I Am Pissed At The Lies Being Told About American Education!
Well … they are not really lies per se, more like ‘mis-truths’ or ‘misleading comments’ about our kids here in the U.S.A.
The story reported by PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment) picked up by NPR as “U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science” where I got it, is suggestive that American students are falling behind in their math and science scores compared to other countries.
Now here’s the challenge with that statement …
MOST PEOPLE ARE TOO ILLITERATE TO READ THE STORY ABOUT THE FAILING EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN AMERICA!!!
I bet that got your attention, huh?
Well that’s my point.
This story is a kind of subtle fear mongering designed to promote the interests of a very select group IMO.
Here’s a definition of “illiterate” from WordNet® 3.0 2006 edition:
- uneducated in the fundamentals of a given art or branch of learning; lacking knowledge of a specific field; “she is ignorant of quantum mechanics”; “he is musically illiterate” [syn: ignorant, illiterate]
Now most people are familiar with the definition of illiterate as:
- not able to read or write [ant: literate] (also from WordNet® 3.0 2006)
Yet the idea that illiterate also means “lacking knowledge of a specific field” escapes them when I use it in the bold statement above.
In this case I’m pointing to being illiterate in a specific way: i.e.: illiterate about how to read the subtleties of statistical information
The U.S. is not falling behind other countries … allow American students remain “sub-average” in ranking when compared to the countries that are “above average” in the PISA study, students in America are showing improvement in math and science scores between the years of 2003 and 2009 (the dates of the studies indicated in the PISA graph). It’s rather that the other countries begin compared with American scores on the PISA standardized test are moving up ahead of the U.S. in this specific scoring and ranking system …
The US is not falling behind at all, their scores have in fact remained flat from 2009, and have gone up since 2003!
NOTE: Using the data from the PISA scores the U.S. is actually tied at 15 in reading, tied at 33 in math and and 22nd in science specifically, so the mean of 28th is bunk when looking at the specific scoring in the individual areas of the test.
The specific score used for China’s ranking in math was the highest in the chart “600” and was from “Shanghai-China” – arguably the most westernized and international city in China (with the possible exception of Hong Kong) with the most privileged educational opportunities in the country, not China at-large, including all the rural and non-metro areas of the country where education is likely least emphasized and least privileged.
As far as I can tell the scoring for the United States was a mean score for the entire country, presumably including all of our most economically underprivileged, and arguably least educationally privileged, regions. I’d personally be curious to see how students in the most privileged U.S. educational communities, like the one I live in near Princeton, NJ, would score comparatively.
(Ref: “Shanghai tops international test scores” SOURCE: 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development | The Washington Post – Dec. 7, 2010)
These are the kinds of distinctions that must be accounted for when looking at comparative test results and scoring.
Look at the chart provided from PISA that’s attached to the article I referenced above … it’s very clear from that chart what’s happening; much better than the article states it in words IMO.
THE U.S. IS NOT FALLING BEHIND AT ALL IN MATH AND SCIENCE per se … JUST IN THIS ‘SPECIFIC’ SYSTEM OF TESTING … AGAINST THE IMPROVEMENT MADE BY OTHER COUNTRIES!
There’s an question hiding inside of this data from my point of view.
What is the data, as it’s being presented publicly, intended to demonstrate and/or suggest … and who would benefit from the results the data indicates?
I don’t want to leap off of the “conspiracy death curve” … but I believe that more often than not statistics have an insidious purpose when they are applied to making a point without clarity about reasoning behind how the statistics were generated and the results arrived at by them.
To quote a favorite scholar of mine, Gregory Bateson … “shoddy epistemology!”
So what’s the big deal … why all the fuss about math and science scores???
Simple …
Better math and science scores means a better chance at getting the “cubicle” jobs available in the current market conditions.
Yup … that’s it.
The U.S. and other developed countries need people in cubicles to run the sophisticated technology we depend on, to run our laboratories where drugs are made, to step into the industrial-military complex where the big money is spent to make millionaires and billionaires out of the capitalists that own the factories and businesses behind them … and we’re losing those jobs to immigrants who are better trained at filling the cubicle positions because they are better trained in rote math and science studies.
Here’s my proposition …
Americans who attend our public and private elementary and secondary schools, and continue onto both our public and private universities are among the best trained “thinkers” on the planet … BAR NONE!”
Instead of getting lost in this ridiculous intensity about producing better trained rote mental robots that will compete with the rote mental robots being produced in other countries … let’s focus on building up the creative and entrepreneurial skills of our youth so we can employ those folks as we continue to build the best and most successful businesses, products and services on the planet.
America will NOT produce more creative/entrepreneurial adults by focusing more heavily on math and science … BUT BY REINTRODUCING MORE HUMANITIES AND ARTS INTO OUR SCHOOL CURRICULUMS!!!
This is especially true in our elementary schools … and heck, our pre-schools as well where we’re beginning to see an earlier and earlier introduction of math and science into the curriculums there as well.
(Does it seem ridiculous to anyone but me that pre-schools even have curriculums??!!!????!!)
FWIW in my mind this includes the movement arts …
We need more music and dance in our schools … not longer school days and school years to improve what calculators and computers will always outperform humans at doing …
LET’S MAKE WHAT MAKES US MOST HUMAN MOST IMPORTANT!
A couple of other statistics that might be more telling than math and science scores …
Now let’s cross-map the impact of math and science in terms of real output. IMO this would be the test of applicability of the learning, more so than testing well, i.e.: what can you do with what you’ve learned?
From my point of view learning is all about the ability to perceive, think, imagine and create … not about regurgitating rote information.
So how about using information about worldwide patents issued???
