Harold Jarche

Sailing through School

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One of the unschooling activities that we are looking at for next year is boat building, or at least boat repair. Graham Watt sent me this wonderful article on how you can learn most of life’s essential lessons by building your own boat. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

We hear a lot these days of student debt, young people working for years in humdrum jobs to clear the heavy personal debt that a university education necessitates. I’ve heard of former students who’ve almost had to forgo buying iPod Nanos, plasma tvs and magnesium rims for their Civics just to make ends meet, some even forced to continue eating Kraft dinners. This is unacceptable, and for those young people leaving high school and considering university I offer an option I myself took several years ago. Your parents will have the proverbial bird when they hear it, but they did when you came home with the celtic tattoo and the lip ring too.

So here goes:

For the same amount of time and money you’ll spend in university, you can build yourself an incredibly beautiful sailing boat. And I guarantee you’ll learn more about life, yourself, and the nature of stuff. The bigger the boat, the easier it is to build . Little boats need precision. Big boats just need energy. Building a large sailing boat by yourself as your major learning experience, has several advantages over going to university. It’ll take you some serious construction time, about as much as you’d spend deconstructing things and being terminally bored in an undergraduate program. And there’s a very positive side to the boatbuilding option; you’re putting something beautiful together, rather than taking something ugly apart.

As well, you can live on the sailing boat after you finish it, and sail away in it, then after several adventures involving beautiful women or men or both, sell it for much more than you put in to it. Try doing that with a diploma, unless of course it’s in psychiatry or advanced plumbing.

So forget about the skill set. What you really need is a Skil saw. As far as actual learning about life, and becoming a serious thinker, I think the boat building experience is better here too. Everything you do physically in building a boat, must also be done mentally. One quickly learns to plan, reflect, and especially not to drill a 10mm hole in the hull unless you’re damn sure it’s in the right place.

Let’s look at some comparisons.

Importantly, the examinations are much tougher for the sailing boat than for the university work. The sea is a hard marker. A 10-metre wave tearing off your deckhouse is more devastating than a note from your prof saying you should rework the essay on Heretical Tendencies of Disparate Families Living Near Organized Places of Worship.

There’s an artistic side to boatbuilding. Some yacht designers are pure artists, with an ability to match functionality with grace under pressure. Remember, a Stradivarius, looking so fragile and vulnerable can be put through the rigours of Beethoven’storms with little damage. Boats are like songs, so build one you can stand to have in your mind a long, long time.

There are several free bonus courses you’ll receive when you opt for the boat building. You won’t find free courses at the university, I assure you. With the boatbuilding bonus courses you’ll hardly feel you’re learning, but I assure you that you will . With the sailing boat you get a relatively painless course in geography, and some nifty words like metacenter, and phrases like ballast/displacement ratio.

You’ll also receive, absolutely free, a slightly more painful course in how to use a screw driver while inverted in an area resembling a horizontal concert toilet. You’ll learn about exotherms and how the potential explosive effect of too much catalysed resin in the acetone bucket can quickly get you off the All-Bran and possibly off the boat. When you build a big boat, you actually get into it, you’re not just faking that you’re into it as you might when writing an essay on Cardinal Newman’s Apologia. And of course, after you’ve finished the boat the learning goes on and on. You’ll enjoy a free course in natural conflict resolution as a sailing boat lives on the interface of atmosphere and hydrosphere, boisterous personalities frequently at odds with each other and quite willing to tear you apart to prove a point.

So why go into debt for $50,000 learning things at university you’ll never use, like finding out why Hegel was such a dork or that Fidel Castro isn’t a hedge fund, when you can go into debt borrowing $50,000 to buy stuff in order to build a boat?

It’s a no-brainer, literally.

You’ll sail the boat for years, hopefully with a wonderful partner you’ll meet who thinks you’re absolutely terrific, partially for having such a fine boat, and maybe because you have callouses and perhaps a missing finger or two. Then you’ll sell the boat for at least $150,000.

Trust me, I did this myself, except for the missing fingers. 35 years ago I opted to build a sailing boat rather than going to university. I still think it was a good move. A university degree that’s 35 years old has very little power to impress. But the boat, which today is sitting pretty in tiny Luperon Harbour in the Dominican Republic with Dutch registry still turns heads. And while I don’t own it anymore, I’m still learning something from it. I’ve found that something you build yourself remains yours no matter where it goes.

The day we understand that the problem is proximity, and we turn around and let our asses thaw, is the day our productivity will begin to grow.

By Graham McTavish Watt, Sackville, NB

CanadaGoose
The Canada Goose — built by Graham Watt

World Economic Forum – Networked Readiness Index

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The WEF has released its Global Information Technology Report, which includes the Networked Readiness Index:

Since it was first launched in 2001, The Global Information Technology Report has become a valuable and unique benchmarking tool to determine national ICT strengths and weaknesses, and to evaluate progress. It also highlights the continuing importance of ICT application and development for economic growth.

