In responding to the home schooling note, Tobin wrote:
>I think that we do not allow children in school the freedom to
explore and experiment and collaborate enough to stimulate the
interest needed to carry them through the difficulties and challenges
of learning. (Of course I am _not_ speaking of organizations here,
they _must_ operate according to the rules of ADULT WORK and COULD NOT
SURVIVE if allowed to follow the natural flow of learning and
involvement which we are speaking of here...)
-- end of quote --
Throughout recent dialogue concerning educational systems, higher ed, and
knowing vs doing, I've noticed how easily we could slip the word "work" in
for schools or schooling. In our talk of learning organizations, or
better yet, as Michael T. and others have mentioned, more fully human work
environments, can't we also see the need to provide opportunities to
"explore and experiment and collaborate enough to stimulate the interest
needed to carry [workers] through the difficulties and challenges of
learning'?
I must disagree with Tobin, then: I think we MUST speak of work
organizations in a similar vein. The essence of LO and other new work
environment movements seems to be to challenge the status quo, the old
archetypes and "rules of adult work," in order to create a more natural,
more vital, more 'well' site for growth, development, contribution and,
yes, even community. I also believe evidence suggests that workplaces DO
INDEED survive when they follow the natural flow of learning and
involvement of which we are speaking. Seems this is much of what we are
trying to understand and expand upon on this list--how to cultivate and
nurture that natural flow and participation.
Perhaps (and I've seen many LO comments along these same lines, under
different subject lines) rather than simply modeling our education systems
more on the lines "of a good pre-school setting--rich environment, lots of
free choice, time for play and interaction, support for imagination and
creativity, laughter and song, music, dance, room for physical activity as
part of learning" (also from Tobin--thanks for a nice description!), we
might also be crafting our workplaces with these same opportunities for
learning and expression. As Tobin points out with educational systems,
perhaps we would then see "some of the incredible progress in learning
continue."
Are these possibilities or only pipe dreams?
Terri Deems
Deems Associates Inc
tdeems@unlgrad1.unl.edu
--tdeems@unlgrad1.unl.edu (Terri Deems)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>