Hello again At,
I read carefully the first two paragraphs of your reply and wish to
comment.
To articulate with words (or express by any other means like music) one's
tacit knowledge is difficult, but ONLY in the sense of how walking is
difficult for a baby who has never walked before
This brings into sharp contrast what I tacitly know about myself. I'm
almost over the frustrations that go with the inability to articulate my
thought patterns and feelings. Studying my MBTI typing amongst other
studies of similar material, helped me immensely in this respect
I think that background and especially the beliefs in it have very much to
do with the ability to articulate one's tacit knowledge. For example, all
over the world the far majority of people believe that knowledge is
outside a person and that learning is causes that knowledge to diffuse
into a person's mind where it has to be memorised.
The intensive (qualitative)
increase of knowledge is born (emerged) within a person.
Perhaps the subconscious thought patterns of a conquered race manifest as
a difficulty to articulate, and a barrier to the birth of increased
knowledge emerging in the people of that race.
These are some of my immediate thoughts At and no doubt others will
immerge in time.
Within the context of this thread and working with my posting LO21149 and
your reply. it is a pity that the efforts of people since 1840 were
largely ignored as we grew as a nation in New Zealand, until the events
just prior to, and the event - The Sprinkbok Tour - forced the
bifurcation. In the early 1960's when I was at secondary school the
history taught to us on our culture was never in sync with that told to us
by our parents and grandparents. The history my children learnt during
their schooling was more so. In the time between my schooling and theirs
there was an awful lot of activists work. I believe this is the
connection I was trying to make when explaining my background.
In an attempt to further articulate my thoughts on "How a nation learns" I
would like to draw a comparison in a micro environmental sense within the
capability of the education system of a nation to improve upon their
efforts to foster "A learning Nation"
Before doing so I would first like to point out that Our national
Education system has undergone/is undergoing some radical changes. I must
also give a brief account of my education. I left school at 15 years of
age and went into a trade. Most of my working life has been in an
engineering trade capacity. I attained post trade qualifications but in
my early 40's changed tack and am now two thirds the way to a Bachelor of
Business Studies degree. All my learning has been via correspondence
lessons (distance learning). For the last 5 years I have been working in
the training and development field.
Now, outside of work I am very much involved in the ongoing changes in our
national Education system. I am in my fourth 3 year term as a member of
the Board of Trustees of the local secondary school. As a forerunner to
the changes the 1980 government asked "Has our education system got the
ability to take us forward into the 21 st century" the answer was no.
Part of the criticism was that the system was not meeting the needs of the
customers - Students were not being employed because of the mismatch
between what they had been taught and the knowledge required by
prospective employees .- Parents were then asking questions of the
institutions.
In 1984 the new education act was passed. In 1989 the concept of
"Tomorrow's Schools" became a reality. Each school throughout the country
was required to run elections for a board of trustees. Each board of
trustees was required to write a "charter'. It was expected that the
charter would reflect the aims and objectives of all stakeholders. Under
the principles of the charter were the national education guidelines and
the national administration guidelines. Parents now had the ability to
directly influence the direction of our schools in the manner in which
their children were educated. I must point out here that in terms of what
I have outlined "The intensive (qualitative) increase of knowledge is as
yet an embryo (yet to emerge) within a sizeable chunk of our population".
I will now return to the influence of education systems on the thinking of
a population. My micro view is in the engineering field. At the local
secondary school we are setting up a faculty of technology. At our last
board of trustees meeting the person selected to implement the faculty
gave a presentation to the board. He generally took us through the
concept whereby students were given a concept from which a useable item
would result - a holder for a pair of sunglasses- There were certain 'use'
criteria included. The class is split into groups of up to 6. The
concept had to be brainstormed and a design agreed upon (team work). The
design had to be drawn using CAD, a mould had to be made out of wood
and/or metal, a plastics blow molding machine was used to create the
article, final finishing work carried out and a presentation was to be
prepared using 2 software packages. The project in total from concept to
material is presented to an audience.
Contrast this to the exercises I was party to during "woodwork" and
"metalwork" lessons of the time. Our faculty head included this contrast
in his presentation to us. He had photographs of the facilities that I
remember. Archaic machinery and benches built to withstand the rough and
tumble they were subjected to, the "if it doesn't fit bash it" mentality
At my place of work we are desperately trying to change the thinking of
our engineering maintenance teams in their approach to their task. We are
trying to implement planned maintenance to take the place of "don't touch
it til it's broken". We are trying to go to just in time spares (JIT) i
nstead of keep it just in case etc etc.
Against the educational background of our workforce it is a struggle.
Younger people with modern ideas are not sufficient in number or
experience with people to quicken the pace of change. However creeping
into our secondary schools are ideas that may give us the quantum leap we
are looking for in terms of learning organizations (therefore the nation)
in our future.
At, I hope you can follow my logic here, my attempt to articulate my tacit
knowledge, and thank you for you invitation for my daughter to visit you
and your family. She is going with her school net ball team to a place in
Johannesburg in June but I don't think she is going to be in Pretoria
throughout her stay. I believe you are right, she will be able to reflect
on her time in South Africa from somewhere in her future at a time when
more of her tacit knowledge has emerged and realize how much she did learn
while she was in "that exceptional laboratory of learning".
Regards,
Dennis Rolleston.
--Dennis Rolleston <Dennisr@ps.gen.nz>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>