Category Archives: Education

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Welcome to a New Kind of Tension

From Newsweek — August 24, 2010:

“Silly Things We Believe About Witches, Obama, and More” by David A. Graham

Orwell taught us that freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.  How much simpler and profound does it get than that?  Depends on how deeply you value your belief set.

There are a few ways to cause people to deny that two plus two make four.  The most basic of course is to cause them to suffer so much physical or psychological pain that they will say anything to make the pain stop.  In Orwell’s anti-Utopian 1984, that was the most expedient, effective, and predictable approach.  With power-based fear as a means of control and the ability to inflict pain, an autocratic society can not only write its own rules, it can divine its own science and history.  We know the parable of 1984 is extreme, but we also know the context and landscape from which it emerged.  Thus far, our core values have largely prevailed, at least within most of our own sphere of influence.  The fact that I can freely type these words and publish them globally without restriction or anticipated retribution suggests we have collectively heeded the warning and fought reasonably successfully against the absurd.

Yet there is a more subtle and gnawing mode of drowning in Orwell’s soup without tangible restraint or any violence.  It’s called repetition.  If enough people say enough times that our President was not born of Constitutional privilege to hold his office — and that his true religion is something other than what he does choose to practice — the echoes will resonate, first slowly with skepticism, then with snowballing strength, and soon enough with mystical authority.  Can the untrue be perceived as true without fundamental questioning?  Why certainly, if there is no agenda to question the rhetoric which most suits a listener’s taste.  When we test the waters for the tides, we refer to the methodology as opinion polling.  Opinions are entirely products of freedom, they are shared freely without legislative filter, and they contain the power to be as impactful if not more so than facts.  Is this a game?  Indeed, it is a well-played game where the stakes transcend all that we hold to be sacred.

We teach our children not to gossip.  Why?  Because gossip is hurtful, it is beneath us as educated, civilized, felicitous members of intersecting communities.  So how do we get the strange beliefs assembled in the August 19, 2010 Pew Poll cited in Graham’s Newsweek story?  It’s not conspiracy, that requires sophisticated orchestration well beyond the bounds of random lunacy.  We get there because people “pass it on” in ways that suit their tastes, it’s just that simple.  Without respect for the truth, opinions can too easily become shared and replace truth with equal detriment.

This is a very simple corollary that precedes the more recent Newsweek story on why 38% of Americans can’t pass a citizenship test.  They can’t pass it because they don’t find it important enough to be able to pass it.  Likewise, any number of individuals don’t find it important enough to validate their opinions by referencing a fact base before they pass them on; it’s inconvenient to fact check, and may not align with deeply held biases that will always be more resonant than facts.

Integrity is the only path beyond the metaphorical Orwell.  We can abolish torture by law, then practice and praise ourselves for preserving freedom, but if freedom is the freedom to teach and evangelize that two plus two make five, have we really come as far as we should expect of ourselves?  Education must be at the core of our debate and discussion, allowing us always to differ on opinion, but when we entrench the unreal in a parade of support, we do no one any favors.  Instead we betray the trust of the very freedom that allows us to say what we will, and we exploit the gift of open exchange by blowing wind rather filling the air with choice words.

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A Civil Right and a Civil Responsibility

From Newsweek — March 21, 2011:

“How Dumb Are We?” by Andrew Romano

Tina Brown of New Yorker and Daily Beast editorial fame is now making her provocative imprint felt on the “new” Newsweek, evidenced here by summary findings in asking our fellow citizens no more than what we ask aspiring citizens.  Since my wife helps prepare many of these aspiring citizens for the same test where the stakes are slightly higher, I have some modest insight into the scope and depth of empathy here.  In the Newsweek test given to 1000 already-Americans, apparently 38% failed.

Click through and take a look at the test before you jump to the conclusion that it is just a dose of unimportant trivial pursuit.  We have to take a basic written test to get a driver’s license, but our sacred one-person one-vote widely evangelized model for democracy comes with only an age restriction.  If you can buy a six-pack of beer at the corner grocery store, even if you can’t calculate the tax in your head, you can vote.

Does this matter?  Methinks it does.  Putting aside the issue of education’s role in bettering newly arrived and long-term citizen’s quality of life as it can apply to the job force, what about the quality of the dialogue (and yes, argument) we need to share with each other to assign executive, legislative, and judicial power to individuals to collectively make the decisions on our behalf that position our nation for solving its current problems, preventing its future conflicts, and making us proud on the world stage.  How can we possibly do our civic duty of discussion and debate if we don’t have any sort of level playing field of knowledge?  We all have to somehow evidence we know the rules of the road to shift out of reverse, at least most of them, but we don’t have to evidence anything to have an opinion on public policy, it shall remain in perpetuity by our Constitution an inalienable right.

So why one set of rules for those already in the club and one for those who so desperately want to join the club?  Are we perhaps asking too much of the newbies, is the test somehow a set of trick questions meant to create a litmus test of seriousness of intent or a number controlling hurdle?  Is it perfunctory?  Or is there wisdom in making people proud of achieving a shared platform of understanding before we welcome them to the permanent pride of  this fragile experiment we call democracy?

If the conclusion one draws from my commentary here is that already-Americans should have to pass the same test to vote, that would hardly be my thinking, that is settled law.  Equally I would not want to eliminate the test for new citizens, because I have personally observed their joy in passing this test and their newfound hope and faith in a future that begins with the reward.

