The time has come for sifting and musing, for reckoning and reconciling, for summing up and throwing down, for interpreting movements, signs, symbols and auguries. Shall we ponder what we learned about learning in 2010 before wisdom vanishes like a restless cloud? It’s up to us, since the white radiance of eternity remembers nothing.
I admit to being baffled in 2010. The year was a noisy quarrel between cynicism and hope, genius and fear, triumph and futility. The hours raced by like Shelley’s chariots and the world changed - maybe not in ways we believe in. Much of what happened in the past twelve months is already a phantom chimera.
Nonetheless, New Year is a time for making lists, so here is the Blended Learner’s list of shoes and ships and sealing-wax…
1. Shoes. Collapse of Nature. A half century ago when sirens began wailing somewhere in the distance, school children slid under tables or huddled in cloak rooms, waiting for the all clear to sound. It seems ludicrous now to hide under furniture from atom bombs. What’s not so funny is that humanity is much closer to annihilation today than it was after World War II. As Pete Seeger might wonder, where have all the sirens gone? Ice caps and glaciers are melting, oceans are emptying, rain forests are wilting, fauna may be heading for another mass extinction. And many educators are more or less oblivious - evidently too busy to discern an apocalypse. It would be a grand thing in 2011 if every academic course, every corporate and military training, included the equivalent of an air raid drill for the 21st Century. Instead of dropping to the floor and closing our eyes, we would devote a modicum of instruction to saving the planet and our cultures along with it. That’s my first contrarian wish for the New Year.
2. Ships. Human Capitalism. During the same decade when children of my generation routinely scanned the skies for ballistic missiles, economists coined the term “human capital” - a warp of Adam Smith that turned a Marxist negative (alienation of labor) into a monetarist positive (workers as assets). Semantics aside, no matter how we objectify people the next step is always the same: to measure outcomes. So in education we got No Child Left Behind, which was supposed to rescue public schools from disintegration by measuring results. Similarly in corporations, human resources development knelt before the false idols of training evaluation. Don Kirkpatrick justified learning with measures of performance improvement, while Jack Phillips went farther and argued that learning is justified by the financial metric of ROI. For every dollar spent on training, the owners of human capital or human assets should receive at least a dollar and a quarter back. But despite quants - or maybe because of them - our schools are failing faster than ever and much corporate training is a mare’s nest. It would be a grand thing in 2011 if we stopped referring to human beings as capital or assets, stopped trying to measure human values as though they were minerals, and instead agreed that learning for its own sake is the highest calling and noblest outcome. That is my second contrarian wish for the New Year.
3. Sealing Wax. Walrus Leadership. You know the parable in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, about the Walrus and the Carpenter. What’s that, you didn’t know the poem is a parable? Read on and decide if you should take precautions:
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"
"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."
"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?
"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"
"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
Professors, teachers, trainers, coaches - all learning pros are the Oysters in this parable. While older ones indifferently “stick to their knitting,” the newbies trot along the beach with Walruses who grow fat on leadership and Carpenters who do the dirty work.
Do I exaggerate when I say that many learning pros in 2010 were led by Walruses, and managed by Carpenters? Decide for yourself. My Walrus of the Year is A.D. “Pete” Correll, the CEO of Georgia-Pacific Corporation who facilitated the sale of his public company to a private equity firm named Koch Industries - a poster child of avarice. Just the other day, on the fifth anniversary of the deal that turned a great corporate citizen into a sop, good old Pete gave a University of Georgia undergraduate commencement address, in which he commended students for returning UGA to its rightful place as America’s number one party school — and he was serious, "because life is supposed to be fun." Fun is precisely what the Walrus and the Carpenter had that day on the beach (as many former GP employees know only too well).
Leaders like Pete Correll are created by the Oysters they consume. They are groomed by something which is euphemistically called leadership development - really, just another misallocation of institutional resources to benefit the insatiable at the expense of the clueless. It would be a grand thing in 2011 if our leaders stopped acting like Walruses, if our best and brightest business school students stopped earning MBAs in carpentry, and if people like you and me acknowledged that each of us is the owner of a uniquely lustrous pearl that far outshines the brass ring that we spend our lives grasping. That is my third contrarian wish for the New Year.
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