education, not training

 I am both a dynamist and a libertarian.  For me, education is a liberating praxis of individual empowerment.  It is the very antithesis of the social engineering so many elites, both within and outside academia, appear content to both promulgate and justify.


Dennis Hayes recently wrote a piece for Spiked which discusses the construct at the heart of this contrast:

• ...the idea we have of the university, and one seldom commented on, is the shift from education to training. In short, HE has been transformed into a huge training scheme. Whereas education is an open-ended, creative endeavour, training is designed to prepare people for specific roles and is structured around meeting fixed objectives. 
• What has been entirely forgotten in current discussions about ‘What is university for?’ is this important distinction between training and education. Policymakers, political commentators, university managers, lecturers and students now see no difference between the two.

For me it is as simple as the stating that I train my dog, I do not train students.  Unlike my dog, I want students to think for themselves, to appraise a situation, problem solve, interact and engage in social situations with empathy and compassion, act decisively and to daily raise their level of self-awareness and sense of personal integrity.


Training is fatally flawed within the education system, especially at university.  Change is both ongoing and accelerating.  By definition, any training provided at a university level is already dated, behind the times and irrelevant to the very market requirements it claims to be serving.  Training is frozen in the constructs and concepts of those professors doing the training: it is a map of how the world was, not how it is or how it is becoming.


In contrast, education is the basis of lifelong learning.  It is a compass to empower and guide an individual through their life journey, a set of principles and constructs that are both timeless and progressively honed through practice and application as an individual's life develops and unfolds.


Training has an inherently self-justifying quality: the student must keep repeating and recycling their training to "remain current" -- a recurrent , reregistration function not lost on institutions that profit from that training activity.


Conversely, education should be one and done.  Get a handle on the whole learning thing once, and then be equipped to use that higher education to continuously adapt to and innovate the change you wish to see in the world.


If you are a student in one of my courses, and you desire to learn, you do.  The motivation to learn, to extend the mind and to push the envelop of understanding, is an internally derived enthusiasm.  We learn because we are engaged, we are enjoying the experience and we see the relevance of the learning to our own lives.  Simple really.


Many students come into my courses not knowing or accepting this reality.  They have been conditioned to associate grade attainment with education.  They fail to realize that a high mark does not mean understanding or comprehension, merely the successful completion of an assessment activity.  In my courses assessment is learning, of learning and for learning.


The high entitlement snowflakes in the class bitch and complain, some repent and prosper, others not. Some even boast of their lack of engagement on the rate my professor websites, not even aware of the irony that they are posting their own disrespect for their own learning.


I do not "learn" students.  I do not "train" them and then in an exam ask them to jump and assess the height and form of their ability to respond in some Pavlovian multiple-choice stimulus.


Rather, I engage the students in an exploration of their own comprehension and understanding of the subject, its relevancy to them, and them as individuals as a consequence of the learning that has now changed who they are and who they going to be in life.


You can Google anything.  The point is not trained memorization. Or the ability to puke the "correct" ideas as stipulated by a professor's lectures in the approved style for a journal no one will ever read. 


No, the point to higher education should be the progressive realization of a higher functioning human being, one who can take responsibility for themselves and their actions, can lead, can inspire, can innovate change to improve the world wherever they find it and is enthused to act sustainably i.e. to actively engage in the complexities of continuous improvement consistent with deep values of human purpose.


Education, not training.

Facebook as a manifesto for change

Mark Zuckerberg recently issued this letter to potential investors:

• Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected.
•  At Facebook, we're inspired by technologies that have revolutionized how people spread and consume information.

How people spread and use information is the essence of education.  Education should have meaning and purpose.  It should be driven by goals of deep human value and the drive to improve the quality of human life.  Thus:

• Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries.
• There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. 
• Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness.
• By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information
• We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.
• Finally, as more of the economy moves towards higher-quality products that are personalized, we also expect to see the emergence of new services that are social by design to address the large worldwide problems we face in job creation, education and health care.

Zuckerberg's vision for Facebook is not confined to a defining social purpose and transformational change.  He also understands that fundamental paradigm shifts are both underway and necessary both in the approach to education for change and the implementation of constructive change. 

• The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it - often in the face of people who say it's impossible or are content with the status quo.
• Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works.

Taken in conjunction, the Facebook model represents a manifesto for the implementation of social change that encompasses both educational reform and the sustainable implementation of constructive change.  It is a manifesto based on 5 core values:

• Focus on impact
• Move fast
• Be bold
• Be open
• Build social value

Zuckerberg's message is deceptively simple. Aspire to address a significant social mission, rather than just a business entity. Innovate, and continue to innovate even as you embrace success. Learn by doing, not from strategic simulations of risk avoidance, rent seeking and brand recognition.  Most of all, trust that the primary recipients of improved education, communication and democratic freedoms -- individual, ordinary people -- are quite capable and able to direct relationships in a manner that moves all society forward.

Facebook stands testament to the fact that improved facilitation, not increased management, is the key to evaluational reform and the implementation of constructive change.

