Keeping human resources human (2)

Keeping human resources human (2)

By Ignas Kleden

This is the second of two articles probing the link between
human resources and development.

JAKARTA (JP): It is hopefully clear that the matching-and-
linking principle has more complicated ramifications than we used
to believe. Human beings are by definition not linked and matched
to their nature nor are they linked and matched to their
societies. Instead, they have to be linked and matched through
culture or ideology.

However, if culture has an ante-factum role vis-a-vis society,
ideology assumes a rather post-factum force, which is a blueprint
of what a society is.

The first answer to the question "why education and not just
training" lies in the socio-anthropological fact that human
beings are by definition the least linked and the least matched
animal with respect to their natural environment.

Their linkage to nature is principally made (through culture)
rather than given (by nature). If training renders human beings
linked and matched to, say, industrial production and the labor
market, this is necessitated by the fact that we are now living
in an industrialized era.

However, a man or a woman can never be reduced to merely homo
faber (producing animal) simply because he or she is endowed with
many other talents which deserve the same opportunity to develop
either as homo ludens (animal symbolicum) or what not.

Education is the enterprise to guarantee that human beings are
provided with the opportunities to develop themselves by
actualizing the potentials they are endowed with.

The second reason has to do with learning capacity. We are now
living in an era where changes take place with such intensity,
both in terms of impact and speed, that any preparation devised
for use will become obsolete.

What is more urgently required is not to create some prefab
solutions but rather the capacity to unlearn what one has
obtained during training and to learn again how to deal with the
new problems.

Learning capacity implies the willingness to unlearn and the
ability to learn it over again. This is something which rather
contradicts the nature of technical know-how.

By definition technical know-how is the capacity to apply some
skill which is so well mastered that in applying it one can do it
automatically without being aware of how the skill is acquired
and organized.

In other words, technical know-how is the result of a learning
process which has become an organic part of an individual that it
tends to be perceived as a natural habit. A professional typist
can do the typing while making jokes with his colleagues. He does
not think anymore of which key he or she has to press. The same
can be said of a professional interpreter who can use a foreign
language without thinking of grammatical rules.

Language is a good example and an apt analogy for technical
know-how. All technical know-how can be seen as a sort of
language which a person can speak without being aware of the
rules and regulations of the grammar.

However, if one is faced with a new technical problem, one is
required to keep a distance from his hitherto mastered know-how.
He has to try to come to grips with the nature of the problem at
hand, just as one has to deautomaticize one's own language in
order to get familiar with another language.

Technical know-how is a complete learning process with well
established results. Nevertheless, in a changing society this
established knowledge, which is well linked and matched to the
old requirements, can help in dealing with new problems.

In technical affairs this will result in a technical stalemate
which will leave the problems at hand unresolved because new
technical problems cannot be tackled with old formulas.

Nature and things cannot be forced and this can only be
achieved only by means of following or manipulating their own
laws. In social affairs it can be much more dangerous. It can
always happen that new social problems are solved by means of old
knowledge. Pragmatically things can be done because, principally
speaking, men and society, unlike nature and things, can be
forced to follow old solutions both by persuasion and violence.
The difficulty arises from the fact that whereas new technical
problems will only remain unresolved if they are coped with using
old formulas, new social problems which might be more serious
than the ones at hand.

At this juncture the role of education can never be
exaggerated. Human beings cannot be only linked and matched to a
particular need, but should be equipped with the equally
important de-linking capacity. This de-linking capacity is a
basic need simply because human beings, unlike other animals, do
not have a stable habitat.

Their living space changes from time to time, to which they
have to link themselves anew. In this connection the impact of
what human beings produce is much greater than we used to
believe. Technology in general and industry in particular do not
change only the infrastructure but, with it, the social
organization and even the mental habits of people.

One of the main differences between traditional and modern
people pertains to the linkage to their living space and social
environment. Generally speaking, the former are more closely
linked to their environment than the latter. Traditional people
are less able to de-link themselves from their living space and
their social environment. This is the case because the former are
familiar with a single cultural world without which they easily
lose ground and social security, whereas the latter are usually
exposed to some different cultural worlds.

If we can take the ideal of modernization for granted it
appears that the de-linking capacity plays an important role. But
there are so many things which can weaken or even destroy this
de-linking capacity. On a mental level, there is always the
temptation to stick to the old system of knowledge even if it has
turned out to be ineffective in solving the problems at hand.
This is fairly understandable because leaving a familiar cultural
world will result in a feeling of insecurity owing to the fact
that losing a familiar cultural world does not always imply that
a better one will be found.

If human beings are basically linked and de-linked at the same
time, then linking them to a certain environment inextricably
will contradict their basic nature. To link and to match them to
industrial production is perhaps a necessary thing, but to render
them unable to extricate themselves from industrial production
might contradict human nature. Human beings can be made human
resources by linking and matching them to the production process,
but they are human and resourceful only as long as they have the
de-linking capacity which enables them to cope with new
developments in the years to come.

The writer is a sociologist now working with the Jakarta-based
SPES Foundation Research Center.

Window: Learning capacity implies the willingness to unlearn and
the ability to learn it over again. This is something which rather
contradicts the nature of technical know-how.