The hidden trouble with classrooms

The use of classrooms (or lecture halls) requires everyone enrolled to show up at the same time. This sends a message to everyone: "don't have a life of your own" or "get penalized if you have a life". It presumes that everyone will have a job after schooling that sends the same message, so the use of classrooms is good preparation for later paycheck prisons.

Instead of having a life, enrollees get to have chronic stress instead. Obviously this interferes with learning, motivation and retention. It messes up any use of time out of classrooms for reflective practices which might find uses, connections or personal meaning in what was taught. The stress weakens their immune system functions which makes one vulnerable to contagious diseases both inside and outside the classroom. Combine that effect with everyone who is stressed by getting penalized for having a life, and classrooms become viral incubators which sicken the majority of enrollment.

Meanwhile the life that is neglected, or pursued in spite of penalties, suffers greatly. This may include caring for children or elders, employment obligations, friendships and dating, vehicle maintenance, living space upkeep and more. The neglect or mishandling of these facets of "having a life" fuels the increased stress and compromised immune system.

The "bad" decision to rely on classrooms (or other synchronous encounters) for learning may be an example of slipping into every one of the seven pitfalls I explored yesterday. Looking at the use the classroom through the lens of "making decisions comprehensively" shows us that the most likely future will be more of the same bad decisions. The trouble will be ignored, dismissed or disputed by the wicked combination of irrational urges to persist with toxic practices and the delusional rationalizations to justify making no changes. The only hope I see is for the enrollment to make better decisions about learning what they really need to know right now while having a life. The problems they experience with learning and staying healthy will vanish with the hidden troubles with classrooms.

When learning it really happens

Did the learning of it really happen or was there just a lot of teaching, instructing, presenting, educating, training or facilitating going on? We can recognize whether learning it has really happened from evidence of:

• not only talking about it, but actually doing it, getting it accomplished, showing how it's done correctly
• not only complying with procedures, but getting the result, achieving the outcome, producing the intended effect
• not only espousing the concepts, but understanding the reasoning, realizing the value, looking after the underlying purpose
• not only trying to adopt it, but successfully integrating it into work routines, replacing old habits, making significant changes
• not only making a thing of learning it, but maintaining a continual process of exploring it, experimenting with it and refining it

When really learning it happens, many different conditions within a pro-learning ecology have supported this occurrence:

The learners' brains got enough sleep the night before in order to pay attention throughout the programme. Then they got enough sleep after to rehash the learning experience from many different perspectives in order to internalize some changes in memory. The learners got enough blood flow to the brain to nurture the construction of new neural connections. The learners' right brains were activated with awareness of creative possibilities in what is being learned and how it was getting experienced, while their limbic systems were pleasantly aroused without handling dangers or loss of control.



The learners' personal histories allowed for really learning it to happen. The learners have been framed as capable and internalized the confidence to utilize a successful approach. The story the learners re-enact ends up with desirable outcomes which confirms their "facts of life" and sense of fate. They are putting faith in receiving authentic learning experiences and it comes about as they imagine it with feeling, intend it with conviction or anticipate it with sincere appreciation. They are believing "I am a learner for whom learning really happens" - so be it.




The learners' emotional states were aligned with really learning it. They felt energized and happy to be doing this. They were feeling curious about what was unfolding and delighted with the suspense, unknowns and ambiguity. They experienced a felt sense of needing to know this, wanting it for their own reasons and valuing it even before it happened. They were feeling courageous enough to take the risks, make the mistakes and expose themselves to discouraging remarks. They were confident enough to see their learning all the way through to completion. The learners felt they had resolved any of their own anxiety or misgivings before those inner conflicts could undermine really learning it.


The learners' tribes were in favor of this change really happening. Their peers or colleagues were offering encouragement, showing an interest in it and wanting further updates, Their interactions outside the learning experience picture what they went through as valuable, enviable or remarkable. The atmosphere, when the learners were socializing, made it easy to discuss it, relive it and deepen their commitment to it.





The learners' casinos pay out for this kind of gamble sometimes. The reward system of grades, paychecks, bonuses or promotions is geared to recognize when learning it really happens. There may have been objectives, goals or plans to learn it that confirm this as a "job well done". There may have been pressures to comply, fit in and stop deviating which regard this as "measuring up to expectations". There might also have been unwritten rules for joining an elite corps or making the grade of the next higher rank which entitles the learners to special privileges after really learning it.




