Message-ID: <1.5.4.16.19970201010008.4f7fd30c@pop.pipeline.com> Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 13:06:09 -0500 From: Brendan Murphy <mailto:bmurphy@PIPELINE.COM> Subject: Re: THEORY: Shall I accept this consulting assignment? To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Reality check: If you're in the business of development consulting, then you accept the attendant political and social realities which include the fact that people promoting projects like these have other agendas than the education of young minds -- jobs, for instance, currying electoral favor, for instance, contracts, for instance. I hate to disillusion you, but this is the way the world works, without exception. Even those "village elders" have their own interests and political/economic axes to grind.Your value as a consultant is not only your expertise in the matter at hand, but your ability to perceive and capitalize on these agendas for the greater good. That's what you're being paid for, in fact. Whether it's USAID or the UN or the Ministry of Funny Walks or the Village Elders, they'll all want to work you into their game plan. But if you're a good consultant, you'll be the honest broker who makes it work for all.
Whether or not these villages should go the route of modernisation is their decision. It's nice to think kids will learn better in small village groups under the tutelage of the local schoolmaster or schoolmarm. But the reality is that if they're going to get the education they'll need in the world they're growing up in, they're more likely to get it in a school with good lighting and computers and depth of teaching staff. Why should they settle for less than people in our countries want for their kids?
Anyhow, technology transfer is about helping to make that happen. If we believe that transferring technology will help in a given situation, we should do it. If we don't, then we shouldn't. Those to whom it is offered are free to tell us to piss off. But extended philosophical generalizing is just burning daylight, and if it weren't a Saturday in February I wouldn't even have put this much time into it.
Take the job! See the world! Do some good! Stop beating a dead horse!
This is, by the way, my first and last posting on this topic.