When learning is joyful again:

Dear loved ones,

please let me finish thinking through the concept of education and apply it to our concrete togetherness.

In the outdated educational system, teachers and students found themselves without being asked in a hierarchical system and prescribed roles. The old-style school corresponded to a mechanistic worldview whose actors saw themselves as an order-executing organ and trivial machines in a bureaucracy, feeling steered and controlled. To preserve the institution, normative rules and gradings had to be accepted as control instruments corresponding to a predetermined truth, which proceeded according to 'right' and 'wrong' as well as measurable linear progress and through instruction, directives, and orders.

Among colleagues, a certain competition also took place for promotions within the hierarchy; overwhelm and stress characterized the interaction between teachers and students, so that hardly any time remained for genuinely human communication and the needs of students. Ultimately, closed systems were produced in this way, with which the actors had to identify and which they had to defend against 'false worldviews'. (cf. Malik, F., Führen – Leisten -Leben. Frankfurt 2006: 434)

However, if, as biagogy suggests, life itself educates, then the educational organization must also listen to life, perceive the needs of the learners, and cultivate communication at eye level. It allows for many truths, keeps diverse interactions in view, works with feedback loops, makes decisions dependent on contexts, relies on self-direction and self-organization, and is open to adopting roles as an impulse generator, gardener, development helper, or coach. Their togetherness is characterized by listening, questions, dialogues, discussions, learning to learn—in other words, by a dynamic interaction process.

The system concept as a "theory of the living" according to Niklas Luhmann—this Greek term means "to stand + together"—fits this organization and refers to a whole whose subsystems interact. As an open system, it strives for a balance with its environment and its diverse interconnections. Organizations therefore consist of 'communications'. As living systems, their actors are self-referential and operationally closed; they change when they are ready to do so and deem it relevant.

Since no external coercive measures are applied, an ethical canon of values is helpful in a systemic process quality of educational institutions, because learning and communications are fundamentally only possible with a positive attitude (Gerald Hüther, Was wir sind und was wir sein könnten: Ein neurobiologischer Mutmacher. Frankfurt 2011)

We therefore need not only self-knowledge, but also a culture of self-observation and self-evaluation of learning organizations. This mindful attitude in a new "We" culture does not just fall from the sky. For this, we need a positive 'culture of error' and a Kaizen attitude of persistent improvement in small steps. In this way, we want to train the ability to deal positively with the unexpected, specifically, as I suggest, with criteria from the organizational psychology of Sutcliff/Weick, which I have clearly summarized here in a diagram for application in learning and working groups. Warm regards and see you next Tuesday, from your Heidrun!