DEVELOPMENT IS THINKING: BUT WHAT IS THINKING?

Good-hearted people can do damage when the implications of what they initiate are not considered carefully. One small instance of that would be our request during our first days before we went to live with Mexican families that the hotel staff not change our sheets and towels. That would be our way to help save water in an area of water shortages. In fact, we also indicated it was not necessary to tidy our rooms. We were planning to leave the next day.

 However, we failed to ask at least one important question. Would that request result in an employee losing part of their potential earnings for the day? Our request was not made as an extended discussion with all parties involved. Rather, it was more a demand than a request and it was made as we headed out the door of the hotel for another busy day.

Our teachers, Gary and Kate, have tried to emphasize that development work is not simply a matter of doing things. There is a cycle in which we experience, think, act and return to experience reflecting again on the impact of our action. What we do is termed experiential learning. There is a focus on immersion in a particular situation and action. However, it is meant to be thoughtful action.

 So let me suggest that it would be helpful to think about the thinking aspect of our cycle of experiential learning. Thinking is about asking questions. At the beginning of life, before social pressures shut us down, we are children inspired by wonder to an unending stream of questions. We saw that with the boys at the Casa de las Flores. They had no problem coming up with questions.

There are, however, different kinds of questions. There are questions for understanding - who? what? why? when? where? And when we think we understand, there is the all-important question for judgement -- IS THAT SO? We are then carried back to the evidence of our experience. Not every bright idea is a right idea. There are questions for action and moral discernment, another form of judgement that asks us to commit ourselves to life -- SHOULD WE? The authentic development worker is characterized by the courage and freedom to ask questions in the face of the Powers (internal and external).

The criterion for reaching the term of a reflection process is the sense we have that in the process we are no longer asking relevant questions. This is a very human process that takes full commitment on our part. To fail to ask relevant questions is just human inauthenticity. To continue asking questions when they are no longer relevant again is just human inauthenticity.

Sergio Castro, whom we learned more about yesterday in our visit to his museum and healing centre, is a man who asked questions. As Gary told the story, Sergio came from Chihuahua as an agriculturalist in training to do a placement among the indigenous people of Chiapas. With his knowledge and energy he did good work with them. However, he asked himself why the work of the families he dealt with so often failed? "Burns" was the answer. The inability to pay for treatment and distance from hospitals intensified the damage. Sergio's response has been to develop a way of treating the burns right in the home of the person damaged. The burns often occur in the home around the traditional open fire pit. There are further questions: are there possible safer designs? Why do adults fall into the fire? And so on. These questions can lead down paths that produce real positive human development.