A Gap in American Understanding

Ivan Illich is advocating for people to come to other parts of the world and learn from them, or not go at all. He acknoledges this sense of American exceptionalism that many people in the US seem to have. they think that they are more fortunate than everyone else and feel the need to go in and help the poorer countries by telling them what they need. So many ideas people create is that they are this person who needs to go to other countries and help people, but Illich argues that their “dogooding in a Mexican village is even less relevant than it would be in a U.S. ghetto” (Illich, 4). He wants Americans to realize that the way they see themselves helping others when they really dont know anything about them is usually the opposite of helpful.

Both of these stories emphasize the importance of acknowledging the fact that you do not know everything, or that because of your life, you know the answer to everyone’s problems. This applies to Illich stating that Americans really don’t help the people in Mexico because they aren’t a part of that culture. Batchelder describethis idea with the green banana and the center of the world. In America, the green banana has no immediate purpose, but that is from the point of view of someone who only knows what they have learned in the US. The green banana is a very important and useful fruit for someone in Brazil. This idea enforces the fact that it is always important to keep expanding your knoledge through experience, and the fact that it is never possible to be finished with learning. A person can never experience every culture, and Illich finds this as an important reason as to why they cannot help every culture.

Batchelder describes the concept of the center of the world being “that special place where we are known, where we know others, where things mean much to us, and where we ourselves have both identity and meaning: family, school, town, and local region” (Betchelder). To me, the idea that many different cultures, groups of people, or individuals have different places that are the centerof the world to them, means that we all have different paradigms. Therefore, it is difficult to ever completely understand how a person sees the world. At my community partner, one student was explaining a concept to another student, but the way they operated their study group was done in a different way than I had ever thought to do so. I personally would never have thought to do it in this way, but it seemed very effective for this group of students. The center of the world for these students could have an effect on how they take on problems, and therefore affect how the study group works.

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