“We are slowly coming to realize that all education is group work (Lewin, 1943, 1999, p334).” Certainly that is true in primary education, most types of effective training, and in what Lewin termed “re-education,” which is the process of helping individuals change how they think and behave in relation to issues such as race and role (especially how to effectively lead and how to effectively follow).

Lewin saw education as a reflection of the broader culture in which it resides, and as an influence in promulgating or changing that culture.

“Education is in itself a social process…Education tends to develop certain types of behavior, certain kinds of attitudes …there exists a general cultural atmosphere…Those who have had the opportunity to observe closely enough the behavior of school teachers (for instance, in Germany between 1917 and 1933, especially in the period 1931-1933) could easily see how even small changes in the general political situation affected, almost from day to day, not only the ideals which they taught, but also the educational methods which they employed (such as the type and frequency of punishment, the amount of drill, and the degree of freedom and independence in learning). Times of political change show very impressively the high degree to which education, in nearly all of its aspects, depends upon the social structure of the group. It seems to be easier for society to change education than for education to change society (Lewin, 1936, 1997, p16).”

True to form, Lewin saw the same dynamics everywhere. In his eyes, more important than the content for the most part, is the educational process itself. If you are teaching a class on democracy, yet suppressing dialogue and valuing compliance, memorization, and drill over critical thinking, you are actually teaching authoritarianism through your actions with more lasting effect than you are teaching democracy through your words. Regardless of the content, the process of teaching either reinforces democratic principles (active engagement and influence), or it does not:

“…for educating future citizens, no talk about democratic ideals can substitute for a democratic atmosphere in the school. The character and the cultural habits of the growing citizen are not so much determined by what he says as by what he lives (Lewin, 1944, 1999, p290).”

Lewin’s research clearly differentiated between active and passive participation, with active participation consistently yielding superior results. As noted earlier, when he was in a teaching or group leadership role, he walked his own talk, encouraging his students into active dialogue even while at the stodgy University of Berlin, where such behavior was far out of the norm_ “Lecturing is a procedure by which the audience is chiefly passive. The discussion, if conducted correctly, is likely to lead to a much higher degree of involvement (my bolding) (Lewin, 1948, 1999, p271).”

Through group dynamics, Lewin found that the social construction of reality could be shifted, and hence individual beliefs and values could be opened to influence. Active group participation, shifting the group from a restraining force to a driving force, was essential to the difficult goals of re-education: “The re-educative process affects the individual in three ways. It changes his cognitive structure, the way he sees the physical and social world, including all his facts, concepts, beliefs, and expectations. It modifies his valances and values, and these embrace both his attractions and aversions to groups and group standards, his feelings in regard to status differences, and his reactions to sources of approval or disapproval. And it affects motoric action, involving the degree of the individual’s control over his physical and social movements (Lewin, 1945, 1997,

Through re-education, which of course is a form of training, Lewin was a pioneer in the reduction and elimination of strongly held beliefs, such as prejudice, and to instilling democratic principles in leaders and their subordinates. Although they never met, Lewin’s efforts to create change through what came to be called experiential education paralleled American educator John Dewey. Indeed, two of Lewin’s most important associates, Leland Bradford and Ken Benne, “…were both students of Dewey’s philosophy of education (Bennis, Benne and Chin, 1961, p45).”

In Lewin’s mind, experiential learning became critical to re-education. That is, learning through an active experience that impacts the cognitive structure, valences and values, and motoric action, and through facilitated reflection on that experience. In his paper Conduct, Knowledge, and Acceptance of New Values Lewin made it clear that random experience is not enough to assure learning, and hence is not the same thing as “experiential learning”:

“The difficulties encountered in efforts to reduce prejudices or otherwise to change the social outlook of the individual have led to a realization that re-education cannot be merely a rational process. We know that lectures or other similarly abstract methods of transmitting knowledge are of little avail in changing his subsequent outlook and knowledge. We might be tempted, therefore, to think that what is lacking in these methods is first-hand experience…

Even extensive first-hand experience does not automatically create correct concepts (knowledge).

