Overview
The Project
Closing Reflection
Endnotes
Co-Creating Learning Communities in Mexico: Preparing the Ground for Evolutionary Learning Community
by Kathia C. Laszlo
* * * * *
"What our world needs... is... flexible and functional learning
environments where people, young and old, can be exposed to
concepts and ideas relevant to their present and to their future"
- Ervin LaszloOverview
This chapter presents experience gleaned from a project in Mexico that sought to promote learning communities as spaces for people to learn together in a self-organized and flexible manner. The project “A Better World: Co-Creating Learning Communities in Mexico”1 took place in the city of Monterrey, Mexico, where two learning communities were formed by people of middle-class socio-economic status. These individuals accepted the invitation and the challenge to get together once a week to learn and collaborate on issues — decided upon by themselves — that could enhance their quality of life and prepare them to participate in the improvement of their communities. One learning community, comprised solely of women, created a safe space for sharing life stories, and through conversation, strengthened self-esteem and the will to bring into the world the love, respect, and dignity that had been lacking in their life experiences. The other learning community, comprised of both men and women already engaged in community development activities, explored topics related to their role in the improvement of their neighborhood and their role as parents, which lead them to make a commitment to form an on-going neighborhood learning community for parents. At the end of the project the participants felt that their involvement in this project had helped them to communicate their ideas more effectively, to think in a positive way, and to believe that they can achieve their goals when they are willing to work for them. The Project
The design of the project “A Better World: Co-Creating Learning Communities in Mexico” was based on the notion of learning communities as stepping stones toward Evolutionary Learning Community (ELC).2 In other words, the scope was limited to testing the idea of learning to learn in a different way and introducing some ideas relating to personal and community development — which are basic concepts necessary but not sufficient for the design of ELC. The objective of the project was to create learning communities as a means to provide a learning opportunity to individuals in low-income social groups who do not have access to other forms of formal education in the northern industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico. The goals of the learning process were focused on topics relevant to quality of life enhancement and community development at the discretion of the learners in the communities. Two learning communities were formed on a volunteer basis and the experiences of their members (participants and facilitators) shed light on issues of the applicability of systems thinking and social systems design to community building efforts, and in particular, to those that relate to the creation of learning communities.
The participants of this project were adults with an average of 6 years of formal education. The two coordinators of the project obtained a list of people in a middle class neighborhood who had previously volunteered for participating in community development activities. In order to be involved in a learning community they had to have expressed 1) an interest and willingness to learn and 2) a commitment to their personal and community development. Potential participants were invited by telephone and 85% of those who accepted were women. One of the challenges involved in the implementation of the project was to communicate concepts such as systems thinking and design in simple, applicable language. For example, the participants learned about wholeness and interconnection through direct experience. They understood what a community is, what a learning community is, and how to co-create one largely due to the fact that they were able to live the process of doing so. They also engaged in collective thinking about their role in creating a better world — and more specifically, about ameliorating the quality of living in their neighborhoods. In the final analysis, it was not necessary to make explicit the concepts behind their experiential learning such as systems thinking and social systems design.
Another set of challenges was associated with the cultivation of partnership values implicit in each learning community (e.g., shared power to make decisions among the members of the community, openness to uncertainty and risk taking, synergy between individual and collective interests, and mutual supporting interdependencies) but which nevertheless are not intrinsic to Mexican culture, according to Geert Hofstede.3 Through respectful, attentive, and minimally invasive facilitation, this challenge was met and the participants were able to form functional learning communities. In a similar way, cultural traits such as power differences based on socio-economic status and gender tend to be generalizable across major segments of the Mexican population. And yet the openness and interest to learn and to contribute to the improvement of their individual and collective lives allowed those who accepted the invitation to participate in this project to create learning spaces where participation and collaboration became the modus operandus. The facilitators and participants acted as equals, and everybody felt respected, honored, and esteemed. They were able to deal with the uncertainty and ambiguity involved in this extremely flexible and open learning process. The participants were able to understand that they were responsible for the direction of their learning. Neither of the learning communities experienced conflicts relating to incompatibility of individual and collective interests. On the contrary, both learning communities were safe spaces where individuals were able to express themselves freely, felt supported, and developed harmonious and caring relationships.
The project sought to facilitate the challenges intrinsic to the creative tension between difficult situations and hopeful possibilities. Many of the participants were already involved in activism, advocating for neighborhood improvements to make them safer places and to reduce the incidence of vandalism. Their approach had always been to complain to the local government authorities and to ask, for example, for more street lights (some sections of the neighborhood were completely dark at night — and therefore, dangerous). Through their engagement in the learning communities of this project they realized that there is a lot they can do by themselves to complement the infrastructural support they were seeking — but rarely receiving — from the local government. They came to see that their role as parents was one of the most important functions not only in their own individual lives, but also in the life of their neighborhoods. Through future-oriented conversation, they were able to perceive the connection between the education of their children and the quality of life in their neighborhood.
All the participants who accepted the invitation to get involved in the two learning communities of this project shared an optimistic outlook on life, even though many were immersed in a context in which other individuals may only have resigned themselves in despair. For instance, the next door neighbor of one of the participants was also invited to participate in the learning community but rejected the invitation based on her belief that “things are the way they are and nothing can be done about it.”
The learning community approach was an excellent way of offering an educational opportunity to a sector of the Mexican society that generally does not have access to other forms of institutionalized education. In this experience, the learning community format was appropriate for people with a diverse array of life experiences — from the house wife suffering psychological abuse and oppression by a dominating husband to the worn-out construction worker looking to see if he can do something more for his large family. The common thread that wove the participants into community was their interest in learning, self-development, and improvement of their lived environments. One facilitator expressed her enthusiasm after her involvement, saying, “This project was really interesting. When I realized what was possible to achieve, I thought: wow! this is powerful!... This is a new kind of education and it can be done with many people.” What she saw as possible was the enabling of self-organized learning communities that can hold periodic gatherings in a community center or in the living room of one of the participants. By creating community in this way, always with the sharing of food and conversation, it became evident that the participants were able to empower themselves and to discover the joy of learning together for their common good.
