“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: How do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”
― bell hooks
I work at the nexus of inclusion and education. My main area of focus within adult education (AE) is workplace learning – that is, learning related to the notion of employment and, in the broader senses of occupation, vocation, and work. Earlier this week, I came across an organization out of the US whose purpose is to “simplify the path that connects people and work”. In essence, it is a placement agency. While it is not advertised on its web site, this organization vulnerable persons find employment; this includes people with criminal records, and even persons on the US national registry of sex offenders.
Most of my career has been spent facilitating access to work by vulnerable persons, chiefly people with functional impairments (more often referred to as people with disabilities). While much of the learning and teaching in my career has revolved around the How of vocational rehabilitation, over time the Why has increasingly taken centre stage.
This quote from bell hooks, who we lost last month, makes reference to one’s capacity to be transformed. In AE we talk a lot about transformation. The notions of humanity and compassion are also regularly considered within our field. But here, bell hooks’ words also bring in the ideas of holding people accountable for wrongdoing, and forgiveness. Which brings me back to the notion of rehabilitation.
The word rehabilitation has its origins in the Latin for “to make fit again”. It is variously defined as the act of restoring someone either “to health or normal life… after imprisonment, addiction, or illness”, or “to former privileges or reputation after a period of disfavour”. Rehabilitation is said to be accomplished via therapy and/or training.
I find some elements of those definitions to be troubling. For instance, they introduce a binary of normal vs. abnormal, along with notions of favour, reputation, and (bestowed) privileges. I much prefer the definition of rehabilitation as “the process of helping an individual achieve the highest level of function, independence, and quality of life possible”. (By the way, these phrases are taken from page-one Google searches, not academia, hence the lack of citations here.)
I also prefer to go back to word origins for inspiration: If rehabilitation means “to make fit again”, while part of me says “‘fit’ according to whom?”, the other part looks at ‘again’ as a signal that we are all born ‘fit’ – that intrinsically, we are good and deserving of a chance to achieve what Moses Coady called “the good and abundant life”, no matter what choices we make along the way. And, if it is true that rehabilitation is indeed accomplished via therapy and/or training, then there is a colossal role for AE in the realm of rehabilitation.
So, what does this mean for me this year? It means a recommitment to showing compassion for and to vulnerable persons. It means determination to be vocal about the right to access the means to make a living, and a life. And it means accepting all persons as intrinsically valuable, and capable of change, at least to some degree.
You may think me naïve. But if I’m in the same camp as bell hooks, that’s good enough for me.
