The TED talk by Chris Anderson highlights the power (and leavers) for successful online video and the RSA Animate talk by Sir Ken Robinson shows some of the inherent flaws in the standard education system, which was built on a factory model, not on a model with an understanding of human learning and behaviour.
With the historical change from Industrialisation to the Service Sector and now ever more creativity required in jobs, the learning and development departments need to reflect these changes and foster an interest and thirst for learning along with the critical thinking and information literacy skills required to do so without being sucked in by the bullshit that’s out there.

I have a more slightly more detailed post here :
https://www.filmsonthefly.com/wp/2010/11/new-paradigm/changing-the-educational-paradigm/

I think this is a fair overview of what L&D should be doing, though I’d go beyond that to say it should be about developing human potential (within the organizational context).

The ‘baggage’ is largely how L&D is perceived, generated by how 90% of L&D departments have operated in the past.

In my eyes, at least in theory, it always has been the role of L&D departments
– to be a competence center for learning (no matter what form of learning)
– to analyze (strategic) learning requirements and build an optimum framework to enable learning instead of delivering learning
– to be a change agent (partly in conjunction with Organizational Development departments)
– to deliver return on expectations on personnel development (or just training) measures, i.e. (partly) performance (potential) improvement.
– not being a mere provider of training sessions

I agree that it can be doubted if this role has always been fulfilled in practice, in theory it exists since decades.

fully agreed, I distributed your post to my members and the reactions were exactly along these lines: Let’s redefine the position.

Yes Dominique, I absolutely agree that it does have an important role, especially if it reinvents itself. However it might be easier if it’s positioned differently and maybe called something different….

I agree that learning will happen if the environment is right. I also believe that there will always be a role for an agile, operationally focused specialism to drive that environmental agenda.