Children learning process LO24628

From: Sajeela M ramsey (sajeelacore@juno.com)
Date: 05/17/00


Replying to LO24616 --

Preview: roughly five paragraphs long

Dear Ana and Co-learners,

> Ana Neves asked if we can learn from children learning and apply it
> to
> organisational learning.

A good question, it seems to me. I'm not sure if this is ontarget, but I
will share the following and see if this is of any use to you:

Edward Hall (anthropologist), in his book "The Silent Language" (1959)
discusses the work of descriptive linguists who make a distinction between
acquired (non-linear/oral) learning, such as that of children before they
read or pre-literate indigenous peoples, and learned learning
(linear/written). From that basis he then explores the chasm between these
two ways of learning.

He suggests a framework for culture, defining it (culture) as:

1) shared learned behaviors
2) learned and acquired primary message systems, i.e., communication

He then cites what he refers to as an infracultural dynamic that is
biologically based. Out of this context he builds a case for three levels
of learning in culture:

1) Formal (binary/fixed---polarized and based on yes/no right/wrong
logic) --- values
2) Informal (nodal/fluid---organic, non-logical --- like a tree growing)
--- situational responses
3) Technical (proscriptive/rulebound---an outgrowth and reinforcement of
Formal learning) --- measures

Within a child who is developing, they first learn at the informal,
acquired infracultural level. Later, as they learn at the formal level
they develop their conditioned values, and begin to reinforce these with
the technical measures of their conditioned behaviors. Hall is eager to
point out that MOST of cultural learning is, in the final analysis,
acquired, or non-linear and oral. I think this is important to keep in
mind, given the emphasis in technologized cultures on learned (adult)
learning.

It is my personal contention that by the time a child has been exposed to
formal learning reinforced by technical learning, that creativity can be
drastically thwarted. (Unless they are lucky enough to develop authority
issues, rebel and eventually individuate---I say this wryly because it's a
hard way to go, but it does the trick---I know from personal experience!)
Anyway, as I was saying, formal patterns are almost always learned when a
child makes a mistake and someone (an authority figure) corrects it.
Technical learning also begins with so called mistake-making. As you can
imagine this puts alot of pressure on the child's otherwise unbound
natural curiosity for learning, not to mention the curtailing of a child's
natural physiological/biological urges.

Studies about the difference between novices and experts support this
thinking. Nodal (like a tree growing and branching out) cognition is very
organic and natural and whole and induces a state of "flow". This is the
expert state, such as when one "gets" how to ride a bike as a whole
experience. In the novice state we have no flow and are laboring over the
pedal or the handlebar or the steering and we get distracted by small
pieces, as opposed to being in the whole gestalt experience of riding the
bike. The irony is that to get to this expert state we must actually
unlearn our learned behavior! My idea is to bypass the learned behavior in
the first place, and try learning the way children do!

Chirping birds at the window,
Sajeela

Sajeela Moskowitz Ramsey, President - CORE Consulting
Center for Organizational Renewal and Effectiveness
2432 Villanova Drive/Vienna, VA. 22180
703 573 7050/ SajeelaCore @Juno.com

-- 

Sajeela M ramsey <sajeelacore@juno.com>

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