Re: more on The Tyranny of Structurelessness
From: Racheli&John (jnpalmeattglobal.net)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 13:47:01 -0600 (MDT)
** Reply to note from "Ken Collerman" <kcollerm [at] windsong.bc.ca> Fri, 13 
Jul 2001 11:53:42 -0700
>From Racheli

Hi Ken,

I agree. 

The late John Holt wrote somewhere that there is no "unstructured"
learning.  All learning has structure - and the difference is between
whether the structure is explicit, or not.  I think it's the same here.
The advantage of having explicit structure/policies is that 
it allows debate.  It also allows measuring behavior and actions
in relation to a given set of rules.  On the other hand, when the rules are 
implicit, it's not clear what they are, what they should be, how they can 
be changed. This leads to ambiguity which serves best the most domineering
types.

R.


> At Windsong we have a small number of members who do not like written
> policies or agreements of any kind.  The two reasons I've heard for not
> having policies (or agreements) are:
>   
> 1) Policies are created by people who just want to have control over others.
>   
> 2) We don't need policies because we can just use common sense.
>   
> We have only 7 policies, 5 years after moving in.
>   
> The result, as I see it, has been a lot of confusion and a minority taking
> control by making decisions, using their "common sense".  Windsong is a
> great place to live, however, I think we've lost some of our democracy.



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