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ISSUES AND CONSIDERATIONS
Some issues and considerations play a major role in determining how and to what extent the ILO Training Guide should be adapted.
Foremost among these issues is the fact that the Philippine labor inspectorate is peopled by inspectors with many years of experience doing labor inspection work. In the course of these many years, there has been very little in terms of challenge for new and innovative approaches to labor inspection. It is easy then to appreciate that patterns of thinking and doing things are deeply entrenched, and any adventurousness, if any, is easily stifled in an environment that thrives on unquestioning repetitiveness. Very little is done to confront issues concerning the effectiveness of current practices, much less improve on them to make their impact more significant and far-reaching.
The kind of training which labor inspectors undergo centers around the teaching of labor laws and standards__ compensation, working conditions, safety and health__ and practices violative of them. In short, training is primarily technical in nature. Of foremost interest is the labor inspectors' ability to enforce the law. In addition, training is usually of the lecture type, with much spoon-fed information. There is very little use of hands-on methodologies that entail active, not merely passive (as listeners), involvement of participants in the training process. The focus is therefore really cognitive in nature.
This training approach has its uses; its value is both understandable and necessary. However, since the interest of this capability-building effort for labor inspectors is for involvement in child advocacy__ and therefore requires commitment__ there must be more than just an intellectual appreciation of what it takes to be a child advocate. This training, as conceived and designed, tries to touch all levels of the labor inspectors' beings that will enable them to operationalize this enlarged role effectively: head, heart, and hands. The inspectors must also play an active part in the training, and must be challenged to think, plan, solve problems, critique, innovate, collaborate. They cannot afford to be mere bystanders in their own learning.
These are important factors to consider in designing and conducting the training program. The first hurdle must be to shake the foundations of comfort, rock the boat as it were, question mindsets of many years and value systems long held and cherished. This is painful, but it is necessary. As a result of tugging at the very roots of belief and practice, resistance can and does occur, but this negativism can be transformed and channeled to positive realizations, both for individual learners and the learning group.
It is impossible, therefore, to proceed right to the subject at hand, and throw in the child labor cause into the middle of it all. Much shaking, defreezing, thawing must be done in order to unplug avenues for openness and discovery. Hence, defreezing is in every single day of all the modules, designed following a planned sequence, progression, logic, and purpose. Undoing many years and several layers of comfort does not happen in a day; it must be consistently pursued throughout the entire training. There must a softening of the jadedness (of varying intensity in different participants) that could be the result of helplessness in the face of such an overwhelming concern as child labor, or the absence or lack of skills to go about doing meaningful interventions for child laborers.
In many ways, the training program must begin with a process for making the participants recapture the freshness of youthful idealism that things can and will change if one does his bit, and the excitement of being part of the action to make things happen.
The formation of child advocates is not completed in only one training program. But it can and does begin there. As suggested by Mr. Jean-Maurice Derrien, labor inspectors who persist in child advocacy are those who themselves went through a process of introspection and analysis about their motives, values, and philosophy. Those who clearly understand their own childhood appreciate better what children who are deprived of it must suffer. Using this framework, part of the defreezing process is a structured learning experience that takes participants back to the scenes of childhood, both pleasant and unpleasant. With effective processing, key points of the childhood experience are brought to fore and made to serve as basis for commitment to ensure that children are not deprived of the joys and pains of childhood. Again this may be met with resistance, with participants feeling that this is part of a past they would rather forget. (Forgetting is, of course, not possible. These memories are there, whether or not one recognizes that they are.) It is a painful experience, but again one that is necessary.
Another important issue is that of teaching and learning. Participants are at the center of learning; learning is more important than teaching. Hence, much importance and time are given to ensuring that participants learn, this concern being over and above whether all lessons are taught and all material covered. Content is important, but equally important is the process by which participants learn and how deeply felt the lessons are. There is an expected impatience from participants to have subjects covered quickly, answers fed. There is little room for compromise here, though. Process must be experienced. It is difficult for learning to happen any other way, particularly in this program where commitment is essential. Commitment cannot be taught; it cannot be merely cerebral. Learning must be affective as well as cerebral, and it cannot occur except as participants teach themselves through experiential processes.
Because learning in this training program is done in and with a group, sharing what each one learns is very important. Much time is spent during the program for participants to share their insights and discoveries with each other. In this manner, participants reinforce each other and share common concerns which they can, as a group, work to clarify, lighten, solve, or dismiss as not being too important after all.
These are the issues and considerations in adapting the ILO Training Guide. They have proven very useful in the conduct of the first Specialized Training on Child Labor for the Philippine Labor Inspectorate. It is hoped that these ideas be continuously tested, validated, and revised in many, many more training classes.
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