A Thorough Education

Outings to the cinema, once a common feature of living only a ten-minute walk from the Mecca of Melbourne art-house cinema (now only a ten-minute tram ride), are now rare treats. But the past twenty-four hours have seen me going to the cinema more times than I went during the whole month of July, and the two films make for an interesting comparison, primarily because, despite being from utterly different cultures, each deals in its own way with the question of education and its value.

The first, seen last night at the Indonesian Film Festival, was a film set in Kalimantan, on the border of Indonesia and Malaysia. The second, seen today in the Beanbag cinema of e Melbourne Central, was the new adaptation of "Jane Eyre". The first, appropriately entitled "Batas (Border)", dealt with a driven young woman from Jakarta who is sent by her company to a remote village near the equatorial town of Pontianak ("Vampire", in English) to find out why the local school is not being successful. The girl's experiences in the village transform her, and her presence in the village transforms the education system. She learns from them and they learn from her. An experience hunting wild boar in the jungle shows her the educational value of everyday situations, and she expands the classroom outside the "border" of a schoolhouse, taking education to where the children are, bringing it into their realm. I enjoyed the film, for its visual beauty, and the lovely soundtrack by the legendary Iwan Fals whose music I have recently discovered. Something of the sensory appeal of the film can be found in this trailer, which, regrettably, is in Bahasa with no subtitles. Still, I suppose it shows that, despite the fact that the dialogue wasn't very good (thus, you aren't missing much) the film was still a joy to watch.

Of course, its chief problem, apart from weak dialogue, was its somewhat unrealistic optimism about the human spirit. While touching on the highly sensitive issue of human trafficking in Indonesia, it passed over the problem without looking at its heart. Humans in the film were fundamentally good, if given the right circumstances. This did not explain where the trafficking problem came from. Were the traffickers a mere aberration? Were they subhuman somehow? The film avoided these kinds of questions.

"Jane Eyre" was a film with much more subtlety. It's hard to imagine a two-hour film that could possibly do justice to Charlotte Bronte, but this, I think, came close. It was delicate, moving, passionate and tender all at once, in the way that often only Bronte can be. And, though education was by no means the focus of the film, again there was something said about it, through the comparison between the "thorough education" Jane received at Norwood - a brutal, austere education through beatings and isolation - and the kind, compassionate education Jane later gives her pupil, Adele.

Of course, in Bronte, and in all the great Victorian novels, life is the great Education. Life toughens and transforms all Victorian heroes and heroines, much as Jaleswari, the heroine of "Batas", is toughened and transformed by her time in the remote Kalimantan village.

But does education transform everyone? As a teacher, I have to say I suspect it does not. Was there a process of education thorough enough that it could stop human trafficking? Surely the perpetrators of such a crime know it is wrong; they don't need to be taught that. They need their hearts to be transformed. Could education have kept Bertha Mason from going mad? Possibly, although it would have needed to change the culture that would have confined and beaten her if she had ever been admitted to receive "professional care". Education very nearly broke Jane. Human compassion saved her.

As I sit down to mark a daunting pile of student responses to "A Midsummer Night's Dream", it is with, I hope, a healthy awareness of the limits of education. And what can overcome those limits? In our humility, we should ask the one who made us. If anyone knows the answer, I'm sure it's Him.