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CREATING THE FUTURE
Perspectives on Educational Change
Compiled and Edited by Dee Dickinson
NO LIMITS TO LEARNING
James W. Botkin, Ph.D.
Ten years have passed since the first appearance of the Club of Rome's report, No Limits to Learning (English language edition, Pergamon Press, 1979; twelve other languages, 1980). Have we made any progress in rolling back limits imposed by outmoded organization and self-imposed outdated models of thinking? Have the concepts highlighted by the report, of anticipatory and participatory learning stood the test of a decade? Answers to both questions are "Yes," but the pace and manner have been slower and more varied than expected (by this author, at least). And leadership has come from an unexpected source-namely, the international business community.
First, readers may be interested to know what has become of the Club of Rome, which initiated the report, since it has not made headline news in recent years. In 1984, the founder and president of the Club, Aurelio Peccei, passed away. Stewardship of the Club passed to Alex King, a British scientist and cofounder of the Club, and headquarters moved to Paris. In 1988, the Club marked its 20th anniversary with a meeting in Paris hosted by the President of France. Participants took the occasion to visit UNESCO, where Club member Federico Mayor is Director General.
The Club has been quietly renewing its 100 members, seeking more representation from developing countries, more women, and more younger people. There has been considerable activity in Africa and the Soviet Union. In 1989, at a meeting hosted by Mikhail Gorbachev, the members of the Executive Council voted unanimously to select a new president, Ricardo Diez Hochleitner from Spain. He is a former State Minister of Education of Spain, head of the Spanish Chapter of the Club of Rome, and tireless worldwide activist.
One might reconsider for a moment the statement above that the Club of Rome has not been headline news. This is true in that the organization has been in a period of stewardship, but it has not been true outside the American press. Russian, Chinese, French, and African agencies have reported on the global activities of the Club of Rome, while the U.S. press continues to have its blinders well affixed.
Similar statements could be made about the field of learning and education. While other countries undertake reforms in their education, the United States continues to speak strongly and let its massive educational bureaucracy slide into increasing ineffectiveness. Few other nations have as large a schooling system as the American one, and among industrial countries, few are as deeply mired in decline as the US K-12 public/private school system.
Most American universities, still admired as among the top in the world, are not yet aware of the rapid changes among European and Asian universities, which are becoming more internationalized. If the rankings of top universities which are conducted annually in the US were done on a worldwide basis, America would still have a strong showing, but would probably not occupy the top positions. An example may illustrate this statement. Recently I was asked to organize a consortium of four management schools for a global executive education program. We started with the International Management Institute in Geneva, Switzerland. We linked to Sophia University in downtown Tokyo and to the newly-formed International Management Center in Budapest, Hungary. No suitable American partner willing to cooperate could be located. "They're all too parochial," noted a prominent international educator.
Here are some lessons that stand out for me since collaborating on No Limits to Learning:
Most Formal Schooling Systems, With Some Notable Exceptions, Resist Change In Their Objectives and Style of Learning and Education.
School, on a worldwide basis, is hopelessly out of date. In North America, despite widespread recognition of the inadequacy of K-12 and higher education, the response to date has been limited to "more" for the future of what has not worked in the recent past. More hours, more homework, more science and math have been the guiding principles rather than new teamwork, focus on values, or holistic learning. No country in the world has been able to figure out how to divest itself of a system built for another age and another time and to start afresh in redesigning formal education. In my experience, the only countries that have even attempted something significant -- and also with limited results -- have been Japan, Austria, and Finland.
Schools and Universities Still Do Not Have the Financial or Innovative Human Resources to Carry Out, or Even Consider, the Fundamental Changes Needed to Meet the Challenge of the 21st Century.
Ministries of Education still play second or third fiddle to those of Defense or Finance. Meanwhile, problems of drugs, dropouts, and deprivation go universally unchallenged as a growing fact of classroom life in all western countries. Even our most prestigious and wealthy world-class universities seem paralyzed and unable to provide leadership for a new era of innovative learning.
The Place Where There Is Promising Action in Reforming Education and Modernizing Learning Is the International Business Community.
It comes as a surprise to traditional educators to learn that fully one-third of professional educators are at work not in universities but in corporate institutes of education. Another one-third are in church-related education, and the balance in conventional public and private educational institutions.
Business, which has become the front line for human resources and personnel development, has taken up the challenges raised in No Limits to Learning in ways unforeseen by many. This is increasingly accomplished through alliances and consortia, and the agenda is "new learning for the 90's." An example of this approach is InterCLASS -- the International Corporate Learning Association -- which I have recently launched with Eric Vogt in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The purpose of InterCLASS is to provide advanced learning services to its corporate members and to develop the discipline of corporate, or group, learning.
Predecessor groups to InterCLASS are the Alliance for Learning in North America, the Scandinavian Leadership Initiative in Northern Europe, and the ongoing CSMDP program that operates in Geneva, Boston, Tokyo, and Budapest. These and other groups explore, through teaching and research, new and "cutting edge" techniques of personal effectiveness in the areas of globalization, the future, and teamwork. Their goal: to make innovative learning an integral force for world development, now and into the next century.
In sum, the eighties brought widespread awareness of the need for changes in our patterns of learning. Who in the nineties will begin to act on that awareness?
About: James Botkin
In the report No Limits to Learning, which Dr. James Botkin co-authored for the Club of Rome, a primary feature of innovative learning is described as anticipation-preparing people to use techniques such as forecasting, simulations, scenarios, and models. Anticipatory learning encourages them to consider trends, to make plans, to evaluate future consequences and possible injurious side-effects of present decisions, and to recognize the global implications of local, national, and regional actions.
The book describes another primary feature of innovative learning as participation. "More than the formal sharing of decision, it is an attitude characterized by cooperation, dialogue, and empathy. It means not only keeping communications open but also constantly testing one's operating rules and values, retaining those that are relevant and rejecting those that have become obsolete."
Neither anticipation nor participation are new concepts by themselves, but what Dr. Botkin points out as new and vital for innovative learning is the insistence that they be tied together. The focus of his career has been on innovative learning in whatever capacity he has worked.
Dr. Botkin is cofounder of the Technology Resources Group, a partnership he established to conduct executive education, research, writing, and consulting. He is also the cofounder and president of the International Corporate Learning Association and Program Director for the Consortium Senior Managers Development Programme sponsored by the International Management Institute in Geneva. He was the first Executive Director and Director of Research for the Alliance for Learning, a consortium of AT&T, DuPont, General Motors, and Sears.
In addition to No Limits to Learning, Dr. Botkin co-authored Global Stakes: The Future of High Technology in America; The Innovators: Rediscovering America's Creative Energy; The New Alliance: Industry-University Partnerships; The Monster Under the Bed; Winning Combinations; and Networked Intelligence: The Future of Business in the Knowledge Revolution.
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