In that ‘test’ where would the United States residents come out?
Well based upon a global study done in 2006 (a period that overlaps with the PISA study quoted about declining U.S. math and science scores BTW) … it turns out that the Americans did pretty dang well!
In fact the only country that surpasses the U.S. in patent grants is Japan … which is statistically relevant, especially when you consider that the population of Japan is about 1/6 of the United States.
Here’s some data for you …
“World Patent Report: A Statistical Review – 2008 edition”
When you look at the data you’ll get a sense of who’s doing what worldwide in terms of creating “new stuff” … as in new products, technologies, drugs, etc. … and you’ll see that the U.S. is by no means “failing” in any way!
In fact when you cross map the data from the PISA study and see how well the students from countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands are doing in math and science … and how well that translates into new patent filings you’ll see that the U.S. education begins to look quite a bit better very quickly (yes, I’ve taken into account the small populations of those countries in my comments).
How about we move on … to Nobel Prize winners, a distinction about who has done truly significant, often seminal, groundbreaking work in their field of expertise???
Here’s the list:
“Nobel Laureates and Country of Birth“
Now when you scroll down you’ll see that there are some pretty impressive turn outs given the population by folks in places like:
Austria, Canada, Denmark, France (very impressive prior to about 1940), Germany (both pre- and post- war geographical distinctions), Italy, Japan, Norway (very impressive given the population), Russia, Scotland, Spain, Sweden (a little over-represented? … maybe some bias there???), Netherlands (again, very impressive given the population), and then you come to …
United Kingdom … HOLY COW!!! … that’s a long list!
And, look at the dates for the Brits … consistent winners from the early 1900s through to the most recent prize awards.
By the way if you’re still up to it after reading this far, try cross mapping the list of Nobel Prize winners with the PISA graphic of math and science scores.
Especially look at the countries where there were declining scores and those where the scores were improving against the most recent prizes awarded by the Nobel committee.
Then you get to the United States Nobel Prize winners … and you have to ask yourself … “REALLY? Are we really worried about the state of education in the United States recently???”
Okay … that’s not just a long list … it’s a crazy long list!!!
And, look at the dates of the prizes awarded too.
Notice the number of Nobel prizes awarded for achievement (i.e.: not the Peace Prize) in the last decade or so to Americans, versus those awarded to folks from elsewhere.
Also, notice the categories that Americans receive the award for specifically. Nobel Prize winners from the U.S. dominate the list in Economics, Chemistry, (Physiology of) Medicine, Physics … with the only real competition in numbers coming in some categories from the Brits.
This is an impressive achievement for a country to lay claim to year after year. Not bad for one with such a “failing” educational system, eh?
Do you think we do so well on the world stage because of the rote learning of math and science required to score well on standardized tests???
OR … do you think that Americans do so well in the application of math and sciences because we’re taught to think and have the freedom to imagine what hasn’t be discovered to be taught yet?
If we follow the plans that the cabal of educational critics will have us believe we’ll focus on scoring well on standardized test, while we give up our children’s future ability to think and imagine.
Is this what we really want for the future of American education???
Creativity and imagination is where it’s at IMO!!!
To illustrate competence in creativity I want to use one more comparison, the MacArthur Foundation grants and prizes.
Here’s a comment about the MacArthur Foundation from their website:
“The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society.” – See more at: http://www.macfound.org/about/#sthash.BBwbRFQe.dpuf
This foundation awards what some people refer to as the “Creative Nobel Prize” – specifically looking to recognize and award creativity and imaginative approaches and solutions to significant issues in the world.The foundation is open to international inquiries, nominations and submissions.
While MacArthur grants are open to international applicants the Fellows program is solely for Americans So while looking at MacArthur Fellows won’t give us a clue about their ranking comparative to potential fellows from other places, because they are no such fellows, it will give us a chance to look at some of things some of the best and brightest from America are up to …
So the question again is, “In the international pool where do Americans swim when it comes to generating innovative and creative solutions to significant global issues such as those addressed by MacArthur Foundation fellows?”
Here’s the 2013 MacArthur Fellows List:
http://www.macfound.org/fellows/class/
Take a look at what American education produces and also what some of the top American educators look like through the lens of the MacArthur Fellows Class of 2013.
Once again I’d argue that …
The difference that makes a difference is education (especially early education IMO) is promoting a sense of wonder and curiosity … as well as a sense of intellectual confidence … that we’d all be better served putting our attention on than the building of rote memorization or methodology skills that the PISA standardized test measures for showing Americans falling behind in math and science.
What do you think it does to the psyches of our young when they are presented with misleading information about their “failure to perform on the world stage” in regard to considering their future … and the future of our nation???
And, once again that insidious proposition, “Who does this serve in the long run???”
I’d love to hear your thoughts about American education … or education anywhere in the world for that matter.
IMO there is nothing more important to us than protecting and preserving the future of our people and our planet … it is the sacred task we’re born into, like it or not.
What do you think???
Joseph Riggio,Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ
PS – WARNING: massive Parental Pride follows … take care in reading further.
FWIW I have two children I inordinately proud of that are products of American education … both of whom attended American public schools.
My son Jason, a doctoral candidate at U.C. Davis in Ecology, attended American public schools though the end of his secondary schooling, and went on to graduate from the University of Vermont’s Honors College, and Duke University with a MEM (Masters in Environmnental Management) and a M.F. (Masters of Forestry), before beginning his Ph.D. work.
Jason is now working on mapping projects in Africa using global imaging, with a major scientific paper published in his name as lead author … and he was never a top science or math student recruited by top universities for his skills in those areas as a secondary student. While he was a quite respectable student, his skills were much more broadly focused than on a narrow band of learning in math or science, and today it is that broad approach that is creating the value he adds to the science he is publishing — alongside some of the world’s leading conservation biologists and ecologists BTW.
