Dear Organlearners,
Bruce Jones <brucej@nwths.com> writes:
>Since schools and education reflect, or are modeled after, the
>prevailing social structure, 'collective control' will prevail and the
>hive will survive. To break free of the attitude of the 'norm' and
>inject a new learning ethic into the system an altered paradigm
>of work ethic will have to be established. This is how I see it.
Greetings Bruce,
Your contribution gave me the kicks -- I loved it.
Your "new learning ethic" means for me two things in particular:
(1) We ought to pay attention also to Learning Organisations (LO) and not
only Learning Individuals (LI).
The more I study history up to four millenia ago, the more I become
convinced that humankind has neglected the LOs in favour for the LI. It
was not something which happened with the same rate every where in the
world, but through the complex interaction between cultures no culture had
been able to escape this skewed focus.
(2) We ought to pay attention also to Emergent Learning (EL) and not only
Digestive Learning (DL). What happened to LO and LI also happened to EL
and DL. For example, 2500 years ago Socrates (with his "midwifery"
learning) and Confusius (with his "inner" learning) were very much aware
of EL. They helped to shape the thoughts of the Western and Eastern ways
of thinking for a couple of millenia. But somehow their sensitivity to EL
made no impression at all, not even their first generation of followers.
These followers merely continued with DL as all the generations before
them.
Your "altered paradigm of work ethic" makes me also think of two things:
(1) As far as I understand it, a paradigm does not get "altered". It gets
completely displaced by a new paradigm. Thus people of the generation in
which the new paradigm emerge, have to "jump" (or shift as Thomas Kuhn
calls it) from the one to the other. However, subsequent generations OF
THOSE IN THE GENERATION WHO HAD TO MAKE THE JUMP are merely borne in the
new paradigm. To those who have not contributed to the emergence of the
new paradigm, eventhough they may have succeeded in making the jump, it
seems as if the new paradigm has been transformed out of the old one.
Actually, the new paradigm begins with new experiences, then experential
knowledge => tacit knowledge => formal knowledge before it becomes known
to other people.
(2) The new work ethic ought to take into account the order relation
of Gibbs, namely
/_\F < W
(See the dialogue on the topic "The Digestor").
What Gibbs did, was to find one single expression for the Law of
Energy Conservations and the Law of Entropy Production. These two laws
were considered to be universal for the material world only. There is
now more evidence than mere suspicion that they also hold for the
abstract world.
>It is up to the experts of this type of discussion group to make the
>changes.
Forgive me Bruce, but here I have to differ. It is up to all of us, not
only the experts, to make the changes effective. Obviously, experts will
pave some of the way. But if they cannot explain their work to ordinary
people, nor allow ordinary people to scrutinise their work, that work will
abort as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow.
>My $0.02
When I was a child many years ago, we could buy four black coated
licorice/aniseed balls for a penny. They were as hard as rocks. By sucking
on them, they changed in colour as the various coloured layers slowly
dissolved. Four such black balls lasted almost a day.
Sadly, those balls are not available any more -- only some cheap
imitations. And a cent today (South Africans changed their pennys into
cents) cannot even buy a tenth of a cheap imitation today.
Your $0.02 reminds me of my childhood years.
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 <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>