Malcolm, you seem to have encapsulated the main ideas surrounding SLEs, I
think.
However, I am not sure about your assumption that " 'safety to learn'
begins in the perception of the (potential) learner".
I am not sure about 'safety to learn' as a term or concept. I may not feel
safe, but I will learn very quickly how to survive. This may not be the
lesson others want me to learn.
I believe we are touching on, but not defining a different type of
learning to the acquisition of knowledge and patterns of dealing with the
world around us.
I would say that the SLE is a misnomer - a nonsensical term.
We are trying to use the term to describe the kind of conditions that
promote deep understanding and insight initially, and then (most
importantly of all) a resultant behaviour that ennobles and graces us.
I think 'living-learning' is an inadequate, but useful term for what I am
trying to describe for now.
Living-learning cannot be present in an environment, or organisation. It
exists in us - each and every one of us - sometimes dormant, sometimes
awake, and most excitingly, sometimes manifest.
Thinking back to the times when I have been encouraged to stretch myself
and aim to achieve an insight - not just through any learning activities I
might have been undergoing, but through the way I lived my life - I
remember people and what they said - people who lived their learning - who
were living proponents of what they preached - mentors, role models,
heros, if you like, who encouraged me to aim to bring forth my full
potential, making it manifest to those around me.
I believe that WE can awaken the need for, create the desire for, and
facilitate the manifestation of living-learning in the people we come
across just by being living-learners ourselves. Living-learning around
people for long enough to influence them to try and have a go themselves.
There is a wonderful passage towards the end of Gogol's Dead Souls that
describes being in the presence of such a mentor.
When we are in a true LE or LO, are we not describing being in the
presence of living-learners?
John Stuart Mill writes 'if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble
character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt
that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is
immensely a gainer by it.'
In answer to your statment that "it is the LO task to create, and be clear
about the importance of, this environment."
I say no.
The power for change is within the people within that organisation - and
their need, desire, actions, consistency and dedication to join forces in
a creative act of living learning that will have the longest lasting
positive effects.
Leon Conrad
The Conrad Voice Consultancy
website: http://www.actual.co.uk/conrad
--Leon Conrad <100755.1675@CompuServe.COM>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>