Peter M. Senge - Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education

Schools
That Learn

A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook
for Educators, Parents, and
Everyone Who Cares About
Education

PETER SENGE

NELDA CAMBRON-McCABE

TIMOTHY LUCAS

BRYAN SMITH

JANIS DUTTON

ART KLEINER

This revised edition first published in the UK by
Nicholas Brealey Publishing in 2012

www.nicholasbrealey.com

Peter Senge, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Timothy Lucas, Bryan Smith, Janis Dutton, Art Kleiner, 2000, 2012

The rights of Peter Senge, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Timothy Lucas, Bryan Smith, Janis Dutton, and Art Kleiner to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN: 978-1-85788-594-1

eISBN: 978-1-85788-941-3

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording and/or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers.

Book design by Chris Welsh

Cover design by Jean Traina

Printed in Finland by WS Bookwell

Peter Senge

Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Janis Dutton

Nelda Cambron-McCabe

Carol Ann Kenerson

Tim Lucas

Tim Lucas

Terry OConnor, Deirdre Bangham

Candee Basford

Janis Dutton, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Tim Lucas, Art Kleiner

Robert Fritz

Tim Lucas

Betty Quantz

Bena Kallick

Steve Price

Art Costa

Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Janis Dutton

Carol Kenerson, Micah Fierstein, Janis Dutton

Nelda Cambron-McCabe

Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Janis Dutton, Tim Lucas, Betty Quantz, Art Kleiner

Bryan Smith, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Tim Lucas, Art Kleiner, Janis Dutton

Jay W. Forrester

Assembled and edited by Lees Stuntz and Nina Kruschwitz

Peter Senge

Michael Goodman

Linda Booth Sweeney

Nelda Cambron-McCabe

Bryan Smith, Tim Lucas

Nelda Cambron-McCabe

Art Kleiner

As told to Micah Fierstein

Michael Goodman, Janis Dutton

Michael Goodman, Janis Dutton, Art Kleiner

Nathan Dutton, Rick Quantz, Nolan Dutton

Joyce Bisso

Edward T. Joyner

Faith Florer

Nancy Hoffmann

Charlotte Roberts

Peter Negroni

Mary Leiker

Les Omotani

Ann Marie Gallo

Tim Lucas, Janis Dutton, Nelda Cambron-McCabe, Bryan Smith

Bonnie Neumeier

Peter Block

Tan Soon Yong

Roland Chevalier

Thomas A. Dutton

Nancy W. Lippe

Andrea Gabor

Katharine Briar-Lawson

Ellen Bueschel

Bryan Smith

Jaimie P. Cloud

Michael Goodman, Janis Dutton, Art Kleiner

Sara Cameron

Janis Dutton

Peter Senge

There was once a young boy who was curious and bright; he had his own way of thinking about things and his own pace for caring about them. School didnt hold much relevance for him because he had other plans, and he was always busy learning. For instance, he collected medallions from every place he visited. Each day, he wore a different one to school around his neck.

One day his teacher said, Matthew, tomorrow we are going to conduct a science experiment with metals. I bet we could learn something interesting about one of your necklaces. He could hardly wait to tell his parents, and much of the evening was spent discussing which medallion to take to school the next day. Finally he picked one laced with silver, from a trip he had taken with his grandfather. In the morning he was in a hurry to get to school. Returning home that evening, he shared his new scientific knowledge with his parents: metals all transmit electricity differently, and the silver in his medallion made it highly conductive.

The boy is much older now, but he still remembers that day, and he remembers what he learned about electricity. He also remembers the feelings he hadof his personal passions being genuinely interesting to others, of helping others learn, of being seen. The teacher may not remember that particular lesson, but she remembers other times when she made a special connectionsometimes with a student, other times with a mentor, a parent, another educator, or someone elseand came away changed.

Everyone reading this book, no doubt, has had similar experiences when someone fired your imagination with new knowledge or touched a deep chord in you that opened doorways you didnt know existed. Why do experiences like these hold so much power? Perhaps its because they are part of our most common birthright as human beings: our entry into life as eager and natural learners. The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive, writes anthropologist Edward T. Hall. It begins earlier and lasts longer.

The Drive to Learn: An Interview with Edward T. Hall, Santa Fe Lifestyle, (Spring 1988), pp. 1214.

Learning is at once deeply personal and inherently social; it connects us not just to knowledge in the abstract, but to each other. Why else would it matter so much when a teacher notices something special about a student? Throughout our lives, as we move from setting to setting, we encounter novelty and new challenges, small and large. If we are ready for them, living and learning become inseparable.

What if all communities were dedicated, first and foremost, to fostering this connection between living and learning? Such a world might feel very different from our own. There would be no boundaries between school and work and life. Skillful people, from groundskeepers to accountants to scientists to artisans, would have a steady stream of apprentices, both children and adults. People of every age would continually embark on new endeavors and enterprises, taking failure in stride, readily seeking one anothers help. Teenagers would spend most of their learning time outside school walls (as Hall puts it, with all that energy, they shouldnt be in school), working on projects with real meaning for them. And children would be everywhere, in civic meetings and business conferences, just as they are present in significant meetings among many indigenous peoples. An innate communitywide culture of learning would lead to fewer quick fixes that seem to work at first but then backfire. The children, the culture, and all everyday practices would continually remind people of the real purpose of our endeavors: to look out for the long term.