The members of each learning community decided when and where to meet, they made adjustments when for some reason someone could not be there at the agreed upon hour, and they decided on the focus of their respective conversations. Through their dialogues, the participants discovered power within themselves, since the project and all its possibilities were theirs to create and explore. In this case, the learning community approach created the appropriate context — a safe and supportive “holding container” — for self-empowerment. One participant said: “I feel so happy. I experienced an unfolding of my interior. I feel inspired to tell you all that I feel really good, full of energy. I feel strong, I don’t have negative thoughts, and I can deal with the problems I come to. Before I felt full of negative energy.... I have learned to trust in myself.” While it is evident that such a community based learning process has similarities to traditional group therapy processes, the key difference lies in their respective approaches to, and concern with, the future. The former is focused on “becoming” while latter focuses only on “being”. As mentioned earlier, these communities were stepping stones toward ELC. They were evolutionary in the sense that the interactions of their members are always future-oriented; with an eye to learning how they could cooperatively create a more healthy and authentic community given the dynamics of change in which they found themselves. It is the role of the facilitator in such a process to help create this orientation and to promote the visioning it entails. Group therapy processes cannot be considered evolutionary in these ways, and they may or may not foster a readiness to learn how to learn both collaboratively and contextually.
The particular focus and experience of these learning communities reflects the socio-cultural and psychological needs of their members. For instance, through reflection upon their lives and their relationships, the participants realized that a person cannot treat another person with dignity if they themselves are not treated with dignity. They were able to see the vicious cycle in which they were caught — repeating many of the mistakes and patterns of behavior of their parents. And this “being able to see” was a liberating experience since now they know that through dialogue they can change such things.
Paulo Freire notes that “founding itself upon love, humility, and faith, dialogue becomes a horizontal relationship of which mutual trust between the dialoguers is the logical consequence.”4 This was clearly born out by the project. He adds: “Dialogue cannot be carried on in a climate of hopelessness. If the dialoguers expect nothing to come of their efforts, their encounter will be empty and sterile, bureaucratic and tedious.”5 The optimism of all those involved in this project made it possible for them to achieve rewarding and productive learning conversations.
The participants expressed the conviction that one of their main learnings was their improved ability to communicate with others; both with the other members of their learning community and with other people in their families and broader community. It is interesting to take note of this emergent outcome since communication abilities were never made an explicit learning objective of either community. M. Scott Peck helps put this corollary in perspective, explaining that “the rules of communication are best taught and only learned through the practice of community-making. Fundamentally, the rules of communication are the rules of community-making, and the rules of community-making are the rules for peacemaking.”6
Self-esteem, a sense of community, and commitment to lifelong learning were the groundwork that enabled the participants of this project to engage in the collaborative design and development of their lives and of their communities. Maybe the most remarkable outcome of this project, particularly relevant for future work on ELC, was the change in attitudes that resulted in the participants. From informal conversations and observations collected at both the beginning and the end of the project, the following emergent attitudes were expressed:
- Optimism and perseverance (“if I want to do it, I know I can do it!”).
- Openness to learn from any experience, with every person, always.
- Strong desire to serve and to help other people in their communities; to learn and to improve.
- Sense of responsibility. Not remaining spectators but wanting to participate in the improvement of their communities.
- Sense of place, of self, and of shared identity; confidence in where they are going, both individually and collectively.
Closing reflection
This case testifies to the simple fact that when a group of human beings interested in learning and change get together to collaborate, wonderful things can happen. The participants in this project came away from it convinced that the future can be co-created — and that the possibilities for a better world depend in large part on our daily choices and our willingness to help each other bring them into being. Although major economic and political forces remained out of their control to influence, the participants in the two learning communities of this project realized what Margaret Mead expressed so powerfully: “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it’s the only thing that ever does.”7
The experience of this project was empowering for both facilitators and participants, and it provides fertile ground for the design of Evolutionary Learning Community. To move on to this next step in the genesis of a learning community, not only must consideration be given to issues of personal and community development, but to issues of environmental sustainability and inter-generational responsibility, as well.8
* * * * *
1761 Vallejo, Suite 302
San Francisco, CA 94123-5029
Fax/Phone: 415-346-1547
Email: info@syntonyquest.org
http://www.SyntonyQuest.org* * * * *
1. This project was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund. An executive report of this project, which describes its design, implementation, and other technical aspects in more detail, can be obtained through Syntony Quest (see contact information above).
2. See “Learning to Become: Creating Evolutionary Learning Community through Evolutionary Systems Design” in this volume for a more specific account of the concepts underlying this case study.
3. Hofstede, Geert (1980). Motivation, leadership, and organization: Do American theories apply abroad? In Organizational Dynamics. American Management Associations, pp. 42-63.
4. Freire, Paulo (1997). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 20th. edition. New York: Continuum, p. 72.
5. Freire, (1997), p. 73.
6. Peck, M. Scott (1987). The Different Drum: Community building and peace. New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 325.
7. Margaret Mead in Banathy, Bela (1999). Guided Evolution of Society: A systems view. Manuscript to be published by Plenum Publishers.
8. “Learning to Become: Creating Evolutionary Learning Community through Evolutionary Systems Design” in this volume presents the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of ELC.
* * * * *
© Copyright 2000. Kathia C. Laszlo - All Rights Reserved
info@syntonyquest.org
http://www.SyntonyQuest.org
