Re: [Futurework] The world of work

Tue, 04 Feb 2003 06:23:15 -0800

Ray, I guess this was directed at me.  I don't disagree that there is such a thing as group learning.  I've seen it in many situations, including sports.  Time and again, wealthy team owners have tried to win championships by buying up the very best players.  It's worked at times, but mostly it hasn't.  Very often, it's teams with good but still rather mediocre talent that go the distance, provided that the team as a whole has developed some form of what appears an almost unconscious understanding of what everybody is doing.  We have a hockey team like that here in Ottawa.  Until very recently it was the top team in the NHL.  Why?  Not because the players are that good.  It seems to be the coach's special ability to get everybody playing together and in accord.  I'm sure the same is true in music.  I sing in a choir, or pretend to.  Ever so much depends on the director.  Some have it, others simply don't.
 
I believe we lost something as we progressed(?) from hunting/gathering and primitive agricultural societies to societies based on specialization and division of labour, and from small group societies to large group societies.  What we lost is an inability to predict and totally trust each other's responses and reactions to given events.  This would have been vital to small groups of people trying to survive on the Arctic tundra, in the jungles or in the deserts, and even to people working together as serfs or peasants or medieval craftsmen.  It's not nearly as important to people who work in large industrial complexes or office buildings because how they must behave and what they must do is completely codified in things like position descriptions and job classifications.  However, it's not entirely lost.  My wife has worked with the same small group of people for the past twenty or so years.  Within the next couple of years, half that group will retire, something that she is looking forward to with complete dread.  Why?  Because each member of that small group in intimately aware of the others' habits and needs, and able to fill in for the others, make whatever adjustments are needed for the others, etc.  The new people she will have to work with for about six years will probably take take some time to acquire that level of trust and intimacy, if they ever do.
 
Ed

Ed Weick
577 Melbourne Ave.
Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7
Canada
Phone (613) 728 4630
Fax     (613)  728 9382
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 9:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The world of work

As I said:
One of the first rules of education is that you can't teach anyone something
that they don't have in their experience already.
 
Our experiences are drastically different.   I would recommend you look at the brain states studies of Dr. Paula Washington in Chamber Musicians.   The title is: AN ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHIC STUDY OF MUSICAL PERFORMANCE;  IMAGINED VERSUS ACTUAL PLAYING AND SOLO VERSUS CHAMBER PLAYING.    It is a PHD thesis in the School of Education at New York University 1993.  
 
Dr. Washington, a violist, conductor and teacher a the LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts in New York City did as you are doing.   She wrote her proposal from her experience and then set out to understand that experience using the Brain lab at NYU.     She found vastly different results from what you imply.     We are not talking metaphor here as in Sternberg but actual group learning as a result.    I did research in it for the Francis Clark Piano Library in group study in the 1960s and I've known about it for forty years.   I certainly mean no disrespect as our experiences are obviously different as are our academic studies.     I would simply say that this is an area of expertise that I have a lot of time and work in and I have arrived conclusions that are not explainable in other manner than as a group consciousness that operates as an organism and that springs from a type of brain state that all must share together in order to participate and that it is measurable by Electroencephalography.  
 
Best
 
Ray Evans Harrell
 
 
 
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Selma Singer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Ray Evans Harrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Arthur Cordell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Charles Brass" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 7:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The world of work

> Sorry about this, but this is the message I intended to send.  Somehow a
> draft version got out first.
>
> Ed
>
> > Just for purposes of discussion- can we try to think 'outside the box' of
> > capitalism as it exists today, especially in the U.S.
> >
> > Would most of you agree :-) (I don't know the symbol for tongue-in-cheek)
> > that, with all due respect to Harry, it might be possibleto control
> > capitalism so that it works for the good of the general public, including
> > the capitalists? No, they would not be able to make their obscene profits
> > and salaries; but could there be incentives such that creativity would be
> > encouraged, especially since the risks would be reduced?
> >
> > Selma
> >
>
> Selma, you're getting very close to what the Soviet Union was like.  It
> wasn't really communism, it was state capitalism that was supposed to
> benefit everyone, but that in actual fact benefited some far more than
> others.  The Soviet Union started out as an ideal egalitarian state, but
> soon demonstrated something that may be inherent in human nature, that
> people will want to exercise control and will divide themselves into classes
> to do so.
>
> Personally, I don't think there is any possibility of achieving anything
> like benign, good for all, capitalism.  An individual company can perhaps
> operate for a time without too much internal conflict by making its
> employees its major shareholders (United Airlines?), but, typically, that
> company has to operate in a competitive market that is anything but benign
> and friendly.  It may have to cut costs and lay people off, just as
> privately held firms do.
>
> One has to see society divided into interest groups.  What is good for
> capitalists is not necessarily good for labour and v.v.  IMHO, the only real
> hope labour has is maintaining its bargaining power, but that has become
> difficult because labour has changed and is no longer clearly definable.
> Auto workers may still be "labour" (and well paid labour), but what about
> clerical or administrative workers in the financial sector?  And what about
> techies?  They probably see themselves as aspiring Bill Gates's, or at least
> they probably did until the dot.com crash.  What people seem to have lost is
> a sense of common purpose and an understanding of which side of the
> bargaining table they're on.
>
> Ed
>
> Ed Weick
> 577 Melbourne Ave.
> Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7
> Canada
> Phone (613) 728 4630
> Fax     (613)  728 9382
>
>
>
>
>
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