I keep reflecting on Teemu’s recent comment…
The aim of reaching everyone is immoral. It seems to be a project of expanding the banking concept of education where “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.”
Going back several blog posts to the original statement, it seems that much of the stir was caused by my (perhaps unfortunate) use of the word “education.” Some will say that “education” is evil because it is traditionally forced on people who don’t want it by people who feel like they need it.
I want to look at the components of the statement “the aim of reaching everyone is immoral” in this context.
Aiming: striving, working toward, trying, goal orientation. For me, this embodies what I have called the “moral imperative” of instructional designers; the responsibility I believe we all have. We are empowered to an almost ridiculous degree. Of course, the quesiton is – empowered to do what? Responsible to do what? To help.
Reach: This word implies an effort on my part – not that I wait until someone who needs a hand shows up on my doorstep, but that I actively seek people who need help and ways to help them. Now, I expect that some may take issue with my use of the word “help.” They’ll say that it implies that I am in a position of power in “giving” the help and that the “receiver” is in a position of weakness; they will say that this is banking education.
To this criticism of helping as banking, I first say, YES. That is the definition of help – that one needs it, and another gives it. Everyone of us frequently find ourselves in situations where we need to rely on other people. This includes everything from moving a piece of furniture too heavy for a certain individual to carry, to mastering complex concepts in pure mathematics that are just plain beyond a certain individual’s capacity to grasp alone. We all need help occasionally – physical, mental, emotional, and otherwise. Anyone who denies this would have to be kidding themself. From the moment we are born (and especially in that moment) we rely on Others. I don’t think that I act immorally when I cut my neighbor’s yard when his ankle is sprained. Just the opposite.
How are we to receive help if an Other will not provide it? “Oh, I can see that you’re struggling terribly to move water from one side of your village to the other. However, because I would find it immoral to place myself in a position of power relative to you, I will not offer to ‘help’, even though I have been doing this for 20 years.” Can you imagine?
To the criticism of helping as banking, I secondly say, NO. It has been my experience (both in everyday life and in multi-year service opportunities overseas) that the one who “gives help” always receives greatly in return, and the one who “receives help” always gives greatly in return. Envisioning true help as a one way power relation and “deposit” mechanism seems wrong to me.
Everyone: Can wanting to help everyone be immoral? If it is, then a moral path might be to systematically ignore some group of individuals and refuse to help them when they are in need.
Another perspective on this might be that wanting to help everyone, all the time, even when they do not perceive themselves as being in need of help, is immoral. Above I’ve claimed that everyone is need of help sometimes. However, for a vareity of reasons, various people don’t perceive themselves as needing help at various times (either because they actually don’t need help, or are for some reason unwilling to admit that they do). Now, if we were to force ourselves on to these people, that would be bad.
But this is not an excuse that allows us to avoid gearing up to be ready to reach everyone. Just because everyone does not need help at the same time doesn’t mean that they won’t need help at some time. We should be ready.
Immoral: Wrong. Something we shouldn’t do. I’m not going to take this one any further. =)
In summary, I disagree with the disdain with which the word “gift” is used in the quote from Freire. If help, given when truly needed, is not a gift than nothing is. And yes, there are people who need help from time to time. And yes, there are people who are capable of giving it from time to time. Why should we embarassed by this? I am not.
Sometimes I need the help, sometimes I hear the need for help and can give it, and sometimes I hear the need for help but can’t give it. The thing that crushes the human spirit, the thing that destroys hope, the thing that leads to fear, anger, hate, and suffering (as Yoda would say), is when people need help and no one gives it – again, and again, and again. As instructional technologists our job is to figure out ways to provide that help when it is needed.
* I believe that the wrongness of this approach is very much spread along a continuum and is by no means absolute. For example, when I was young, I had no interest in learning to read or play the piano, but someone “forced” me to do these things. Were they wrong in doing so? There’s never been a day I was sorry that they did (but there have been plenty when I was sorry they let me quit piano lessons as early as they did).
The crux of the matter: “Envisioning true help as a one way power relation and ‘deposit’ mechanism seems wrong to me.”
Right.
There are three ways ‘help’ can become immoral:
– By attaching conditions to help. “I will help you, but you have to…” changes the ‘help’ relation to something else. Donors of help often ask for recognition, preferential treatment, payment in kind, or some such thing. This is no longer ‘help’ per se; it is a commercial transaction imposed under conditions of duress.
