Tom Kertes

Today I am participating in a conference on the human rights of the child. The conference feels more like two different events, as there are two very different sets of speakers throughout the overall conference. One set of speakers talks about statistics and law, often citing lines in an international treaty that they want the government to honour, and another set of speakers talks about their work as community, care and cultural workers, sharing stories and descriptions of their programs and projects.

One set talks statistics and uses studies of people to make claims about what is best for all children. Another set talks about their own values and beliefs, or about how they believe children ought to be treated. One set primarily uses stock photos to illustrate ideas stemming from population research, based on comparisons of differences between average scores of groups of children. Another set tells stories stemming from their own experiences with children and families.

The presenters who talk of studies are called experts. They work at universities and are researchers. They write the books and articles that inform and justify policies with implications for everyone. They serve on the councils, committees and boards that determine how public resources and community power is used. And they also train most of our leaders in universities. They train people how to measure things in an effort to simplify and understand humans, how to trust experts, how to think about things, and how to be powerful.

The presenters who talk of their programs and projects are called practitioners. As practitioners they are the “doers” of community life. When practitioners are influenced or controlled by experts, they become the forces that make expert ideas real, practised and powerful. As community workers, cultural workers, support workers and child care workers, practitioners do the work that makes, sustains and enriches communities.

Experts need practitioners to reflect and act on expert ideas – because without people acting on these ideas nothing will come of them. But do practitioners need experts? While the question may be too general to be useful, since there are times when we do need experts and times when we don’t, I still think it’s a good question to keep in mind when attending conferences like this.

So do we need experts? Perhaps we can answer this by imaging how to power a community without experts in electricity production. Truth is, I can’t imagine having electricity without knowledgeable and skilled people who know how to produce and distribute it.  But this does not mean that we need experts in values to make related decisions, such as how much electric power to have (which could include none at all), or how to use and distribute electric power, or what social and economic costs to pay for the production of electric power do not require experts. People do not need experts to tell them how to feel, what to value, or how to decide what they believe is best for their community.

What troubles me is that many of the expert speakers at this conference act as though they are entitled, perhaps by reason of being “smarter” than other people, to have greater influence in shaping or expressing community values than we – the non-experts – should have. This is reflected in many of the unmentioned assumptions of their work, such as the assumption that we can make meaningful conclusions about human ways of being by studying collapsed and simplistic measurements of behaviour. What gets lost in meaning when we reduce human behaviour in quantified and linear studies is huge, and important to know when evaluating the information.  The experts today and yesterday left this part of their expert knowledge out of their sweeping conclusions about what’s best and how’s best for everyone. It is also reflected in the unmentioned and underling values of their work, such as that some people should have more voice than others in community decision making, or that it is okay for some people to use the work and power of others without their meaningful consent.  Leaving out these beliefs is dishonest and not helpful, especially in the context of a forum for human rights.

The practitioners who I listened to at the conference did not trouble me in these ways. They talked as sharers with others, sharing their ideas, experiences, stories and beliefs with the people attending their sessions. The stories were often inspirational, such as a story about a year-long process of working with a family whose young child required extra support needs in order to communicate with others. At first the child’s father told her that he did not trust her, and did not want his child to go to preschool or to receive any supports to assist with his communication. She talked about how challenging this experience was for her, and how she was was faced with her agencies rules that would of created barriers in forming a relationship with the family. She also talked about her own fears and concerns for the child. And she talked about how she, over time, came to know the family and how trust was built over time. From this story we came to know the presenter as a person, and came to understand ourselves and the community she worked with better. She made no claim that her experience would be reflected in our work, or that we should respond in the same way that she did. She left that up to us, respecting our capacity to act and reflect, and to be wise.

Communities do not need experts to know how to be loving, supportive and responsive places. What we instead need is control over our own resources, our own work and our own power to realize what we already know and believe. When we trust ourselves as equally capable persons who know how to love and how to be, then we can use the tools and resources developed by expert tool makers in order to realize our own dreams and values for our communities in whole.

I think that the difference between participation and being intentional about relationships in caring communities is huge and important to think about.

This is because when we ask “how can someone participate in our program?” we start thinking of the program, not the person. But when we ask “how can I relate with a person in a caring community?” then we start with the person.

