ACTION LEARNING: Its Terms and Character

The Pervasiveness of Change It is change which gives the present time its distinctive character; most of what we now have to deal with changes more in a year than, in the past, it would have changed in a century. And it is not only the spectacular we need to think about, such as the panic when the nuclear reactor overheats and a town's population has to flee from danger overnight, nor when some new wonder drug goes wrong and hundreds of babies are born with hideous deformities. The very bases of our culture are being changed by the speed with which we can handle information, or put people into outer space; even though we personally may not handle information for a living (and certainly do not make a habit of going to the moon), all we do is greatly affected by change—and many of us are finding it hard to become accustomed to the unexpected. It is, all the same, no good complaining; not for some centuries has this country actually passed laws forbidding the introduction of new ideas.