– By imposing help. Even if the help is genuine, the imposition of help creates or reveals an imbalance of power between the helper and the recipient. By imposing help, one is being clear that he could impose other measures as well – payment, performance or whatever. Imposed help is a sort of commercial transaction in which the possibility of payment is deferred. (p.s. forced piano lessons are not ‘help’ no matter how helpful they are).
– By creating the need for help. I suspect this concept lies behind the ‘banking’ argument. The need for help in the developing world arises as a result of the hoarding of wealth and resources by the wealthier world, and even the extraction of wealth and resources from the poor communities to the benefit of wealthy communities. The reason we need to ‘provide’ an education to such nations is that the conditions that would have otherwise enabled an education have been blocked by prior actions. What ought to happen, it would be argued, is that instead of a sort of ‘help’ being provided, rather, a ‘repayment’ for the hinderance we have already caused ought to be provided.
Frankly, I believe that much ‘help’ we provide the poor, either in our own countries or in developing countries, falls under one of these three categories. I met with someone in Nova Scotia recently who, through the best of intentions, is providing computer access and training to people on welfare in the United States. But in order to qualify for this help, the recipient must satisfy certain conditions – taking a course in computing, for example. At this point is ceases to be ‘help’ – it becomes a commercial transaction whereby one person is using his position of economic advantage to steer the development of another into a certain direction.
Foreigh aid routinely violates at least one of these conditions. Most aid programs, for example, require that the materials purchased for the provision of aid be purchased from the donot nation. Moreover, such aid very often carries significant obligations on the part of the recipient (these days, the obligation is to ‘respect human rights’, to ‘promote democracy’ or to ‘fight terrorism’). No matter how beneficial the obligations, it is no longer ‘help’ but rather a commercial transaction – even if the donors don’t see it that way (the recipients certainly do, though, which is why they express rather less gratitude than you might thing (just as you are somewhat less than effusive in your thanks to a grocery store clerk)).
To take another snippet from the post: “It has been my experience (both in everyday life and in multi-year service opportunities overseas) that the one who ‘gives help’ always receives greatly in return, and the one who ‘receives help’ always gives greatly in return.” This may be true – it probably is true, and forms the heart and core of Taoism, but if this is the expectation and motivation for undertaking to help someone, then what is provided is not ‘help’ properly so called but rather an vendor-initiated transaction with deferred terms and conditions.
So what is help? ‘Help’ – properly so-called – is aid given, at the request or initiation of the recipient, without conditions or expectations of future gains, and where the helper is not the cause of the conditions necessitating help in the first place.
You find a wallet. You pick it up and return it to the person. This is ‘help’ if and only if:
– the person actually wants the wallet back, and
– there is no expectation of reward for your honesty,
– you didn’t steal the wallet in the first place.
Finally, help in the instructional context. What would qualify as help?
– we make the materials and services for an education *available* for use by people who need it, but with no requirement that they do, and no expressions of anger or disappointment if they don’t
– these materials and services are offered without conditions – we don’t ask for recognition, money, links, thanks, or any other sort of recompense (this is not as easy as you think – people who support causes you genuinely detest will take advantage of your help, but it ceases being help the moment you restrict usage of your help to the ‘good’ people)
– these materials and services are genuinely new and cretaive enterprises, that is, they go *over and above* mere recompense for the wealth you have gained as a result of the exploitation of the developing world or the poor in your own country. What this, in practise, means, is that your help continues to be available even after they become as rich (or as well educated) as you are; there is not a condition of ‘need’ attached to your help. Help does not submit to a means test.
David is right. There is a great need for help in the world. What saddens me is that, despite so many ostentations pretensions of the offering of help, there is so very little genuine help in the world. Everybody, it seems, has an angle.
And it is that, I think, that Teemu was flagging – and while my advice would be most certainly not to take it personally, I think that his words serve as a healthy reminder how difficult genuinely moral behaviour can be.
I think it’s a grave mistake to equate these things with immorality. Communism failed because most human interactions ARE transactions–that’s simply the nature of the world. I will be more than happy to teach a course at a good university…if they pay me. That’s not being immoral; it’s feeding my family and ensuring I can afford care for my sick wife.