The learners' experience of the instructional design was empowering and particularly supportive of them. They felt the pacing was in their control or in sync with the rate they could get this clear in their minds. The choices they were offered among viable options and the validation of their intentions -- kept them in the driver's seat as responsible learners. They sensed the process began with their current understanding instead of taking off without them on board. They realized what they were assuming incorrectly by having their own thought processes put to use and challenged by unfamiliar situations. They welcomed the new content as additions and refinements to their competencies, rather than starting over or correcting their lack of understanding.


The learners' actual context was essential to learning this. The learners' imaginations are now picturing the result of really learning it in the situations where they can actually use it. The learners have connected the dots between the challenges they face routinely in their own worlds and this new learning. They get the learning to serve their lives or forget it.



All this implies that the learners we're actively involved in how the experience went down for them. If they sensed the learning was not happening, they would have taken the initiative to make changes. They may have done something:

• to perk up their brain
• to recall who they thought they were when they really learned something successfully
• to resolve inner conflicts to get a good feeling about this,
• to convince their tribe of the value of learning this,
• to improve the odds or get some payback for their effort
• to get more control over their own learning processes
• to make the connections to how they will use it in their own world

Any of those initiatives are standard fare of a day in the life of a pro-learning ecology.

No one would have believed

When telephones were a new technology, a phone call with a friend did not count as a real conversation. It was necessary to stop by the house to show the friends they were not being snubbed, ignored or taken for granted. People could not let go of eye contact and shaking hands to legitimize the conversation as sincere. No one would have believed our network of contacts we've never met in person and all the different ways we send messages to each other.

When TV broadcasts of baseball games began to be watched at home, the TV announcers were not considered legitimate. The TV audio was turned down to listen to the game on the radio. People could not let go of the vocal mannerisms of their favorite radio announcers that established credibility, familiarity and reliability in each listeners' minds. No one would have believed our hi-def camera broadcasts, concurrent webcasts, real time online game stats and text message updates sent to cell phones.

When VCR's were new, it was unusual to tape over an previously recorded program. Most everyone was building up their own library of videotapes made off of TV broadcasts. Watching reruns on TV, renting videos or borrowing friends' tapes was not considered to be reliable. People could not let go of keeping a massive personal archive to feel safe about seeing something again. No one would have believed our TIVO's for time-shifting the broadcasts while eliminating commercials and our downloading digitized TV shows & movies onto PC's through broadband connections.

When desktop PC's were new, people continued to buy IBM Selectric typewriters with carbon ribbons, changeable font balls and proportional spacing. The advantages of word processing software did not seem legitimate when sending the document to the printer was a sure ticket to discovering problems with installed drivers, ribbon cartridges, paper feed mechanisms or incompatible formatting protocols. People could not let go of putting each letter on the paper with their personal keystrokes. No one would have believed our blogs with formatted text, side columns with all those widgets, post with embedded videos, photos or links to PDF's, and auto-published RSS feeds.

When 3D environments gained usage in education, people continued to gather in virtual classrooms (as here described by the MSIT SecondLife wiki)

Classroom Emulation
In this use of a 3D learning environment, the idea is to re-create the actual classroom environment within the 3D world. ... The learners sit in the virtual seats, look forward and raise their hands or ask questions as if they were in the same space with the person presenting the instruction. Current, this is by far the most wide ranging use of 3D worlds. The advantage of this delivery is realized when it is compared to 2D Synchronous Learning where you want to get everyone in the same space and looking at the same thing and provide people via distance with a sense of connecting to one another through the visual representation of their avatars.

The advantages of creating educational experiences by conforming with brain rules or creating pro-learning ecologies did not seem reliable. People could not let go of making sure everyone got the same information in real time. No one would have believed how classrooms fell into disuse as educational experiences became phenomenally effective, personal and social.

It's only a matter of time.

Learning from mirroring

During our early childhood development, we can play "monkey see monkey do" long before we can speak words. John Medina, in his book: Brain Rules, tells of the rapport he developed with his new born son by each of them getting the other to stick their tongues out. Neuroscientists have labeled the locations where this occurs in the brain "mirror neurons". The same brain cells that fire when we pick up a toy also light up when we see someone else pick up the toy. It's as-if we learn by pure imitation - no thinking required. This function is easiest to detect with our imitating others' actions because motor functions light up only small portions of the brain. Memories, speech, thought processes and learning -- fire neurons scattered all over our complex brains.