My daughter Michaela attended a private Waldorf school through fifth grade and then transferred to a local public school to complete her elementary education. She is a good student in the maths and sciences, but outstanding in the arts and writing. How would a student like her be better served by more focus on math and science in her schooling??? Where would she find time to do her art and writing in an already overcrowded academic routine … i.e.: three to four hours of homework a night, much of it in math and science. For my two cents I’d rather her have no homework, and three to four hours of time outdoors, dancing, singing, drawing, sculpting, conversing with friends and standing in awe at the wonder of the world-at-large that surrounds her. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help her navigate a course in secondary school that allows for many, many hours of wonder … not filled with repetitious rote learning.
As you can see this is more than mere speculation on my part or the opinions of an interested observer standing apart at arm’s length.
NOTE: I’m about to publish my next book on “whole-form learning and whole-form communication” … my next after that, which I’ve begun writing, will be on “whole-form” parenting. All the best – Joseph.
t says
Hi,
I like and agree with this piece of writing given that I’m committed to my own life and the life of my daughters to live with exquisite imagination and voracious curiosity. I see how the learning that you faciliate and bring to the world is effective at an individual, group and organizational level. How do you see bringing it at a more cultural level so that others can have an approach and way to live with deep imagination and curiosity?
How do you define intellectual confidence in your own practice in living and speaking from it?
A fovorite quote that you wrote was: “LET’S MAKE WHAT MAKES US MOST HUMAN MOST IMPORTANT!” So simple and yet so profound. I’ll take this as a premise as a lived inquiry. What is you answer to this fully useful question?
Thanks again Jospeh for brining a story that opens up more story of creativity, imagination and thriving for those that read and apply the silent brain learning of what you write about.
Best,
T
Joseph says
T,
My first comment is that we bring anything we are passionate about to a “cultural level” via our personal life, i.e.: living our passions and becoming the model for them.
The same goes for “intellectual confidence” … living it is the best medicine, so to speak.
We are most confident where we have the most positive experience. We can only gain positive experience by acting in the world in the direction of our interests and desires.
Here in lies the rub … for many of our youth their experience is guided by others, leading them onto a path that is not their own … therefore they neither gain the experience nor the confidence to pursue their own dreams, nor to bring those dreams to life in the share myth we live alongside them. What a tragedy for us all …
(Imagine if Picasso or Caruso, et al, were forced to become accountants, engineers or hairdressers … because their parents and society told them they could at least make a good living doing so.)
KJ says
Pretty much you nailed it right here : “America will NOT produce more creative/entrepreneurial adults by focusing more heavily on math and science … BUT BY REINTRODUCING MORE HUMANITIES AND ARTS INTO OUR SCHOOL CURRICULUMS!!!”
Joseph says
Ta …
Thomas says
I think other country fall behind the Us and Uk just because of the english language. Japan was an exception and China will be in the future. Japan has more than 120 million people, thats not 1/6 of the Us like you wrote. Asian are generally good in math and science, like the black are good in music and dancing.
Joseph says
Thomas,
I won’t even begin to address the potential examples of bias and/or prejudice in your comments, but instead focus on the idea I think that lurks behind …
First of all each of the examples I use to demonstrate applicability, with the exception of the MacArthur Foundation Fellows that are only awarded to United States citizens, are not based on English language use.
The patent results are by country for both resident and non-resident applications. So the language in question in each would be local. The same is true of the Nobel Prize winners, they are not awarded based on any specific language use or application. Therefore the language bias in those examples is a non-starter as we say here in the states.
I also stand corrected on the comment about Japan’s population … it is closer to 1/3 than to 1/6. Thank you for catching that for me.
Thomas says
Thank you Joseph,
language is a non starter in tests where the fondamental knowledge required to do good is available in that language; for basic school its a non-starter, but if you start specializing, in nearly every developing scientific field i’m aware of, you will find more and more information and expert access in english than in every other language.
The supremacy of the Us and Uk in Nobel prizes is an effect of that. The good performance of the Us in the more Information-Intensive Industries are correlated with the cultural commons that developed in the Us because of the English language broad sharing.
Red says
Thanks for this Joseph. Its a good companion to your excellent TED talk on education – at http://youtu.be/bDx2o8e8sH8
The UK education system seems to be similarly obselete, if we’re interested in producing the creative thinkers who can do what is necessary for us to survive as a species.
Our current system is very good at producing docile, obedient people, and that worries me.
I am reminded of Georges Bernanos:
“I have thought for a long time now that if, some day, the increasing efficiency for the technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth, it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction and still less, of course, the indignation that cruelty awakens and the reprisals and vengeance that it brings upon itself…but the docility, the lack of responsibility of the modern man, his base subservient acceptance of every common decree. The horrors that we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels insubordinate, untamable men are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile men.”
All around us are people who are limited by their thinking they are ‘not clever’ because they couldn’t manage to confirm to an extremely limited system of testing within a very narrow range of subjects. This happens from an increasingly young age. Four year olds already given limiting labels!
I couldn’t imagine anything more horrific than sending my amazing wild and beautifully free girls to sit still and quiet in a sterile box for most of their day, squashed of energy and forced to regurgitate ‘facts’. There are much more interesting and attractive ways to learn discipline.
There are much more interesting and attractive and useful things to be learning!
Exceptional communication skills, relationship skills, how to use our bodies most effectively and efficiently, how to get the outcomes we want – most elegantly, how to be calm, grounded and centred in any situation. These subjects are on my home school curriculum, and I am pleased to be having a chance to learn them now myself. My girls and my family are my best teachers!