For thousands of years man’s everyday experience with falling objects did not suffice to bring him to a correct theory of gravity. A sequence of very unusual, man-made experiences, so-called experiments, which grew out of the systematic search for the truth were necessary to bring about a change from less adequate to more adequate concepts. To assume that first-hand experience in the social world would automatically lead to the formation of correct concepts or to the creation of adequate stereotypes seems therefore unjustifiable (Lewin, 1945, 1997, p48-55).”

Apples had been falling since the dawn of time! It took the accumulated knowledge of humanity up to the right moment combined with the inspiration of Sir Isaac Newton to formulate a scientifically valid theory of gravity.

Neither Lewin, nor I, nor my OD customers think we have that much time! Re-education must work relatively fast. It must also reach deep within the individual. To do so and to have it last requires a process in which the individual willingly rethinks their own beliefs and behaviors. Like the groups of children under democratic leadership, the individual must reach a point of taking responsibility for their own learning. If behavior is only enforced from outside, re-education has failed. As Lewin put it: “Re-education is frequently in danger of only reaching the official system of values, the level of verbal expression and not of conduct; it may result in merely heightening the discrepancy between the super-ego (the way I ought to feel) and the ego (the way I really feel), and thus give the individual a bad conscience. Such a discrepancy leads to a state of high emotional tension, but seldom to correct conduct. It may postpone transgressions, but it is likely to make the transgressions more violent when they occur.

A factor of great importance in bringing about a change in sentiment is the degree to which the individual becomes actively involved in the problem. Lacking this involvement, no objective fact is likely to reach the status of a fact for the individual concerned and therefore influence his social conduct (my bolding) (Lewin, 1945, 1997, p52).”

If people are simply lectured at – moralized at by a critical authority figure – then all they are likely to learn is to watch what they say around the authorities. Such approaches increase polarization instead of decreasing it. Conflict goes underground, where it simmers. To foster real and lasting change the individual, in concert with the group, must be facilitated in doing genuine action research on themselves. They must test beliefs, old and new, and test new behaviors through dialogue and interaction. When done effectively, Lewin’s methods achieved (and still achieve) reliable and dramatic results:

Experiments in leadership training have shown that it is even possible… to transform highly autocratic leaders of long standing within a short time into efficient democratic leaders (my bolding) (Lewin, 1943, 1997, p41).”

The following is one example from Lewin’s work in industry, which we will explore in more depth in Chapter 10:

“An example of a successful change in ideology and social behavior is the retraining of relatively autocratic recreation leaders into excellent democratic leaders, as carried out by Bavelas. These leaders had followed their method of handling groups for five to seven years. The change took place within three weeks. It was brought about partly by observation of other leaders and a detailed discussion of the various possibilities of the leader’s reactions to a multitude of situations arising from group life. In this way, the cognitive structure of the field ‘leader behavior’ became much more finely differentiated; the individual became sensitized. The motivational change from skepticism to enthusiasm for democratic procedure cannot be discussed here in detail. It came about, in part, through the thrill of experiencing what a democratic group-life can do to children, and through the realization that one is able to create such an atmosphere. The preceding years had been for these people a period of low morale, of dissatisfaction with the insecure position of the W.P.A. recreation worker and the carrying through of their work as a matter of routine. The new experience could change the ideology and morale of these people so suddenly and deeply because it provided worth-while goals and a long-range outlook to individuals who previously had lived with a time perspective which was composed of a disagreeable past, unsatisfactory present, and no positive outlook for the future. In other words, the retraining was achieved, not in spite of the long-standing bad habits but, partly, because of them (my bolding) (Lewin 1942, 1997, p226).”

My colleagues and I can bear witness to countless such shifts in even shorter periods of time, as we have applied and refined Lewin’s methods. More on that in Chapters 12 and 13.

Lewin summarizes the shift to leading through democratic principles this way: “Learning democracy means, first, that the person has to do something himself instead of being passively moved by forces imposed on him. Second, learning democracy means to establish certain likes and dislikes, that is, certain valences, values, and ideologies. Third, learning democracy means to get acquainted with certain techniques, such as those of group decision (Lewin, 1942, 1997, p223).”

All of which is vital to our next topic, Social Justice and Change, and to the final chapter of Section 2, Organization Development.

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