The Report uses the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) to measure the degree of preparation of a nation or community to participate in and benefit from ICT developments. The NRI is composed of three component indexes which assess:

– environment for ICT offered by a country or community
– readiness of the community’s key stakeholders (individuals, business and governments)
– usage of ICT among these stakeholders.

Here are the top ten (plus one) rankings:

  1. Denmark 5.71
  2. Sweden 5.66
  3. Singapore 5.60
  4. Finland 5.59
  5. Switzerland 5.58
  6. Netherlands 5.54
  7. United States 5.54
  8. Iceland 5.50
  9. United Kingdom 5.45
  10. Norway 5.42
  11. Canada 5.35

This is the first time that Denmark tops the list, while the US slipped from 1st to 7th place.

Self-sufficiency or Resilience?

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The NB Self-Sufficiency Task Force is making its recommendations, based on its stated realities of a “need to increase our population and our labour force”, “increase labour productivity by providing people with the right tools for he right jobs”, create “large-scale investments in infrastructure”, and “expand our existing corporate base”. All of this is premised on what appears to be the primary reality, that “Export growth must drive overall economic growth. This will create prosperity”.

The ways to achieve this are provided as 20 policy recommendations, including “Rebranding New Brunswick”, creating a “flexible incentives program to attract businesses” and conduct a “review of business tax policy”. The Task Force also recommends the establishment of several new organisations, including:

  • A Commission on the Future of Local Governments
  • An Aboriginal Employment Council
  • A $1-billion Self-Sufficiency Fund (of which $500 million would be raised from long-term bonds from the Liquor Corporation)
  • A not-for-profit corporation to raise funds necessary to develop an e-health system
  • A centre of excellence for service delivery

In addition, the Task Forces recommends the “creation of a lean manufacturing program by the Research and Productivity Council” and a targeted immigration strategy.

I’m not an economic development specialist but I have worked with several NB companies, government departments and non-profits. I try to see patterns and determine the underlying foundation of operating models, to see what makes them tick.

It appears that the foundation for self-sufficiency is that we need to export our stuff and we need to get bigger companies (corporations) to locate here so that they can sell our stuff. In return we get jobs, and employees will continue to take their cars and drive to these places that generate the paycheques, from which the government will deduct taxes or invest their beer money profits. This money will create some think-tanks and money-lending agencies to fuel this economy.

So what’s new? Corporations create jobs based on shipping stuff that belongs to the people, especially our grandchildren. We get jobs to pay taxes and attract some more people to come and pay taxes. Everything goes along just fine as long as there is demand for our products. The corporations get richer and the average citizen remains a wage-slave. This is self-sufficiency?

In reading the reports, I didn’t see much that was innovative at all. Yes, there’s an understanding that “We need to be prepared for sweeping changes of unprecedented magnitude”, but little that explains how we can be better prepared. For instance, the need for education is stated, but it is assumed that the same outdated industrial structure is adequate for our societal needs. It is assumed that work will continue to be a place to which we commute, increasing the demand for roads. Recommendations for agriculture are to continue the corporatist model, whereas there is real innovative thinking coming from people like Rob Paterson on Food:

This series will be all about how we can practically, and in a generation, shift from a model where farming now profits only a few large external companies, where it creates serfs of our farmers and where it is ruining our biosphere. Shift from this to a model where it is our farmers who make the money and where farming is the most powerful beneficial force that restores and sustains the key services that give us all life on PEI.

This report seems to be a recommendation for business as usual, but under a new brand. It supports the entrenched powers, particularly faceless corporations who are not rooted in the land.

Thomas Homer-Dixon has said that we really need to develop resilience in order to be prepared for an uncertain future. The best tools available for that task are open source collaborative problem-solving and the Internet. The grassroots, who really understand the land and our communities now have the means to assemble and collaborate. It seems that real leadership and vision for our future as a resilient region is up to us.

Entrepreneurship for students

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I’ve been asked by a local high school teacher to spend some time with his students on Friday:

if you wouldn’t mind coming in and sharing some of your expertise with my Business, Organization and Management Class …

particularly what I would hope you could offer is how you as an entrepreneur have made the switch from a past life and career, some of the risks and challenges you faced, and of course how you have Managed and Operated your consulting firm to fill specific niches locally, regionally and nationally if applicable …

one of those niches I was hoping we could focus on is maybe a deeper look at cooperatives and how they are formed, structured and work, and your experience in them

I’m not really an entrepreur, as I view freelancing as quite different from entrepreneurship. Freelancers have less risk, but don’t build any equity. Anyway, I’m thinking about discussing how the web has significantly changed many business models and talking about some of the lessons I’ve picked up from my clients over the past decade.

