• Half of Luxemburg is filled with foreigners, although mostly from neighbouring countries. The UK’s foreign citizens % is surprisingly low.
• Neo-nationalism exerts more and more pressure on the European Project.
• Europe moving closer to the American model in higher education.
• No surprise, SAS most punctual airline.
• The divide is increasingly north-south, in addition to east-west.
• New study says African civil wars not result of climate shifts.
• This is how you write for the British tabloid.
• Behind “The Secret”.
• Post-Communist generation: “Skeptical about democracy, cynical about capitalism”.
• Is “more Europe” the solution to Europe’s problems?

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. …

THE REST
World Cup preview
nplusonemag.com- A team-by-team analysis of the World Cup teams for a rough idea of what people will be talking about in the month ahead. …
The ‘beauty bias’ at work, and what should be done about it
inthesetimes.com- The increasing prevalence of obesity in America has done nothing to curb virulent prejudice against fat people. Ironically, immobilizing obesity is protected as a disability, but discrimination based purely on cosmetic aversion to fat is totally legal. …
Naughty by nature: Why has Britain become so rude?
independent.co.uk- How did we become addicted to rudeness – in the sense of fart-joke vulgarity as well as personal insult? Is it a phenomenon of British art history, a leitmotif of British popular culture, or something firmly engrained in the British character? …

inthesetimes.com- The increasing prevalence of obesity in America has done nothing to curb virulent prejudice against fat people. Ironically, immobilizing obesity is protected as a disability, but discrimination based purely on cosmetic aversion to fat is totally legal. …
Naughty by nature: Why has Britain become so rude?
independent.co.uk- How did we become addicted to rudeness – in the sense of fart-joke vulgarity as well as personal insult? Is it a phenomenon of British art history, a leitmotif of British popular culture, or something firmly engrained in the British character? …

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. …

THE REST
“Green consumerism” largely a myth
nakedcapitalism.com- Conventional measures of carbon emissions give consumers a free pass and ignore the greenhouse gas production resulting from global sourcing of consumer goods. …
Costa Rica puts brakes on popular stem cell tourism
in.reuters.com- Costa Rica is cracking down on an unauthorized stem cell clinic that has attracted hundreds of foreigners seeking relief from degenerative diseases and serious injuries. …
Neuroplasticity is a dirty word
mindhacks.com- Synaptic plasticity refers to changes in the strength of connections between synapses, the chemical or electrical connection points between brain cells. …

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?

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?

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.

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?

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.

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:

Many of the Europeans first came to the U.S. as graduate students, frustrated by the limited options offered by European universities. … Getting a doctorate in her native Belgium was unappealing, … because students were left on their own, with little academic support or oversight; many Ph.D. candidates she knew became discouraged after a few years and gave up. In the U.S., by contrast, the university was geared toward the student. Professors were approachable; research facilities, including libraries, were first-rate; and financial and other assistance was readily available.

I also buy the argument that subjects such as economics, treated as a scientific pursuit in North America, is still subject to political and philosophical whims when presented in Europe.  I once sat in an advanced political economy class, where mercantilism was offered as a viable alternative to the current global economic system.

Obsolete and disproved Marxist and socialist thinking also remained strong within European universities, including in economics departments. Many young economists, scientifically oriented and so recognizing the superiority of free markets, found the climate intellectually stultifying. It remains the case that most French and Italian universities teach economics as a philosophical subject—with opinions mattering as much as facts—not a scientific subject. A Keynesian, statist perspective still dominates most European curricula: free-market professors are an embattled minority.

I can’t help but think that much of what goes on in those supposed intellectual hot-beds called universities, particularly in Europe, because of its relatively low level of diversity when it comes to political ideologies and economic preferences, tend to be self-selective.  Therefore, the Keynesians and statist school will always dominate, no matter the timing.  And those that want alternatives have no choices but to leave.

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 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is based in Paris, projects that Denmark’s growth rate will fall to an annual rate of slightly more than 1 percent for the five years beginning in 2009, reflecting a dwindling supply of a vital input for any economy: labor.

The problem, employers and economists believe, has a lot to do with the 63 percent marginal tax rate paid by top earners in Denmark – a level that hits anyone making more than 360,000 Danish kroner, or about $70,000.

As for lessons learned from the fair state?

The EU says thanks, but no thanks. While searching for a more sustainable social model that blends sensible social welfare policies with demographic shifts and competition from hungrier players, i.e. Asia, OECD’s secretary general says:

“The Danes are the happiest people in the world, but you have to be a Dane to be happy in those conditions, because it is explained by 150 years of evolution in that particular area,” Gurría said.

“What is not possible is to replicate this. When they are talking about the Danish or the Nordic model, this cannot be done in Brussels, this cannot be done in Paris, it cannot be done in Italy, it cannot be done in the United States.”

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 moment later, I spoke to an Anglo-Canadian journalist at the press coffee bar: “A great film,” he said. “Shows how oppressive the French school system still is. Everyone has to fit in, or they’re out. Look what they did to that boy from Mali!”

