Gary wrote,
> I am doing a lot of personal unlearning, yet it really becomes a manner of
> learning new behaviours and new ways to listen and respond, recognizing
> the old modes of doing things are no longer productive, valuable or
> required.
If we understand "learning" as the process of making meaning, of coming to
make sense of our world and ourselves in the world--including how we name,
group, and symbolize things--then whether it's learning or unlearning is
perhaps not relevant. They are parts of the same whole in our
meaning-making system, they have no boundaries; when new information is
gained, when we can no longer hold a new experience in our existing frames
of reference, we begin to understand the world and/or ourselves in a
different way, we make meaning in a different way. We learn. We unlearn.
This sense of learning as meaning-making (an orientation to learning which
has been well-developed by many scholars and practitioners over the
centuries) forces us to shift our perspective towards learning--be it
individual, or collective as in the learning organization. It reflects
the essential difference between the Latin 'instruere,' (instruct) the
furnishing with knowledge--putting understanding into the learner (the
deficit/banking model of learning), and 'educere,' (educate) meaning to
lead out.
The technical-rational approaches to learning and to work, which have
governed our institutions for the past 100+ years, are based on instruere.
What we are moving back to, perhaps, is educere. This is far more
consistent with the principles of LO's. However, most people (many of us,
perhaps?) continue to try to force instruere--that in order for people or
groups to learn, it is simply a matter of giving them the proper
information in just the right way; when that doesn't bring about change,
we wonder, for example, what is wrong with the people (see, e.g., the
dominant literature in training & development).
Learning/unlearning is about more than information, data, facts, and even
processes. It is about leading out, to bring meaning forth in the Self
(individual or collective). It is this shift in our meaning schemes and
assumptions, I think, which will ultimately bring us to more vital
workplaces or societies.
--Terri A Deems tadeems@aol.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>