Protest less, Act more

In 1971,  Marvin Gaye released his seminal What's Going On album, the Funk Brothers are listed on a Motown record for the first time and James Jamerson is superlative. 


On that album was a definitive anthem for the Woodstock generation, Mercy Mercy Me, Ecology.  The sixties awareness and consciousness raising gave way to the generation that was going to change the world, make things better and the world a haven of peace, justice and equality.


Now let's flash forward forty years to 2006 and John Mayer's anthem for the Millennial generation, Waiting for the World to Change.


Now it is the Fall of 2011, and I find it singularly depressing that the best an outraged generation can do is to Occupy Wall Street or any other meaningless piece of property open to publicity.  Woodstock this is not, nor is it much of anything really.  40 years after the summer of love and the birth of the generation to fix the world, the best that can be done is another protest.  To do what? Raise awareness? Consciousness?  Suggest that change is needed?

News flash: you cant "wait for the world to change" -- you have to be the agent of change yourself!


Ah, but there is the problem.  To actually implement and sustain change, you have to CREATE something.  Preferably something better and without the systemic flaws of the hand presently feeding you.


Worse, academics and intellectuals are imposing their own visions and aspirations on the various occupations in a vain attempt to give them some sense of coherency and meaning other than a generation throwing its metaphorical toys out of the buggy.

• It’s hard to decide which side is worse: a group that lets out an incoherent temper tantrum devoid of political ideas, or a group that opportunistically uses that outburst to claim their lame ideas were right all along. (Collins)

OWS and its ilk have generated media publicity for themselves, about themselves.  Its all so adolescent and narcissist.  There is no platform, no guiding philosophy, no coherent vision to guide change into a brave new world., a utopia of oppression overcome and supplanted by any implementation of any actions that have tangibly affected anyone's lifestyle and livelihood.  We are waiting for the world to change and we are getting impatient.  Stomp feet and cry.  Pay attention to me!

What strikes me most about both the OWS temper tantrum and the lame efforts by intellectual elites to impose and insinuate themselves into the opportunity the OWS publicity has provided, is what is says about the educational system.  

In the 40 years since Woodstock, we have apparently leanrt nothing.  The best we can teach our youth in schools and at universities is:

• criticize
• protest
• raise awareness, if not with the public, then at least with the media
• make the story about you, not what you are protesting
• don't worry about any solutions
• repeat: reuse, recycle, and regurgitate the dogma we have fed you
• wait for the world to change

And we will test you on this, using multiple choice questions.  Occasionally, we will prescribe an essay, not in any useful structure or format, but one that reinforces the archaic monopoly on ideas that benefits us, the self-same academy feeding you the intellectual hypocrisy that says criticism is both sufficient and necessary for change. Your grade will be entirely dependent upon your ability to re-use, recycle and re-invigorate the journal articles we have written applauding our own "insightful" social criticism.    We will have then trained you to be perfectly ineffectual, except for the purposes of protest and self-aggrandizement, and we will legitimize those acts by labeling them "politics". It is all so shallow and devoid of integrity.


Well not this puppy.  No abstract theories, no hiding behind academic pretensions and intellectual deceits.  

Think. Cleanse your mind of dogma.  Replace axiomatic constructs with concept attainment that liberates, engages and creates.  Implement.  Be the change you want the world to see.

You want the world to change?  Take the money you were going to spend on graduate school and buy a one way ticket to any developing country.  Go apply your skills and energies in the service of a village and facilitate their engagement in sustaining change that tangibly improves their lifestyle and landscape.


Act.  Help one person in your own community improve their daily condition.  Read to someone.  Spend time with a senior and listen to their stories from their life.  Be a Big Brother or Sister.  

Start a business: find a good or service people in your community lack, need or want.  Fill the void.  Create, rather than criticize.


Stop thinking that every answer has to be government.  Liberate yourself from tyranny first.

change is constant, development is an option

welcome to my newest blog....


The Divergence Imperative is still under development and design.  Thus far, I have added the basic framework, included some influential and inspiring videos, added some of my own stuff and links to other blogs and resources for good pedagogy.


Thanks to those who know me and suggested, nudged and otherwise inspired me to step out beyond ecomyths and into the realm of the central role of education in facilitating sustainability as change.  

Change is constant.  It is both ongoing and inevitable.  Our only options are to embrace change, to sustain and creatively develop ourselves, our communities, our landscapes and our lives, or to resist, desist and wallow in the stasis of our own mediocrity, to justify our coma of complacency and lash out in protest at the injustices of life like indulgent, indolent toddlers.

Education that instructs students on criticism, conformity and convergent thinking, constricts and censures.  Grades are taken as a measure of learning, assessment becomes a calculus of defined memorization and recitation of prescribed dogma, and education becomes a system for trained compliance and a tool of oppression.


Education needs to do more than inform, instruct and inflame.  It needs to create, foster and facilitate divergent thinking.  From divergence comes creativity, from creativity comes innovation, inspiration and sustained development.  Divergence encourages enhanced interpersonal and interpersonal awareness and intelligences.  Divergence fosters enthusiasm and engagement: it is education that sustains change and builds futures.