where curious minds meet
Posts tagged as:
What education should seek to teach.
No representation, low taxes.
On class, facial hair, and Turkish politics.
Things to know about start-ups.
The case for learning foreign languages not strong enough for the British.
Brussels’ image overhaul campaign.
BUSINESS
Mind over mass media
NY Times - The Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. …
Too big to fail? The BP bailout as corporatism
rushkoff.com - The BP crisis recapitulates the entirety of corporatism in real time, transparently enough for anyone to see. …
The gulf oil spill: No end in sight
The Economist - The oil has been flooding out for more than seven weeks now. The damage is becoming more apparent. The solutions are not. …
FINANCE & ECONOMICS
Dismantling factories in a dreamweaver nation
english.caing.com - Rising labor costs will ultimately force factories closer to labor sources, and working conditions will turn more humane. The biggest losers will be coastal governments that side with the factories to protect their revenues. …
Americans: Let’s stop investing in our kids
blogs.law.harvard.edu - Just as we’ve produced a health care system so expensive that we’d be better off without doctors and hospitals, we’ve managed to create an education system so expensive and ineffective that we’d be better off not sending anyone to school. …
Greed’s not good for shareholders
psyfitec.com- Wherever you find over-rewarded executives presiding over companies whose main aim is to increase their market capitalisation we should pick up our skirts and get the hell out of it. …
COOL THINKING
The bright side of wrong
Boston.com- A better relationship with wrongness can lead to better relationships in general — whether between family members, colleagues, neighbors, or nations. …
The science of gaydar
nymag.com- If sexual orientation is biological, are the traits that make people seem gay innate, too? The new research on everything from voice pitch to hair whorl. …
Female teachers’ math anxiety negatively affects female students
brainblogger.com- It is possible that even with male teachers, a relation between teacher anxiety and female student achievement might occur. …
BUSINESS
Rivals secretly finance opposition to Wal-Mart
WSJ – Supermarkets that have funded campaigns to stop Wal-Mart are concerned about having to match the retailing giant’s low prices lest they lose market share. …
Higher education’s bubble is about to burst
washingtonexaminer.com- Will traditional academic institutions will be able to keep up with the times, or will “edupunks” be able to find new ways of teaching and learning that challenge existing interests? …
Good business
interacc.typepad.com- If you’re the vendor, would you rather the definition of success was in your hands or those of the people that hired you? …
World-wide hiring set to pick up
blogs.wsj.com- Employers world-wide are more optimistic about hiring next quarter but the U.S. isn’t preparing for robust job growth. …
FINANCE & ECONOMICS
Asset bubbles can’t be eliminated
blogs.hbr.org- Whatever your theory is about why bubbles originate, count on another one appearing sooner or later. …
Hungary: (mis)managing market expectations
blogs.ft.com- Investors are seriously concerned about the Fidesz government’s readiness to stick to a tough economic programme without resorting to populist remedies. …
Dutch parliamentary elections: The return of the bourgeoisie
spiegel.de- The Dutch go to the polls today. What’s driving the fears and anxieties of the Dutch constituents? …
A failure of economic and environmental regulation
newyorker.com- Reforming the system isn’t about writing a host of new rules; it’s about elevating the status of regulation and regulators. …
TECH & SOCIAL MEDIA
Israel’s Silicon Valley of beauty technology
time.com- Ultrashape’s technique involves high-intensity ultrasound waves guided by a sophisticated tracking and delivery system to explode unwanted fat cells — much the way heat-seeking missiles destroy enemy objects. …
No comment
ajr.org- One good reason to end the practice of allowing unnamed comments is that it’s flat-out wrong. Another is that it is causing headaches for news outlets, headaches they seriously don’t need, and it will cause more in the future. …
Don’t get stuck in Edu 2010
O’Reilly Radar- With investments being made now in education that may not be repeated for decades, the challenge presented to technology is one of developing platforms that will not require massive tech do-overs and reinvestment as new technologies coming online. …
Culture is one of these double-edged swords. Certain aspects of a culture might help a country during one period of economic and political development. The same traits will hinder development, if not outright self-destruction, during another period.
I enter Japan as exhibit number one.