So what to be doing?
I’ve been inspired lately by Professor Sugata Mitra, who talks about creating Self Organised Learning Environments, ‘where learning is an emergent phenomenon’. He suggests that the role of a good teacher nowadays is not to be providing the set answers but instead to be asking the best questions. It is fascinating to see the journey a group will go on to find their answers.
I’m interested in others’ responses to your piece here Joseph, and in whole form learning, whole form communication and whole form parenting!
Red
Joseph says
Red,
I love the quote above … thanks.
I think there are at least two aspects to this thread that go beyond my post (which was intentionally polarizing BTW).
One is that we (as parents and citizens both) assume too much responsibility for raising our children in the system, including the educational system. At the risk of painful recrimination I would argue this is in large part due to a culture of “non-parenting” in modern, industrialized societies, e.g.: U.S., U.K., Japan and China (on the way). Functionally this is about the limited time that parents actually spend parenting in two career families. Simply put, there’s no one home to raise the children. We have turned our educational systems into de-facto daycare and remote parenting entities. Then we wonder why “our” children are unable to mature into “proper” adults … they can never get past the necessary separation from their parents, because they’ve never been allowed to create the necessary bonds in the first place. There are other issues of course, but speak to many modern educators and ask them about the role of absentee parenting in the classroom and I think there will be a lot of support there for the position I take here.
The second issue that is inherently present is the request we make of our educational systems to educate, i.e.: “How do we as a society want our education systems to educate our children?” Education was at one point in time a process of broadening the intellectual capacity and curiosity of the participants in it. At some point this shifted to training our population to fit into society, especially in the roles that society deemed most important for it’s proper functioning. And, I’d argue that now our educational systems have been tasked with what amounts to vocational training, i.e.: either training students to leave school ready to assume a job role, or ready to go onto further “education” which means deepening their vocational skills whilst in university.
Where is the idea of learning for the sake of learning … for the pure joy of becoming a competent “self-learner?” …
The challenge for our school systems is that if our children can’t pass standardized testing with high scores the school is vilified. At a higher, more elite level, if the students from those schools are well prepared to be accepted into elite universities then the school is again vilified … and the criteria is not individual excellence, but the ability to perform within the competitive academic environment, including scoring in the top 5% of the standardized testing used in university admissions processes.
In the end we have a culture, which has imposed a literal death sentence on some of our best and brightest with the rate of teenage suicide we are seeing amongst some of the top students at some of the most elite schools.
What’s interesting is how often the mass media here in the U.S. covers stories about teen suicide related to bullying, especially if there is a LGBT component in the story … but virtually ignores the suicides connected to parental and/or institutional bullying. When will we own the horrors we visit upon our young???
E.g.:
One Town’s War on Gay Teens
From the mouths of babes: Teens, stress, and suicide: A day in the life
Per Rehné says
The Danish professor in statistics, Svend Kreiner
Directed a sever blow to the validity of PISA results earlier this summer. They where at Best useless to compare
Students actual skills ……
Svend Kreiner published his investigation on the PISA test first time in 2011. His research was based on 30.000 Danish students double the data pool that is used by PISA, and he was quoted in the News papers under the headline “Pisa test is harmful for the Danish schooling system
it’s in Danish, But Google translate will do most for you I think :O)
http://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/pisa-undersogelsen-skader-den-danske-folkeskole
PISA did not want to share their Assumption and calculation on their statistically results, so he played with different assumptions and based on the same data material, Danmark could be ranked as anything between 3 and 42nd on the list, depending on the assumptions made. Still using the same statistical Model (Rasch-Model) as used by PISA.
He believes that the use of the PISA test result to direct the Political decisions in Denmark in respect to how we run our Schooling systems has been very harm full to the Schools in Denmark, and parents have lost belief, trust and respect in the system.
Svend Kreiner goes on, stating that with the unreliability of the PISA test results it is very concerning that the Danish Ministry of Education have used the Test Results to drive the political decisions to change the Schooling in the Denmark , and have implemented changes every time a new PISA test result has been published.
Svend Kreiner believes that the results can at best, be used on a national level to see if the goals we set for the skills, creativity and thinking we want our kids to obtain is also delivered by the education they are exposed to……….But cannot be used to compare between countries at all….
Joseph says
Per,
Thanks for this repost from your comment on Facebook.
I agree with Professor Kreiner in that testing can indeed serve a valuable purpose, i.e.: to identify where an individual is to create a program of targeted future development. HOWEVER … what is true on an individual level is often malevolent when applied to the masses, and visa-versa.
Simply, we cannot judge individuals by averages, nor the average by an individual. The challenge with statistical reporting is that it is only as accurate as the assumptions used to create the results … something that a vast majority of people either forget or simply never realized.
Shyaam says
Right on target Joseph!!!
There is too much emphasis on ‘math’ and ‘science’ here in India, without realizing whether it really has any impact in the long term.
But, I also see a shift (atleast in the metros) towards social entrepreneurship and creative careers!!!
Also, I like the timing of this article. I decided yesterday to not to prepare for an entrance examination for an MBA (which will need me to spend atleast 2 hours/day for 8-10 months to crack the exam). I want to focus my attention on myself – and follow my journey to become a ‘change artist’ – like you.
Thanks!
Joseph says
Shyaam,
I am glad you enjoyed the post and found it valuable.
I do however want to make clear that I am not “anti-education” per se, just anti soul stealing educational practices.
In my P.S. you can see that I have a son who has excelled academically, is pursing the highest level of academic excellence himself, and will likely pursue a career in academia … all with my full support and encouragement.
