HEDIR, for Health Educators

The Other Effective Skill: When More is More

There is more beauty in words than in war.
The most deafening weapons in any war should be lyrics, not landmines. Carry our well wherever we walk, saturating scars with living waters, promise.

From Split this Rock Poetry Festival

Mark Kittleson wrote in his blog yesterday about the critical skill that “The LESS the health educator talks, the MORE the student learns.”  Today I would like to suggest that the other effective skill is to speak your mind. And if enough of us speak our mind, we can learn together. Health education is a collective experience. Here is an example. Today, I received this email from the web team of the Obama-Biden Transition team.

Dear Friend,
Transparency and engagement are priorities for the Obama-Biden Transition Project. Our success depends on not only opening up a process that has historically been inaccessible to most Americans, but also encouraging citizen participation. Last week, we took an important step towards these goals by asking the public to participate in a discussion about health care on our website. The result was fantastic. Started by a question from our Health Policy Team, thousands of comments poured in over a few days. Some people answered the initial question, but others engaged with one another debating and developing new ideas and approaches to health care reform.

The letter ended with these words, “This is just the beginning. These discussions are a valuable resource for Transition staff and an important way to ensure that everyone has a voice in the process.”

While I agree with Mark K. that the less we speak the more students learn, I also believe that the more we speak, the more learn. The power of words, spoken from many perspectives is the power of change.

Thoughts anyone?

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watsonpho

You make a great point Mark. We should speak our mind and express our thoughts. It is ALWAYS ewasier to do that when you know that the person you are speaking to is listening and willing to be respectful of your opinion. You frequently exhibit this… but many do not. Perhaps this is a great melding of the first two posts on the HEDIR Blog… Speaking and listening are equal pillars in the building of communication.
T Dub

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2 December 08 at 22:46

lkolsen

While I agree in principle with Mark, it is important to speak one’s mind as long as that speaking has a factual basis. We have to be careful of what I once heard at a meeting, “It’s a well-known fact, in my opinion…” Opinions are like, well, like something; nearly everyone has one. Oberteuffer once stated that if one’s opinion is shown to be “incorrect,” then one should be willing to change that opinion. I wonder how often this happens, or if the erroneous opinion persists, is passed to others who have not had a chance (or who have not taken the opportunity or time to examine an issue), and this “erroneous” information then begins to take on a “life of its own?” It can become like the old game, “That’s where I saw the ghost” that many of us played as children.

L

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3 December 08 at 10:34

aversniknowak

I think this and the previous post are saying the same thing. It is important to speak our minds (this post), but we should balance that by giving students the opportunity to speak their minds as well (previous post). My question is this…”How quiet would the world be if people only gave an opinion with a factual basis?” Very quiet, I suspect! We might not initially agree or understand how someone developed a given opinion, but those opinions can/should challenge us to think differently, consider other perspectives, and to reevaluate our own beliefs (if we are open to that process).

AVN

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3 December 08 at 12:17

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