C.M. Rubin, a US-based educationist, journalist and author of the award-winning ‘Global Search for Education’ series, interviewed Dr. Peter Senge, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the bestselling The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization (1990) which has made him a household name among informed corporate leaders around the world. How do you define a ‘learning system’? What are the main differences between systems thinking for business and education? The obvious difference starts with aims. In business, you are trying to achieve a mission that involves serving a particular customer. In education, the objective is to grow people. This also involves serving a ‘customer’ but in many ways customer is a bad metaphor used too casually in education, because students are both recipients and co-creators of learning. But mostly, they need to be seen as co-creators. Learning occurs when students learn. So this is not simply a matter of professionals (i.e. teachers) producing a particular type of product (students). It is a joint process of exploration and mutual development. A common element that connects both business and education is the need to grow an organisational climate or culture that supports collaboration, risk-taking, and deep sense of common purpose and commitment. So in this particular way, leadership is quite similar in education as in business. What I always remind people is the single biggest difference from a leadership standpoint is the complexity of a school — in particular the complexity of its stakeholder environment. Businesses have no stakeholder analogous to a parent. Parents have a profound commitment to schools because they have a deep commitment to the well-being and growth of their children. How can we avoid the trap of treating education as a business when the product needs to be human beings who can lead satisfying lives? I think the simple response is we have to keep remembering our purpose. In education, it is to grow people and help society evolve. There are these two fundamentally different but related purposes in education: benefiting students and benefiting the future of society. Education is the only institution in society that has a 50-70 year time horizon. It has the strongest potential to influence the future, just as business has the greatest power in the present. But no business has a time horizon of this scope and the potential to make the sort of impact on society that education does. Which school systems or schools you are familiar with have established collaborative inclusive learning organisations? What are the key measures of success they have shown? Within the SoL (School of Learning) Education Partnership there are now 15-20 school districts with about 1,000 schools all together. If you visit these schools, you’ll see a profound shift in the climate, from classrooms to the school as a whole. Teachers and students learn together. There’s real appreciation of students’ leadership in transforming education, ongoing inquiry, reflection and innovations in pedagogy. In short, these schools create real learning…
