How do we learn?

Sunday. And instead of watching Liverpool vs. Man.City live, I am sitting in church.  My wife has been asked to join a choir and I am the spousal support team.  Small, rural Ontario church, much the same as all small, rural United churches throughout Ontario.  Same architecture, same set of hymnals and books, basically the same service structure and I still have no idea when I am supposed to stand and when it's o.k. to stay sitting.  I sit at the back: my wife has a beautiful singing voice, hence the choir invite -- me? Not.  I am one of those who listens and no one ever comes over and says "you should be singing" once they have hear me sing.


As the service progresses, my mind wanders (as it often does during church services) and I reflect on how people learn.  I am actually quite spiritual, but my faith is my own and I am not even sure it is shared by the rest of my family.  So how do we learn?  And how do we learn the most elemental of constructs to the human condition, such as spiritual awareness?


Well it occurred to me, sitting in the back pew that people divide into a number of groups:

• experience: those that learn by doing, doesn't matter what you tell them, they have to experience for themselves. They experiment and often latch onto the newest leading edge not so much to store and reflect on the learning as to experience the first steps of new learnings and to be in the constant process of the not yet known.  Pioneers.  Not always with any overt purpose other than it is necessary.
• personal journey.  More than experimentation, more than experience, these are people who set off on a path of personal discovery. Often painful, often more time consuming, ultimately very personal and deep learning.   Discovery is to go on a spiritual journey of self-awareness and actualization like the main character in A Razor's Edge.
Their journey is driven by a constant question of "why?" to just about every facet of life and living.  Disdainful of rules, authority and conformity. Innovative.  Charismatic or delusional, depending upon the audience. Often wrong, seldom in doubt.
• directional: people who learn but need guidance and leadership to venture into new domains, like structure and the re-assurance of a conforming message. Will apply new rules but not initiate nor innovate those new meanings.  Community builders. The mainstay of small, rural Ontario churches.  People who run things.
• institutional: people who are less about learning and more about being educated.  They seek, need and appreciate the structure and directions supplied by an institutional setting and instructional training.  There is clarity in conforming to norms, not questions.  Comfort from consistency and compliance, not acquiescence.  The congregation, the majority of students who sit in class and associate their grade with learning: "is this going to be on the exam?".  Need to 70 to get into Heaven.

Einstein said that Problems can not be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

So how to learn about sustainability and change? What is the role of education if learners divide into a number of categories (doubtless there is a book and a whole forest of trees devoted to journal articles with various schema for categorizing learning types in 32 sub-fields of algorithmic certitude, but for now I 'll play with my simple fourfold back pew reflection).


Well I often use the analogy of the beach.  The beach has sand and waves that crash onto the shore.  And I will liken traditional pedagogy to an accepted paradigm of building sandcastles.  The waves represent change: inevitable, constantly changing, dynamic and not subject to human instruction, even royal fiats as Canute can testify.


So we organize society into little teams, each building sandcastles. Some elaborate and using buckets and spades, some using left over cups and some using powerful sand moving technology Tonka trucks (made in China).  Bullies knock over other peoples castles, some castles aren't very robust, fights break out over who has the best looking sand castle and everyone accepts that life is about building sandcastles under fear of "the big wave" that knocks any and all sand castles down and washes them away -- they are sand after all.


There are classes on castle building, rules and directions on correct castle design, construction and maintenance, people who draw castles, people selling shovels and spades and people running around preventing people from running on sections of the beach to protect the castles (well the important ones anyways).  And on one end of the beach there are the people protesting that 1% of the people have 99% of the sand, another group extolling the virtues of castle building as God's work and people organizing teams to tell other teams how to build their castles like their castles....


Then there are the groups who watch the waves.  They are assisted by others who shout about how the next incoming wave is "the big wave" and constantly try to run drills shepherding people up the beach to safety in case the "big wave" hits -- which of course hasn't happened but every wave does destroy at least one castle, especially those built close to the margin of the shore.