On the heels of Japan’s latest prime ministerial resignation, the following seems especially relevant.
Dogged resignation to the status quo is inculcated from an early age here. There is next to no education in civics and no attempt to make children aware of their democratic rights. Children are not encouraged to express an opinion at school, where classes are large and taught by rote. The energies of pushy children are channeled into sports clubs where they learn how to fit into a hierarchy, first learning how to stoically endure discipline from older members, and then, as they get older, learning how to discipline their juniors. Less pushy children, meanwhile, can sleep in class and go unnoticed.
There is also great emphasis placed on the individual’s ability to gaman (put up stoically with suffering), rather than on problem-solving skills, and children are taught to fear the censure or ridicule of others, which makes them unwilling to stand out. In fact, the education system, with its songs, uniforms, rituals and group-focused activities, has achieved an almost perfectly Foucauldian model of passive citizenship. It’s an achievement, of sorts.
What helped to propel Japan to economic stardom post WWII is now dogging both its political and economic systems. A lesson for China perhaps?
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Are we really faced with an inter-generational struggle in resources for the coming decades?
The politics of the next decade will be dominated by a battle over public spending and taxes between the generations. Young people will realise that different categories of public spending are in direct conflict — if they want more spending on schools, universities and environmental improvements they must vote for cuts in health and pensions.
Schools and universities are more important for a society’s future than pensions. Yet every democracy around the world has made the opposite judgment. While many politicians claim to be obsessed with education — recall Tony Blair’s three priorities were “education, education and education” — in reality they support health and pensions to the point of national bankruptcy, while squeezing universities. The same applies to the many fiscal benefits heaped on pensioners over the years. Is it, for example, better for society to offer free bus travel to wealthy 80-year olds rather than students or impoverished youngsters looking for their first job?
Or will it find some kind of resolution not unlike the compromise made between developed and emerging worlds?
Does the increasing first-world sense of austerity give the rest of the world room to grow into middle-class status? If so, we need to find a few Saudi Arabias worth of oil to fuel their ensuing energy needs, and that seems unlikely. Or will we all meet in the middle somewhere, with declining resource requirements increasingly hard-wired into our makeup, the way it is already. happening already in Europe and elsewhere?
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Someone has taken a chill pill and examined whether the idea of an “Asian century” has any bearings to reality.
The way those arguments go, not so much. It turns out that advantages accumulated over centuries will not disappear over night, or even decades, for that matter.
As much as the Asian economies have shocked and awed the rest of the world in their speed of growth, a rapidly aging population, wealth disparity, income inequality, political turmoil, and the lack of any kind of “Asian consensus” will make the emergence of a united Asian block highly unlikely.
Whether measured by military prowess, education ranking, level of innovation, or simply, coolness appeal, it is doubtful that Asia will ever overtake the West. Moreover, it is arguable that the world will default to trusting the devil it knows, than the devil it doesn’t.
With Asian nations still squabbling amongst themselves, many look to the United States as a neutral power broker, a role America plays around the world. German writer and scholar Joseph Joffe calls the United States today the “default power”: No one in the world trusts anyone else to play the global hegemon, so it still falls to Washington.
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For the last couple of weeks, Australia has been trading barbs with India, on a series of what were deemed racially motivated attacks on Indian students studying in the country.
So who are those Indian students getting attacked?
Melbourne has been attracting Indian students in large numbers, but they are mostly enrolled in vocational courses—like cookery or hair-dressing and hospitality—offered by colleges operating from a few rooms in buildings located in the central business district or suburbs.
The students in these institutions are from rural Punjab or small towns from other parts of north India. Their principal motivation isn’t education. They are here to acquire “PR” or “Permanent Residency”, for which one must have stayed in Australia for at least two years. Egging them on are the agents in India, weaving the alluring Australian dream but omitting to mention other criteria a PR candidate must fulfil. Buying this dream are mostly Indians from poorer economic backgrounds, doomed to feel alienated in kangaroo country.
And attackers?
Salaem says it isn’t the white Australians who are attacking Indians. He blames the violence on those who have migrated from Muslim countries or Africa. But he concedes that the government’s open-door immigration policy has created enormous problems for white Australians. “The government’s education policy of getting students from India and other countries is depriving our local boys a chance to get into universities.”
