Picturing the learning

Choose your way of picturing those who are learning. Here's my top four ways to picture them:

1. As animals to be tamed who act irrationally until they've been sufficiently indoctrinated with rational thinking to control themselves without micro-managing supervision.
2. As cups to be filled with expert content, more logical ideas and tons of accurate information until they can put on a show of being well informed (without the ability to do as they say  or to avoid acting like a hypocrite).
3. As candles to be lit by intrinsically motivated guides on the side who walk their talk of self-directed learning, life long exploration of varied viewpoints and ongoing refinement  of their passionate pursuits
4. As inner conversations to be joined by outer conversations, contradictory arguments and challenging choices (like this list of four ways to see learning)

The third and fourth options are compatible with spacious networks. They translate learning into ongoing processes which end in spaces for formulating the next adventures. These options avoid the troublesome uses of persistent objects and routine procedures. They imagine the minds of the learners to be in flux rather than stuck, fixated and opinionated. They nurture the intrinsic processes of changing the lenses looked through, the meaning given and the patterns recognized.