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.

This relentless focus on the self led to some friction as children of those baby-boomers moved through the school system.  In one instance, red pen were deemed too harsh a colour to mark mistakes, so lavender was used instead.  Participation trophies in sports were introduced.

Over time, various institutions have had to deal with this cohort and adjust to its various demands.  In universities, some professors are now faced with complaints when handing out marks: some children and their parents simply would not accept bad ones. In this case, education is viewed as a business transaction, and entitlement rears its ugly head: students are customers of a product, and universities are there to provide it.  Therefore, they feel entitled to walk away with a degree, and a degree with hounours at that.

The road to hell is often paved with good intentions.  Child psychologists now recognize that instead of instilling self-confidence and self-esteem in children, this generational focus on feeling good has created quite the problematic outcome.  The languages and tools used throughout the school system has created an environment where competition is eliminated or downplayed, criticisms are removed when deemed too harsh, children are protected from failures, and as a rule, any kind of output – meaningful or not, is lavished with praise.  In hindsight, this created us: a generation hooked on constant validation and affirmation, perhaps with an unrealistic sense of our own strengths and shortcomings.

The extent to whether the above analysis is in fact accurate, is questionable.  The teachers and lecturers I encountered during my school years were for the most part, fair, constructive, and honest.  But I have noticed the emergence in a brand of bland, neutral and non-critical teachers into the classroom. With various changes taking place in the education system, and more teachers seeing themselves not as teachers but facilitators, what can we expect from the next generation?

The market feeds the beast: unique, customized, and controlled by you

Marketing shifted its focus when it comes to psychological selling.  In the past, the advertising world used to sell based on aspirations.   The marketing message then was: you are not good enough unless you buy our products.  Since nobody will ever be “good enough”, one is left to buy in perpetuity.

That message lost its lustre a while ago.  The message that sells now is something quite different.  Marketers tap into our sense of entailment , our vanity, our need to feel good, and our need for “self-expression” and self-validation through the idea of: you are important, you are unique, you are great the way you are. Now all you need is a product that we have to express your uniqueness.

If we think of some of the most successful products and services to emerge in the past decade, what comes to mind? Facebook, Youtube, IPod, Starbucks.  What do they have in common?  They all capture our need to exert and broadcast our presence, our importance, and our uniqueness to the world.

The trend that pander to the idea of self-expression and self-importance developed when the current Gen Yers were still in their tweens – the term has only been in existence for under two decades.  It was back then marketers first tasted the success of marketing to kids that had their own brand of shampoo.  Since then, that market had been segmented and targeted as one that has the power to make or break products.  I know a little about that.  I still remember the Tomagochi craze and the hand I had played in that hype with my baby alien.

Since then, our generation had not been without this constant bombardment of “uniqueness” marketing.  Marketers are also astute to introduce a sense of “control” back to the consumers: you know better than us, so tell us how and what you want.  Starbucks sells to that – customized coffee experience; burger and sandwich places want to sell you “your” burger or sandwich; cultish spiritual books sell on that – The Secret is to conform the world to your divine force; new condos targeting young urban yuppies – customize your living space by checking a few boxes.

Of course, the true irony of the situation is: the more we buy into the message of customization, the more we are essentially the same.  No matter what colour of IPod we choose, how obscure our coffee order is, or what kind of boxes we tick off when it comes to picking our condo tile or flooring colours, we are buying into the same message of uniqueness.

Arguably one of the most consistently powerful and seductive marketing pitch of our time is one that centres around the idea of: you deserve it.  The L’Oreal commercial and Oprah alike appeal to their audiences this way.  There’s nothing wrong with leading the best life that we can have.  But after years of the same self-congratulatory refrain, we have internalized the idea that luxury is for the masses and not only the rich.  In doing so, we have become accustomed to living the life we want, or “deserve”, rather than the life we can afford.  That sense of entitlement has us hooked on swiping those credit cards.  In one way or another, those self-affirmation and feel-good principles seeded during our school years, carefully nurtured by teachers, parents and marketers alike, came to fruition.

Now, the workplace

The problem gets a little more interesting when my generation enters the workforce.  The old guards are not used to tell us how valuable we are, or hold our hands for constant validation or feedback, or have the patience to listen to our unidirectional broadcast.

All the arguments given above is predicated on the idea that we are indeed a cohort, and this kind of attitude is prevalent in our generation.  In many cases, family influences can trump socialization.  Even so, I have to say that whether I like it or not, my generation probably embodies more Me-ness than generations past.  Whether these are attributable to our age and brashness, or some wider social forces, I cannot be certain.

But the ego-massaging activities the marketing community readily offers is beginning to seem more cynical than clever to me.  If they are indeed fostering a generation that is both insecure and vain, unable to cope with failure and assess ourselves critically and realistically, then perhaps we are better off without them.

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.