So economic insecurities combined with a sudden large infusion of foreign population from a single source, with little efforts and policies directed towards integration creates frictions. Where have we seen this before?
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What makes one person more ambitious than the next? Is it social factors – upbringing, class, cultural influences, or is it primal – genetically fixed with some kind of temperamental determinism? And is a trait like ambition absolute and unwavering, or is it something more fluid, that is, once dormant, if can be unleashed with the right trigger?
This Time feature finds out.
What I find interesting is how an over-exercise of ambitions can lead to not only extreme stress, but cheating and other moral transgressions.
Cheating was common, and most students shrugged it off as only a minor problem. A number of parents–some of whose children carried a 4.0 average–sought to have their kids classified as special-education students, which would entitle them to extra time on standardized tests. “Kids develop their own moral code,” says Demerath. “They have a keen sense of competing with others and are developing identities geared to that.”
And what better example than those over-ambitious Chinese students (and their parents and teachers) that cheated in a marathon in order to get extra exam credits.
Competitors stood to gain a crucial advantage in China’s highly competitive university entrance exams. Those who finished in under two hours and 34 minutes could add extra points to their score in the gaokao. … The exams are so crucial to the future of Chinese children that both students and their families will go to extraordinary lengths to guarantee success. Last year, eight parents and teachers were jailed on state secret charges after using communication devices – including scanners and wireless earpieces – to help pupils cheat.
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Escaping the mediocrity, sometimes unfathomable bureaucracy, and a general lack of opportunities in their home countries, many European economists have stayed in the US after pursuing a degree.
This is not exactly shocking news. But it reminds me of my own. So allow me to indulge for a minute.
While in university, some of my friends went on exchange, and many to Europe. While getting B-ish grades in our own universities, many came back with A+ from schools in Europe while maintaining a party schedule the rest of us could only dream of.
Not too long ago, I myself spent some time at a European university for a master’s degree. Now watching my boyfriend also pursuing a master’s degree from the same reputable university, I can say from first-hand experience: There-Are-No-Standards.
First off, many universities in Europe have no entrance cut-offs. That means, with the right preceding degree – which was also given to students that studied with no real entrance requirements, you are stuck in a classroom with the lowest dominator. Having a “tolerant” education system also means assignments can be handed in late, exams can be taken and re-taken, an atmosphere of genuine lacklustre-ness prevails.
Adding to the lack of uninspired classroom interactions, the hierarchical structure on the other end of the podium is also unfathomable. Unlike the tenured and untenured tracks in the North American system, complete with resident RAs that mark assignments and hold the occasional seminars, the entire supporting arm of this higher education branch is missing!
Contrasting my lonely graduate student life with those that pursued their graduate careers in Canada – with their own office space, more-or-less guaranteed research assistant positions, access to professors and conferences, and a structured graduate-student social life, my deal was truly crap.
So I buy the story when it says:
![[The Tivoli park, Copenhagen, Denmark] (LOC)](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1069/3174172461_623c53bc81_m.jpg "[The Tivoli park, Copenhagen, Denmark] (LOC)")
NPR did a couple of podcasts, touting the “awesomest” economy in the world, Denmark, here, and here.
I thought it was going to be another piece of hoopla on the wonders of Danish happiness derived from their unthinkably high taxes. But luckily, Danes interviewed in the program didn’t go into PR mode, so some real questions and real concerns were addressed.
I do not think the low unemployment number (at 1.8% versus 5.8% in the US, on average) in Demark is indicative of its economic success by any means. Whether they like to admit it or not, an open EU has effectively made Denmark’s neighbours, close and afar, competitors of its most vital resource: labour. Courtesy of the country’s free education system.
Danish taxes also contrast sharply with those in nearby London, often jokingly referred to among Danes as a Danish town, because so many of them live there. Lower taxes on high earners have been a centerpiece of the policy mix that has fed the rise of London as a global financial center since the 1980s.
But today young Danes can easily choose not to pay for the system’s upkeep, once they have siphoned off what they need. For starters, as citizens of the European Union they are entitled to work in any of the 27 EU countries.
In a country of just 5.5 million people and averse to immigration, there is no loss too small.
