My blog

Tag: education consultant

  • Resilience in Crisis: Dr. Pamela Chrabieh on Lebanon’s Struggles and Hopes for the Future

    Resilience in Crisis: Dr. Pamela Chrabieh on Lebanon’s Struggles and Hopes for the Future

    Dr. Pamela Chrabieh is a Lebanese-Canadian scholar, university professor, visual artist, activist, writer and consultant. Selected as one of the 100 most influential women in Lebanon (Women Leaders Directory 2013, Smart Center and Women in Front, Beirut), and ‘Most Exceptional Teaching Fellow’ in 2008 (University of Montreal)

    Dr. Chrabieh won several national and regional prizes in Canada (including Forces Avenir Université de Montréal, Forces Avenir Québec, Prix Lieutenant-Gouverneur du Québec), and her Peace Education ‘Diplomacy of the Dish’ activity was selected as one of the most innovative activities during the Innovation Week of the United Arab Emirates in 2015. Since 2017, Dr. Chrabieh has been the owner and director of Beirut-based SPNC Learning & Communication Expertise, and the Nabad (nabad.art) Program Manager since 2020.

    Here, in an important exclusive, she talks to the poet and critic Omar Sabbagh about the current condition of Beirut and Lebanon.

    Omar Sabbagh: Whether it may be common knowledge or not, Beirut and Lebanon more generally are currently in a state of crisis.  Can you tell us, to start with, what this crisis situation looks like on the ground?  

    Dr. Pamela Chrabieh: Lebanon has been going through a multiform crisis following the so-called end of the 1970s-1980s wars: social, political, environmental, sanitary, etc. The Beirut port blast on August 4, 2020, was the first straw that broke the camel’s back, and the ongoing acute economic crisis the second straw. As poverty is rising – more than 60% of the local population lives now under the extreme poverty line – people are increasingly desperate. Many (those who were able to do so) left the country, others (those who are staying) are trying to survive the financial meltdown, the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the political deadlock.

    OS: There are many factors that constitute the fraught modern history of Lebanon.  In your view, is the current crisis another version of other crises in the history of modern Lebanon, or is the current situation of a new sort, and why?

    PC: In my opinion, the current situation is first the consequence of decades of corruption, physical and psychological wars, state paralysis, nepotism, sectarianism, foreign interferences, and a clash of ignorance. However, and contrary to what we went through during the 1980s – and that I witnessed first hand as being part of the generation of war – what we are going through today is different, as the deterioration of the country is unprecedented.

    During the 1980s, we were able to escape bombs and snipers and take refuge in a different city or village, we were still able to find food and work, and we had hope for the future. Whereas today looks and feels like a descent into hell, with most of us who still roam the land are hanging by a thread. The level of despair is immeasurable today, and that is, in my opinion, one main difference between the recent past and our present life.

    OS: The economy has suffered tremendously in recent years.  Apart from long-standing practices of corruption, there was the revolutionary movement from 2019, and the terrible blast in Summer of 2020.  How would you assess or critique the recent fate and current state of materialwell-being in Lebanon and Beirut?

    PC: Lebanon is enduring an acute economic depression, inflation reaching triple digits, and the exchange rate keeps losing value. This is still affecting the population, especially the poor and middle class. I agree with the World Bank statement: “The social impact, which is already dire, could become catastrophic”.

    I honestly don’t know how long the local population will be able to survive with one of the lowest minimum wages in the world, and when the country’s food prices have become the highest in Southwestern Asia and North Africa. People can’t even find needed medicine or pay a hospital bill. They haven’t been able to access their money in banks since late 2019, and their lights may go off starting May 15 because cash for electricity generation is running out. 

    OS: How would you assess the prospects for the young, the student body of Lebanon?  It’s common knowledge that for decades the pool or fund of human capital, of human talent in Lebanon is a kind of superlative supply for what is a nugatory demand, and that there has been for decades a brain-drain from Lebanon to other places.  Are prospects for the young just a continuation of this previous scenario or are there significant differences to the situation now, and how so?

    PC: Now more than ever, and given the compounded effect of multiple crises, the Lebanese youth is facing a lack of work opportunities, rising costs of living and unemployment rates, and the absence of any state support. Many are growing disillusioned and desperate, and we are not even at the end of our crises. We should expect worse to come and it is going to be tougher for young people to pursue their higher studies, find a job, or even secure an entry visa elsewhere. 

    OS: Lebanon is known for its fractious sectarianism.  Does this feature of the nation’s political, civil, and denominational make-up affect the young today as much as it may have done in decades past?

    PC: Most students of mine and other university students, along with countless academics, activists, and artists who have been part of the October 17 ‘revolutionary movements’, have vehemently criticized sectarianism in all its forms and offered alternative paths, ranging from a complete separation between religion and politics to mediatory approaches. This is not a new phenomenon, as many individuals and organizations stood against sectarianism in the last decades, but we are witnessing change within student bodies, especially with secular groups winning elections in some of the most prestigious universities versus traditional sectarian groups.

