Good learning capability key to human resources development

Good learning capability key to human resources development

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Whether we are really serious about developing
our human resources is a question that has been frequently asked
of late. And whether we really understand the meaning and
implications of "human resources development". Or do we merely
use these three words to satisfy our appetite for slogans?

I don't mean to sound cynical, but the recent prevalence of so
many calamities, disasters and accidents in our society within
such a short time span has this question haunting me.

Consider the number of woes that occur regularly every year in
our society: the chaotic handling of the routine haj expedition;
the great confusion that occurs every Idul Fitri holiday when
millions of Jakartans head to their home villages; the many
highway accidents involving public transportation; the annual
floods; the frequent accidents on construction sites; the
presence of so many unwanted middlemen in bus terminals where
every attempt to control and discipline them is defied, and so
on, and so forth.

If we were really serious about our human resources
development programs we would have learned something by now. We
would have learned how to prevent extreme catastrophes like the
Gurita ferry accident, to prevent the bank robberies and cases of
embezzlement that seem to be routine matters now, and how to
reduce financial losses suffered by state firms.

Or more positively, we must have learned how to improve our
work performance. If we were really serious in developing our
human resources, we would have learned how to increase job
efficiency. Unfortunately there is no convincing evidence to
indicate this. It thus seems that we have failed to learn
anything significant from our past mistakes and misfortunes.

If I understand correctly, human resources development has
always meant the enhancement of the capacity to learn. Thus
logically, after years of national campaigns for human resources
development, we should see a tangible improvement with regard to
our national learning capability.

Yet what do we see? Repetition of past mistakes, which is a
sure sign of failure in enhancing learning capabilities. There is
a saying in Dutch that no donkey stumbles upon the same stone
twice. Cynics would say then that we are worse than donkeys in
our learning capability.

What is wrong with the way we learn?

To be fair, it must be acknowledged that communities within
our society show widely differing degrees of learning capability.
While on the whole our society does not show much learning
dynamics, there are pockets within our society in which
institutions and individuals are really fast learners. Within
these pockets people and institutions seem to know which things
are relevant and which should be considered irrelevant.

However, within the vast majority of our communities the
situation seems to be that no significant learning dynamics takes
place. In these communities it is very hard to find the
phenomenon of innovation.

In this regard, several interesting phenomena are worth
mentioning. The first of these is that on the whole our private
sector seems to have been learning faster than the bureaucracy,
and the difference in this regard is not diminishing but
increasing.

If this trend is not halted or reversed, some people predict
that we are going to have a dangerous situation, that we are
going to have a mediocre bureaucracy which will have to deal with
an increasingly sophisticated private sector.

Another interesting observation is that among the young
generation, those working in the field of technology and
engineering seem to learn faster than those working within the
realm of business administration, who in turn learn faster than
those working within the area of public administration.

One explanation that can be given to this phenomenon is that
those working within the field of technology and engineering are
much more exposed to change and innovation than those working
within the fields of business and public administration. This may
be one factor that creates a difference in learning motivation.

Another factor that may cause a very large segment of our
society to lack enthusiasm and rigor in learning may have to do
with attitude towards learning. My impression in this regard is
that on the whole we do not feel the urgency for learning. We are
not haunted by the feeling that we are ignorant about so many
things in our life. We feel secure in our ignorance. This can be
seen in our attitude towards television. For many of us
television is primarily an entertainment medium, and not a
learning medium.

Still another factor which may contribute to our low learning
capacity is that we pay more attention to the symbolic attributes
of learning rather than to the functional value of learning. Many
young people prefer to pursue study programs which lead to
degrees without competence, rather than pursuing study programs
leading towards competence without degrees.

Finally, lack of knowledge about learning techniques may also
be an important factor. For too many people within our society
learning is identical to memorization. Just look at the way we
always memorize and imitate sentences and phrases used by high-
ranking government officials. No matter how absurd they may
sound, these phrases must be memorized and imitated.

Even among university students there are many who try to learn
by rote. It is this reliance upon memorization, I think, which
makes us a nation with very low creativity. It should be
remembered that imitation never leads to creativity.

The important question in this regard is: how to improve this
situation? If we do not want a repetition of past mistakes, if we
want to learn something from the ongoing changes around us, if we
want to increase our efficiency, and if we want to constantly
improve our performance, then it is imperative that we at least
improve our learning capability. Without achieving a sufficient
degree of learning capability, we will remain poor learners.

One problem in this regard is that learning capability has
been taken for granted in many of our human resources development
programs. No one has bothered to question whether the
participants of such programs actually possess the necessary
learning capability to pursue the programs to a fruitful end. And
nobody seems to be interested in teaching people how to learn
effectively, efficiently and rapidly in human resources
development programs.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.