Replying to LO28944 --
Dear Organlearners,
"ahsfamily" <ahsfamily@cox.net> writes:
>Through studies of the learning organization based on
>Peter Senge's book, other articles and the observation
>of behavior of students in graduate level courses I have
>developed the term "obedient learning society". It strikes
>me how many people in general and students especially
>crave to be told in every little detail what to do, when to
>do, and if possible how to do it.
Greetings dear "ahsfamily" or AM,
Forgive me, but it feels rather silly to address you in this manner since
I have no clue to what your actual name is. It is also a pity that I have
no idea from which country you write because what has been quoted above
would give me valuable insight into that country.
[Host's Note: It's Axel Meierhoefer... Sorry, I usually check that
writers to the LO list indicate their names. ..Rick]
What you describe above used to fit my own people, the Afrikaners, like a
glove. Afrikaner and English people make up the two major portions of
white South Africans. The Afrikaner societies were up to the dismanteling
of apartheid very closed and authoritative. Furthermore, during the
apartheid years South Africa was ruled behind the scenes by a secret
society called the AB (Afrikaner "Brotherhood") The AB decided in secret
the policy for almost every walk of Afrikaner life -- church, state and
business. These secret policies were then steam rolled through public
discussions on them. Thereafter no one dared to question a policy again.
RMB (Rote Mental Behaviour) was expected from every Afrikaner.
I do not know if it is really so, but I always thought this excessive
obediency of students and workers was the result of being ruled in secret.
To keep out of trouble they had to do exactly what was expected from them
-- RMB. I was much like them when I got to the university. But after five
years of study and another four years of doing research, I had developed
some ability to ask penetrating questions, often causing conflict and
damage to myself.
Then I became a high school teacher realising my calling. Within the first
week I was struck by exactly what you wrote above. In every class, usually
between 30 to 40 pupils, there were at most 5 who would ask questions
other than the "please sir, tell us how you want it to be done". I soon
learnt to depend on them as my most valuable allies in getting the spirit
of questioning airborne for the whole class.
During the early nineties this all began to change when apartheid became
dismanteled and black people took up their democratic rights. The power of
the AB was broken. Sadly, Afrikaners began to ran like frightened sheep in
all directions, not knowing how to use their creativity to secure their
future.
Today I think that not only control by a secret society can cause this
excessive obediency in organisations. The spoken (but never written)
purpose of the organisation can cause it too, despite its lofty vision and
mission statement in script. The more that purpose disrupts the creativity
of clients, the more the obediency of those who stay in the organisation.
For example, a few weeks ago I came into contact with a health
organisation, taking up a case for somebody else. It seemed to me that the
organisation wanted to make money out of every possible event and item for
a service delivered. In the reception office a brilliant vision and
mission statement was hanging against the wall. But as I began to question
one of the assistants on the invoice, she had to run to the back rooms to
get an official answer to each of my questions. I felt sorry for her,
trying to please me, but also obedient to what were "backroom" operations.
>Combined with the behavior in the workplace to do what
>one has been told, follow all the rules and regulations and
>make no noise so the next paycheck is secure, I ask myself
>how much creativity can be expected from students and
>employees alike?
After more than thirty years, trying to promote the creativity of everyone
with whom I come in contact with, I am convinced that the management of an
organisation is the main factor in determining the status of creativity in
that organisation. If the managers are little creative self or know very
little of creativity, there is no way how anyone of these managers can
employ a creative worker to the benefit of the whole organisation.
Whenever a creative worker accomplishes something creatively, uncreative
managers seem to experience it as a clever reflection on the incompetence
of their management. This involves a serious issue. The lack of creativity
in any person and not merely managers makes that person to react in a
negative manner towards creativity or a lack of it. Consequently
organisations in which creativity is suppressed usually have a negative
atmosphere in them.
>I believe the learning organization will remain to be a
>ream for the few as long as we don't praise creativity,
>challenge ourselves to do things differently, take time
>to listen to our environment and the people around us
>and strive to make things better not only for us but for
>society as a whole.
I am convinced of the same. Thirty years ago, after having observed pupils
closely for a couple of months, I came to the conclusion that TO LEARN IS
TO CREATE.
That tenet still holds for me today.
But what is creativity? After thirty years I have come to a number of firm
conclusions. I want to share three of them with you fellow learners,
despite how wierd they are.
(1) If someone says that this or that is not involved in creativity, that
person's understanding of creativity is impaired in some or other striking
manner. The more I try self to answer the question "What is creativity
not?", the more I find that this question has no answer. Sometimes I
thought that I had found an answer, but afterwards I would discover that
the answer was actually me failing with sufficient creativity to account
for the lack or abscence of creativity!
(2) I used to think of the material-physical and abstract-spiritual worlds
as complementary to each other, but also excluding each other. But after
1983 I began to understand how they overlap each other. It is in this
overlapping region that creativity becomes the most clearest for me to
understand. This means that for humans creativity involves both body and
mind. The one without the other results in a serious impairing of
creativity.
(3) Creativity has a Janus face. Creativity can be used in a constructive
or a destructive manner. To destroy creatively is much easier than to
construct creatively. This can be explained in terms of the 7Es (seven
essentialities of creativity). To destroy merely one of the 7Es has to be
impaired drastically. But to construct all seven of them have to be
satisfied up to a certain level of complexity.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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