    OS: You have been involved at a grass-roots with the so-called ‘revolutionary’ upheavals in Lebanon and Beirut since they began in late 2019.  How would you characterize the nature of this movement?  And what do you think its effects have been and/or will be on Lebanese politics and thus on the prospects of the up-and-coming generation?

    PC: I think it is still too soon to assess the October 17 revolutionary movements. I wrote a while ago that there are many ways of approaching the study of revolution in the contemporary world. According to a narrow definition, “revolution is a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system”.

    In that perspective, revolutionary dynamics in Lebanon appear to several observers (whether anti-revolutionary or skeptics) as “minor disturbances”. According to these ‘experts’, as long as the socio-political and economic systems are “unchanged”, the so-called “hirak (movement) is not worthy to be called “revolution”, and “will soon end” or it just “ended”.

    However, a different definition of “revolution” – the one I use and develop – makes it appear as an ongoing project of deep confrontation, resistance, deconstruction, reconstruction, and systemic transformation. This project has no start per se, nor a specific end. In other words, Revolution with a big R is a process, and the October 17 revolutionary movements are only but a step towards overturning existing conditions and generating alternative socio-political and economic orders.

    As I see it, “revolution” in Lebanon isn’t a static object that can either be a “success” or a “failure”. It consists of several current dimensions and historical layers simultaneously, and when it is not roaring in public spaces, it is boiling in the minds, adapting, learning, and bouncing back.

    OS: What’s it like being both a teacher and a business woman in today’s climate?  Detail, if you would, how the perspectives of your variegated work-roles have illuminated for you the current state of Lebanon?

    PC: I wear several hats: scholar, university professor, visual artist, activist, consultant, program manager, wife, daughter, mother, etc. And these hats have been both challenging and rewarding. Definitely, my studies and work experience have helped me shape my knowledge and critical thinking, but my life experiences, with my family, friends, and colleagues, in Lebanon and abroad, have marked my identity and deeply contributed to what I have become today. Most certainly, I haven’t learned about resistance and resilience in books, but through my art, the arts and culture in my country and the region, and through the many struggles I have been going through, as well as the struggles of others around me.

    OS: Given your answers to the questions above, what in your view is in store for Lebanon, and why?   

    PC: As long as there are inequalities, social injustice, exclusion, oppression, violence, war, etc., and as long as there are possibilities of change, I do not think that revolutionary movements will end. As long as our backs are to the wall and our only way is forward and through our fears, and as long as there are no limitations we choose to impose on our will, imagination, resilience, patience and freedom, we will rise again from under the rubble. 

    Photo credit: the opening image was originally posted to Flickr by jiangkeren at https://www.flickr.com/photos/90475107@N00/5959474239. It was reviewed on 28 October 2011 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-sa-2.0.

  • Lumos Education CEO Johanna Mitchell on her early life and the incredible influence of her parents

     

    Johanna Mitchell

     

    I had no idea that I would work as an education consultant, until I was in my mid-30s, running a small school for the Lawn Tennis Association. The education part I got from my father and my sense of optimism from my great aunt, Pat.  My own experiences of education made me want to help other children. When parents ask me to find a ‘leading’ school or university for their children, I always ask what they mean. If it doesn’t cater to the specific emotional and social needs of their children, it’s leading them nowhere.

    My father was an academic.  A North Londoner, he attended Haberdashers, after failing the 11+. Prior to this, he was told by his prep school head that he would amount to nothing.  Like many young men, he started to thrive at aged 13-14 and went on to have a career in food technology. He was said to have developed the recipe for Quavers crisps whilst at Unilever.

    His colleagues described him as the Patrick Moore of the food science world. He was the archetypal mad professor and was often to be seen on stage, trying in vain to put his hands into the pockets of his inside-out lab coat.  His secretary remembers him telephoning her regularly from airports to ask: ‘where am I going?’.

    Whilst my father was secular, my Roman Catholic mother was the major force behind my schooling. My father confided that there were two things that filled him most with trepidation:  one was the nuns and the second was women, of a certain age, telling Peter Jones’ customer services that they were ‘cross’.  The head of my first secondary school, a convent, was the formidable Sister Mary Angela.

    At parents’ evenings, she would send my father into a spin. At Sister Mary Raymond’s funeral, an elderly piano-teaching nun with six fingers on one hand, Sister Mary Angela marched to the altar and slammed her coffin lid shut, exclaiming ‘thank God she’s gone!.’ It was pointless getting on the wrong side on Sister Mary Angela.

    A gentle soul, who didn’t hold with too much authority, my father sneaked a replacement tape player into my boarding house, right under the housemistress’s nose.  My old one had been confiscated for playing Pink Floyd’s The Wall loudly.  Later, at another school, I was expelled, with my friend Isobel, for posting questionable photographs on the head’s door in the middle of my night. My father was summoned and when Father President handed him a manila envelope, containing said photographs, my father took them out, examined them and burst into laughter. I loved him for that. Priests didn’t frighten him as much as nuns.  I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was the added female dimension. Or the veil.