It seems likely that we also imitate sounds and initially acquire language by making the same sounds as the people around us. Most parents have experiences of getting quoted verbatim by a child that cannot yet tie his or her own shoes. The toddler will suddenly utter "get a life" without knowing what it means -- if that's a parent's over-used expression. I know from my own travels abroad that my "Americanese" gets a slight British accent when I've been surrounded by the Queen's English. Likewise my French accent improved dramatically when I was living around Paris for a couple weeks. I've also noticed my speech gets a bit of a southern drawl when I've worked for extended time periods in Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee and Virginia.

As I reflected on our mirror neurons this morning (pun intended!), I wondered if we also learn other's unspoken premises by imitation. What if we cannot help but give others "a taste of their own medicine", "a show of what they're showing us" or "a return of their favor"? Perhaps our mirror neurons fire up when our minds have "nothing better to do". That suggests several ways that pro-learning ecologies respond effectively to our mirror neurons and support imitation learning-- while anti-learning ecologies do the opposite:

• When learners need to reason something through more effectively, an exemplar is provided to imitate who can externalize his/her thinking. The learners mirror what they see in the exemplar's conduct and self awareness. When learning is opposed, a bad example is put in front of the learners or a hypocrite is put in charge of getting learners to "do as I say -- don't do as I do".
• When learners need to interact, socialize and experience other viewpoints, opportunities are provided for discussions and collaborative problem solving. The learners mirror each others ability to be conversant, interactive and understanding of each other. When learning is opposed, the anti-social instructor does all the talking and penalizes the imitators who anti-socially talk at the same time.
• When learners need to play devil's advocate to develop a balanced perspective, they are presented with extreme positional stances that provoke opposing arguments. The learners mirror each other's use of contrarian viewpoints and non-conformist positions. When learning is opposed, the learners seem like monsters who constantly confront, antagonize and dismiss any reductionistic proponent of one right answer, bigoted stances and one-sided solutions.
• When learners need need to cultivate their own leadership traits, they are provided with playful situations where their initiatives get feedback, their reasoning gets reflected upon and their "acting out their frustrations" gets mirrored back to them. When learning is opposed, they get told how to be a leader, given lists of respected traits and tested on the right way to take charge of a situation.

As I explored this different facets of mirroring, it became clear to me that learners not only replicate what others are doing, they show educators what's missing, one-sided or in need of more mirroring. In a pro-learning ecology, the learning dynamics are holistic and capable of revealing the complexity of what the learners need right now. We then learn what we need next, not only what is obviously available to imitate.

OJT rocks the brain

As I've reflected further in John Medina's insights in brain rules, I realized why on the job training (OJT) is so effective. The book reminds us that 90% of what is conveyed in a classroom is forgotten with 24 hours. That brought to mind the opposite statistic: that 90% of OJT is retained and put to use. The success of learning on the job shows us how natural learning is when we don't use those contrived contraptions called classrooms.

Learning on the job is a pro-learning ecology. The complex inter-dependencies outside of classrooms favor learning, skill transfer and long term retention. When people are shown how to use a new tool or operate a piece of equipment and then given opportunities to see if they can do it too, they get the hang of it in stages and then do like they were shown. Likewise, when someone shadows a mentor on a service call, sales appointment or interview session, the skills observed get assimilated and put to use after some faltering attempts, follow-up coaching and improved efforts. New members of a team quickly assimilate the unwritten rules and shortcut methods that are in active use by the team to realize the current outcomes, reputation outside the team and level of cooperation from others in the organization. All of this learning is outside a classroom. It's active, individualized, social, situated and conducted over "spaced intervals".