What I intend to offer is provocation about how we are foisting learning upon our youth, the process under which education is undertaken, and the question of whether all of our youth should be “educated” via the academic track that I argue is only suitable for a small minority of students, but closes the door to other avenues of success to them quite early on …
Shyaam says
Got it.
Thanks!
Mike G says
Dear Joseph
Well, what can I say? You know that I am very “pro” maths and science, and I believe that these things need to be taught in schools, and taught well – – NOT just as learning of facts and rote information (which is not what science is, almost the opposite!) but as one way of thinking about that which is greater than ourselves.
And, I would add emphatically, not as a way of getting a job in a cubicle in industry. I speak as someone with an advanced degree in a mathematical area, who has worked in industry, and recruited graduates to work in industry. Knowing about Lagrange multipliers, Hausdorff sets, or simple groups was never of any use to me in industry – – it was simply a pleasure. A necessary pleasure. Or for that matter, the periodic table, the laws of motion, or the formula for ethanol. They were about as “applicable” as biology lessons were to becoming a parent!
And rarely did we find, in our recruits, that much of what they had learned at university, as rote facts, was useful to us. If they had grown up while at university, made the break from home, learned to work with less direct supervision, that was as much as we could expect, and that was useful. Find any teenager who is a gifted computer programmer, and ask them what school they learned that skill in, they’ll laugh!
But despite this inapplicability to “industry”, I think maths and science are still valuable elements of our culture that need to be passed on, that need to be offered to young people, just as much as music poetry dance and literature. I think they SHOULD know of the periodic table, the calculus, the group theory, the vector spaces. I would love to teach vector spaces to bright ten-year olds.
We too, in the UK, constantly get this party political “news” about how our education standards are “slipping” on the world stage – – the sky is falling.
Have you read “Antifragile” by Nassim Taleb? There is some interesting material about education for industry in there. I recommend that book to all. And yes, there is some calculus in the book. Okay, it’s been safely sequestered in an appendix.
Joseph says
Mike,
First I will refute myself in the eyes of some “light” readers of my comments …
I am for math and science education … I fully support and endorse it.
WHAT I AM AGAINST IS …
A) The way much of maths and science are taught in schools today,
-and-
B) Using standardized testing as the basis of evaluation of educational/academic competence and/or performance … and especially using it to form, or even inform in many cases, fundamental policy
You may remember a conversation I had with you about my own maths background. I formally learned maths through to advanced calculus/differential equations in school (university while studying in the architecture program I was enrolled in at the time). Afterwards as an adult in my thirties I got it in my head that I wanted to learn the maths of topology, and self taught myself from books … as you say, “for the joy of it,” and in my case also because I thought it would throw light on another avenue of thinking I was exploring at the time. So I’m not anti-math as I say, just anti-forced math to the exclusion of other learning.
Here’s another way, perhaps simpler way, of making my point … I don’t thing that math and science learning is hierarchically more or less important than other learning universally as it applies to all students or the educational systems in general.
For some students on an individual level dance, song and/or painting maybe more useful and relevant.
So, whilst I set up what might read like a polarity position in the post, I am very clear on the intention and consideration I’d like my writing to provoke:
If we overfund math and science by draining the funding of money AND time available for our young to explore dance, song and painting are we in service to them … and furthermore building a future we want them to be forced to live in by decree???
Brian says
Hats off, to your post, & book concept ow “whole form” I am 57, & a product of education run amuck. I very much agree w/ your antirote sentiment. Had far too much of it in history, & even spanish. Also, agree about homework itself. Ironically, my best learning was achieved by reading, then putting it in a contextual setting that I could relate to, hence my determination to have the overview of the picture. I’m waxing too eloquent here…………The point is , “we don’t need no education” all in all, you’re just another brick in the wall. As stated by Pink Floyd
Please don’t get me wrong. My wife is a former educator. Her & I have had lenghty conversations about the problems of our system, & yet as I see it, it’s really more a matter of what each of us VALUES. This , as I see it, is the heart of being able to retain. After all, the chinese have a saying that ” it’s not what you learn, but what you remember ”
In the book of Proverbs, we are told to “guard your heart w/ all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life” Years later the greatest teacher of all time said, that ” Where your treasure (primary values) is, that is where your heart will be”
I haven’t read it, but would like to at least breeze it Sam Cathy’s book, Building Boys, is Better than Mending Men. Conceptually the title seems to capture the essence of what is at stake in our soceity, because my observation of the vast majority of adults has been one of near complete apathy. But , I am encouraged from the standpoint that little is much, if God is in it.In the final analysis, HE is the only one , that has made a real difference in my life, by reshaping, & redefing my sense of values.
I close w/ a quote by an “unknown” “saint”………..” The meaning of things, lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them “
Joseph says
Brian,
Thanks for reading the post and your reply to it as well.
FWIW I find the issue of “rote” learning showing up as much … and sometimes more … in the work I’ve been contracted to do with my corporate clients in the past.
For example, an individual from HR with a specialty in “Training and Development” and/or “Learning” will engage me to run a program within the organization.
Then the first two things they’ll ask for are:
A) An agenda of the program,
-and-
B) Learning objectives
Now, this unto itself is not necessarily a bad or improper thing, but needs to be placed in context.
If you are running a training on how to use a particular piece of software, or learn a particular skill, these may indeed be reasonable requests … one or both.
However, when I am running programs that are be their very nature facilitative or experiential these may be ludicrous requests.
In a facilitative program it is the process the determines both the agenda and the largely the outcomes that emerge from it. While there may be, and often is, an intention to the facilitation, forcing it to fit either an agenda or the learning objectives set prevents it from being “real” in regards to what happens and what becomes possible that could not have been known prior to engaging in the process.
