Dear Organlearners,
Doc Holloway <learnshops@thresholds.com> wrote in LO15704
what seems to be ages ago (it was days ago):
> My historical reference is to Thoreau's disagreement with slavery in the
> south and the war being waged by the US against Mexico in a thinly veiled
> effort to annex a huge chunk of property now known as New Mexico, Arizona
> and California. Thoreau pointed out that he was in collusion with the
> government pursuing unethical choices if he continued to pay taxes to
> support those efforts.
...snip...
> That is what Thoreau did when he refused to accept
> the government's sovereignty as greater than his principles.
Doc, as I have said previously, I would see how much I could read on
Thoreau. To my surprise, I could not find much on Thoreau in the
local libraries. I will still keep on hunting.
But these negative results made me thinking. What if somebody wants
to learn about democracy. Where will that person find literature on
the subject. Most people believe that our university's library is
closed for the general public. The public libraries have very little
on democracy. I have checked on the main library of our city and was
schocked how little was available on the subject.
In other words, the thread "What is democracy" has taken a new
direction for me. How much do we make sure that people can learn as
much as possible from other people all over the world what democrcy
amounts to? Only the few students who brush through the department of
political science have the formal opportunity to learn something
about democracy. They are less than 0.01% of the city's population.
The rest of the population have to learn about democracy in an
informal (unorganised) manner through bitter experience, from
political charlatans and opinion formers, or through dilligent
self-study. Can a democracy survive under such circumstances? John
Constantine's observation "A democracy is the ultimate learning
organization." gives the answer. No, a democracy cannot survive if it
does not function as a learning organisation.
Let us pursue this insightful observation of John further, please.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>