Meaningful learning experience happens many times in lifetime, some teaches minor lessons whether some teaches important lesson. I learned a meaningful experience on a religious and historical tour that I went with my friends. The author of “The Banking Concept of Education” Freire Paulo describes the learning experience as a problem posing and critical thinking, which somewhat relates to my experience. The concept of Percy Walker in “The Loss of the Creature shows the learning through sovereignty and exploring is more similar to my learning.
I learned the meaning of people’s lifestyle that differs according to the person and the places they lived and also the problems that they have on getting the basic needs that everyone has right to get it. Sovereignty doesn’t require being alone on or only few people. In 2010, my friends Prashant, Sujit, Pradhu, four others and me made a plan to go motorcycle tour on a religious tour for four days. Being a follower of Hinduism, we decided to visit a Hindu temple called Muktinath. Is located on hill area of Nepal on the Mustang district. Which is two days drive from the place we lived, about 400 miles.
We went on four motorcycles; on the half of the way I saw such beautiful rivers, springs, hills that I haven’t seen before on my life. I am arguing the concept of the Percy’s explanation of learning through discovering and exploring when someone is experiencing alone or with few peoples. I was with many friends but my meaningful learning of exploring depends on my own way of observing and experiencing it. Percy has mentioned the couple on Grand Canyon wants to explore new place that is “unspoiled , (463). Describes the place should not been discovered by others or should not been told before.
In My opinion it doesn’t matter the place is discovered or not but should be something new and interesting that you had never experienced before. I was so excited that I was not even the half of the way and saw so beautiful places. How would be that places that we were going? What would I see on the way? As the Freire brings the concept of critical thinking on his writing, some questions arose on my mind and started thinking deeply on to it. After a long drive of 10 hours, we reached a city called Pokhara, which is one of the most beautiful city of my country Nepal.
We decided to stay there for a night visit some places, eat food and sleep at night. We went boating on Fewa Lake from where we could see a clear view of mountain piled up with the snow. The sun was about to set so I could see the sun on the top of mountain hiding a little bit on the white cloud and spreading the orange color of light, which was the most beautiful natural beauty that I had ever seen in my life. I couldn’t forget that moment in my life. Then after we went to see the cultural dance and get some drinks. The first day of our journey ends with a good early sleep dreaming the more beauty of nature that I could see tomorrow.
Secondly, we started our journey at seven on the morning. After few hours of drive the road starts to be unpaved. It was a month of rain so the unpaved road somewhere was full of water, though it was hard to drive on such way I was enjoying it. There we got chance to see thick green forest with some wild animals like deer, wild rabbit, fox crossing the road. The way was so uphill and downhill because the temple was located on the hill area of my country. Unexpectedly we got stopped suddenly because of the landslide. We were stocked on the way, after few research and thinking we decided to go few miles back to keep our bike on a resort.
We requested the manager to park bike on his resort for few days. He agreed and our journey turned into hiking. I carried my backpack and started hiking. We travelled through the landslide; some of the experienced villagers were there to help the traveller. Freire has introduced the “problem posing education (323), as a study of the factor and consequences of any problems. Getting the consciousness about the situation or problems, which was applied on me that time. I got knowledge about the natural disaster and the problems caused by them and were conscious about the hard time that we got during landslides.
The time was already 7 pm and the sun was on his way to set. But according to the map we had to walk about four hours to reach to the small village where we could ask or rent a room to stay at night. It get darker and darker we were talking and making fun of each other and heading to our destination. Finally we reached on a small village, there were some small house made of stones. We asked a room to stay a night and would travel in the morning. We offered some money and they provide a room with bed n sheets only. We all were tired so tried to sleep but it was raining and the roof was leaking.
Its kind of funny, some drop of water dropped on my ear while sleeping. After an hour it stopped raining and I changed the place and tried to sleep but I heard the loud noise of stone breaking and falling. We all were on fear that landslide may come to the house where we were. Electricity was not available on that place. We used our cellphone’s light to find out our stuffs. During that time some sort of strange feelings came on me, I became emotional thinking the people there. How they are living their life? People have never seen the electricity, neither means of transportation.
Children had never been to school, they just took the pet animals to graze on the field from 10 on the morning to 5 at evening. I couldn’t consider my life on their situation. As of Percy’s experience on “The loss of creature , I also found myself as discovering that place under some consideration. I was also observing and exploring that place. Though there is individualism on her concept, my experience was not similar to the Freire’s collaboration concept on “The banking concept. ” Because I was experience those things myself with few friends. I was exploring and observing new places.
When I was picturing those things on my mind, I heard a loud voice of something cracking. It was a landslide again about a few meters ahead where we stayed. We were so scared and didn’t sleep whole night, passed all night talking about natural disasters. We waited for some sunlight to come so that we could move forward to our destination. Finally the sun spread some light then we start packing our stuff on bag then we walked to our destination. We walked on a narrow way between two huge hills; some waterfalls gave us some shower, refreshed us and gave some energy to move on. On the way I saw some houses far away behind three hills.
It would take two more days to walk to there, no any means of transportation. How do those people survive there? I was in shock when I saw those houses and imagining the lifestyle people living on such condition. What do they do when some people get sick? How do they get medicine’such questions came on my mind all the time while moving forward. The more we travel the more critical lifestyle, we see people living around there. Children were wearing just a shirt without button and small shorts on a cold weather. I feel so unhappy to see that the children couldn’t get proper dietary food, education, clothes nothing at all.
Childs are responsible for the changing the society on future, but they are out of sources to learn. I couldn’t imagine the changes on their lifestyle after generations also. After walking whole day finally we reached our destination and talked with some people lived there. The said that whatever we saw the people’s living condition on the way are far better than the people live 200, 300 miles away from there. I couldn’t even imagine that the life of people living there. I learned a lesson from them that how people could struggle for surviving and the changes on lifestyle according to the places they lived.
I was so sad for them but little bit happy that we are living very wonderful life in comparison to them. This tour gave me a meaningful learning experience about the lifestyle of different people, resources they are using. Struggling whole life without basic needs but also happy to live. Friere and Percy gave me some ideas about the meaningful learning experience depending on their view and I made some comparison with my own experience. Also tried to understand their concept by relating their concept on my experience.
