TWENTY QUESTIONS FOR DILIP MUKERJEA: QUESTION 19

[continued from the Last Post]

Question #19:

There is seemingly an evolving plethora of new skill or competency sets, e.g. neuro-linguistics, success motivation, financial intelligence, team creativity (synectics), Kepner-Tregore methodology, Triz, Tony Buzan’s stuff, etc., from many different purveyors, which one must acquire in order to survive – and thrive – in today’s fast-paced, rapidly-changing, highly-complex and hyper-competitive world.

How can we make our choices or rather how can we make the right choice?

DM:   Good question.

The cost of confusion is soaring, so we must appreciate the value of clarity. The list proffered by you has merit. One can never learn less. But we must be clear in determining where we are, where we wish to go, and how to get there. This must be in the face of upheavals in numerous sectors of society … feels like trying to outrun a tsunami!

My clear conviction is that we have a choice: education, or extinction!

We need to redesign the structure of education so that learning takes place instead of swotting, slogging, and sweating…in terror! The vital characteristic of a learning experience must be its evocative quality: it must evoke the experiences or meanings from within the learner, rather than describe what is on the outside.

It must have the power to catalyse passions. With its subtly penetrative attributes, smart learning systems are able to extend into the unconscious matrix where perceptions, experiences, concepts, memories, cohabit and commingle with one another in varying degrees of intimacy, sinuously tangling and disentangling, often with languorous aplomb, at other times, with celebratory incandescence.

These learning strategies unravel the qualitative relationships that are generally invisible to the naked eye. The process, at full throttle, often unravels an unsuspected kinship between things and elements, culminating in an epiphanic revelation.

I thus respectfully propose that my material be started with, so that a solid foundation can be laid for further skills to come on board. Without this foundation, we might as well invest in real estate…a house of cards!

[to be continued in the Next Post]