Schools as Learning Organizations LO14382

Tadeems@aol.com
Wed, 16 Jul 1997 23:32:09 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO14353 --

Hear, hear, Graham! These are some important points that aren't made often
enough, and you've done it nicely.

> The word "learning" itself is usually value-neutral,
> in the sense that it picks out both desirable and undesirable learning.
> The idea that schools should be about learning isn't enough, educationally
> speaking... People in conventional non-learning organizations learn
> all right, but far too often they learn things which are harmful to
> themselves, and counterproductive to the best workings of the
> organization.

Far too often we fail to critically examine WHAT it is that people are
learning within our organizations, be they for education or for work,
spiritual practice or the family unit. All of these are, in one sense,
"learning" organizations, in so far as we learn through our interactions
with these environments, our experiences with them. Learning is a social
activity and we are always learning something--and not always something to
our benefit or the benefit of others. Probably the most powerful learning
we do is tacit, incidental, informal. That is how our meaning
schemes--mental models, assumptions, beliefs, whatever--are created and
recreated throughout our lives, through the interactions and transactions
involving our subjective selves and the objective environment. Learning
is the process of making sense of our world, and of ourselves in this
world. It's about meaning-making, and becoming increasingly more
conscious of ourselves and others.

> The purpose of the "learning organization" isn't just to
> foster any old kind of learning, it is to promote learning which will
> enhance the lives of those in the organization, those who come into
> contact with it, as well as the intelligent performance of the whole
> organization in pursuit of its mission.

John Dewey referred to this as an "educative environment," one which was
most conducive to development -- growth in a particular direction which,
as Graham describes, enhances the lives of those experiencing the
environment (the environment being whatever conditions interact with
personal needs, desires, purposes, and capacities) and leads us on to
continued growth. So our concern must be not simply with what it takes to
create a learning organization (because they are all that, though naming
one type of organization an LO does make it easier to talk about), but
what are the qualities necessary within an experience (e.g., workplace)
that enhance the kind of growth and development that lead to a vital
society?

> That is, of course, why "education" is a useful concept. Education is
> about learning, but not all learning is educational... This is petty, but
> the West
> has become somewhat obsessed by "education as schooling".

Not at all petty. And what is almost more frightening to me, is that
"schooling" has become increasingly viewed as simply preparation for work.
My state's school-to-work project is a good example of that, where
recently the governor went so far as to talk of "training in our public
schools," rather than of education. Hmmm . . . wonder what kind of
implications there are within that for both our educational systems and
the workplace?

-- 

Terri Deems tadeems@aol.com

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>