Ben says, in response to my rather negative commentws about families,
I think that your premise is a leap of abstration, assuming that because
some families are dysfunctional, all families are dysfunctional. I'm not
convinced this is true.
My wife and I have used Senge's five disciplines in developing our family
community, and have found a tremendous amount of satisfaction. Our
two oldest children (ages 7 and 5) are able to think more broadly and
deeply about many issues, because we have casually espoused
systemic thinking. We have also focused on using dialogue to create a
"shared vision," which has proven to be extremely beneficial.
I think that the family is one of the best places to use principles of a
learning organization. Perhaps one of the reasons so many families have
become dysfunctional is simply because the art of dialogue has been
neglected.
== End quote ===
In principle I agree with you. However, when we think about the issue
systemically instead of anecdotally, we see a lot of evidence showing the
trends in families to be less functional, less collaborative, more Me
first. The data is there. Of course, there are a lot of exceptions, and
I am not arguing that every family is dysfunctiojnal. Nevertheless, the
data is extraordinarily clear. It may be painful to acknowledge it, but
acknowledgement is the first step toward redemption as they say.
--Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>