INDEX OF QUOTES
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Most people who take up the pen, or the keyboard, to carve out words for the anticipated enlightenment of others do so for ‘oughtistic’ reasons. For whatever purposes, they want the world to be a different place and whatever they write is directed toward that end. Even those who write journalistically, supposedly reporting the "facts," appear remarkably inept in disguising their beliefs about how such "facts" relate to a world that ‘ought’ to be. Those who write about human behavior are the most ‘oughtistic’ of all. However scientific their claims in what they have to say, the pervasive thrust is generally toward the improvement of the human condition in accordance with some predetermined set of beliefs about human potential, moral integration, empirical validity and the like. Researchers and academics have even developed a formula (APA approved, of course) in which specific facts or variables, considered to be significant, are marshaled according to the assumed rules of cause and effect. Although this orientation has generated supportive evidence around various theories and beliefs, such "knowledge" has done little to enhance our understanding or appreciation of human life as it unfolds in everyday experience. Hence, the experiences of childhood and the adult/child relationship remain relatively unexplored. Experiential writing is particularly difficult for the helping professional. For most of us the first helping act is motivated by a desire to change what "is" into what "should be." In this act, we also make the shift from our own direct personal experience to the imagined experience of the other person. The more professional we become, the more we concentrate upon the "interventions" of change and the more we move away from our own humanity. Child and youth care workers are still relatively free to write from an experiential perspective. In taking the courage to share their own experience in working with young people, they have an opportunity to generate a body of knowledge that promotes understanding, caring and respect. The "truth" to be discovered is the revelation of what is rather than the attainment of should be or the illusion of what might be. In peeling back the layers of their own experience, child and youth care workers can make a unique contribution to our understanding of how it really is to work with troubled kids. They can tell the untold stories of childhood and adolescence, albeit from the "truth" of their own perspective. Surely the time has come for us to re-examine our discipline that moves from the inside out. The prescriptions for such writing may seem vague, but the first step is definitive and unambiguous — look in the mirror, look beyond and tell it as it is. |
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