IQ, SchmI-Q.

Tonight I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker of mine from my first Peace Corps site (I say “first”, because as noted earlier, I am in the process of a site change). The site change is going pretty well, as I have been really busy with secondary projects lately and therefore have not been around much to witness the “chika-chika” that may or may not be going on. But, word has inevitably spread of my departure, and although I do not yet know where I am going, I am very satisfied with my decision to move placements. A time comes where every Peace Corps Volunteer thinks about the inevitable questions—what am I doing here? What good am I doing? Am I making the most of my time? Am I being given professional opportunities that challenge me? Am I anywhere near reaching my potential? Anyways, I had to think about the professional experience I was or was not gaining and weigh it against professional opportunities that are out there at other agencies, and the potential impact that a PCV can make in a short amount of time.

Anyways, so I visited my site tonight to retrieve some books and visit with the children. When talking to a co-worker, he asked me about the sort of things that I was hoping to accomplish there but hadn’t. Without getting into much detail, I just said that I was hoping to do life skills sessions with the teens and children, such as leadership, decision making, conflict resolution, communication skills, etc. Starting life skills sessions is my idea of the MINIMUM I had wanted to do, since they are relatively simple to do, and also the baseline that the CYF program here uses. I was quite surprised by my co-worker, when he said that those sorts of sessions are much too challenging for our children. He pointed out that most of them have such low IQs, so he doesn’t agree with challenging them intellectually. His belief was that since he doesn’t think they will “get it”, there is no point in trying. It is much better to give them “hard skills”, such as welding or jewelry making, than to try to develop any of their internal and more abstract skills.

I countered very firmly with, “I disagree”. My belief is that every child, no matter where they come from or what their background or “IQ score” is, they have the potential to do great things. Not only that, but every child will eventually become an adult, and it is the responsibility of adults and centers for children and youth to equip these children with the skills that are needed as an adult in this world—communication, conflict resolution, interpersonal relationships skills, etc. They are ALL important, and more than that, EVERY child is special and has potential to grow and be challenged, no matter what any scores on any tests say. Despite my attempts, my co-worker was not convinced that children are able to grow…this broke my heart, because these children are especially the ones who need people to believe in them!

The conversation left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, which is where the M&Ms that were sitting at home came in handy…