> My comment is focused on the word "teaching." In recent years I have
>come to believe that the ideas of "smart" and "stupid" only seem
>applicable if I assume my role is "teacher." What if there is really no
>such thing as "teaching?", only learning?
Mediating/facilitating public policy situations, we regularly experience
representatives of conflicting interest groups explaining to us something
along the lines of "It's just a matter of education. If we had a chance
to educate them there would be no problem." I've had industrialist,
governmental, and environmental leaders privately say almost identically
the same thing to me within an afternoon -- and none of them interested to
listen with each other.
It's easy for me to infer they fear they might "get educated." That is,
"get educated" in the sense that getting educated is what you get when you
don't get what you want.
In non-profit groups we see the same resistance-to-joint-learning,
paternalist, competitive mindset reified in "public outreach and education
committees."
When we talk about dialogue now, in the Bohmian-Argyrisian-Sengeian sense,
we use the phrase "reflective dialogue learning."
Dan Chay
Horizon Mediation Services
chay@alaska.net
--Heidi and Dan Chay <chay@Alaska.NET>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>