What is? What is not?

I was in my reflective mood these past few days. I was taking into account the role I was given the privilege to perform, a teacher. A learning facilitator.

One of the painfully funny reality that overwhelmed me, as it came to view, is the fact that learning facilitators has this default of "teaching" students how to solve problems while spending very limited and "lacking in meaning" time in equipping students in how to see the true situation, thus properly defining the problem.

This is a very sad thing because even if we have this very brilliant solution to a wrongly framed problem, we only end up being brilliantly wrong = )

The problem still exists.

So, how do we see the true problem? And is it really necessary to define the true problem?

House MD taught me the significance of the later question. Of knowing the true problem because in their profession, if the problem, the disease or sickness, is not properly diagnosed, the patient dies. The margin for error is slim.

Unlike in business. If we misdiagnosed a situation, a problem, well, the worst thing that can happen is we lose all the wealth and the economic system siphons off the "scarce resources" to opportunities with better returns, new businesses.

But we are still alive. We lost face but we are still standing. Pride is crushed but we are still breathing. Given another chance = )

What if this very framing of the truth... this truth context is the very thing that hurts the initiative to clearly see the true problem?

What if the first step to understanding the importance of correct problem definition is in truthfully and vulnerably answering the simple question of ..."What does it mean, to us, personally, if we can truly see the true problems and have the ability to solve them?"

Is it simply a grade? Worst, a passing grade? Is it simply bragging rights?

Honest, does it excite us if we can define a problem correctly? Could we understand the weight, the significance and the importance of properly defining problems like the way doctors see it?

As learning facilitators, do we have the ability to replicate how we feel about problem definition to our students? Could they see our personal journey in arriving in what we know? Could they see why we even took the journey? Why we even choose this journey? Could they feel the burden that we feel?

Is our experience made real in them? Again? First hand?

Could we give the ability of seeing what is the problem? And what it is not?

"One must embrace first that he is part of the problem in order for him to be part of the solution!"

Lord, all I have is You... my Audience of One!