Dear Organlearners,
Charlie Saur <csaur@remc8.k12.mi.us> writes:
> The opportunity to participate with everyone here is really astounding.
Greetings and welcome Charlie.
I think it has very much to do how our host Rick moderates this list.
Everything which has to do with the
Dialogue on Learning Organisations
is welcome. Once or twice he send a contribution back to me - and I
realised that they were not conducive to his criterium.
(snip)
> And that brings light to my intense interest in the topics of this ongoing
> LO conversation: Why doesn't everyone have an individual educational
> plan?
One of the five disciplines to understand learning organisations, is what
Peter Senge calls "personal mastery". You gave it another name "individual
education". I can give it the name "self-learning".
We may call it by different names. But on in the end it boils to one
thing: What is authentic learning?
You also write:
> I have two sons and a caring, strong wife. My eldest son Dan has
> some technical difficulties from cerebral palsy. The medical
> community calls him a quad-spastic.
and later on
> We have also been pursuing an educational curriculum for Dan called
> "conductive education". This is a pedagogy that assumes cerebral palsy
> (or motor disorder, as they refer to it) is more a learning disfunction
> than a medical one. Conductive education was developed in the 1940's and
> has just recently received increased attention. We feel this is a very
> important effort, and currently have gained cooperation from a local
> college and public schools to move to transplant this curriculum to the
> USA while measuring its success. But since this is a very wholistic
> system of teaching whose stated goal is to "develop fully the whole
> personality of the motor disordered child"; what should we measure? has
> been the question. If you have interest in more information about
> conductive education, please email me and I can point you to resources.
Your insights in "conductive education" and how it relates to Learning
Organisations will be most welcome.
Pardon me the following metaphor. In our ordinary organisations we are all
severly disabled people like Dan, but only on different levels. When such
an organisation has become a LO, it has found ways to overcome this
learning disabilities.
> I have a sense that in these LO pages and other conversation or dialogue,
> we have a long way to go before we can get to shared meaning of all the
> patterns, characters and symbols that we continuously build as
> representations of the world as we see it through our individual frames.
> But this is the most hopeful place (virtual place?) I have found.
It is true. I have browsed and lurked on tens of list servers. But
this one is the oasis in the desert because of the spirit of learning
pervading it.
> My son Dan thanks everyone for the hugs.
Charlie, forgive me , but I must bring this issue up. I am acquainted
with people like Dan and also some deaf or blind people. Although I
have immense compassion for them, I always feel extremely
uncomfortable with them, eventhough I try my best not to show it. The
reason is very simple. I do not know enough about them because I do
not have the esperience of a disability like their's. Thus I am
forever afraid that I will hurt them through my ignorance. I alwaeys
feel like running away and hide my shame. Will you teach me how to
become familiar with people like Dan?
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>