Here's how John Medina's brain rules explain the effectiveness of this kind of learning:

1. The learners are moving around to get with whatever they are being shown, tagging along on or trying something for themselves. The brain is oxygenated by this breathing and revived by the increased blood flow.
2. The learners are rapidly adapting to the new challenge by gaining experiences in what it feels like to adopt this role, how the situation reacts to making a move, what to do after something does not go as expected, which things create added problems, etc. The learner is also breaking out of the box of past habits and assumptions as those now lead to unintentional setbacks which call for innovative alternatives.
3. Each learner is regarded as a unique individual who will: make sense of this in his/her own way, take different amount of time to grasp each part of it, have trouble with different facets, need different amounts of attention and come by some of it quite naturally.
4. The learners will pay attention because it's like a conversation, they will be expected to comment after and how much they observe will make a difference. Their attention won't be undermined by multi-tasking, boring lectures or a lack of context.
5. The learners acquire the new skills and information in the same context they will put them to use. The situations will remind them of what they learned, how they acted and what they did to respond to the setbacks.
6. The learners have time between sessions to replay what happened in their minds. This reflecting may bring forth new questions or experiments to try out. The next session will involve a lot of repetition of the same procedures, issues and reasoning to get ingrained in their minds slowly.
7. It's possible they have gotten more and better sleep than the typical college student, medical intern or parent with a new born.
8. The learners and mentors are acting empowered and efficacious. If something is not clear, not making sense or not working out as expected, they are in a position to ask, get help, be shown again or try something else. They can reduce their circumstantial stress by taking action as well as avoid both contagious and chronic stress by acting powerfully.
9. The learners are immersed in multi-sensory experiences that allure all their senses to take in what they are first shown and then given a shot at themselves. Their experiences when they've succeeded would include the sounds, sights and tactile dimensions of the moment.
10. The learning calls upon their powers of observation to detect what the exemplar is doing in great detail. The emphasis on eyesight is congruent with the brain's enormous commitment to processing the inputs from the eyes.
11. The learners may be understood differently based on their gender and not expected to conform to some universal standard of what "normal people" notice, how they react and what troubles them.
12. The learners are actively exploring who they can be different from before, what role they can now fulfill and what image they will project onto others. They are immersed in an adventurous quest to discover what they are capable of, what limits they encounter and what changes come easily to them.

Learning on-the-job could not be more effective if it was designed with brain functionality criteria. The 90% success rate speaks to the effectiveness that occurs naturally when the contrivance of classrooms gets compromised.

Breaking the brain rules

Yesterday, I finished reading John Medina's new book: Brain Rules - 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School. Compliance with these rules spells the end to our pervasive use of classrooms and cubicles. Dr. Medina lectures college students in classrooms, and thus limits much of his exploration of the implications of these brain rules to improving the attention and retention of his students. Promoters and profiteers of formal education will inevitably find these rules to be bad science, over-generalizations or faddish proclamations. Most educators are acting in defiance of these rules and playing by a very different set of rules. For a synopsis of the 12 rules in the book, see Angela Maiers's post that got me inspired to read the book in the first place (Thanks Angela!) Here I'll present the opposite set of rules that are adhered to religiously in anti-learning ecologies.

1. Minimize blood flow to the brain and aerobic breathing by immobilizing the learners. Foster the accumulation of free radicals in the neurons which impair brain functions. Reduce the oxygenation of the brain by long periods of "seat time" and sedentary "activity".

2. Diminish our specie's chances of survival which depend on our recognizing errors and then trying something different. Go to the opposite extremes of repeating experiences with no experimentation and experimenting wildly with no experience. Carefully avoid the recognition of "mistaken approaches to teaching/learning" made evident by experiences with how learners feel about, react to, experience the effects -- of what gets presented to them.

3. Assume every brain gets wired the same, develops through the same progressions and conforms to the same functional patterns. Recognize deviance as deformity while cultivating functionality as conformity. Disregard the unique developments inherent in brain responses to life experiences.

4. Undermine everyone's ability to pay attention (give people "attention deficit disorder" whenever possible.) Expect learners to pay focused attention without context, the gist of it or a story-line of some kind. Expect their paying attention to be very logical and unemotional. Undermine concentration with "multi-tasking" distractions as if it takes no time and energy to get back into a focus. Force learners to pay attention after they naturally "zone out" from more than ten minutes on the same old thing.

5. Give learners useful information in a place where they will never use it again. Help them anchor what they're learning in useless vistas like the neck of the person sitting in front of them, the flag pole holder in the front of the room or the wastebasket next to the teacher's desk (how symbolic!). Make what they're to retain so "easy to remember" that it's meaningless, devoid of context and reduced to pure abstractions.

