Resonance as Aggregate
Resonance is the aggregate term we use to describe fragmented ideas such as management, administration, and entrepreneurship. We believe that these and similar designations refer to the same quality in the individual. When the individual expresses this quality, observers then choose to label it as management, or administration, or entrepreneurship, and the university attempts to “teach” these designations as individual skills. (chapter 8 & chapter 2). This fragmented approach has woefully failed the PUCs (persistently underdeveloped countries).
Resonance as a Hidden Language (chapters 8, 9 and 10)
Resonance is also the term we use for when the elements of the economic model connect with the language capacity of the individual.
The visible language that we speak, read, and write consists of elements such as words and their meanings. A person can use a visible language effectively when its elements combine with the language capacity which resides in the individual. When that happens, the elements become vocabulary. When that does not happen, the elements are just words on a list and cannot be used for effective communication. Science refers to the inborn human capacity for language as “poverty of the stimulus,” which means WE DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS.
The elements of the Western economic model include the empirical and technical information about government, institutions, businesses , resources, technology, science, and so forth. A person displays resonance when these elements are connected to the language capacity that resides in the individual. When this happens, the elements become vocabulary, and the individual expresses behavior called competent management, administration, or entrepreneurship. When that does not happen, the individual cannot perform like expatriate agents.
The human language capacity is what drives the economies of the developed countries. In a resonance-driven economy, there is no end to technological development and economic growth because there is no end to the versatility and creativity of people in the use of language.
Since development is part of their culture, resonance is acquired passively in the developed countries outside the classroom. Western societies have always taken resonance for granted and have focused on teaching only the technical aspects of development in the academic curriculum. No matter the wishful claims made for the liberal education curriculum, this is all that Western academia knows how to do. In other words, the university curriculum does not impart resonance, and there is no concept of resonance in Western academia other than genetic superiority, Darwinian superiority, or religious work ethic. All these prejudiced concepts are lacking in imagination and empathy. They are also a dead end for development in the PUCs.
The only explanation for the development of Japan, Korea, and China is that they have elements of culture in common with the West, which enables them to acquire resonance passively in culture.
Expatriate agents perform effectively in the PUCs because of the command of resonance. To them, the elements of the economic model are merely “vocabulary” to be contingently and creatively expressed as management, administration, and entrepreneurship, using the skills of the language capacity.
In contrast, development is not part of the culture of the PUCs. The Western economic model was imposed on the PUCs by colonialism. The elements of the economic model are not connected to the language capacity possessed by the individual. Conventional education does not have the means for making this connection. Therefore, the elements of the Western economic model learned in school are equivalent to the words and ideas of a foreign language that is not understood. They are words and ideas on a list to be used only technically as fixed protocols. They do not combine with the language capacity in the individual to be contingently and creatively expressed as management, administration and entrepreneurship. The attempt to operate the Western economic model only with the fixed protocols of technical knowledge is another definition of persistent underdevelopment.
We know how to connect the elements of the Western economic model to the language capacity that is present in the student. That is what our new curriculum does. This is a 3-year curriculum that must be urgently implemented in the universities of the PUCs. That way, real development can begin
In today’s academia, the idea of resonance is fragmented to a ridiculous extent. On the one hand are the professional schools that claim to impart the skills of management, entrepreneurship, administration, and other subdivisions of resonance. On the other hand, we repeatedly hear in graduation speeches that the liberal education curriculum has imparted the same skills to all graduates, through the study of literature, humanities, natural science, social science, and so on. This fragmented approach has served to permanently divert attention from a unifying concept that is essential and unavoidable.
Visible language does not need human explanation to work, and the formal study of visible language has zero bearing on the ability of people to use it. The use of visible language by people in any culture or community does not require learned explanation. Likewise, resonance does not require human explanation for it to work. Resonance operates regardless of how little or how much explanation we provide.
More information about resonance and our new curriculum can be found in chapters 8, 9, and 10 of “The Failure of University Education for Development and What to Teach Instead.”
Samuel A. Odunsi, Sr.
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