The Confederation of Danish Industries estimated in August that the Danish labor force had shrunk by about 19,000 people through the end of 2005, because Danes and others had moved elsewhere. Other studies suggest that about 1,000 people leave the country each year, a figure that masks an outflow of qualified Danes and an inflow of less skilled foreign workers who help, at least partially, to offset the losses.
And once the effect of its brain drain is felt, slower growth will follow, and the existing welfare system will have to change.
The fact that the president of France has the right (and the time?) to dictate the country’s history curriculum seems rather absurd. The Economist concurs:
Perhaps the most striking thing about this row is not that French scientists will learn less history. It is that the central government still dictates to all schools exactly how much time to devote to each subject every week, down to the last minute. That is a legacy of Napoleon, who codified the curriculum—classics, history, rhetoric, logic, maths and physics—by an imperial decree in 1808. Just don’t expect all of next year’s school-leavers to know that.
But I’m sure the French don’t see it that way. Take the French movie, The Class, which attempts to showcase the dynamism of a new generation of French classroom instructors.
The HuffPo critic says:
As a sociological document, the film testifies to how the French educational system — even today — is based on the idea that one does not “educate” students (i.e. “lead” them) but “forms” them, puts them in the moule. It is telling that the climax of Cantet’s film is a “disciplinary” problem. A boy is kicked out of school and forced to go back to Mali, because of an outburst in the classroom.
Indeed, The Class, despite its intentions to show dynamic pedagogy at work, reveals its the opposite: how “learning” in France consists of accumulating “facts”: basic mathematical and linguistic skills; points of geography and history; the properties of a triangle. A poem is discussed in terms of its meter, a country in terms of its rivers. The aim is not to inspire talents, but to accumulate enough facts to be a well-functioning citizen of the Republic.
And as testament to the depth of cultural divide between the French and the non-French.
“What a great film,” a French Belgian said. “It shows how hard it is to be a teacher today, to discipline these kids.”
A couple of days ago, a fellow blogger commented on this rather unfortunate Fortune article on his blog. It is interesting for several reasons.
First, the ideas are cookie-cutter and stale. Us Gen Yers had been told (to a certain extent) that we were on the cusp of a great demographic shift, where baby boomers’ impending departure would wreak havoc on corporate health. True, some of us were led to believe that our contribution would be valued at a premium, which would in turn translate into lots of choices and result in us hopping through the corporate environment at break-neck speed. In reality? Highly unlikely. The smart ones among us always knew that good jobs are competitive, and supply almost always outstrip demand, especially at the bottom rung. But the media kept up the propaganda – to what end, I don’t know. Every once in a while, articles like this appear.
Second, the timing is totally off. Because of economic realities, many boomers simply can’t afford to retire. More and more Gen Yers find themselves in a much more competitive environment than they were led to believe. Now everybody is learning to make do with less and to compromise. Exactly who is out pandering to those misunderstood geniuses, I’m not sure.
The somewhat hilarious prescriptions thrown around by the Fortune writer, and the kick my blogger friend got out of it, reminds me of a book I heard about recently. In this book, the authors address the various social and consumerist constructions of the Gen Y generation. I took some notes, here’s a broad overview of the ideas.
School: the obsession with feeling good at all cost
According to the book, the ME culture evolved over several decades, but found its decisive start within the school system. The baby boomer generation struck out, rejected authority and tried to find its own path. In their children, they instituted and obsessed over instilling self-esteem. Subsequently, various forms of formal, or informal self-esteem programs were introduced in school. They generally aim to make children feel good about themselves at all times and at all cost, with messages like: you are special, you are unique, you are fine just the way you are.
Armed with technology, globalization changed the way of life for many of us in a shocking span of time. The way we work, live, communicate, learn, has been completely transformed. Learning has undoubted changed too. But how will this change impact the way we value education and knowledge-based work going forward?
In the past few years, more and more educational materials have moved off of campus firewalls, and onto the web for all to consume. We are talking about entire course curriculum, reading list, lecture notes and videos. When the accessibility of information is no longer constrained, and the cost for knowledge acquisition is inconsequential, what does that mean for the education of knowledge workers?