6. Expect learning to occur from new information. Regard repetition as useless, inefficient and boring. View those learners who rehash, ruminate and revisit new ideas as "slow on the uptake" or "obsessive about recalling facts for game shows".

7. Maximize sleep deprivation whenever possible. Interfere with the intense processing of new experiences that occurs during sleep. Obstruct our physiological need for short, afternoon naps. Put everyone on the same schedule to the detriment of every early riser and night owl.

8. Convince learners they are trapped in adverse circumstances deemed necessary by authority figures. Stress them under conditions where they are powerless to escape, make changes or take out the stressor. Torment them with so much adversity that their ability to perform collapses into a state of despair. Provide relentless pressures to induce chronic anxiety whenever possible. Disable their immune systems in the process.

9. Seek the effects of sensory deprivation through the consistent presentation of talking heads, text-laden slides and printed materials. Avoid any visual movement, auditory stimulation or involvement of touch, taste and smell. Give the learners the look of stunned, floored or wasted individuals by acting as-if they do not come equipped with five, highly integrated, senses.

10. Give the eyes a picture that nothing is happening and there's nothing to follow along as it changes. Give the eyes the same thing to look at so it becomes necessary to look away, daydream or check out all the mating possibilities in close proximity. Assume the learners' eyes are seeing what's objectively in front of them, and not some subjectively distorted picture under the influence of their past experiences or personally unresolved issues.

11. Expect brain development to be the same in males and females even though the X chromosomes that are largely responsible differ between the genders. Disregard how males get all their X chromosomes from their mothers while females get one from each parent. Downplay the advantages of females having two X chromosomes, with one as backup in case of genetic damage that could produce brain deformities.

12. Expect learners to do as you say, not do as you do by natural imitation learning. Hope the learners are not exploring your every move, motivation and mental excursion as they experiment with how to be in the world. See the learners as passive recipients of expert information, not adventurers on quests to realize grander possibilities in their lives.

When does detention begin for all these "rule breakers"?

Robust curiosity in practice

Pro-learning ecologies are teeming with questions. Learning occurs because so much curiosity is nurtured and responded to effectively. Learners get the sense that it's good to "not know" and "be somewhat ignorant" for the time being. Everyone seems to be in the midst of inquiries, experiments, remedying previous errors and cultivating their next hypothesis. Their questions are neither shallow or fleeting. The curiosity in practice is robust.

Anti-learning ecologies are choked with old answers that signal the futility of asking questions or nurturing curiosity. Patterns of domination, control and abuse seem so prevalent because compliance with those answers is expected and rewarded. Learners get the strong sense that it's bad to "not know" and only losers are ignorant. Everyone seems to be in the midst of making excuses, avoiding responsibility and making a thing of being right.

Pro-learning ecologies differ from those phases that kids go through where every adult's answer is followed by another question "why". Learners with questions in these systems are far more resourceful than that. When we give a listen to such an environment, we will hear things like:

• Which change seems the most beneficial and feasible to you?
• What questions have been raised in your mind by the new information?
• Which alternatives are you comparing before taking your next action?
• What explanation do you favor to connect these dots?
• What are you forecasting for the next development in this chain of events?
• What difference do you think it would make to pursue this with more dedication?
• What do you foresee as the consequences of focusing on this issue now?

Anti-learning ecologies fill the air with a very different kind of questions that make curiosity seem scarce and fragile:

• What do I have to do to comply?
• What's the reward for getting this done on time?
• How much has to be done to qualify for the next level?
• When is the deadline and can you cut me any slack?
• How much of this is actually required?
• How long do we have to continue doing this?
• Why are you making us learn this?

From the sounds of what gets said in an anti-learning ecology, everyone is keeping learning to a minimum. Learning is neither rewarding as a process or pursuit of outcomes. Asking insightful questions would be unproductive, self-defeating and possibly embarrassing. Robust curiosity is not practiced.

Learning from the lack of learning

Pro-learning ecologies thrive on learning from signs of stressed out, anxiety-ridden or depressed constituents. Rather than posing a threat to the ecology or putting it on the defensive, the stress level offers a lesson to learn. The symptoms of excessive stress are an indication that it is a time for a change in how learning gets nurtured. The ecology will mutate and evolve into a better way to function inter-dependently for the sake of learning.

