Stephen Downes continues the Learning Is Vulnerability discussion by agreeing with much I’ve written, stopping just short of the “eating is vulnerability” comparison I chose to include.
Draper writes, “Learning is no more vulnerability than eating might be.” Quite so. But every time we eat, we are vulnerable. Not ‘vulnerable’ in the sense-of-community kumbaya sense. But vulnerable in the sense that we might be poisoned, suffer indigestion, eat too much, find the food distasteful, and any of a hundred other discomforts. Any change creates vulnerability because it introduces something from outside the system into the inside, and that introduces the possibility of some sort of failure – failure to adapt, failure to learn, failure to digest, failure to grow.
To be honest, I like it, and really appreciate that Stephen took the time to elaborate further! While focusing mostly on the feelings of vulnerability a learner might experience while in the process of learning, I hadn’t considered how internal change might impact the system as a whole.