Forming relationships with families, and being intentional about relationships, should be the goal. Then we can focus on each family, one person at a time, and ask ourselves what can I do to facilitate a deeper relationship?

• Build trust
• Listen to each other
• Respond to each other
• Respect each other

Over time, relationships will develop and provide a base for a community to emerge. And that is why we should think more about relationships, less about participation or involvement.

There are lots of kinds of knowledge, but in school it’s useful to think of three kinds of knowledge.  These are:

• Personal Knowledge
• Favoured Knowledge
• Useful Knowledge

Personal Knowledge
Personal knowledge is what we know from all our experiences as human beings.  It is what have learned from our family, our friends, our teachers, our leaders, the media and the rest of our culture. It is also we have learned from ourselves, through our own reflection and the synthesis of the information we discover through participation in community life.

Favoured Knowledge
Favoured knowledge is what decision makers, or people in power, believe is important for them or (sometimes) for others to know.  This kind of knowledge often comes from “experts”.  Governments often recognize experts and grant powers to them through professional classes.  Professionals form groups, and often limit membership in these groups to people with specialized training in favoured knowledge.

Sometimes favoured knowledge is based on facts, such as knowing how to build a building that won’t collapse. Sometimes it’s based only on opinions or customs. Favoured knowledge has an important role in the power relationships of society.  Once you favoured knowledge it becomes part of your personal knowledge.  There are many times, however, when personal and favoured knowledge will conflict, such as when favoured ways of knowing violate your personal values.

Useful Knowledge
Useful knowledge is information that helps people do the things that they want or need to do.  To be effective, useful knowledge may need to be based on reality.  Some times it may need to based on imagination instead.  Useful knowledge includes strategies and tactics for doing things and intended results in mind.  It also includes knowledge about patterns, knowing how things work, and understanding things well enough to predict outcomes based on inputs.  Some people may try to present useful knowledge in inaccessible ways, to keep others from knowing useful things.  A lot of useful knowledge is also personal or favoured.  Some useful knoweldge is neither personal nor favoured.

As a child care worker I believe that my work is to provide care to families.  This means that our role as care providers is, simply put, to care for children at the bequest of families. This is best done in thoughtful, honest, caring and respectful ways. We provide care for children because families either want or need us to do this work.

I believe that child care work is immensely rewarding because it benefits children and families, supports equity for women, provides a means of survival for underpaid workers, binds me to a community of care, and helps sustain a rich cultural and community life for everyone.  I want to live in a world that cares for, and respects, all people – including all children and all families.  I also want to do the cultural and community work that sustains such a place.

Through our cultural and community work child care providers have a lot of power in the lives of children and families, and also in the community at large.  As with anyone in a position of power, we should carefully reflect on how we use our power – we should be intentional about for what purpose and in what way we use our power.

With power comes responsibility.  Because many families need child care to survive, and in fact have little choice over how to get the care that their children require, care workers often have the power to dictate the terms of care.  I believe that providing care in exchange for influence over how a family raises its own children is simply, and in almost all instances, an abuse of power. I also consider it an irresponsible use of power to employ the provision of care as a way to “get inside” a family to influence the cultural life of the family.

In exercising our power responsibly I believe that child care workers should recognize the primacy of a family in guiding and caring for their children.  This means that we should consider the family as the initiator of the relationship between us, the care worker, and the family.  We work with a child’s family at their bequest. We work with a family because they want or need care for their child. The family asks us to care for their child, and we should proceed on that basis.The fact that families initiate the relationship should limit the power we exercise through our role as care providers.

Caring work is relationship work, because human care exists only in social relations. By nature a human relationship is a two-way process.  Even though the relationship is two-way and is between persons of equal inherent worth, the child care relationship should be guided by the principle that the family starts the relationship. The family has the primary role, relative to that of the care worker, in this relationship.

We should recognize that in many family – care worker relationships it is the care worker who has more power. This is because the family does not always have a choice of where, when, how or from whom to get care for their child.  The care provider could exercise their greater power to influence the child and the family, but should not.

