CONTESTING TRAINING

When some HR professionals meet someone self-described as a Trainer, they respond with a smirk: “Training is what is done to animals”. Dogs and bears and seals are trained…to perform a set of preferred behaviours. The implication is that human beings have in them a level of autonomy, of self-direction, of choice that elevates them above animals…and, therefore, the word training doesn’t apply. 

 True. If that is so. And that is a big if.

 I am a trainer… yes, the person addressed in the first sentence is me. And I have seen the landscape of training change during the last ten years. There are now trainers galore: and many of them are doing immensely valuable work. How do I as a thinking person and a corporate trainer respond to this scenario? What are the factors that lead to this insatiable demand (it seems) for all kinds of training that are on offer today?

I see this as a need to fill four gaps: a gap of history, a gap of knowledge, a gap of skills and an attitude gap.

To grasp the historical gap, one must recall that Pakistan’s education history has undergone two seismic shocks. One was nationalization in 1972, the other was the dark slump we went into due to the Dictator of 1977. The combined darkness that was visited upon the education system can only be understood by those who have seen a better system, at least a more learning-friendly system in the Pakistan of the 1960s.

The gaps in knowledge are indeed amazing. But Alfie Kohn  points out that it is not just the isolated facts, and ignorance about them, that is the issue. Heaven knows I can confess to vast swaths of entire fields of knowledge that I am ignorant of. No, the issue is deeper. Dr Samuel Johnson gave a hint: Knowledge is of two kinds: we know something or we know how to know it. This second kind of knowing: of having the ability and the desire to look it up, to pursue a line of inquiry, to persist in it and arrive at an insight that gives a well rounded view of the issue in question: it is this that is lacking in those who are in their 30s and their 40s: their maps of meaning are not drawn to scale. And when they use them to navigate the landscape of knowledge, they fail miserably in the most basic test: they do not know where they are. Nor can they reach where they wish to be.

If one were to list the skills that mark an educated person many would agree on some variants of the following:

· To listen to a lecture and be able to see the examples and explanatory digressions from the main points being made. 

· To orally summarize the main points of a chapter or an article, and to locate them in the “big picture” about that issue

· To read an author and be able to grasp “where he is coming from”: to connect him to the tradition of thinking on that issue

· To write across a broad range of genres with appropriacy and clarity

· To participate in a discussion with a human set of skills [brevity, humour and relevance]

You will note that I have not mentioned other skills [the so-called life skills of friendship and caring for elders and time management etc.] but only those which might be the purpose and the end of education. And obviously, our education fails to give these skills to the students. The government schools have a pedagogy of unending tedium. The teacher reads aloud, (or a child does); the teacher writes on the board (or a child does). The teacher dictates, the children write; or the teacher writes on the board and the children copy in their notebooks. Imagine the soul stultifying tedium such children grow up with as images of what education is for them. These are the people who then attend training sessions [any training session] to pick up the skills they should have received in their school but did not. Because their teachers were the products of the double calamity of Pakistan’s history.

A subtler point emerges. All behaviour in public space is a matter of permission. We behave according to the norms set by us implicitly by the milieu that defines us. Thus when we have spent in classrooms the opening decade and a half of our lives in a very narrow range of behaviours that we were allowed to act upon, we unconsciously limit ourselves to that narrow range. We think those are the only ways to behave because that is the only way we have seen those whom we wished to emulate behaved. We can now see the great harm a limited repertoire of activities does to the children: they are limiting as well. They limit their actions in ways we cannot foresee then but they become manifest in time.

To return to the subject. When a Trainer in a workshop asks the participants to use post-its for their responses; or make a bridge out of sheets of paper in groups as a team-building exercise; or explain to their colleagues the gist of a reading--- the participants have got the permission to behave in a cooperative, sharing way. All their schooling they were strait-jacketed in a “no talking, no cheating” seat-work heavy classroom. The training experience thus is liberating because it opens the doors of permission.

Finally: the attitude gap. Now imagine a swimming instructor insisting that you learn how to swim in only three inches of water. Surely you will respond it is not possible without the swimming pool filled with water. This is the attitude problem: we all want to swim but we don’t want to fill the pool.

I have generalized a lot in delineating the four gaps above. Of course, there are exceptions, because human nature has a grandeur that cannot be caught in statistics. In Chicago many years ago, I was criticizing the education system with gusto when a Faculty member of the University asked me: “Surely it can’t be that bad. After all, it produced you!” I replied: True! But I had many variables going in my favour. What about the thousands the system destroyed instead?”

Let us return to the opening paragraph where I explored three reasons the word training doesn’t apply to human beings. I mentioned that human beings are autonomous, self-directed, and can make choices that elevate them above animals. But then I added:  If this is true.

Autonomy is defined as independence, not subject to control from outside. It is indeed a mark of being human to have control over one’s own actions or will; to be able to take action when it is indicated. But if for years you have been the subject of a curriculum that was flawed, an examination system that was corrupt, of teachers who were limited and limiting, what autonomy will you have?

Of the sixteen habits of mind of students that need for success, defined by Art Costa and Ben Kallick, persistence is key. It is the synonym of the second reason: self-direction. Being able to choose a direction and then to steadfastly remain on it, is an admirable human trait. We remember Edison with 10,000 failures, Mandela in prison for 27 years, Lincoln losing seven elections until winning the last. We admire Steve Jobs and his persistence for Apple, Dr A. Q. Khan for his efforts at Kahuta. The underlying quality under all their achievements despite the differences in culture, clime and century is self-direction, persistence. Now I ask again: when did the system ever reward self-direction?

Third: the choice that elevates. I mean here: given a choice between several alternatives the person chooses the nobler, fairer, alternative. This is what elevates us from the herd, makes us distinctive. But then, without belabouring the point again: where exactly in our landscape of thought and vision, does nobility and excellence figure at all?

Training is being done for an outcome. It is a set of preferred behaviours. Civil society rests on some basic assumptions of civilized living. Those are well known and we are far from them. Just watch the passengers in a domestic flight land at a local airport. They have just heard the announcement to NOT take out their luggage from the overhead compartment until the aircraft has come to a complete stop and the doors are opened. But after four decades of flying, I have yet to see any sign that people heed this announcement. There are countless other examples of our public ineptness, our lack of civic sense, our lack of large-heartedness on issues that matter.

And so I return to those whose high definitions of being human rest on such assumptions: If our youth was already endowed with the above traits, there was indeed a case for not using the word training. Until such time as preferred behaviours become the norm, I will remain, and will proudly call myself, a Trainer.

Perhaps it is the HR professional who needs to examine the words human resource. Resources are meant to be consumed. Doesn’t human resource have a hint of cannibalism then?

Within the training landscape, practitioners can show the people they are training that there is a horizon that is beyond this moment in their lives. To aspire to having better knowledge skills and attitude is not the same as ignoring your current reality. What it means is that you can start taking steps today that show results in three months, six months, a year. Planning one’s own progress requires autonomy, self direction and empowerment, all three of which our education system takes away.

 In my capacity, I feel it is the trainer’s job to make a human resource feel more human, less a cog in a machine. To that effect, I train therefore I am.

CONTACT: ABBAS HUSAIN DIRECTOR TEACHERS DEVELOPMENT CENTRE

 021-34310217 MOBILE # 0300 7046286