    After this, I had to sit my A levels as an external candidate, at schools which had the same specialist papers.  Oakham School were very kind. My father decreed that I would have to self-fund part of my private tuition by working in a launderette and waitressing. I know how to operate a dry-cleaning machine and am a dab hand at silver service. It was a challenging period. Despite being predicted straight As, I lost all my university offers, and had to take up a clearing place. In my work with Lumos Education, I feel an affinity with children who have experienced ruptures in their education.

    Post university, I went to live in Paris for a few years, teaching English, working as a fille au pair and doing a postgraduate at the Sorbonne. I wanted to be an academic, like my father – maybe in English or French literature. He himself said he would have liked to have been a Bond hero. Or perhaps, a politician.  He saw both as more glamorous. His own father had overseen general election campaigns for Conservative Party central office.  So he had some understanding of politics.  His one and only student job was delivering Conservative Party campaign leaflets throughout Hampstead and Finchley. No launderettes for him!

    Back in London, I joined the civil service.  Sir Humphrey stalked the corridors of my first department. I remember one senior civil servant telling me that I could only handle confidential files if I put on the pair of white gloves which were in the cabinet, with said files.  I didn’t double check invites that had been printed for the Science Minister inviting his guests to the Zuckerman Science Lecture that year, and afterwards to a buffet supper. The letters went out inviting guests to a ‘buffer supper.’ Although this seemed quite appropriate, given some of the audience, the minister was, understandably, not happy.

    In London, I began to spend more time with my great aunt Pat, whom I hadn’t known well as a child.  She divided her time between London and Sydney, was from the Irish/Australian branch of the family and a real bon viveur. Unfailingly cheerful, she lunched most days at Frantoio on the Kings Road.  Three months pregnant with my youngest daughter, I arrived for a pre-lunch drink and she filled a half pint class with brandy .

    When I refused the drink:  ‘lily-livered all your generation are!  All vegetarian’, she said.  Once her back was turned, I tipped the brandy into a pot plant (which was conspicuously absent on my next visit).  Both Pat’s sons had pre-deceased her, but she was just incredibly resilient.  Her family history was both entrepreneurial and tragic. Her grandfather, my great, great grandfather, was Charles Yelverton O’Connor, the engineer who constructed Freemantle Harbour.  He rode into the sea and shot himself after being criticised, for his work, in the Times.  There are two statues commemorating him in Freemantle.

     

    Commemorative statue at Freemantle

     

    Charles Yelverton O’Connor

     

    Her aunt, my great, great aunt, was Charles’ daughter, Kathleen O’Connor, the celebrated Australian impressionist artist who defied the patriarchy surrounding women artists of her time, and lived to her 90s.  Pat had some of her paintings in her Chelsea home. My husband and my daughters enjoy painting.  Pat lived until 100 and, even in her nursing home, she shared a bottle of good red with her fellow residents every night. I learned a lot from her – mainly that your glass should always be half full.

    Credit: Richard Woldendorp

     

    Some of my dearest friends today are from the civil service, school and university. Interestingly, in my time there, there were a lot of civil servants who had been raised in the Catholic church. Whether or not you continue the religion into adulthood, it does give you a sense of service. I love helping families to navigate global education systems which can seem incredibly complex.  Pastoral care is so much better now and we understand more about the emotional health of the child. There are still key improvements to be made in education, but it’s far cry from my experiences in the 1980s.

    My father and aunt Pat were givers. Dad loved to help others, young academics and children whom he tutored in chess. He sponsored a young girl’s education in India and, despite being an incredibly busy man, he wrote to her regularly.  He didn’t give a fig for money, rank or power.  He always said ‘be kind, for others are fighting a harder battle.’ I didn’t understand exactly what he meant then. I do now. We have a picture of Plato on our kitchen wall, with his quote below. My daughters have stuck a moustache on poor Plato. Having both studied ancient Greek, they should know the importance of this great philosopher.

    My father was also a man of his generation, without much freedom to express his emotions.  He would have had more emotional freedom now.  I remember him crying three times:  when his first marriage fell apart, when he watched a programme on Siege of Leningrad and on the day of the Brexit referendum result.

    I’ve made so many mistakes and continue to do so.  So did my father and my aunt. It’s essential to learn from them.  And to hold ourselves accountable when things go wrong. Staying in one’s integrity, and treating people well is not always easy – but it’s the most important thing. My father understood this.  With challenge comes growth.

    Ancestral lines are not just linear. Their branches grow thick and dense with our colourful ancestors whose loves, hopes and losses were not so very different from ours. When asked, most people can’t remember the names of their great grandparents. How quickly we are forgotten. A reminder to live for now and to do our best work.