When the training is experiential there may or may not be an agenda … largely a function of the experience, skill and expertise of the consultant. Someone who is highly experienced and skilled will do more in a spontaneous unfolding during such a program with a high level group than could ever have been planned inside of an agenda.
Similarly, leaving the outcome of a program open to what becomes emergent with the group in the hands of an expert can exceed even the grandest learning objectives design that could have been imagined prior to running it.
Yet, what will often be intended at the end is the ability for the participants to demonstrate what they have learned via rote regurgitation of the material presented versus the results produced six months after the program ran.
The other laughable condition/consideration is the evaluation of the consultant by the participants, who are themselves non-experts evaluating what they know little to nothing about … other than to mark their “happy sheets” about how they felt during the program, despite the intention of the expert leading it … which may have included very intentional discomfort.
So I think it is good advice to all and everyone to “guard your heart with all diligence” … there are jokers out there who will steal your soul if you let them. The shame of it IMO is that this often happens to those who are too young to notice it has been taken and is now missing … until they have spent half of their lives here on earth without it.
Ham says
Hey Joe,
the same story was picked up here a couple of months ago in the press and on the television news, albeit with an Australian flavour, and how poorly Australian children were doing by comparison to the various Asian countries mentioned. I thought it was utter bullshit back then.
There’s so much in your post and I thank you for writing – in this age of 140 character SMSs and tweets, soundbytes and synopsised scrolling newsfeeds – I *sincerely* welcome you taking the time to take the time… to pen a blazing rant in the grandest tradition of Riggio’s Rants; indeed a pre-Christmas lion’s roar to scatter the chattering hyenas and to wake, perchance to undream the spoonfed drivel, lazily gnawed upon by the bloated middle classes who tune in and suckle on the electronic high definition teat of further slothful mass media. Yup, I’m pissed too Joe!
… and maybe it’s not their fault. The most interesting part of your missive for me is the notion of who is behind the curtain, who’s pulling the damn strings and a phrase comes to mind: follow the money. Now, I don’t know where that trail of Benjamins leads and I have my own theories conspiring in my mind, swirling around the vortiginous subterfuge of international political powerplays, of fat cats getting fatter whilst the very people they serve go hungry and lead lives of quiet desperation. And the truth will set you free, especially the truth you scribe yourselves. Can I get an amen, brother?
After 20 something years since I’ve lectured at universities in England, and working my way down to high school, primary, eventually a Japanese Montessori/Steiner/Reggio kindergarten where I served my youngest daughter and was witness to her endless blooming, I find myself back at the most prestigious university in Australia, here in Melbourne and witness to the cream of the crop, the students who’ve excelled through high school, often at a frightful cost to their enjoyment of their teenage years, and sometimes not… to ultra wealthy kids from China (Shanghai in fact!) next to Aussie kids who’ve worked their way up from the least privileged parts of this country… it’s a true mishmash, a bubbling stew of Left and Right, of people Fiving and Sixing, trying to outfive each other on occasion, REALLY not getting the systemic piece… tribalism and protectionism… joyous collaboration and academic splendour… young people who’ll pass through these years here and will get a job and maybe look back in forty years and wonder why all the money in their bank accounts doesn’t pay off the bankruptcy in the rest of their lives and there’ll absolutely be young people who, in forty years, look forward to another forty years of doing what they’ve loved doing all their lives and laughing and hanging with those friends whom they bonded with under a Melbourne sky.
I’ve seen the Japanese education system up close and personal and it’s a dreadful, miserable existence from the age of about 5 – it’s dead, rotten to the core, rote memorisation and “how do I fit in, SIT STILL and cause the least trouble?” Don’t make me quote Serpico! “THE WHOLE FUCKING SYSTEM IS CORRUPT!” I’m not just talking about Asia. And Japan is seen as one of the more advanced in Asia, and certainly was the grand rival to China for decades. Good grief Charlie Brown. The university here itself is realising the need for innovation in an increasingly fractured marketplace, going up against online education and the fact that some people have been indoctrinated to think that they just need a job and will do the least amount possible to secure a job. I’m consulting here to sort this out; it’s time to light a few fires under a few asses.
So let’s begin again at the beginning. I’ll take it from an Australian perspective since I know a little of how it works, having been here eight years now and it’s a Western Anglo-Saxon somewhat libertarian state that I live in, much like the part of England in which I grew up. I’ve four kids at four different stages of the education system here (more of that later). Pretty much everything you write about the reportage is the same over here. There is fearmongering coming from someone, and repeated with shamefully little scrutiny or dissent from journalists. I concur that creativity and imagination is where it’s at – Dan Pink’s work says it better than I can so I’ll leave it there. The indices of creativity and non-mechanistic intelligence that you cite are ones that I’d agree as worthy of bringing to the conversation. There are countries that currently do the mechanical processes that we *used* to do ourselves, much better than we can these days and ffs, computers already do so much crunching better than we can, so why are these meaningless comparisons being made anyway? computerbasedmath.org, ahem.
