Replying to LO24554 --
Dear Organlearners,
Dennis Rolleston <dennisr@ps.gen.nz> writes
>And how do I feel?
>
>So far (2 years approx) a little intimidated by the "BIG" words
>(my description of the abstract dialogue). Yet the themes and
>contributions have helped me emmensely in clarifying my own
>thoughts or have prompted me to research further and learn
>more.
Greetings Dennis,
The most powerful way for myself to overcome the intimidation of these BIG
words is to trace their evolution in at least one dimension. Some
dimensions are etymology, reification and comprehension -- pretty BIG
words themselves ;-)
I have not been taught in school or university that such an intimidation
exists and that it can be overcome. I had to learn it myself.
To learn it self we need many dictionaries.
1 We will need a bilingual dictionary when our mother tongue
is not English.
2 We will need a standard dictionary of English which explain
the grammer and meaning of each English word.
3 We will need an etymological dictionary which describes the
evolution of each word from older languages
4 We will need a thesauric dictionary which gives the synonyms
and antonyms of words where possible.
5 We will need broad-subject dictionaries of academical
terminology like one each for
mathematics, logic and model theory
physics and chemistry
geology, soil science and physical geography
engineering and technology
botany, zoology, microbiology
etc., etc., etc.
Can you see me smiling? Although these BIG words lose all their
intimidation for me, all these books strewn over my desks, many of them
BIG, intimidate (at least ;-) the students like hell.
Some of these dictionaries of kind 2 on English, Dutch, German, my own
mother tongue Afrikaans are so voluminous that I can neither afford them
nor keep them in my office. Likewise I cannot afford all the many
subject-dictionaries. So I often have to "run" to the library to consult
them. When I get there, I make a point of observing how many students work
from them. I am now twenty one years at this university. I wonder if I had
seen twenty one students in total all those years working from them. I
sometimes wondered if my observations were not way off the mark. But when
I page through these books, their pristine pages witness to how little
they get used. I sometimes forget strips of "ancient" computer punch cards
used in them as page markers. Many moons later I feel ashamed for having
to remove my unique page markers self.
The second BIGGEST names which I know are the biological names of plant
and animal species. Those names will even kill a cat with seven lives.
Yet, even they are not intimidating once a person knows that they have a
well intended meaning according to clear rules. I can type here several
hundred names of species from memory which many of you will even find
difficult to pronounce.
Did I learn them by parrotry? No, by using three basic rules:
(1) You must have a specimen at hand, alive or dead -- or at
least an image of it, photo or detailed description.
(2) You must be familiar with biological nomenclature rules
(3) You must have dictionaries of Latin and Greek.
Then you connect the name with its linguistic meaning effectively
to the specimen with a definite property of it such as in appearance,
discovery or locality.
The BIGGEST names of them all are the systematical IUPAC names of some
chemical compounds. When the name become three to four LINES long, even
the chemist will give up pushing the systematical recipe, thus giving it a
short, unique name in some or other way connected to the complex compound.
>I will be eternally greatful to my own father who at approximately
>65 years of age and for the next decade, appeared to entrust his
>further education to us, his 13 children, only interrupting when our
>teaching/learning/probing/ wanderings strayed outside his terms
>of reference for "wisdom" gained from providing for most of his then
>65 years for the physical and emothional needs of his own and his
>extended family.
In my case it was my father's only and much younger brother "Oom Flip"
(Uncle Philip). My father thaught me creativity by setting an example
difficult even to equal. But it is with my Oom Flip which I had many
thousand hours of LO-dialogues any time during day or night on any topic
under the sun.
He is now dead for more than a decade -- he would certainly have loved
Senge's book the Fifth Disicipline. We had countless many hours of
dialogue on the learning of individuals and communities. Should he still
have lived, I would certainly have asked him why our LO-dialogues were so
numerous and many so long. (Ask my dear wife how long some of them were!)
Some on the list may now think my long contributions are an expression of
my longing for those dialogues. I have often wondered if it is not the
case after all.
Perhaps the most important incident in his life was when he was almost
killed in a motor cycle accident. Half his skull was ripped off! He should
have been dead, but he was unconscious for many months, fighting to heal.
He did heal. His unprecedented respect for all living things afterwards
was one of his greatest virtues as a human and as a teacher.
>My Dad was a Kaumatua, an elder of our tribe and thus
>looked to for guidance by the tribe yet was humble enough
>to learn from us in the servant leader role, a "mentor".
Please, tell us more when the time is ripe.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.