It’s easy to forget that everybody involved in these transactions has OBJECTIVES–goals like those, which transcend the specific act of help. Even with what we call altruism, one could argue that there is generally–if not always–a transaction. I’m a Roman Catholic; we have a prayer called the “Act of Contrition” that illustrates this nicely–part of it goes “…and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.” Now here’s the point: when we try NOT to sin–when we try instead to do the good works our faith (whatever it may be) teaches us to do, can ANY of us truly say that at SOME level there isn’t a transaction there? That’s not to say other motives may not be at work ALSO–and most importantly, the co-presence of the transaction–avoiding hell or earning rewards in Heaven–doesn’t render our good works immoral–at least not unless it’s the ONLY motive…but just as there are few so pure as NEVER to even THINK about the transaction, there are few so cynical or hypocritical to think ONLY of the transaction and never of the good being done.
At the societal level of course, things are no different–societies being composed and led, as they are, by we imperfect human beings. When we go out–as religious on mission, as members of the Peace Corps or Amnesty International or Doctors Without Borders, or as members of the teaching profession–we are doing so because, at some level, we want to help. But we are also doing so–as members of the particular group we have affiliated with–because we subscribe to the definitions of “help” and “need” shared by members of that group. Heaven help us if the coexistence of that “culture-centric” motive with the desire to help rendered the act of helping immoral! We would then be morally obligated NOT TO HELP…which I think we can all agree would be a bad thing!
No, the most we can reasonably do is to take care NOT to impose our particular group’s flavor of help on those who wish to decline it. (But isn’t giving them that option–acknowledging their freedom TO decline it–by the definition above, “attaching conditions to our help–i.e., only giving it to those who agree to ACCEPT the kind of help we offer, together with whatever “darker motives” like proselytizing or opening a new market or “imposing” a Western concept of medicine or human rights or education might coexist with our desire to help?)
And THAT in turn raises a problem with the second “immoralizing” factor proposed above: we risk a total breakdown of the social fabric if we refuse to accept that it is just and proper–sometimes absolutely IMPERATIVE–to “impose help.” As parents, we impose our help on our unwilling children all the time. As teachers, we impose our help on less-than-enthusiastic LEARNERS on a pretty regular basis too. When we require immunizations against common and devastating childhood diseases before kids can attend school, we are “imposing” our particular definition of medical “help” –one that some Constitutionally-protected faiths would take great exception to…but which the need for public health must override. When we institutionalize or forcibly medicate a psychotic killer, we are again “imposing” our help on the unwilling–but few would call that immoral.
Once again, there are corollaries to each of these at the societal level as well. Yes, most (if not all) international aid programs have agendas. Yes, to an extent, “the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must” (as the Athenians famously said). But it’s equally important for us to bear in mind an essential paradox: the only way for the weak to AVOID “suffering what they must” at the hands of their stronger oppressors is FOR SOMEONE STILL STRONGER TO “HELP” (with all the “darker” aspects of that discussed above). So at the end of the day, we must ask ourselves not “is our help free from those conditions” –for that is a standard beyond humanity– but rather “are THOSE conditions less grievous than the ones our help will relieve?”
And yes, of course, when we conclude that they are, and “impose” our help or our conditions, we’re using OUR values to do so. Somebody ELSE’S values might weigh differently, and they may take us to task for it.
But it is equally true that if we adopt the criteria Stephen offers and choose to WITHHOLD our help because of the “immoral” motives which would accompany our desire to offer it, we’re STILL using our values to do so…yet choosing to leave those whom our values also tell us could use our help to make due without it.
Now which of those choices is the moral one?
Jim Ellsworth misunderstands what ‘help’ means.
Drawing on the bugbear of communism (as though it were relevant), he writes, “I will be more than happy to teach a course at a good university…if they pay me. That’s not being immoral…”
Of course not. But it’s not *help* either – it’s a commercial transaction and, ceteris paribus, morally neutral.
He continues, “It’s easy to forget that everybody involved in these transactions has OBJECTIVES—goals like those, which transcend the specific act of help. Even with what we call altruism, one could argue that there is generally—if not always—a transaction.”
This is merely the restatement of my own point, that (morally good) acts of ‘help’ are indeed rare. I have no disagreement with commercial transactions (and implying that I am a communist doesn’t argue otherwise). Where we disagree is (a) that these are instances of help, and (b) that they are therefore morally good.