Of course, anti-learning ecologies react in the opposite fashion. They learn nothing from stress symptoms or the lack of learning. The constituents, who's own learning is impaired by their anxiety level, pose a threat to the ecology and appear to be enemies, traitors or saboteurs of the stability. The symptoms indicate that it's time for more of the same, greater determination and dismissing the complaints. The ecology will learn nothing and suffer the consequences of it's obsession with survival.

A pro-learning ecology responds in ways that restore the learning of it's constituencies. By the ecology learning from the internal breakdown of learning and indications of stressed out constituents, an irrefutable message is sent about the importance of learning from what happens. By learning what is causing the stress, feeding its persistence and opposing it's relief, solutions get designed and changes get made. The constituents learn from this learning that they are cared for, respected and valued by the ecology. The are given the impression that learning really is the purpose of coming together in this way.

An anti-learning ecology cannot mutate to restore learning. The necessary changes appear life-threatening and self-destructive. The level of anxiety produced by the evidence of breakdowns shuts down the consideration of options. Like the individuals who have stopped learning due to their excessive anxiety level, the entire ecology cannot rethink it's options or learn from what's happening. Everyone is party to the persistent lack of learning and perpetuation of excessive anxiety.

Circumstantial or chronic anxiety?

Yesterday I explored the possibility of helping each learner face stressors in their educational environment with more resourcefulness. The four tools function amidst circumstantial stress. Sadly they do not make a significant difference with a learner's chronic anxiety.

Whenever we're traumatized, we experience being put in danger that is out of our control. We are inherently powerless and incapable of pulling off a win, solving the problem or resolving the conflict. Our limbic system memorizes the cues from these painful episodes to avoid them in the future. Anything that reminds us of the traumatic incident can set off a panic reaction and loss of composure. Most people keep these tragic memories for life. They overreact when they are seventy, just like they did when they were seven years old.

The more overwhelming dangers we've faced with this powerless stance:

• the more emotional scars we have to endure
• the more agitation we constantly feel
• the more hyper-vigilant we are about repeat occurrences
• the more problems we have with infections, sprains, indigestion, weight gain, sleep and illnesses.

We cannot simmer down, chill out, get a grip or feel calm inside. Physicians label this condition: hypertension. Psychiatrists call this a conflict between our Id and Super Ego. We try to keep a lid on a pot boiling inside with agitation about an archaic trauma and a recent indication that it's happening again.

Chronic anxiety can be alleviated by EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) or some cognitive behavioral therapy. The original traumatic incident is relived to honor the feels of powerlessness, panic and vulnerability. The view of what happened evolves to oppose the aggressors, get angry then, judge their insensitivity harshly and feel intolerant of their conduct. With further reprocessing, other feelings arise that look upon others with sadness and then understanding. A phenomenal amount of life-changing learning occurs as the limbic system revises the literal, vigilant memory. The emotional scars get healed and new situations can be approached with confidence, resolve and optimism.

Curing the blight

Some of these flowers look like healthy learners. They are not stressed-out by the ecology they share with other flowers/learners. The other flowers appear to have some blight, like learners who lose their ability to grow in stressful, anti-learning ecologies.

The healthy flowers have four petals which symbolize four resources for coping with circumstantial stressors:

• Exertion abates anxiety: Moderate exercise changes our physical state which then changes our mood and thought patterns. Getting active makes us less reactive to upsetting situations.
• Meditation moderates misery: Achieving a "relaxation response" calms the heart and mind. We feel more resourceful after quieting our mental chatter, rather than continually helpless and victimized.
• Relating restores resilience: When we're caught up in a community, we feel different about ourselves and others. We value the differences we can make and the ways we interact.
• Reframing rekindles responsiveness: Redefining the problem gives us a new outlook to explore. Changing the diagnosis opens doors that we're closed before.

The flowers with the apparent blight cannot benefit from the effects of all four petals on circumstantial stressors. These learners grew more vulnerable to the hostile pressures in the ecology. They learned to be stressed out by the stresses, instead of becoming more active, reflective, interactive and creative. Their petals remain under-developed in an ecology that maintains the blight.

Curing the blight calls for awareness of the effects of stress on the learners. Their lack of resources for coping with adversity needs to seem as obvious as partial petals on a blossom. Then it becomes possible to cultivate what's missing. The learner who's lacking usually won't feel like becoming more resourceful. Their lack of ambition is a badge of honor, source of pride and protection against further anxiety. They make sure they won't get repaired by any mechanic who shows up in the garden with a pliers and a wrench (spanner). Yet these under-developed learners will usually respond to gardeners who know it takes patience, caring and sensitivity to grow what needs to eventually blossom.