Cost for low value-added knowledge and execution of tasks keep falling, due to both a falling cost of information, and the increased competition from a more level playing ground. Power no longer rests in the hands of those with knowledge, not when knowledge has become such a public good. But it rests in the hands of those that know how to manipulate and utilize knowledge in the most value-adding manner.

The newspaper industry’s present-time struggles are partly due to inflexible and inadequate responses to the lowered entry barrier (on the supply side) and lowered valuation of its current product offerings (on the demand side). Also afflicted? Future of higher education. This is succinctly illustrated in the lament on the present course of training MBAs.

What will we sell them when the algorithmic skills we are now teaching will be available at zero marginal cost? What will we be selecting for when the preeminent source of value will be the skills involved in defining values rather than those involved in calculating the best means to achieve accepted values?

And just exactly what kind of thinkers will flourish in this new economy? You know, the ones that will lead the transition from the Age of Information to the Age of Interpretation?

These thinkers will be big- and nimble-minded enough to reason coherently about radically different cultural, metaphysical, technical, disciplinary, linguistic, and methodological perspectives; and tough-minded enough to take constructive, positive action in the face of radical inconsistency and incongruity among perspectives; to stare the future in the eyes even after realizing truth is not equivalent to certainty—and to think about the world while thinking about thinking about the world at the same time, having realized that all thoughts are fallible, but thinking itself is priceless.

Critical thinking and morality in education

I had little interest in the field of education, short of writing about the inadequacies of my own education. Then I came across Shafeen Charnia’s blog, where the shortcomings of our education systems are placed in context with much of corporate and social misdeeds.

This financial crisis has exposed, some says over-exposed (because it always has, and always will exist) corporate mis-behaviour. Executives have been called anything from greedy to immoral. Suddenly, morality found itself a central theme in the discussion of education reforms.

As a precursor to aspired characteristics such as integrity and accountability, morality is no doubt a good starting place for the future leaders and participants of civil societies. Yet one psychologist so far sees flaw in the logic, and pointed out that “true moral education encourages critical thinking and cannot be assumed to promote virtuous behavior any more than education about economics can be assumed to promote thrift.”

Many would argue that moral education should be left in the hands of the parents. But when parents fail, should the system pick up the slack? And just exactly how do we promote morality through the education system? And more importantly, should the promotion of such qualities be a part of its mandate? With a system that in some instances, still struggles to impress upon its students the basic skills of life, is the promotion of moral behaviour too much to ask?

Globalization and the right responses in education reform

American children are by no mean masters of rote learning. And nor should they be. But when it comes to talks of education reform, an overwhelming amount of focus is given to better GPAs and higher SAT scores. The end goal? The right college or university.

This is all good and well when the dissemination of knowledge is protected and monopolized by educational institutions. Those were the times when self-learning was a much more laborious and arduous journey, a journey that requires mental fortitudes not possessed by most. Going forward, perhaps outcomes will one day trump processes. Equality of information access ensures everyone gets to play. In the near future, perhaps other measures of learnedness can be created to replace the diploma-driven educational market.

Some would argue that the west cannot compete with children from countries in East Asia, where children possess higher technical skills. So let them be, and accept the challenge. Focus on molding our children into more creative, conscientious, culturally adaptable and well-rounded beings. While those societies are producing the next batch of knowledge workers, perhaps we want to charge forward and nurture the above-mentioned information “interpreters”.

picture source: ~ForbiddenEmotions

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.

After a couple of years of manipulating spreadsheets, I returned to school and picked up, then subsequently dropped, the utopian study of politics. Slightly disillusioned over the ivory tower dissection of some irksome subjects, I turned to the idea of educating myself.

Needless to say, we live in a time when knowledge dissemination could not be greater and more easily accessible. The only thing required of us is our time and attention. After divesting myself of school, I had all the time in the world. I can safely report that, if you have the time and patience to learn, then there’s someone out there willing to teach you how to do it, most likely for free.

My point here? Learning does not always need to take place in school, nor does the departure from a particular time in our lives signal the end of learning. Unbeknownst to us, when we put our heads down at jobs, our exposure to the world narrows significantly. But learning need not stop there – if not for the selfish reason of keeping ourselves relevant in this ever-changing world.

Less than half a decade ago, marketing itself revolved around the 5 Ps, whereas now it would seem dinosaurous to teach it without incorporating the power of social media and consumer dialogue throughout the online space. A couple of years ago, we approached the financial market through the lenses of Black-Scholes. But nobody in finance today would be taken seriously without acknowledging at least some of the fatal shortcomings from which modern finance was built upon.

When I felt less than inspired during my working life, the idea of education or school always gave me hope. I think the promise of education allows us to temporarily shed the shackles of our jobs in whichever its current incarnation may be, and open our eyes to new possibilities.

Now that I am working through my version of DIY education, I think I have found the right balance again. In an informal and self-controlled setting, learning can be more liberating and more rewarding than what most of us have experienced within the hallowed halls that our parents paid dearly for.

picture source: ~shimpo