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.