He continues, “I’m a Roman Catholic; we have a prayer called the ‘Act of Contrition’ that illustrates this nicely… [text deleted]”
I have addressed this elsewhere, specifically, here. In a nutshell, it is in my view religiously dishonest to promote moral goodness via the mechanism of personal gain (such as eternal life). If you perform an act only in order to achieve eternal life, you have entered into a morally neutral contract with God. Morality comes into play only if you would perform the act even were there no gain in it for yourself.
He continues, “…we are doing so because, at some level, we want to help. But we are also doing so—as members of the particular group we have affiliated with—because we subscribe to the definitions of ‘help’ and ‘need’ shared by members of that group. Heaven help us if the coexistence of that ‘culture-centric’ motive with the desire to help rendered the act of helping immoral! We would then be morally obligated NOT TO HELP…which I think we can all agree would be a bad thing!”
This is absurd. If our culture redefines ‘help’ to mean “killing them” (as some cultures have!) then refusal to ‘help’ 9according to this definition) is not a bad thing. In a similar vein, the point of my commentary is to argue that our own society has redefined ‘help’ in such a way as to allow us to harm other people, and benefit ourselves, and claim some sort of moral virtue in the act because we now call it ‘help’. What I am arguing is that you cannot obtain moral absolution through redefinition (as much as the Wall Street Journal may disagree).
Ellsworth, having made the redefinition move, now takes to the offensive:
“But isn’t giving them that option—acknowledging their freedom TO decline it—by the definition above, “attaching conditions to our help—i.e., only giving it to those who agree to ACCEPT the kind of help we offer, together with whatever ‘darker motives’ like proselytizing or opening a new market or “imposing” a Western concept of medicine or human rights or education might coexist with our desire to help?”
The paragraph sounds plausible because the conditions described to not correspond to ‘darker motives’ within our own social context. There’s nothing wrong with medicine, rights, or education, why not attach them as a rider?
Because then it’s not HELP any more, it’s a commercial transaction. And though it sounds like we’re giving something good away, a short analysis shows that we are not. The sort of priorities expressed by medicine, rights and education are OUR priorities (and, ultimately, we expect to benefit if the people we are helping build a society MORE LIKE OURS). Now I personally think that such transactions are, under certain conditions, well worth undertaking – I would have, for example, recommended paying each Iraqi $5000 if they deposed Hussein and established a democracy (it would have been cheaper than the war). But I would not have deluded myself that his is ‘help’ – it is, rather, the best of all commercial transactions, one where both sides see a benefit.
He continues, “And THAT in turn raises a problem with the second ‘immoralizing’ factor proposed above: we risk a total breakdown of the social fabric if we refuse to accept that it is just and proper—sometimes absolutely IMPERATIVE—to ‘impose help.’ …”
I find this to be a fascinating assrtion being made by someone who has just proposed that we redefine ‘help’.
We may benefit from imposing our will on others – slave owners, after all, lived and died rich – and we may sustain a particular order in so doing. But the question of whether it is the best of all orders remains very much open, and the question of whether it is our call to make likewise. Any time conditions are imposed on people, whether or not they are called ‘help’, they create a power relation, a type of relation that, thoughout history, has led to abuse as often as it has led to benevolence.
The example of parent and child may appear to run counter to this, but short observation proves otherwise. In eras and places where parents had the unrestrained right to impose their will on children, it led to child labour, child abuse and worse. Legislation is quite rightly in place which requires that the conditions we impose on children actually benefit the children, and the complex relationship between a parent and child is today, quite properly, a complex exchange of value between parent, child, and society. Not all instances of parential interactions with children fall into this category – but where they don’t, you’ll find that they typically satisfy the conditions set out above, and most particularly, are not imposed.
He continues, “When we require immunizations against common and devastating childhood diseases before kids can attend school, we are ‘imposing’ our particular definition of medical ‘help’—one that some Constitutionally-protected faiths would take great exception to…but which the need for public health must override. When we institutionalize or forcibly medicate a psychotic killer, we are again ‘imposing’ our help on the unwilling—but few would call that immoral.”
