To Make a Better Workshop

Abstract

T HE workshop technique, by which people together in small groups to discuss the problems most pertinent to those present, has grown enormously in the last ten years. It is now used by people in all walks of life-wherever individuals with similar interests are assembled. The older pattern for holding a meeting was to have a series of speeches, where someone from afar, quite removed from the people assembled, lectured on the ideas that were important to the speaker. Those who had assembled to learn merely sat and listened, or slept, or dreamt. The chance that the speaker could meet the needs of all his hearers was extremely remote. Sometimes he missed the interests of everyone in his audience. Not infrequently, believe it or not, the speaker was employed specifically because he would talk about something of no immediate concern to his learners. It is not uncommon even now, for example, for teachers, at their conventions, to call in someone to entertain them, or to a fake Indian chief to tell them of tepee life. This apparently is an effort to get away from it all, although the meeting has been called to improve their understanding of their work. The workshop movement has thrived because of the general revulsion against boring speeches, little related to what the learner came to learn. There is but one way to sure that discussions will be apropos to the interests and needs of those present, and that is to give them a chance to ask questions and to contribute from their own knowledge and experience. There is great promise for better learning in the recognition of the fact that each individual in a group knows things which no one else knows. Each one, therefore, has a unique contribution to to the whole. This is the significance of uniqueness. Many of us think we have to make people learn, that the learner does not know anything, has nothing to contribute, and has to be told all that he will learn. This attitude on the part of teachers and parents has caused people to lose confidence in themselves, and respect for their own ability to think and to contribute. The fact is that the total knowledge of the group members about any topic under consideration far exceeds that of any expert who may be brought in. We outsiders may not always be pleased with the quality, the so-called level, of discussion, because we expect others to share our own interests. The place to start, however, is with the current present concerns of the group members, whether that starting po t pleases us or not. A successful small group, operating toward and, at least in part, accomplishing a goal held by its members to be worthy, constitutes the best learning experience known to me.