Immersed in consensual torment

When passionate learning professionals get immersed in anti-learning ecologies, they end up heartless and broken hearted. The system produces so much antagonism to learning, there is no way to remain passionate about their love of learning, caring for learners or responding to challenges that arise in each situation. Everyone is feeling tormented. It's not clear who is tormenting whom. Only that it's painful to care so much or to respond with compassion. V. Yonkers framed this issue superbly in a comment on If stressors could speak.

On the one hand, I agree that there needs to be a way to de-stress the learning environment. I have students that try so hard, I am afraid they are going to have a nervous breakdown (some in fact have had chronic stomach ailments, have been near tears if they just can't get a concept). On the other hand, I have students that are downright rude and disrespectful of the instructor and what a course is trying to accomplish. Many times the content and objectives are out of the control of the instructor, yet the student seems to think the instructor can and should "change" things to accommodate that one student. As a result, an instructor must walk a fine line between being supportive enough to talk the learner "off the cliff" of stress, yet stern enough to motivate those that don't want to learn or are trying to get out of doing any kind of work.

The instructor is usually blamed for the evils of the system because s/he is an easy target, even more so when they provide evidence of really caring for the learners. The teacher who exudes any devotion to learning and learners appears more likely to understand the complaints and to make changes. The caring types take the brunt of the torment dished out by learners inside the anti-learning ecology. They are penalized for taking a heart-felt approach to their profession. They become heartless under duress.

Meanwhile the learners say they are taking the brunt of the torment. Their list may include the workload, deadlines, personalities of the instructors, problems with a particular student, hassles at home, conflicts with administrators and worries about what lies ahead after completion of the learning. Anti-learning ecologies convince everyone that they are the victim and their torment has been singled out for their personal misery. As the learners make their case, it's easy to for our hearts to go out to them and to end up broken hearted. The toll the torment takes on their lives, health, confidence and satisfaction is devastating. It's amazing they get any value of the educational experience. Feeling their pain makes for heartache.

When an anti-learning ecology is exposed, everyone can say "it's not me and it's not you". The blaming and finger-pointing become irrelevant. The problems are inherent in the nature of the system. Everyone is immersed in consensual torment until the system is abandoned or transformed. So it's the system AND it's our personal responsibility that we're experiencing the torment in that anti-learning system we're immersed in.

Putting the learners in danger

Anti-learning ecologies put the learners in some kind of danger. The learners' experience anxiety, apprehensions and stress that indicate how impressed they have become with the presence of danger. The ways any apparent dangers get handled exclude authentic learning. Options are extremely limited until the danger is alleviated or eliminated. The dangers seem painfully familiar. The learners know what to do without thinking or changing their minds.

Some dangers call for safety. Others call for getting dangerous. When the situation evokes a flight response, we execute avoidance patterns or stick to our own kind. We may find safety in numbers and act in favor of conformity, compliance and collusion with those that give us shelter from the abuse. We may feel more safe going into our own shell, avoiding exposure to hostilities and appearing unavailable. We may pretend to learn what is being taught in order to avoid scrutiny, criticism or put downs. We may even experience our own emotions becoming our worst enemy and react accordingly. We will wear our game face, put a lid on our inner child, lose track of our feelings and repress all irrational urges. To others, we will look like a zombie: lights on - nobody home. We won't know what we feel, what to think or what to do differently.

Other dangers call for becoming more dangerous than the immediate threat. We react by getting in the opponent's face, making a scene to embarrass the enemy or cause problems for the predator. These fight responses take postures intended to intimidate, invalidate or manipulate the imposing danger. Our minds are devoted to getting control of the situation We cannot back down, lose face, admit errors or concede defeat. We know what the problem is, who's to blame and how to fix it. Nobody can tell us a thing. Our minds are closed.

When a learning ecology gets taken over by dangers, the learning stops until safety is restored. Each danger breeds more danger and devotes each learner's attention to questions of safety and control. The dance of aggression & withdrawal, fight & flight, overtakes any new inquiries, rethinking or deeper explorations in the situation. Anxiety levels rise unchecked until the accumulated stress induces systemic breakdowns. People say "I cannot take it anymore", "this is making me sick", "I don't need this much pain" or "I'm totally burned out". The learners lose their interest, motivation and openness which authentic learning thrives on.