What I am suggesting is that if we don’t start demanding broad, honest, serious, fact-based and critical thinking models of education for every single human being as an absolute, then we’ll get what we’ll get.  We’ll keep fighting with each other, we’ll let Congress keep fighting with each other (the wrestlers change costumes but the steel cage death match remains Groundhog Day), and we’ll keep making mistakes until one day we make one that is just too serious, and our relevancy on the planet will be reversed.

We need to get very, very pissed off.  Each of our votes is one, it counts the same.  We have to have faith that everyone around us has some shared basis of decision-making or our own contribution no longer works.  One generation ago our public education was the envy of the world, we were #1 because we made it a national priority.  Today depending on you who you ask, we are #17.  Is that okay for a nation that by decree gives all power to the people?

Education is not a luxury item, it is not an option, it comes with the territory of democracy.  Without education, we will destroy the environment, the whole landscape be it cash green or forest green, literally and spiritually, and there won’t be a subsequent generation with the resources to fix it.

If we can afford doctors and lawyers and bankers and movie stars, we can afford teachers and schools and educational tools provided in a setting of peace and safety.  If we don’t think that’s important and want to leave anecdotes about ignorance to the late night comedians and midday pundits, we get what we get.  I just can’t believe on a scale of goals and priorities that an uneducated populous is what any already educated individual would find acceptable and sustainable.

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For Love or Money or Necessity

From The Wall Street Journal: April 23, 2008:

“Must I Bank” by Jonathan Knee

I’ve been thinking a good deal about my Engineering vs. Liberal Arts post earlier this week, and couldn’t help but remember this great column by Jonathan Knee from just about three years ago.  Harken back to 2008 and you will remember the first rumblings of approaching economic challenges, and the first waves of impact in the financial sector where life as it had been known was about to lose a lot of luster.  Careers were changing, some were ending.

The passage that leapt out at me, and why I committed Knee’s article to memory, is a cogent but quietly profound quote from the existentialist Rainer Maria Rilke which he cites.  In “Letters to a Young Poet” Rilke writes:

“This most of all: ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?”

In Knee’s analysis that followed, he framed the business context with poignant clarity: “Rilke warned of the hardships of his chosen craft, arguing that if the poet could even imagine living without writing, he would be better off doing so.”

I remember this same discussion growing up time and again with musicians, comedians, authors, dancers, and actors.  Why did they do what they did, why would they choose a life where hardship was the norm?  The answer in every circumstance was quite clear, they did not choose the hardship at all, who would purposely be such a maniacal masochist?  They did what they did because they could not imagine doing anything else.  They did not choose their path, except in acknowledging that the discipline chose them.  If you could do any other thing for a living than follow the path of the gift and be happy, why wouldn’t you?  You would.

Knee applies this same rigor to the discussion of career choice, in this instance, the path of the investment banker.  Yet Knee’s thought pattern travels well beyond that of the investment banker, beyond financial services, to career at large.  Must You Do what it is you are doing?  If not, then can you make a choice that is a better or closer fit to what it is you are supposed to be doing or could be doing.  Knee is not impractical in what he suggests, he knows we all have bills to pay and responsibilities to meet, he simply asks us to consider the extreme case to make sure that we are thinking actively instead of passively, and at least considering if that which we are doing is by selection, momentum, or the well placed secret traps of the pigeon-hole.

We may choose to study liberal arts or engineering, and we may choose the path of a profession.  The choice to change is always present, but really, it is not much of a choice if we force ourselves to be honest and think about the concept of Must.

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Can You Study Want You Want and Still Have a Career in Tech?

 From TechCrunch — March 21, 2011:

“Engineering vs. Liberal Arts” by Vivek Wadhaw

So I ask myself, does it really have to be versus?

Increasingly the notion of the value of a liberal education comes under attack, particularly in a tough job market with economic pressure everywhere you look.  Many of our nation’s greatest universities still hold fast to the notion that they are not pre-professional academies, and that their job is to teach undergraduates “how to learn — how to learn.”  That might sound a bit abstract for the aspiring unemployed with bachelors degrees in art history, creative writing, or sociology — especially with a bag of student loans as a lovely parting gift — but consider the following:

1) It’s your life, you only get one, and no matter how healthy you are, it is going to be relatively short.  Why are you here?

2) What you do with that life cannot solely be guided by decisions around income, your earnings will only be one part of the greater picture known as potential fulfillment.

3) The four years (plus or minus) you spend in college is by definition impractical, unless you are pre-med or something similar, the NPV of four years spending without earning is going to be a tough pill to digest unless you Think Different.

4) If you have made the choice to go impractical and invest in a college degree, how can it not be in a subject you love?

5) If you learn to learn, and learn it well, you can probably teach yourself almost anything (ok, maybe not brain surgery).  The point is to love learning, sharpen your critical thinking skills, and pursue your passion.  Passionate people have a much better chance — though no guarantee — at happiness (see #2 above).

So I’m with Steve, follow your muse, study what matters to you.  You can always pick up the focus in graduate school or on the job training, and who knows, the insight you gain in the study of almost anything could just Change The World.  But remember, science and math are a subset of the liberal arts, a classical education includes broad exposure and experimentation, so if already love poetry, perhaps you can also learn to like physics, even if just a little bit — it’s good to stretch beyond your comfort zone and you always need to do that.  And as Steve says, when it comes time to innovate, it does take all disciplines working together at the table, so the more you know and appreciate what your neighbor knows, the more you can help each other win together as a team.