Horizontal playing field
A horizontal playing field means that students and workers in less privileged countries or regions have a much more equal starting point, where the only determinants of success is motivation and hard work.
Right now, the up-and-coming parts of the world are still performing relatively mundane and technical tasks outsourced from the west. But let’s not forget how much of a leap that had been already. Computer engineers two decades ago were a rare breed and commanded high salaries. Nowadays, programmers with little business experiences are a dime a dozen. And they compete directly with well-educated coders from India, Russia, and China.
But as the next generation of customer service operators and programmers become exposed to the vast sea of free information readily available on the net, what’s preventing them from “pricing options, or calculating weighted average cost of capital, or mechanically ploughing through ‘five forces’ analysis”? It seems to me that any activities that require only technical proficiency will become low value-added tasks going forward, and can be contracted out.
Value deflation in certain areas of knowledge-based work
In the coming decades, information will become more free and more readily available than ever before. As a result, more than one category of jobs will be made obsolete, or attain the endangered status in their current forms. It’s not only the low level tasks that get outsourced anymore.
I’ve felt ambiguous and conflicted about education for a long time, because it inspires while it stifles. But here are two ways it has always resonated with me.
One is learning for learning’s sake. Now looking back, and without sounding nauseatingly cheesy, there is something pure and unadulterated in the joy of soaking in the world. I was never a science person. But I still remember in Grade 11, the excitement I felt bubbling from my belly, when trying to explain to my mom the idea of atmospheric pressure and rain formation and somehow likening it to the pan on the stove that was steaming our vegetables for dinner.
But I am also diabolically practical. So this form of learning left me feeling somewhat indulgent. Coming from a family where money was never something to be taken for granted, I always felt slightly guilty if what I was putting in my brains was somehow not contributing to the process of attainment that would eventually be responsible for putting food on the table.
The second source of turn-on is the sometimes masochistic pleasure of having to perform under pressure. Yes, I am perfectly aware of what that sentence sounded like. But the truth is, when overwhelmed to just the right degree, education has contributed greatly in honing my “getting-things-done” skills.
For me, education hit the right spot in high school. It was broad enough to sample from, yet challenging in its particularities to stimulate quite a bit of brain activities. But university, not unlike technical colleges, tends to churn out specialists, whether in the fields of art history, chemical engineering, or accountants.
The often repetitive and dogmatic field of business studies made me more cautious, practical, and cynical about the institutional delivery of education. It also iterated the value of an education by continually flashing dollars signs in front of students in the forms of sponsored conferences, prized internships, and the ultimate plushy fruit – a prestigious, high-paying job.
It is little exaggeration to say that many people are losing their shirts (if not worse) through the ongoing financial turmoils. A few got caught up in some truly heinous swindles, but for the most of us, the losses came through our previous-thought conservative investments.
What happened? What happened to the smart experts that put out money into hyper drive for a fee, but came back with losses? Are all these letters behind their names truly worth their weight in paper?
In all fairness, in a year where even Warren Buffet’s having a tough time, we can ask for little more than a mere preservation of capital. But for millions of ready-for-retirement boomers, this is no consolation. The S&P Index is back to 1997 lows, the bloodbath continues on Wall Street and Main Street.
Troubled started brewing by the end of 2006, as many forecasted low growth for 2007. Yet the market defied expectations, and the naked emperor marched on.
Now in retrospect, the picture is so clear. The US and a number of European countries were experiencing massive real-estate led credit bubbles. Many banks were leveraged to the hilt on their sub-prime lending. Debts were piling up (residential, commercial and credit cards). But the general consensus, or should we call it wishful thinking, was that there would be a soft landing at worst.
Instead of heeding to a minority of economists and analysts’ pleas to exit the market, more individual and institutional investors poured money in, hoping to ride the ever-rising wave to riches.
The media outlets were of no help. The 24-hour squawk box provided little insights and meaningful discussion to the issue. Eager to fill out its screen time, so-called experts and analysts were brought in, each with their own agendas. The stage was set up for them to further confuse the public and fan the flame of speculation.
At a time when the only thing left to say should have been: we’re in trouble, how do we get out, and by the way, get the hell out of the market right now; the discussion on short-term profiteering and trading opportunities raged on.
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