A Personal Perspective Problem

Our focus this week was on decentering ourselves in order to open up our minds. Ivan Illich, however, completely blew my mind and made me reconsider my position as a privileged college student in his speech, “To Hell With Good Intentions.”

Illich’s speech is riddled with lots of sarcsasm but his main argument asks, “that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico” (5). In the beginning of his speech I did not quite understand why he was so against Americans taking trips to Mexico and other Latin American countries to provide assistance. But like we have repeatedly discussed in class, real change is not about helping individuals, but rather about breaking down and improving the structures and systems that are keeping people in these countries impoverished and underdeveloped. Simply going into a town, building a school, and talking to the residents is not going to fix the fact that approximately 75% of them will drop out before the 6th grade. Illich wants Americans to stop buying into this illusion and the illusion that taking mission trips are a sacrifice we make to change the lives of others. He says, “All you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder. At best, you can try to convince Mexican girls that they should marry a young man who is self-made, rich, a consumer, and as disrespectful of tradition as one of you” (3). Illich’s argument became very clear to me once he used this example:

“Suppose you went to a U.S. ghetto this summer and tried to help the poor there “help themselves.” Very soon you would be either spit upon or laughed at. People offended by your pretentiousness would hit or spit. People who understand that your own bad consciences push you to this gesture would laugh condescendingly. Soon you would be made aware of your irrelevance among the poor, of your status as middle-class college students on a summer assignment” (4).

I would feel extremely foolish going into an inner city and doing the things that Illich describes above. I believe it is priviledged America’s “single story” of impoverished countries that leads us to treat them differently than an inner city area. Americans need to decenter themselves when going into a new environment in order to keep from imposing their own ideals and ways of life onto people trying their best in their own realm of life. We need to use Friere’s definition of “practice” when working with new groups so that we can grow with them and learn alongside them rather than stupidly trying to “help” others become more like us. Doing this creates more of a dialogue to learn rather than a one-way action.

Despite Illich’s strong stance against the privileged coming on mission trips to Latin American countries, he says, “I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help” (5). Illich is advocating that we immerse ourselves into the culture and beauty of the land to have an enjoyable experience. In The Green Banana, Donald Batchelder falls into a wonderful learning moment when his Jeep experiences issues in the middle of a small hamlet. Since he pulls into the little village by chance, he enters without expectations and allows the people there to help him. He uses critical consciousness by withholding his judgements when the villagers tell him they can use a green banana to fix his radiator, and shows respect when he is informed about the rock in the “center of the world.” By entering the situation respectfully, consciously, and softly Batchelder was able to immerse himself into the way of the people and learn from them. I believe this is what Illich is also asking us to do rather than imposing ourselves on another world. Batchelder summarizes, “If some of the goals of education in modem times are to open up possibilities for discovery and expand learning and the chance for mutual acceptance and recognition in a wider world, it may be important to offer students a perspective on their own immediate center of the world by enabling them to participate sensitively as crosscultural sojourners to the center of someone else’s world” (xv).

After pondering my place as one of the university students Illich mentioned I started to wonder what exactly this means for me and what I can do to avoid disrespecting the people at my community partner site. For one, this definitely reminded me to actively apply Friere’s practice on a small scale when I am with my students. This will remind me to work at their place and work where they are instead of trying to pull them to my own level of education. For example, when I do spelling practices I should consider skill level of each student when they are spelling their words rather than comparing them to their peers, my skill level at their age, or my perception of what they should be able to spell at their age. Instead of thinking that I am coming to help them in their classrooms I should think of it as providing extra assistance where needed. I am not “helping” these students receive a better education, I am working with students to hone their skills and answer their questions on their path of education.

To me, as a community volunteer at Venetia Valley, my goal is to keep the students on task and learning. My main focus is always on the students while I concurrently worry about school and getting to work on time. However, I must always recognize that the students’ focus can be everywhere but school and their biggest worry could just be about the boy who said hi to them at lunch! From talking to the kids, hearing what they complain about, and hearing what they get excited about I can tell that the center of their world and focus is very different from mine. One example of a time I learned my perspective was different from theirs was when two girls became disappointed when I didn’t call them for spelling practice. I was surprised at first, because I thought that the students did not like being pulled from their work to be quizzed on white boards. Later, when I called them up, they told me that it was fun to be quizzed on words, they liked being pulled out of the normal class, and they liked being able to write with the markers. This is just a small example of a perspective I did not previously have, but learned through working respectfully with my students.