{"id":10409,"date":"2017-01-27T15:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T15:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/2017\/01\/27\/the-new-workplace\/"},"modified":"2017-01-27T15:00:38","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T15:00:38","slug":"the-new-workplace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/2017\/01\/27\/the-new-workplace\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Workplace"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Pat Montgomery, Founder<\/em><\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong> From time to time, we\u2019ll \u201clook back<\/a>\u201d through our archives to share articles that are as relevant today as when they were printed. In this piece that was originally published in the December 1990 issue of <\/em>The Learning Edge, Clonlara\u2019s founder offers support and encouragement to anyone\u00a0who wants to take ownership of their learning.<\/em><\/p>\n

I recently read a newspaper article with \u201cThe New Workplace\u201d as a subtitle. It featured a Wisconsin, family-owned sausage company\u2014Johnsonville Foods\u2014where \u201cworkers reign supreme. They hire and fire each other, buy equipment, and write budgets. They are their own bosses.\u201d (Prior to making that change, the workers ran a forklift truck into a wall and made numerous other costly errors.)<\/p>\n

The owner turned the operation over to the workers because he considers himself a pragmatic guy. \u201cTeach people to do for themselves\u201d so that their performance is tops, he figured. The \u201crun-it-yourself\u201d philosophy is spreading across corporate America, the article stated.<\/p>\n

Look at that! They are playing our tune even in hard-nosed, no-nonsense business settings. It is small wonder, then, that the approach works so beautifully when education is the focus\u2014as in \u201chome-based education.\u201d The Clonlara School Home-Based Education Program [now called the Off-Campus Program<\/a>] is as close to a do-it-yourself operation as a home education\/private school can be. The idea is as old as the adage about leading a horse to water.<\/p>\n

Whether we are talking about a parent, a teacher, or a student the principle is the same. If a person actually takes ownership of his\/her own actions, the results are completely different from being lead around by the carrot and the stick approach (or worse) so common in public schools and in conventional private schools.<\/p>\n

One major message we are attempting to convey to parents, teachers, students is: \u201cThis is your education. This is your life. What you do with your time will mainly benefit you in the long run. Take responsibility for it. Get every ounce of good you can out of it. We can assist, but the choices are yours to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not to say that the task is easy. We are each fraught with doubts: Is this the best choice to make? Will this get me where I want to go? Are there not better choices I could make? These are all natural misgivings. We do well to heed them and to make adjustments as we go\u2014to learn by our errors, and not to repeat the same mistake over again. Making allowances and adjustments as we go is the stuff of learning and developing and growing. This is the \u201cloneliness of the long distance runner,\u201d the intensity of the serious scholar, the ownership of one\u2019s own life and one\u2019s own behavior.<\/p>\n

It is not just for the young person in the home to learn; it is for every person present, this growing and trying and testing one\u2019s limits. Any person at any age can benefit by the freedom to learn in a way that involves him\/her intimately in the process. We need not have our intelligence insulted by being told what to learn, when to learn it, and how to learn it; not even when the \u201cteacher\u201d is a kind, good-hearted, well-meaning soul.<\/p>\n

John Holt warned against \u201cuninvited learning\u201d in the recently published Learning All the Time<\/em>. That\u2019s a big part of this concept of taking hold of one\u2019s own learning\u2014whether one is young or older.<\/p>\n

The newspaper article cited the \u201cpayoff\u201d to companies that follow the lead of Johnsonville Foods: better quality, reduced costs, and greater efficiency. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those rare situations where everyone wins,\u201d said one company president. \u201cThe more you have a sense of autonomy, the happier a camper you are, \u201c he concluded, \u201c\u2026this philosophy won\u2019t work everywhere\u2014it\u2019s pointless in FACTORIES WITH SIMPLE REPETITIVE TASKS (capitals added for emphasis and to make the too, too obvious contrast between what can happen in homes and what does happen in schools).<\/p>\n

So, for all of you out there in [Clonlara\u2019s Off-Campus Program], the \u201cnew workplace\u201d is your home where education is a non-stop, no-holds-barred activity. Lean on us here at Clonlara School for all of the assistance (guidance, support, shoulder-to-cry-on, etc.) that you and your student require. We have been at this participant involvement, \u201cownership\u201d business for many a year now; we are pleased to share our experiences and your load. Doing so makes us a TEAM with you in your new workplace.<\/p>\n

(The article referenced was in the Ann Arbor News, Dec. 2, 1990. It was from an AP story by Sharon Cohen entitled, \u201cCompanies try making workers boss.\u201d)<\/p>\n

What does taking \u201cownership\u201d of learning mean to you and your family? Share your experience\u00a0and advice for others in the comments below.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Pat Montgomery, Founder Editor\u2019s Note: From time to time, we\u2019ll \u201clook back\u201d through our archives to share articles that are as relevant today as when they were printed. In this piece that was originally published in the December 1990 issue of The Learning Edge, Clonlara\u2019s founder offers support and encouragement to anyone\u00a0who wants to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clonlara.org\/hu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}