eLearning the Religion - The Unfortunate Parallel

It might be because I'm reading the book 'God Is Not Great', but I essentially can't lose this feeling that eLearning and the folks within the industry operate as a 'religion'. Now there are going to be some of you who think this is a good thing. I couldn't disagree more.

Without getting into a debate over 'religion' itself, let me point out some of the characteristics of a religion that I believe are universally true and then discuss how these characteristics when applied to eLearning prove to be a detriment.

1) All religions require a 'leap of faith'. In other words, religion is beyond reason, and if you tried to logically defend it, you would ultimately have to at some point agree that the 'first thing' (refered to as God) can not ever be logically proven as fact and therefore requires a leap of faith. Religion would argue this is because as humans we could not possibly really 'get it' unless through divine revelation.

2) All religions have 'Guardians' of truth that serve as the messengers who spread the word and work to assure the faithful that their faith is well placed and also rebuke the nay sayers.

3) Religions require 'status quo'. Ideally there is no change...ever...since the basis of a religion is thought to come from God him/herself. If it comes from God...it must be true! Sure, there is evolution and modernization...but really this is simply trying to attract the next generation of believers...since the current generation would never want anything changed.

Now lets look at these characteristics and apply them to eLearning:

1) Leap of Faith - People buy products and services all the time before ever having a logical reason or the right information about the product or service before buying. They acknowledge their ignorance and take somebody's word for it, that whatever they're buying will do the job. This is pervasive in the eLearning industry. There are a significant portion of decision makers that are in their position without any knowledge at all of learning, training, development, eLearning, etc who pay big bucks for products and services. Even the people below the decision makers who inform the decision maker are in no position to understand the ins and outs of what they recommend. The end result - the leap of faith - and a big waste of money.

2) The Guardians of Truth - These are the folks that keep the status quo. They reaffirm the faithful and keep away the nay sayers. If you don't believe these exist, take a look at every conference and look at the vendors, speakers and participants. The vendors have spent lots of money on their product so they absolutely want to slow down change to sell as much product as they can. The speakers in the hopes of attracting the largest amount of people must talk about topics that are familiar to everyone and most of the time, speakers are vendors. And then you have the participants. The participants only know what they've heard at conferences. Their education comes from the literature and the conferences that all conspire to market the same message and that message is the one that the guardians of truth want us to hear. The messages that sell the most products and attract the greatest amount of attendees.

3) Status Quo - There is no doubt that when large groups of people all share the same message, as a person of reason I'm going to tend to drop my guard and believe what I hear. The eLearning industry and the organizations that operate in it must try to maintain the status quo to satisfy its participants. Change is intentionally halted and slowed down. It preys on ignorance and systematically keeps ignorance alive by bombarding participants with half truths, lies and simplified ideas.How else could it sell to the ignorant?

If you still think I'm being harsh, think about eLearning 2.0? How many people know where the '2.0' comes from? How many people know what it refers to? How many people understand the concepts implicit in tying '2.0' to learning? My guess is the answers to the questions are 'not many'. If thats the case, why is everybody talking about it? Where is the research? Where are the nay sayers?

eLearning needs the nay sayers. We need to educate ourselves so that we can make informed decisions, not decisions based on a leap of faith. We need to challenge the orthodoxy. We need to push our institutions to showcase what the 'others' are saying. What organization out there is going to take this challenge?