I grew up in Hawaii, and was a surf lover until banished to a New England college where skiing had to take the place of surfing. But skiing was expensive, and I had to work to make it through college, so I began to teach skiing. I found that teaching others to learn was as much fun as the sport itself. That has led to a life-long passion to understand how people learn, and to support the process of learning in various cultures and contexts. Living and working in Ethiopia, Uganda, Lesotho, Botswana and Egypt for extended periods, I have grown to believe in a deep, innate human love and capacity for learning (and playing), which is not inevitably deadened as youth fades into adulthood. I hold that every child - and potentially every adult - is a genius. My work seeks to support individual and community learning - which I believe to be the process of transformation that leads to greater capacity, and opportunity, to participate in society. Learning is connected to our personal meaning, and to our relationships to others. I have been involved in specific projects in Egypt, Ghana, Uganda, Malawi that apply learning principles to classroom, school, community programs, and I also work towards supporting and financing national policies that are built from local successes.
I recently returned from Kosovo, where I worked with the UNICEF office, headed by Rob Fuderich, on strategies for the development of the education sector. Kosovo faces the challenge of establishing its legitimacy as an independent country, deserving of international support, and securing the external assistance and financing to meet pressing development needs. Ash, working with UNICEF and Ministry of Education staff developed a sector overview addressing these issues, and also prepared a paper to map out how UNICEF, with its unique role supporting children and youth disadvantaged by historical, cultural, social, and economic conditions, can most effectively contribute to the overall education sector reform.
I believe it is critical to link the consideration of educational quality explicitly to learning, and to draw on what we know about the process of learning in order to transform current education policy and practice to achieve Learning for All in the next century. In the poorer countries of the world, particularly those in Africa, South Asia and Latin America, public financing for education is unable to keep pace with rapidly increasing populations and school enrollments, resulting in a notable deterioration of school quality. This regression is occurring at a time when there is universal recognition and advocacy for quality basic education for all. It is vital to recognize that a policy of more of the same will not be sufficient to achieve the goal of quality education for all.
Ash Hartwell has thirty-five years of field experience working at community, national and international levels on educational policy analysis, planning and research. He has provided technical assistance and training for the establishment and strengthening of national educational planning divisions in Egypt, Botswana, Lesotho and Uganda. He has provided leadership in establishing innovative designs for basic education reform in Egypt, Ghana and Malawi, and the development of a health oriented rural women’s literacy program in Afghanistan. He has also held regular and honorary teaching positions in several universities in Africa and the United States.