The exercise of this greater power is most often based on a false presumption of entitlement to intervention in the life of a family. It is therefore an irresponsible use of power to make such an intervention.  Care providers have no such entitlement, and have no basis to presume a right to use their power to influence the family in this way. We should should respect the family’s culture, their wishes for their children, their values and their place in world as human beings.  We should proceed knowing who initiates the relationship and respect the right of families to be their child’s primary caregiver.

This does not mean that care workers should become robotic in the “delivery” of child care.  Just as we, as child care workers, are not entitled to intervene in the lives of the families with whom we work based solely on the power we have when relating with families, families may not dictate to us how we’ll conduct our jobs.  We should retain power over the conduct or our work. And part of our work is to share our ideas, values, insights, knowledge, experience and ways of being with families.  We may influence families through honest dialogue.  We may not influence families through abuse of our power over families on the basis of our role as care providers to their children.

I will not acquiesce the central values that drive what I do as a care worker to anyone.  My job is to support the well-being of children and families. I intend to maintain the integrity of this work. This is especially important to me because I consider child care as sacred work, requiring integrity in every aspect of the work itself. The job of caring for children requires an honest dialogue, a two-way conversation between me and the children and the families with whom I work. There is no care without authentic relationships, no care without honesty, no care without integrity.

If the process of honest conversation is shut down, or is not respected by a family, then I cannot do what I value – which is care for children and work with families.   Each family that initiates a care provider relationship with me deserves (and requires) honesty and integrity from me. I require (and deserve) the same of them.  This is developed over time – there can be no hurrying of depth of knowing or trusting each other.  The caring relationship deepens over time.  But without such a deepening process taking place, there is little in way of authentic care being developed.  And there little hope that there will ever be a caring relationship.

We should also keep in mind that everyone in such a caring relationship – the child, the family, the care worker – has agency. Our unique wishes and interests, wants and needs, values and beliefs, and other cultural ways of being should be respected and nurtured because our agency as persons is a precious gift of the human condition.  Conflicts between people in a caring relationship should be honestly resolved.  What this requires is that we relate to each other as people.

Rich cultural life depends on a deeply experienced social life, which is only possible in honest dialogue.  When are dishonest with each other, when we hide our true selves, and when our relationships lack integrity and depth, then we fail to realize our potential as human beings.  This is an extreme form of poverty.  In place of such poverty I want to create richly experienced social and community life, rather than to live in poverty or to impose such a form of poverty on myself or on others.

From Policy Note, “A Modest Proposal“:

At some point before long, Haiti is going to be rebuilt. It occurs to me that we in BC have available wood to help in the effort. Most things are built of concrete there because there simply isn’t any wood. Rebuilding out of concrete will be massively expensive and massively polluting. And, as Premier Campbell noted in his speech to the BC Truck Loggers Association this week, wood buildings are much better in an earthquake zone than is concrete.

Using the pine beetle wood from our forests for rebuilding Haiti seems like an idea worth considering. What it would take would be enormous amounts of government money to make this happen, but if the Premiere truly wants to “re-establish and revitalize our forest industry” it makes sense.

Come to think of it, I can’t remember hearing anything at all about the BC government’s contribution to the Haiti relief effort. BC municipalities have signaled their intention to give support, and Harper is all over the news with his efforts. It would seem that Campbell needs some encouragement in this direction. I’m sure the forestry sector would be on side, and perhaps even the federal government could be.

I like this modest proposal because what Haiti needs is resources to build its own infrastructures and institutions.  Haiti needs resources, beyond the donated labour, management and help of over 10,000 foreign charities.  I cannot imagine how hard it would be to govern a country with its social infrastructure fragmented by so many missions and agendas, and by so many people based outside of the country.  So while we should help in all ways needed now, this should include sharing tangible resources that can be used to support long-term development that’s based entirely in Haiti.

When I moved to Canada in April 2007 I decided that I would wait three years before taking a position on partisan politics. I’ve stuck to that, and have mostly stood on the sidelines and watched politics unfold, rather than join in commentary or protest.

One reason why I held off on taking partisan sides is because I didn’t “feel” Canadian. I thought I should feel vested in the idea of the community itself before speaking out as a member of the community. Other people in Canada deserved that from me, as they were taking positions based in part on love of place – or a deep bond or connectedness to the implications of our actions (in America, we’d simply call this “love of country” – but that doesn’t really describe the nuances for how many Canadians experience civic identity).