What the hell are we giving four year olds homework for anyway? What is the world we are hoping to create? Given that the extraordinarily fragile limits of capitalism and consumerism are groaning under the mass of 7 billion people, surely we need grand thinkers, morally ultrabrave individuals and teams, fearless leaders who don’t lust after the MBA and the fast cars, people who will say “Forget the artificially created markers of success, we need to clean up our act before we release another $250 million movie” – I want our children to grow up in a world where liberty is assured, where there is room to excel and be respected for that, to be a mother raising children and be respected for that… to be a generation who left a legacy of feeding everyone on the planet, not being the ones who fracked the Earth to hell and brought us pink slime and Kim fucking Kardashian – someone who is famous for making a porn tape for goodness sake! It wasn’t even a particularly good porn tape! I could understand the fuss if it was like the Star Wars of pornography but it was like The Hangover part 2…
We are blessed with sacred work and yet, as you said so well in your TED talk, we are remarkably off track. My six year son old gets homework. If he’s interested we’ll do it, if he’s tired or wants to move and groove, I let him move and groove. If painting is far more interesting in that moment and he’s genuinely being himself in that moment, why the heck would I stand in his way? He’s six! My ten year old daughter makes her own homework, even though the school has stopped giving her grade any. And sometimes she just wants to hang out and sing, or play with her nine chickens. Again, why would I get in the way of that?! A dear friend of hers, barely sees her parents and gets sent to school on the weekends and hates it, because they’re busy making money, and they want her to do well, even the evidence that private school educated children do no better at university than public school educated children. And what does that even mean if they lose their magic in the process? I see this girl slowly losing her spark; it comes back in moments and then she is !alive!, but this is not a conversation I should be having about a nine year old. This is appalling.
I’ve hired a lot of people in my time and I always go for people who know how to think for themselves, who have indeed been taught to question presuppositions and who have skills in outcome based creativity, those who do the right thing and lead and are willing to be led, based on relationships of trust and mutual respect. And I find that these people bring out the best in those around them. I’m going to stop writing here, for now. I wrote more in the comments section of your “The Folly of Education” a while ago and that adds a bit of context to my rant. I have much more to say and even more to do and as ever, I am honoured to engage in a dialogue. This post was fuelled by many minutes of Van Halen, hence the abundance of Nietzschean exclamation points.
Seasons greeting to you and your loved ones! Thank you so much for another amazing year of enchantment, humilty and abundance. The simulcast trainings in particular have been everything I dreamed of and then some. And more importantly: the infinite space inside, where it’s quiet… and the simultaneous pull towards perfection… is simply magnificent… and I am eternally grateful for the poetry you whispered to me that caused my heart to sing.
“The child passes little by little from the unconscious to the conscious, treading always in the paths of joy and love.” – Maria Montessori.
Joseph says
“Now, I don’t know where that trail of Benjamins leads and I have my own theories conspiring in my mind, swirling around the vortiginous subterfuge of international political powerplays, of fat cats getting fatter whilst the very people they serve go hungry and lead lives of quiet desperation.”
AMEN!!!
Great “post” Ham … I loved it.
We agree too much for me to comment more … it would be redundant.
Ham says
Oh goodness me, where are my manners…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV6SmY04WdE
Holy crap.
I had an aha! moment during my recent rewatching of the Mythoself Professional Training (module 1) last week, specifically about wholeform learning and my resonating completely and fully in a single moment with an exemplar. I’m *really* looking forward to the new book.
Joseph says
Hahahahaha … the amazing virtuosity of one least versed in S.T.E.M, but obviously follow a path of her own lusts just as diligently …
And, again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tXuYLc6rIg
Joseph says
And here’s my favorite …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILbTttLyvY
(especially the final two seconds!)
Ham says
Hear hear! I’ve watched this girl the last couple of years growing in her musical ability and asides from the fact she absolutely shreds, it’s her nonchalance that I adore too.
Yes! The last two seconds are absolutely gorgeous. 🙂 🙂 🙂
The funny thing is, last weekend I showed my ten year old daughter the Eruption performance and she sat absolutely transfixed much in the way I did thirty years ago watching Crossroads. I let her have a play on my guitar and again, in a wholeform moment of splendour, my body gave me a very specific signal when she began strumming, and she absolutely lit up, bearing in mind she’s never touched a guitar before. She looked up at me with those big blue eyes and said “Can I have a guitar for Christmas please?”
“Sure thing kiddo… sure thing.”
Ham says
You sir… are the most dangerous man on the planet. 🙂
Whilst the NSA’s search algorithms will probably love that sentence, I mean it sincerely and wholeheartedly as the greatest compliment I could ever give.
THAT song from Crossroads, THAT scene, was the wholeform experience I was referring to in my post above!! Get out of my head Riggio!!
Last week, I was watching the Mythoself Professional Training from February 2013, every day over and over and I had a flash to being a 12 year old kid and staying up late one night, whilst my two brothers and two sisters and parents slept… turning on the TV and watching this bizarre movie I’d never heard of called Crossroads. My whole body lit up and I was fascinated… completely and totally. It would have been about 1984 and the music scene in England, at least in terms of the mainstream, was pop. We had a great pop scene, and lots of musicians rose and fall, as is pop’s essential disposable nature, and we had a good share of genuine musicians whom I had a passing like of, e.g. Queen, but generally speaking, there was an absolute minimum of guitar driven music. Our radio in the car was tuned to the same mainstream station as the radio in the house, and we’d listen to the top 40 countdown on a Sunday and I never really knew that there were other stations.
And so I’m watching this movie, and there’s a scene at the beginning where Ralph (Macchio, playing “Eugene Martone”) is playing the caprice at Julliard, and then adds a blues riff at the end, much to the dismay of the examining board. His teacher says in an angry post-exam critique “You’re a promising student, but let me give you once piece of advice: do not serve two masters.”
I loved that line. At the time of my life, I was reading about various non-dualistic mystical paths, and meditating, and this metaphor was often used in the context of spiritual learning: “If you want water, find a single place in the earth and dig deep; if you dig many holes, you’ll never find water or worse you will give up believing that water exists.” Freud would get a psychoanalytical boner reading that line, ahem, but I’ll assume it points to the notion of finding a path that resonates for oneself and sticking doggedly to it.