And there are people who don't actually do any building any more. Like parents they sit under umbrellas, on comfy beach chairs and sip cool beers or drinks with little umbrellas and watch the beach around them.  Occasionally, they walk the length of the beach, saving their prime spaces on the beach with books, determining what new activities should be allowed and what should be prohibited.  They make the rules, rules that fit their view and use of the beach but after all, without rules, where would the organization be?


Meanwhile waves come and go,  Change is constant.  Some people have tried to play in the waves. Pioneers, with big boards, they surf in the waves, look wonderful, routinely drown once in a while and are invigorated and inspired.  Many watch them but do not aspire to surf themselves as it is challenging, difficult to learn and not something everyone can do: not everyone is blond, with 10% body fat and blue eyes, coordinated and a strong swimmer.


Some complain about surfing.  It is risky. Not everyone can do it.  It is hard to learn. There are movements afoot to ban surfing.  Plus it is disruptive: often during castle building classes kids will gaze at the surfers and admire them, wonder "what if...", it gives them wrong ideas.


That is until someone had a bright idea.  Big boards are difficult but little tiny floating devices, boogie boards, allow everyone to play in the waves.  You don't even need big huge dangerous waves, just the every day, on the shore waves can be enjoyed by everyone using a boogie board.  Wow! Technological innovation changes the whole dynamic of the beach.  Waves are not to be feared but enjoyed -- easily and by everyone!  Suddenly the metric and pre-eminence of castle building is challenged.  More and more people stop trying to mold the beach into castles of sand they seek then to protect and preserve, and instead they jump into the very waves they have be told to fear and frolic, boogie boarding, laughing, together, people from all sections of the beach, playing in the ever changing waves.   Life is not dreary, a daily drudge of more castle building.  Instead it is a daily play in the waves of change.


Of course this comes at a cost.  The chair people have lost their control over beach life.  People are too busy playing in the waves to worry about the chairs or to want to "steal" them.  No one worries about the "big wave" -- people do not fear change, the waves are a new challenge and new opportunity to test their skills and learn how to enjoy the dynamics of constant change.  Most of the beach monitors are irrelevant: the water and the waves are the focus of life, not the beach.  Who knew?


So are we educating people for a life on the beach? A life based on moving sand, inherent impermanence, rule by chair people and plagued by bullies?  An education predicated on fear of change and the illusion of castles?


Or is education for sustainability about embracing the changes of new technological innovation?  More and cheaper boogie boards to allow more people from more places on the beach the opportunity to play and revel in the constant waves of change?


Educate to conform. Or educate to empower?


Directional training. Or personal journeys of discovery and the exploration of new frontiers of knowing?


As I write this, Southern Ontario is getting its first dusting of snow for the season.  A heavy wet snow.  Guaranteed people will gripe and moan. I think I will start an "Occupy Cayman Islands" movement to protest the mal-distribution of sun and sand on the planet that persecutes snow and winter bound Canadians.


Or I can get out my hat and mitts, build a snowman, check out my skis and snowboard, get out the snowmobile....and change my whole analogy of the beach to a Ski and snow metaphor.  Life is for living, laughter and love.  Not worry, whining and work.  (Thank you Ed!)


What are we teaching? Why and how?

Protest less, Act more

In 1971,  Marvin Gaye released his seminal What's Going On album, the Funk Brothers are listed on a Motown record for the first time and James Jamerson is superlative. 


On that album was a definitive anthem for the Woodstock generation, Mercy Mercy Me, Ecology.  The sixties awareness and consciousness raising gave way to the generation that was going to change the world, make things better and the world a haven of peace, justice and equality.


Now let's flash forward forty years to 2006 and John Mayer's anthem for the Millennial generation, Waiting for the World to Change.


Now it is the Fall of 2011, and I find it singularly depressing that the best an outraged generation can do is to Occupy Wall Street or any other meaningless piece of property open to publicity.  Woodstock this is not, nor is it much of anything really.  40 years after the summer of love and the birth of the generation to fix the world, the best that can be done is another protest.  To do what? Raise awareness? Consciousness?  Suggest that change is needed?

News flash: you cant "wait for the world to change" -- you have to be the agent of change yourself!


Ah, but there is the problem.  To actually implement and sustain change, you have to CREATE something.  Preferably something better and without the systemic flaws of the hand presently feeding you.