Three years since landing in Canada is soon approaching, and I am beginning to feel more Canadian. Recently I have written words like “like other Canadians” and I have felt passionate about “our” democracy and the potential it represents, and the importance of defending and sustaining many of our institutions as legacies worth extending and expanding. I have also shifted interest from American politics to Canadian politics, become involved in policy matters of Ontario and B.C. early education, and felt moments of national pride. Just under three years ago I knew Canada as a list of dates, names, places, facts and figures. But having driven from Toronto to Vancouver, and having also been to Quebec, Ottawa and Montreal a few times each, and having camped on the Shield and dipped my toes in the Great Lakes, the ideas of Canada have shifted to realities of Canada.

While I have lots to learn, I don’t think the words of the classmate who told me that “you are not a Canadian” actually apply to me anymore. She told me this in the context of me feeling proud to be Canadian because of our immediate response to the need for resources in Haiti, and that feeling was a real and important experience for me. After nearly three years of watching, inching in and gradually becoming part of the community life of this country, I want to continue being Canadian – I like feeling a bit proud of my adopted home, as that is one reason I choose to move here. I certainly don’t want to be pushed out or be excluded because I am originally from someplace else.

I like it here. I want to make things better for all Canadian families and children – for my neighbours and my community. I want to be part of the community life, to participate in and be responsible for the history we create together. No matter how American (and not Canadian) others may see me, my adopted home is Canada now. And perhaps that’s why it warms my heart to know that 25,000 Canadians protested today to hold our government to account and to say “democracy matters to us”.

Willie is a leader in the movement to end poverty led by the poor. He is one of my mentors and he works to expand human potential by developing leaders from the ranks of the poor, by uniting people around human rights values and through education and scholarship. He spoke at the opening of the Justice Theater Conference in Baltimore, organized by the United Workers.

I am so happy to be part of the Langara ECE program this year! I am part of a wonderful cohort of students who are really interested in learning more about each other, sharing ideas and making a difference as preschool teachers, daycare providers and other child care workers. Here’s a photo of many of my friends from the program at a recent potluck (not everyone could make it to the event). Thanks to everyone in the cohort who have made this such a special time for me!

I work with the United Workers (an organization fighting to secure human rights for everyone and founded by homeless day labourers in Baltimore) and helped with some of the planning for last weekend’s Justice Theater Conference.  So even though I could not make it to the event, I felt like I was there in spirit.  The conference brought together leaders and organizers as cultural workers, working through the arts to build power for justice and human rights.  It is part of the lead up to the May 1 Our Harbor Day participation play that will retell our history of struggles and victories of human rights justice.  A cast of hundreds will author and act out the play, using theater as a metaphor and a means for building power.  From what I hear, the conference was an incredible experience!  Here are some photos of the event (click to see all the photos):

Image source: UNfreemedia.org

The New York Times has an op-ed on Partners in Health, a human rights organization working with people in Haiti to support the development of the country’s health care sector. Earlier in the week my good friends of the Coalition of the Immokalee Workers sent out an email with information about the organization’s commitment to providing supports for effective and community-based development of infrastructure. Visit Partners in Health for information about how to donate to the humanitarian efforts of the organization. Here is more about the organization, from the op-end:

This week, the list of things that Haiti needs, things like jobs and food and reforestation, has suddenly grown a great deal longer. The earthquake struck mainly the capital and its environs, the most densely populated part of the country, where organizations like the Red Cross and the United Nations have their headquarters. A lot of the places that could have been used for disaster relief — including the central hospital, such as it was — are now themselves disaster areas.

But there are effective aid organizations working in Haiti. At least one has not been crippled by the earthquake. Partners in Health, or in Haitian Creole Zanmi Lasante, has been the largest health care provider in rural Haiti. (I serve on this organization’s development committee.) It operates, in partnership with the Haitian Ministry of Health, some 10 hospitals and clinics, all far from the capital and all still intact. As a result of this calamity, Partners in Health probably just became the largest health care provider still standing in all Haiti.

Fortunately, it also offers a solid model for independence — a model where only a handful of Americans are involved in day-to-day operations, and Haitians run the show. Efforts like this could provide one way for Haiti, as it rebuilds, to renew the promise of its revolution. read more