There is no doubt we are imposing these things. But they are manifestly *not* instances of ‘help’. They may or may not be immoral – but their moral status has *nothing* to do with their being ‘help’ (indeed, I would argue that they can be (depending on circumstances) morally good if they produce the greatest good for the greatest number – it would be a grave misreading of my argument if it were interpreted to read that moral goodness is obtained *only* through help.
And so on his argument goes… I can skip a few paragraphs where the same sort of point is made.
But not the last, where he concludes, “But it is equally true that if we adopt the criteria Stephen offers and choose to WITHHOLD our help because of the ‘immoral’ motives which would accompany our desire to offer it, we’re STILL using our values to do so…yet choosing to leave those whom our values also tell us could use our help to make due without it.”
I would comment first that my argue did not describe *motives* but rather sets of actions that accompanied the putative ‘help’. I do not pretend to read someone’s mind; I can point to overt instances where through public behaviour and assertions the persoin has violated one of the conditions.
But it doesn’t matter because Ellsworth never did display a genuine understanding of the definition of ‘help’ I offered. For if he had, he would never have asked whether “choosing to leave those whom our values also tell us could use our help to make due without it” is the moral case.
Because, on my definition, his question amounts to the following:
Is it moral to create a power relationship over people by forcing on them things they don’t want?
Is it moral to steal from people and then give some of them back?
Is it moral to use conditions of need to cause people to enter into an extortionist contract enacting conditions they would refuse if they could?
No. By and large, none of these actions is moral (that there may be exceptions in some cases in no way sanctions that type of act generally). In most cases, these actions are morally wrong. And most certainly, none of them qualifies as ‘help’.
Methinks the gentleman does protest too much! When I last studied Logic, stating that a jackass was an animal, then stating that a given person was likewise an animal, did NOT imply the person was a jackass.
Communism is relevant to the debate, because (as an economic philosophy; as a political philosophy it is indeed another argument) like Stephen it tried to ignore human nature–the fact that every interaction between two or more humans is at some level a transaction motivated by self-interest. As David points out in his subsequent post on the main page, even among atheists what we call altruism is motivated by the fact that the sense of goodness, self-worth, or personal pleasure derived from helping others outweighs for them the value of the time and money and effort invested in doing so.
Consequently, as David also correctly observes, it is Stephen who is attempting to redefine “help” –because by Stephen’s definition, true help is not merely rare (a point where he clearly misunderstood MY argument), but actually IMPOSSIBLE…and yet the rest of us see it–and frequently give it–all the time.
David’s post is actually such a good refutation of Stephen’s that I’ll generally leave it at that–with one significant exception that I really should have mentioned in my initial reply. One of the places where idealists most frequently go astray is in their apparent assumption that if we, with OUR particular brand of expectations and “imposed conditions,” were to refrain from offering our help, its erstwhile beneficiaries–whom they invariably redefine as “victims,” in a strange practice of doublespeak–would somehow be left alone in a blissful state of nature to pursue idyllic lives without outside interference. In harsh reality, unfortunately, there are plenty of other candidates eager to “offer” THEIR brand of expectations and “imposed conditions” if ours aren’t there to keep them at bay. Sometimes, these alternatives are no more indigenous than ours–Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group, al-Qa’ida in Mesopotamia, for example, would LOVE to “help” Iraq into the yoke of their harsh perversion of Shari’a. Sometimes, tragically, they are–like the “help” that the government of the Sudan (or the rebels against that government, for that matter) “offer” the Sudanese people these days.
Those who TRULY want to help must ask themselves, “What happens if we DON’T help?” Getting back to the comment that started this branch–Teemu’s assertion that “The aim of reaching everyone is immoral”–this is where such a viewpoint becomes so dangerous: what happens if we DON’T aim to reach everyone with education? Who gets left out–and to what results? History has many answers for us: the poor, the disenfranchised, the powerless, the homeless, the sick and the hungry, the REAL victims of racism and sexism and prejudice of all kinds–in short, the very people a true liberal would want desperately to reach…and to help.
Instead, at the end of the day, Stephen’s redefinition of help leaves them out in the cold. Again I ask, which choice–which definition of help–is the moral one?
It seems that Ellseworth is the only one who is rational about this topic in this dialog. Others are being logical, but not necessarily rational.
I admire people who would give this more than a few seconds passing consideration. .. it seems more like ventilation than edification.
rk