Replying to LO25715 --
Dear Organlearners,
Bill McQueen <wmcqueen@oise.utoronto.ca> writes:
>One thing I like some discussion about is along the
>lines of "appreciation", and how and why we need to
>"appreciate" others in all aspects of our lives.
Greetings Bill,
You have touched upon a topic crucially important to LOs.
I myself was born before apartheid became the official ideology and policy
of South Africa, but too young to become aware of the vast changes it
brought about and all its implications. One of apartheid's implications
was that it loaded the majority of South Africans with an omnibus of
horrible Mental Models (MMs). Our greatest struggle now in the new South
Africa is to get rid of these MMs.
One curious MM was that showing appreciation spontaneously is not good
citizinship. We had to ask permssion to do so and permission was often not
granted. Only much later I learned that much of this had to do with the
country being run by a secret society. Members of the secret society had
to be "marketed" by among other things "appreciation" whereas any
opponents to them had to be denigrated as far as possible. Showing
"appreciation" to an opponent was to invite big trouble.
Obviously, I myself had been trained into this MM too. I did not became
aware of it as a MM during all my years of schooling (primary, secondary
and tersiary) and researching. However, upon realising that my life
mission is to teach authentic learning, soon afterwards as a teacher I
became intensely aware of this MM. I did not want to "appreciate" the
excellent work of pupils, yet before my very eyes I saw how "appreciation"
transformed many of them from sleeping kittens into stalking lions.
Many times I felt very dishonest by showing appreciation. I sometimes even
sweated when doing so. Today I know that this feeling of dishonesty was me
letting go of this MM while believing falsely that I should not do so.
Many times also my pupils behave negatively to such appreciation, either
of their own work or that of others. Having had to struggle with my own MM
made me aware how difficult it was also for them to become constructively
tuned to appreciation.
>Whether facing frustrations, obstacles, or great achievements, it seems
>to me a critical factor, not just one of "acknowledging" the "employee of
>the month" or giving "bonuses", or a gratuituous "pat on the back" but
>genuine and honest appreciation of others.
This I can understand fully. In terms of pupils it means not to say: Let
us clap hands for Susie Song because she got 100% for the test. It
means the following doing:
* Let us look at Susie's answer to the test and see what exceptional
things she did in her answer and why.
* Let us also look at Jack's answer sheet. Although he got only 60%,
this one answer of his is the best among all answers. Why?
* Let us look at May's answer sheet. She used to average 60%, but in
this test she got 30% because her mother was in hospital. Despite
this, she managed to create the following extraordinary answer. Why?
>To me, not appreciating, is just setting up another barrier
>to being a compassionate human, not just an "ineffective"
>manager. Nor is non-appreciation an unimportant part of
>personal and organisational learning.
What I think happens, is the following. By appreciating the creative
outcome of a member of a Learning Team, we draw attention to the
creativity underlying that creative outcome. While communicating on the
creative outcome, we follow tacitly the creativity involved. By
highlighting features of excellence in the creative outcome, its back
action is to enrich the underlying creativity of all participating in the
appreciation.
One of the best way to act as midwife in the enriching of the seven
essentialities of a learner, is to show appreciation to learning outcomes
in which that learner excelled in one or more of these seven
essentialities of creativity. Not to pull the essentiality by the hair
into the appreciation, but to make sure that such an appreciation would
not have been possible without such a clear manifestion of that
essentiality in the work to be "appreciated".
>Thanks very much.
Thank you very, very much for bring this topic in the LO-dialogue.
I suspect that lack of "appreciation" may be globally epidemic. Why?
As I have said earlier, this resistance to showing appreciation was a
horrible Mental Model among far too many South Africans. Why did it occur
so much? Because of a destructive rather than a constructive
"appreciation" of creativity. In the case of South Africa, apartheid
(fragmentarism) impaired wholeness immensely. Hence creativity was often
used for destructive purposes. I suspect that whenever a community is
seriously impaired in one of these seven essentialities, it will not only
employ creativity for destructive purposes, but will also be infected by
this Mental Model of denying "appreciation".
The work of the South African Jan Smuts ("father" of holism) is a
milestone in the history of humankind's collective conceptualisiation of
wholeness. It is extraordinary how few South African's can and will
appreciate Jan Smuts for his work on wholeness. The legacy of an impairing
in essentiality of creativity (in this case apartheid impairing wholeness)
goes far and wide.
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.