Stephen Downes writes, “I will mention in passing that I am opposed to the trend coming from the corporate learning side of the house to treat PLEs as work tools. What is it about people in corporate learning that they feel the need to perpetuate the attitude of servitude it seems all learners must adopt. We don’t exist to work for a corporation; our learning, our minds, our most valuable asset of all, ought to serve our own purposes first and foremost. But I guess it’s employers, not employees, paying the bills for corporate e-learning consultants, and thy wanna hear what they wanna hear. Meanwhile – for the rest of us – the reason we call them personal learning environments is that they are indended to serve our needs, not someone else’s. ”
Stephen and I have had our tiffs in the past. They fade away as we decide we’ve got better things to do than argue. At the heart of most issues, Stephen’s take and mine are one and the same.
Until now.
Stephen says people in corporations are in servitude. He suggests that using PLEs at work is equivalent to turning our minds over to employers. Then he implies corporate eLearning consultants are in league with employers to shaft employees, telling the boss man what he wants to hear.
This is utter hogwash, and Stephen knows it. As one of a dozen or so edu-bloggers searching for the appropriate metaphor for PLE, I’ve talked with Stephen and others. He knows full well that the reason I question “Personal” is that I don’t want us to forget that learning is co-creation, not solo. It has nothing to do with outsiders trying to take control.
Lest you think I’m taking this too personally,
this is from the post Stephen linked to,
and yes, I am a corporate eLearning consultant.
Many school professionals cling to the fiction that there need be two separate realities: school and the real world. Why? Don’t we want to use the same knowledge-building tools and portfolio we spend sixteen or more years building in school when we “graduate” into knowledge work? It’s a replay of the old joke that “I wouldn’t have majored in philosophy if I’d known that none of the big philosophy companies would be hiring when I got out of school.”
As our world gets deeper and deeper into an information age where rapid change necessitates continuous learning, work and learning inevitably become one and the same. The learning environment is the working environment with training wheels and a life line. You don’t throw away your “PLE” when you graduate. Do you have to rename it?
Stephen brought up corporations, not I. In fact, fewer and fewer of us work for corporations; we’re doing our own thing. Free agent nation. Talent is scarce. Anti-capitalists need to select new devils to disparage.
On the topic of servitude, what’s more authoritarian, coercive, and enslaving than schools? Unlike students, workers have the right to quit.
Corporations don’t tell employees to stay silent unless they are called on. They don’t aspire to behavior modification and thought control. They don’t assume that management has all the right answers. They don’t punish people for working collaboratively. They don’t pump novices full of Ritalin when they get rowdy. They even try to push responsibility downstream. Compared to modern corporations, schools are dictatorships.
I fully agree that technology should serve people first and foremost. I have never argued otherwise. This has nothing to do with promoting knowledge work environments.
What’s the purpose of “Meanwhile – for the rest of us…” It’s us and them? Does this have to be win or lose? Or is that just an academic question?
I resent the implication that I tell employers what they want to hear instead of what I believe in my heart. Stephen’s flippant suggestion that I lack integrity insults me.
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We corporate learning consultants are oft-times the agents of change, and welcomed by internal staff, because someone from outside can get management’s attention. The fact that they pay us means that they will listen to us. I see more radical innovation coming from external consultants than from educational institutions, who only have one thing to sell – The Course.
Great post Jay.
When asked why he did not hate the Chinese, the Dalai Lama replied, “They have stolen my country. Why should I let them steal my mind?”
So I was tempted to let this stuff pass and just continue doing my work. However, there are important issues underneath these squabbles, and we have a lot better odds of coming to agreement about them than the Dalai Lama has of regaining Tibet.
I’ll be back in a day or two with a few thoughts about where things appear to have gone off the rails.
Pitting individuals against corporations is not productive. Nor is the implication that businesses are out to steal workers’ intellectual property. Nor is twisting discussion of the appropriateness of the word “personal” a foundation for suggesting that consultants are conspiring to take away the personal freedom of “the rest of us.”
Catch you later.
Jay,
We all read and learn a lot from Stephen, but not from his politics. It amazes me the hold that this kind of neo-Marxist disgruntlement has over so many intellectuals. (Or, maybe it doesn’t.) It rests on the assumption that capitalism itself is a kind of enslavement, despite the fact that we all have more freedom, more choice, more great technology, and more wealth than ever before. I doubt if Stephen had a deliberatly hostile intent, but his analysis lends itself to some pretty wacky extrapolation – ‘Jay Cross wants to enslave people!’ I wouldn’t take this too personally becasue it’s absurd.
There are companies who will use PLEs in the right way and companies who will use them in the wrong way. This is called freedom. The rule that applies to companies is the same one that applies to individuals: you have the freedom to choose your own course of action as long as its within the law.
I’m not saying it’s the case with Stephen (I’ve never met him) but the academies are full of people who deeply resent the free market and the ‘corporations’. Thery create much of the intellectual climate of our age. They cut themselves off from the markets (to pursue the much higher calling of the intellect) but realize when its too late that they hasve cut themselves off too, from its spoils.
Surely it’s up to the individual to decide whether or not he wishes to use a PLE in his work and personal contexts. Only free indiviuals in a free market will drive this development forward.
Long live Hayek and keep up the great work!
In a purely capitalistic sense, you cannot equate students in a school with employees in a corporation. Students are the customers of an educational institution and the only thing that this institution sells is learning (call it courses, conversations or environments). If the institution is treating its customers badly, that’s a different thing altogether.
On the other hand, the focus of most corporations is to sell than to create a learning environment. If a learning environment can help boost productivity and profitability, that’s fine. This is not a simplistic anti-capitalistic argument: because the desire for profitability also promotes research, innovation and new thinking. There’s nothing right or wrong with this fact. Like all facts, it remains outside the moral realm (if at all there’s a realm like that).
It is a fact that organizations (of which corporations are an example) attempt to protect information, shield themselves from outside enquiry, impose thought control, avoid difficult discussions, etc.
Corporations aren’t THE BAD GUYS but they don’t qualify as cute puppies in the marketplace either.They are supremely self-interested.
I think there are some interesting monologs taking place about PLEs and whom PLEs should belong to. Steven is obviously on the side of keeping PLEs personal and I applaud him for this.
If there is a problem with the terminology I suggest you guys get your heads together and figure out something that makes more sense. We accept your leadership and your willingness to lead on issues such as this.
But please let’s keep personal learning environments out of corporate control. Corporations aren’t the bad guys but they do have issues when it comes to self-serving thinking and I don’t think they are natural stewards of life-long learning.
Anil and Michael, I am describing a potential future, not the past. We are in the midst of a total economic makeover. Corporations whose people are not continually learning will not be in business long. Survival is self-interest.
When it comes to who owns learning, I am probably to the left of Stephen (!). What one learns belongs to the individual wherever she is located, be it school, corporations, or home. It’s all life. I have not heard anyone advocating that corporations own personal learning.
As for the characterization of business, let me say that I just returned from a conference focused on business and technology. The presenters talked of how web 2.0 can help businesses share information, be more transparent, and encourage innovative thinking. Smart businesses are shedding industrial-age models as fast as they can. A number of us are working to accelerate corporate transition from the industrial age to the network age.
It’s easy to criticize corporations, and often the criticism is justified. It’s also easy to criticize schools; ask any parent. When corporations decry schools for not knowing what’s going on, and schools pillory corporations as robber barons, nobody wins. It’s no longer a zero-sum world. I’m in favor of institutions that challenge their participants to lead more fulfilling lives.