If the stressors could speak

Yesterday, I mentioned how learners experience a second level of stress when nothing changes in response to their existing anxieties. This morning I had fun imagining what the unresponsive systems would say as comebacks to my expectation that they should alleviate the learners' stress. Here's some retorts to my compassion for stressed-out learners:

• Bully for you. If you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
• Do I look like a bank? I cannot give this away, lower the price and pretend that content wants to be free!
• Do I look like a therapist? I cannot listen to every whining wimp with crippling insecurities that weaken their resolve, endurance and fortitude.
• This is not kindergarten. We cannot pay attention to every cry baby throwing tantrums to get attention.
• You think I'm not stressed out of my gourd too? You don't see me looking for any easy out, making excuses or shying away from the challenge.
• If we start accommodating every snivel-nosed stress case, will lose our competitive edge, brand equity and market share.
• Business is war. It's not supposed to be conducted in an atmosphere of meditative repose, serene resourcefulness and quiet responsiveness.

These are examples of defensive rationalizations which justify insensitivity, unresponsiveness and perpetuation of anti-learning ecologies. These fixed mentalities cannot learn from what they are being shown. For them, the learning already happened when they made up their minds to endure stress at all cost. That cost is paid in very many ways.

Stress-induced breakdowns

Seeing how interconnected stress effects get interwoven makes it easy to see how ecological learning really is, even when it's delivered formally as it's pictured here. The inter-dependencies involved in getting learning to happen exceed our left brain's linear comprehension. With a picture of all these linkages, we get a better sense of how learning happens naturally and cannot be made to happen mechanically.

Learning does not happen when people become anxiety-ridden. Feeling stressed-out eliminates the state of mind which support authentic learning. Small amounts of stress can function as a welcomed challenge or inviting game obstacle. Yet when stress exceeds that moderate level, our minds become preoccupied with anxiety relief. We need to get the agitation out of our systems by taking out our frustrations on others, displacing it in revenge fantasies or transforming it via either physical exertion or relaxation. Learning is a luxury we cannot afford when we have become a stress-case.

Stress can be added from several situational sources:

• A learner may show up with chronic anxiety unrelated to the place where learning is meant to happen.
• The instructional design may be a misfit to the level of understanding, the subsequent uses of the new input, the pace that accommodates the learner, or other parameters of "what works for the learner".
• The delivery may come at a bad time, cause problems with other commitments or inconvenience several different people in other ways.
• The people interacting with the learner may be already experiencing anxiety that infects others, or they may become agitated through the involvement with the stressed-out learner.
• The management system may hold the learner and others accountable for the learning, penalize a lack of results or withhold rewards for slow learning which all contribute to anxiety-producing pressures.
• The social context of peers may be sharing the same anxieties as well as providing peer pressures to perform better or more poorly to avoid getting ostracized.
• The larger context (family, job market, industry rivals, economy, international instability) may offer looming uncertainties which fuel worries, distractions and sleep disorders.

An additional level of stress gets internalized as frustrations, resentment and self-incriminations when there's no listening, evidence of the learner's feedback put to use or timeouts to provoke changes:

• the learner keeps trying to learn the same way that feeds chronic stress in spite of blatant evidence that personal anxiety is over the top
• the instructional design, required materials and educational processes remain unchanged in spite of countless "users who found it useless"
• the delivery sticks to the same schedule, pricing, requirements, and paperwork in spite of evidence that calls for lowering people's anxiety levels immediately
• the management system "turns up the heat" when it becomes obvious the current level of expectations and consequences has not convinced people to make more effort
• the social context becomes more cynical, antagonistic or intolerant of those who demonstrate the tattered remains of commitment, confidence, or ambition in the face of this adversity
• the larger context becomes more imposing, threatening and discouraging as vast networks within it are not learning

This entire ecology crashes when there is no accurate diagnosis of the stress-induced breakdowns in learning. There's no way to alleviate the anxiety and every remedial effort fuels the melt down. Nothing is learned from the learning not happening. The highly interdependent ecology is a happening place for contagious fears, chronic anxiety and stress-cases.