Impression LO12637

Mnr AM de Lange (AMDELANGE@gold.up.ac.za)
Fri, 21 Feb 1997 15:47:52 GMT+2

Leon Conrad wrote in LO12607
in reply to my LO12593

> "We all have this incredible need for creative learning, i.e. proper
> learning. Proper learning is one of those things we will never be able to
> buy, because it can only come from within each of us. Whoever is trying to
> sell learning as a commodity, is commiting fraud. But we also have to
> share this creative learning, thus forming a LO, because our spirituality
> depends on it. Alone I am not a full person - you are the other part of
> me."
>
> At - thank you .. your open way of communicating, your insights and your
> wisdom which you share with us on the list are extremely valuable. I'd
> like to hear more from you about your 'need' for learning - when did you
> first become aware of it? Why? Who nurtured your need?

Dear organlearners,

Leon, thank you very much for your kind words. Here in South Africa, as
you know, apartheid has been dismantled. To accomplish it, one of the key
levers used by the African National Congress and the South African
Communist Party was to disrupt the education of the black peoples - no
education again before apartheid has been dismantled. Unfortunately, it
created a whole generation of people ignorant to learning and a culture in
which learning is considered to be only of minor importance. This, as a
result, created an imbalance according to the 'Law of Inverse Lusts'.
(This law says that the lust to vilify is inversely proportional to the
lust to learn.) Kind words bring back some balance to those who wish to
promote learning.

(I wish someone else will someday write in this LO about how the negation
of learning causes something which is infinitely worse than vilification,
namely 'spiritual anorexia'. I observe this 'spiritual anorexia' to be
rampant in Africa, even South Africa. Just as it is in the case of
physical anorexia, those afflicted by it are the least able to admit it. I
do have the power myself now to write about it.)

Why do we need creative learning? To answer this question, we need to know
the most outstanding property of reality. For example, why are yesterday,
today and tomorrow DIFFERENT? Is it because CHANGE is a fundamental
ingredient of reality?

We have to understand that words like DIFFERENT and CHANGE help us to
describe various facets of reality. You can add many other such words to
the list. But these two words do not describe the most outstanding
property of reality.

Let me explain it by using a metaphor. Words such as different, change,
etc. describe reality in the same way as like decribing a person with
phrases such 'grey eyes', 'brown hair', 'graduate in humanities', 'player
of saxophone', etc. After paragraphs using such phrases, we are still not
sure whether we will recognise the person or whether we will be able to
relate to that person. However, sometimes a nickname (terror, tricky,
mother, dolly) is given to a person which describes that person better
than pages of traits. In other words, we need to find the nickname of
reality to deal effectively with it. Or to put it more academically, we
need the paradigm for reality to deal effectively with it.

Many would argue that CHANGE is indeed the most important property of
reality and thus must serve as its paradigm. The fact that CHANGE is a
property of reality, ensures that they have the right to claim CHANGE as
the paradigm of reality. But they should also make SURE that when they use
this paradigm, it is consistent with all the other properties of reality.
In other words, despite all our scepticism and uncertainty, SURENESS is
indeed another property of reality like CHANGE. For example, if we run
over a cliff, we will not suddenly develop wings and fly to safety. If we
put a beaker of water on a hot plate, the water will not become ice. Thus
it is also any person's right to claim SURENESS as the paradigm.

Since both CHANGE and SURENESS may serve as contenders for the parardigm,
it points to another right we have, namely that no property of reality can
be excluded. In other words, inclusion or ONENESS is yet another property
of reality which may serve as its paradigm.

By now you will all agree with me that selecting the paradigm (nickname)
for reality is a very complex task. Some are now even thinking of making
COMPLEXITY its paradigm. I personally believe that the paradigm should
entail/allow all the other properties of reality, including complexity.
The best candidate in our present slice of time is CREATIVITY. In other
words, the most single important property of reality is its creativity.

Let us return to your question: Why do we need learning? We have to cope
with the most important feature of reality, namely its creativity.
Creativity makes reality not only kind, but also cruel; reality is not
only joy, but also pain; it is not only success, but also failure; it is
not only love, but also hate. We cannot work with only the good of
reality, but also have to work with the bad by transforming it for the
better. In other words, we have to change cruelty, pain, failure, hate and
other negative things into kindness, joy, success, love and other positive
things. This requires us to become superiorly creative. Jesus set us the
perfect example.

Obviously, since we have to learn to become more and more creative, can we
do it in any other way that the creative way? We can answer this question
either logically or empirically. The logical argument will be based on the
outcome that an uncreative learning of creativity is a sheer
contradiction. In the empirical answer, we will study how exceptionaly
creative persons happened to be like that. Were they born as superiorly
creative beings, or did they become superiorly creative? The empirical
answer is quite clear where such data is available: they all learnt
creatively how to become superiorly creative.

In my forthcoming book I will answer how my awareness of creative learning
developed.

Your last question (Who nurtured your need?) is quite interesting. My
teachers at school and lecturers at university were very much the same as
millions of them all over the world. Some allowed us more creative
learning while others forced us to parrotry. I have to thank all of them
for their influences. Yet there was a very specific person who nurtured my
need - my late father's much younger brother Flip (Afrikaans for Philip).

Uncle Flip became a diamand cutter like my father. But after about 10
years of it, he realised that he was called to teach. So he became a
student again, obtained his degree in physics and chemistry as well as a
teachers diploma.

During my school years we had little contact because he teached in a
different town (Potchefstroom). However, I went to the University of
Potcefstroom where I finally obtained my MSc in physics. At first we
talked only occasionaly and then only like family members. But soon we
discovered that we had a common burning interest - learning (note, not
teaching!).

Uncle Flip and me - we formed a perfect LO. We had many hundreds of hours
of dialogue on all the intricacies of learning. Nothing was too holy not
to discuss. When I became fed up with the linear, closed reversibale
thinking of physics, he was one of the few to accept and support my
decision to turn to soil science. When I discovered the immense complexity
of soils and that only irreversible thermodynamics (entropy production)
helped me to get a hold on soils, he was the only one who got as excited
as me about the outcomes.

I only kept one thing a secret from him - my calling to guide learning. I
did my teachers diploma in secret and I secretly applied for a vacancy at
the school where he was a teacher. When he finally learnt that I would
work as his assistent, he got in his car and drove to my home. He never
swore, but that day he was raving mad. My wonderful wife managed to calm
him down. He then said a very strange thing: "You think that you now know
what complexity is. But let me tell you - if after six months you are not
crawling on your knees, praying and begging to God to help you with the
learning of children, you will never understand what real complexity is."
With that he got into his car and drove off.

Six months later I knew exactly what he meant.

For two years we acted as each other's midwifes.

Then he had a massive heart attack. It took him many years to recover -
only to find that scool was not the same anymore. (I also left
Potchestroom two years after his heart attack.) I think that he was
starving spiritually - there was much less opportunity for us to continue
with our two-man LO. Eventually he had to undergo a heart bypass - and the
hospital made a stupid mistake. The two-man LO deceased - and so another
part of me.

Leon, the LO lives when its members share their lives in a creative manner
with each other. A creative sharing of lives is to love, to care, to
respect, to nuture, to honour, to invite, to reprove and to free each
other. If we do not get this impression of an organisation, then it is not
a LO.

Best wishes
-- -

At de Lange
Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za

-- 

"Mnr AM de Lange" <AMDELANGE@gold.up.ac.za>

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