You Don’t Really Want to Learn in Risk, Do You?

I get contacted all the time by organizations who state they want to learn, particularly about a different way to tackle risk that works. Then when we first make contact it eventuates that they don’t really want to learn and certainly are not ‘ready’ for any learning.

We learn in learning theory, curriculum, pedagogy and education that ‘readiness’ is essential for learning (https://safetyrisk.net/scaffolding-readiness-and-zpd-in-learning/ ). It is also critical to note that I am not interested in schooling or training. Parroting, schooling and training are not about learning. A shift in cognition is NOT learning.

Most times when I read Safety talk about learning, it’s not about learning but rather schooling and training. Schooling is not education and is most often anti-educational and anti-learning, it is about cultural reproduction (Apple, Giroux, McLaren) not learning. If you want to learn about learning perhaps start with Freire or Goodman.

Taking in data, regurgitating data and the input/output of knowledge is NOT learning. Ideas without method creates no learning (https://safetyrisk.net/the-safety-and-new-view-debate/ ). Collecting and shifting information is NOT learning (https://safetyrisk.net/learning-leaning-and-learning-in-safety/ ).

The enquiries I get are most often governed by the following archetypes:

• The Gunfighter: comes to the moment seeking to shoot down things it doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to understand.
• The Entertainer: expecting some entertaining moment but no intention of moving.
• The Amateur Lawyer: defends the indefensible and spruiks hobby law as professional.
• The Gaslighter: starts by faux enquiry wanting to gaslight in response.
• The Fixer: seeking silver bullets and quick fixes to a wicked problem.
• The Psychoanalyst: projects a psychosis by association only to attribute power to self.
• The Engineer: hears problems only solvable by measurement when anti-measurement is articulated.
• The Professor: comes to the moment to tell the other is stupid.

None of these archetypes help learning indeed, they waste time disguised in the rhetoric of ‘learning’. Each of these archetypes demonstrates that the enquiry is not enquiry but rather a false consciousness (https://safetyrisk.net/false-consciousness-and-perception-in-risk-and-safety/ ) not aware of itself. Most often when I get a call or someone seeks to engage under these archetypes the first thing they want to do is affirm and tell me all they know. This is NOT the seeking of learning.

All learning requires embodied movement and if you are not prepared to move into uncertainty, take a leap of faith, suspend your agenda (https://safetyrisk.net/step-1-suspend-your-agenda/ ), then the enquiry is NOT about learning but schooling.

If one seeks learning one needs to be prepared for a hefty dose of Cognitive Dissonance, disruption and threat. Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger) is not about intellectual discomfort but a challenge to worldview, to your very identity. All of these archetypes listed above have no interested in moving into uncertainty, no interest in faith.

Most enquiries I receive are not interested in any of the above and so regress back into what is safe: paperwork, systems, hazards, controls and policing. This is the archetype of safety (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-safety-as-an-archetype/ ). There is no safety in learning.