But something didn’t quite sit right with me, because I knew that – even as I butted up against the edges of the school system I was in, and was being forced to make a scary choice about which subjects I’d study that would determine my career (as a 12 year old kid ffs! What did I know about universities and workplaces?!) – that I could find something I loved in the moment and do that (or even two things) and take all I wanted to for as long as it resonated, and it was actually ok to then do a different thing. Not in the flitting, distracted sense of modernity’s obsession with modern technology and spending mere moments on one thing and then another and then another and gaining no mastery of a subject or self, all under the guise of “multi tasking” but something else entirely. Trusting myself so much that I would learn what I wanted to learn and know when I was done. Some paths did indeed hook me for my entire lives; others gave their rewards in mere decades or years. I learn what I can from a master and then make it my own.
And through the journey that Eugene then follows, he absorbs the blues, he plays the blues, he feels the blues, and in the pivotal final scene, he uses the blues to take on Jack Butler. Two things happened for me in that scene, firstly I sat slack jawed as I witnessed Steve Vai, fusing himself with the guitar, taking it to a ridiculously over the top rock god level. “This is what a guitar can really do” I thought! What a wholeform learning! What a mythic form! Although I didn’t know it at the time, he was channeling Jimmy Page, whom he cites as a massive influence – the hair, the sartorial elegance, the swagger, the sex – and that character darn near blew me away. To go from virtually zero exposure to rock music to this… oh my. The powers that controlled English radio and TV had labelled rock as a dirty word. The country that gave the world Led Zep, The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, Clapton, Jeff Beck, would not play these artists, because it didn’t shift enough units off music store shelves.
The second thing that happened is when Eugene’s blues don’t work against Jack, and he pulls out the caprice but adds the blues to it. HE SERVES TWO MASTERS. He took his learnings from the classical world and the new passion he has discovered and blends them into something altogether wonderful. Years later, whilst reading guitar magazines, I realised that the generally agreed census in the guitar community was that the movie had an unsatisfying ending since it showed that Eugene rejects the blues and instead performs a sterlie Paganini piece instead! No, no three times NO! He honoured the past and took two styles he loved to create something new and amazing.
Ultimately this is a conversation about balance. Play all types of music on the radio! Let us not push ALL children down a S.T.E.M. path, let us do the Steiner/Montessori thing of providing and manipulating a context in which children are served first and foremost, in which they can be children and can express all that is natural to them. Music and dance as much as math and chemistry. Trust them, their bodyminds know exactly what they need – honour that!
A few days ago, an interesting outcome from my revivification of Crossroads last week was that I had planned to watch it today. I shall do just that and raise a glass to you sir. Salute!
Joseph says
Ham,
I myself am not sure where the road leads. However, I have stood at the crossroads now for nigh on twenty five years … standing and waiting, tempted to do a deal with Scratch myself, like Willie Brown … just to find my mojo you see.
Heck, I think I was about ready to sign too when Scratch’s assistant asked me, “So’s what you’s play there boy?” and for the life of me I couldn’t answer … my hands held no instrument I could discern. So he left me, standing there, at the crossroads … hands outstretched and empty, wondering what indeed had I come seeking. For just about twenty five years that question has been fermentating now …
Here’s my deepest, darkest secret Ham … after all this time, breathing and swallowing the dust kicked up by passerbys and deal-makers I have witnessed at the crossroads I still don’t know the instrument I play well enough to name her. Oh, now don’t get me wrong … I’ve had my flings and mistresses, one in particular,”Lady Hypnosis'” I thought was “the one” for a while … but she too was it seems but a muse sent to tempt me. That Scratch is a devious one if nothing less.
So I continue standing … bearing witness at the crossroads, warning the young who come to make no deals they cannot write the check to cover. Very few like Eugene out there can cover the check when the time comes for cutting heads and clearing the debt. The few I’ve seen do it were foolish, brash and petulant enough in their youthful exuberance to believe in themselves more than the “rules” … and had the courage to walk their own path making no deal, but nonetheless covering a few outstanding debts for others when their name came to the attention of old Scratch.
Now in my couple of decades, plus some, what I’ve picked up is that when the time comes it’s gonna be “put up or shut up” as the old school saying goes.
Well I’m still standing Ham, and that counts for something when you’re talking about doing it at the crossroads. And, for what it’s worth I haven’t signed no deal … I’ve even turned down Scratch’s fine whiskey when my throat was parched and my thirst was raging … damn near mad from the lack of shade and the relentless demand of standing there in the light and heat of the noonday sun.
Hell, on a few long, dark, cold and lonely nights I even turned away the comfort of warm willing flesh that daemon put before me. He’ll just have to go on hoping that he’ll wear me down enough with the scouraging of the unforgiving wind and weather of that God-forsaken place, so I’ll forget who I am, or who I’ve become in these many longs years …what I’ve learned from standing resolutely, empty-handed … to forget too who he is, or the price he demands for the very little he gives.
So there you go Ham … my late night confession, yea I am a sinner looking for my soul, knowing full well that even when I’ve turned my back on it, it has never turned its back to me.
Ham says
Thank you Joe. So much.
Your recent talk of “nothing” in your Rants and blogposts… I laughed out loud, with sheer joy… for I recalled a little “something” from November 2000. Thirteen years ago, when the sun shone bright, you talked about what you did professionally… or not.
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/mythoself-tm/conversations/messages/1013
“Hangman, hangman, hold it a little while,
Think I see my friends coming, Riding a many mile.
Friends, did you get some silver?
Did you get a little gold?
What did you bring me, my dear friends, To keep me from the Gallows Pole?
What did you bring me to keep me from the Gallows Pole?”