What do I mean by cultural change that I mentioned towards the end of the last post?
I was greatly influenced when I started streetwork in 1990 by observing what happens when young people grow up with seemingly little or no – what most people would generally regard as – positive adult influence. Oftentimes the result is that they lack a secure base and have little stake in where they come from, or in society in general. This I believe is a result of their and their families’ exclusion over many generations. Heaped upon that is their own level of anger towards school that excluded them, Gardaí who they feel constantly harass them, and their general apparent apathy and indifference in respect of their own future. And I say apparent because, deep down, all were concerned.
Inclusion requires some empathy with the culture of the young people – in other words walk in their shoes a little. This is not easy because there are many aspects of the young people’s culture that is destructive.
I will deal with this in far more detail in the Chapters in a later Section, where I devote a full Chapter to Cultural Matching. I will, however, mention two elements of culture here that I consider to be important. They are anger and language.
Anger. I have often observed a deep anger in leaders who were of, grew up in, and became an integral part of the community, towards practitioners – including myself. I’m absolutely sure that this was (and still is) because of the fact that many hard-working and courageous grassroots community people are often side-lined by practitioners within the Pillars. On sensing the anger, I sometimes noticed practitioners, in turn, getting angry with the grassroots leaders, overlooking those who they perceived to be a bit, as we say, anti and favouring those who were compliant towards Pillars thinking.
I also observed practitioners, colleagues, who understood the anger and gave it space and time to express itself – often with good results. (I hope that I was perceived to be one of the latter). But there were enough practitioners who would get angry, all HR-y, or (a favourite one) say that people are not ready, to cause me a little concern.
That is, instead of understanding the anger (and taking it on board) they’d try and dismiss it, make a commodity out of it, go on the attack themselves and/or try to get the person to rationalise it, pressurise them to explain it, avoid it, apply logic to it, misinterpret it, or play games – but not healthy games.
This differed to the others for whom the anger was simply the community showing part of its real self.
Now, in communities, like in the world at large, anger is often expressed in a passive-aggressive manner because it is the only way that people know. Many practitioners treat that anger with an attitude like ‘well if that’s the way ye want it’, we’ll withdraw support. This, of course, is a very uncreative, lazy, bureaucratic, put-people-in-their-place, way of dealing with anger.
Perhaps this is a personal kind of statement but I don’t really mind people being angry with me. In fact, I’d much prefer it to the passive-aggressive – and I try to make it safe for people to speak their minds. I believe that it is, actually, a rare privilege to hear people’s uncensored views – even if they contain anger directed at me because of something that I did or neglected to do.
I feel privileged because someone is safe to be themselves and they are confident that they won’t be punished because of that. (Punished in this context almost always means being excluded, or funding being withdrawn, or plans changed without consultation etc.).
Community activists may sometimes be hurt by life, and this is motivation to get involved in the first place. Punishment because expression of strong emotions that might be – from the formally-educated-middle-class point of view – a little incoherent, or forceful, reinforces all sorts of negative messages about being heard and about anger itself.
I’m very proud of that part of me though it might get in the way of mainstream management practice sometimes.
So my encouragement to practitioners is to let the anger flow, listen, answer honestly and don’t rationalise. Perhaps we will learn something. And there are always opportunities to explore options and seek middle ground!
Language: It’s easy to disempower people who have left school early by using language that they cannot understand. I have noticed myself doing this when I have been under a bit of pressure. In fact it can a real challenge for me to keep it simple.
Another way of taking away people’s power is summing up. This displays superiority and the ability to analyse, evaluate and place a topic in a kind of educated, distant generalising context. Yet another way is adding extra, unasked for knowledge to what someone says or a point someone makes.
Now, once again, I stress that I am not saying that there is anything wrong with using words that are precise or big, or even jargon – if that is what is needed. Nor indeed, am I saying that there is anything wrong with analysing, summing up or bringing new knowledge to someone’s attention. But I believe that it is very important to be aware of the possible depowering effect of doing so.
Being aware will mean that we can choose when to do it and when not to.
I believe that all this starts in school, because those pupils who stay in school and learn big words are more naturally academically inclined. Such pupils will probably feel more favoured by teachers (perhaps unintentionally) and do better in exams then those who are not academically inclined. This continues into adulthood as the pupils who are better at understanding big words, and analysing things, do better at interviews (that are predominantly verbal) and thereafter get better jobs. (I cover this in greater detail in this post).
This is actually very little to do with how intelligent people are, or how hardworking they are, or what capacity they have for learning, or how creative they are, it’s just a measure of what type of language – and vocabulary – they have been exposed to.
On the other hand people who leave school early get jobs that, in the eyes of the Pillars, are of lesser status – or, in the case of the Focus Group, often get no jobs at all. Naturally enough those who have no jobs will feel less powerful than those who do, and language (and the command of it) is associated with success.