Introduction to Articles by Thom Osborn
Here are some articles I wrote a long time ago. Re-reading them recently, I think they are still of interest, still relevant to our time, and remain illuminating for the work we are undertaking in these training events.
They go back to the 70s and 80s, when I worked on the design and running of two courses. The first was at the Polytechnic (as it was then) of North London, in the Organisation Change Unit of the Management Studies Department, together with John Southgate. The second was in the Counselling Skills courses at Southwark College, with Brigid Procter.
The students on these courses played a large part in what they learned and how the programme was structured. Both were for mature students, already experienced in some related field: but I don’t think their level of ‘maturity’ affects the issues addressed here. I believe this approach to be valid at every level of achievement.
The courses came to be called ‘self-directed’, but that title ignores the collective planning that the students, together with the staff, are thrown into.
So: the determining of what an individual student is motivated to learn; and the collective work on how to put into practice a plan which will use the available resources to make these motivations possible: I believe that both these aspects were, and remain, of vital importance in two respects. One is the developing of personal and collective responsibility. And the other is a move towards resolving a central issue of our society: namely, how to integrate collaboration and competition - or, in other words, how to resolve the polarisation between co-operation and entrepreneurial freedom.
I was working in an educational setting. But the articulating of individual wants and needs; and the interaction and shaping of a way to achieve these which gives voice and value to all of those involved: these are, I believe central to how we need to approach the social, economic and environmental problems of our time. And not just in an ‘organisational’ framework, but in a psychological one, at all levels from intrapersonal to global.
I stopped working in this field after Margaret Thatcher came to power. This kind of approach was replaced by ‘management’ and ‘targets’. The work we had done somehow fizzled out. I lost energy for it and went on to other things.
These are old articles, and much in them was written in the context of their time. But reading them again after all these years, in the context of planning these events we are now putting on, I believe the narrative they provide from back then is still useful in looking at what we are doing now.
The first provides a kind of general history of that Polytechnic course. The next two describe the structuring of learning along these lines in the South-West London course. The fourth and fifth were more general, around the issue of responsibility (all were published in the journal ’ Self And Society’ between 1975 and 1984).
A lot of water has flown under many bridges since those days. Please only read them to the extent that they engage your attention!