Worse, academics and intellectuals are imposing their own visions and aspirations on the various occupations in a vain attempt to give them some sense of coherency and meaning other than a generation throwing its metaphorical toys out of the buggy.

• It’s hard to decide which side is worse: a group that lets out an incoherent temper tantrum devoid of political ideas, or a group that opportunistically uses that outburst to claim their lame ideas were right all along. (Collins)

OWS and its ilk have generated media publicity for themselves, about themselves.  Its all so adolescent and narcissist.  There is no platform, no guiding philosophy, no coherent vision to guide change into a brave new world., a utopia of oppression overcome and supplanted by any implementation of any actions that have tangibly affected anyone's lifestyle and livelihood.  We are waiting for the world to change and we are getting impatient.  Stomp feet and cry.  Pay attention to me!

What strikes me most about both the OWS temper tantrum and the lame efforts by intellectual elites to impose and insinuate themselves into the opportunity the OWS publicity has provided, is what is says about the educational system.  

In the 40 years since Woodstock, we have apparently leanrt nothing.  The best we can teach our youth in schools and at universities is:

• criticize
• protest
• raise awareness, if not with the public, then at least with the media
• make the story about you, not what you are protesting
• don't worry about any solutions
• repeat: reuse, recycle, and regurgitate the dogma we have fed you
• wait for the world to change

And we will test you on this, using multiple choice questions.  Occasionally, we will prescribe an essay, not in any useful structure or format, but one that reinforces the archaic monopoly on ideas that benefits us, the self-same academy feeding you the intellectual hypocrisy that says criticism is both sufficient and necessary for change. Your grade will be entirely dependent upon your ability to re-use, recycle and re-invigorate the journal articles we have written applauding our own "insightful" social criticism.    We will have then trained you to be perfectly ineffectual, except for the purposes of protest and self-aggrandizement, and we will legitimize those acts by labeling them "politics". It is all so shallow and devoid of integrity.


Well not this puppy.  No abstract theories, no hiding behind academic pretensions and intellectual deceits.  

Think. Cleanse your mind of dogma.  Replace axiomatic constructs with concept attainment that liberates, engages and creates.  Implement.  Be the change you want the world to see.

You want the world to change?  Take the money you were going to spend on graduate school and buy a one way ticket to any developing country.  Go apply your skills and energies in the service of a village and facilitate their engagement in sustaining change that tangibly improves their lifestyle and landscape.


Act.  Help one person in your own community improve their daily condition.  Read to someone.  Spend time with a senior and listen to their stories from their life.  Be a Big Brother or Sister.  

Start a business: find a good or service people in your community lack, need or want.  Fill the void.  Create, rather than criticize.


Stop thinking that every answer has to be government.  Liberate yourself from tyranny first.

change is constant, development is an option

welcome to my newest blog....


The Divergence Imperative is still under development and design.  Thus far, I have added the basic framework, included some influential and inspiring videos, added some of my own stuff and links to other blogs and resources for good pedagogy.


Thanks to those who know me and suggested, nudged and otherwise inspired me to step out beyond ecomyths and into the realm of the central role of education in facilitating sustainability as change.  

Change is constant.  It is both ongoing and inevitable.  Our only options are to embrace change, to sustain and creatively develop ourselves, our communities, our landscapes and our lives, or to resist, desist and wallow in the stasis of our own mediocrity, to justify our coma of complacency and lash out in protest at the injustices of life like indulgent, indolent toddlers.

Education that instructs students on criticism, conformity and convergent thinking, constricts and censures.  Grades are taken as a measure of learning, assessment becomes a calculus of defined memorization and recitation of prescribed dogma, and education becomes a system for trained compliance and a tool of oppression.


Education needs to do more than inform, instruct and inflame.  It needs to create, foster and facilitate divergent thinking.  From divergence comes creativity, from creativity comes innovation, inspiration and sustained development.  Divergence encourages enhanced interpersonal and interpersonal awareness and intelligences.  Divergence fosters enthusiasm and engagement: it is education that sustains change and builds futures.