Any advice or recommendations for a one hour session with these Grade 11 students? Does anyone know of a good, but short, video that I could use to generate a discussion on business?

From Concept to Commons

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BACKGROUND

About five years ago I met Barry and Pam at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute, which is located about 15 KM outside of Sackville on a large property bordering the headwaters of the Tantramar River. At the time, AWI consisted of about a dozen buildings, each designed for a specific type of animal care.

The Institute takes in wildlife in the same way that a researcher would take air or water samples. Each animal tells a story and through hands-on care and possible release, we can learn about the causes of displacement, most of which are due to human actions. However, caring for animals is not enough. What is learned has to be passed on to others, so that the entire community can work to maintain the diversity of species necessary for life. There’s more information on the AWI website. Too often, environmental knowledge gets passed on only to those who are already committed, so AWI also reaches out through programs such as youth at risk. AWI is really about learning.

OUR FIRST MAJOR PROJECT

In order to create a focal point for learning activities, we decided to build a learning centre a few years ago. It would be slightly removed from the wildlife care facilities, so that the animals would not be bothered (AWI is not a zoo). We were able to build the Wildlife Learning Centre, at a cost of almost $400,000 through the support our many partners. This project showed us what we could do by working in collaboration with government, the private sector, academia, and the community.

WLC

The success of this project started several conversations. For example, we knew that with the limited staff that we had, we could not get our message out to everyone. We also wanted to start a network that would help to get science-based practices out to everyone who might come into contact with wildlife, ranging from the general public to veterinarians. For instance, many of the animals that arrive at AWI should never have been disturbed in the first place.

We wanted to build a more public office that would connect with the community and act as a node in the embryonic network. The idea was to create an environmental services centre in Sackville, which was already home to the Canadian Wildlife Service, Bird Studies Canada and other environmental groups. In 2005 we started talking to community groups and interested individuals and from these conversations our idea grew.

Almost every group that we met with had the same issue. They all needed space to do their work or to operate their programs. Few had dedicated buildings and they were constantly looking for low-cost locations. Many were operated out of someone’s house. The problem was that most lacked the consistent funds to pay rent on a long-term basis.

A COMMONS

It was at this time that I became interested in the notion of the “Work Commons” and watched with interest as Rob, Dan, and Cynthia created the Queen Street Commons in Charlottetown. I saw how individuals could purchase memberships for $35 a month and that with sufficient members, a work commons would be financially sustainable. Why not merge the idea of a work commons with an environmental centre, based on some form of cooperative? From this idea we progressed to the concept of three pillars (environmental, cultural, entrepreneurial), reflecting the makeup of our community.

With this concept, we were able to get a business plan funded by our Town Council and generate more support from businesses and organisations. As of today, we are in the process of securing a piece of property thanks to the generosity of Irving Oil.

There is a real need for physical space in our community. Non-profit organisation need a place to work and meet but cannot afford a dedicated space. The Commons will allow several non-profits to share office space. Home-based business need a place to meet with other people, or host meetings. Our Commons will be a place for the community to build; a gathering place for emerging businesses to form partnerships & friendships, and an appealing setting to think and interact with other creative people.

A COMMON POINT FOR STAFFING

I believe that a Commons would be a valuable addition to any community. It would be the place to build our own sense of community, something that has been lacking in many of our industrial age towns and cities. A common venue could also help with that other component that is missing from most non-profits: core funding.

Any non-profit organisation in this country will tell you that funding for administration and overhead is almost impossible to secure. You can get program funding or infrastructure funding but no money for administration or day-to-day operations. However, if you have a Commons, you now have the common physical space to share staff. One person can work for several non-profits. Instead of going after small pockets of funds, non-profits located in a commons can collaborate and seek funding together, because they now have a single physical address.

The path appears to be one of first providing valued programs and services, followed by collaboration and network building. Then you build physical infrastructure so that you can cooperate even more and grow your services. So far, we have been successful on this journey and I look forward to eventually breaking ground. Thanks to everyone who is working to make it happen.

Homework, the tip of the iceberg

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Witnessing the effects of six hours of homework after a six hour school day has had my mind churning so much that I cannot sleep. Consider this an open letter to the New Brunswick Department of Education and all educators.

Like the Berlin Wall, homework is a barrier between stagnation and progress. It reinforces many of the hidden messages in the school system:

Hidden messages are being delivered by our educational system to our students each and every day. The basic structure of our schools provides students with powerful lessons that don’t appear in the curriculum. These hidden lessons are unconsciously reinforced by the very nature of the system. Exactly what are they?

They are learning that discovering and creating knowledge is beyond the ability of students and is really none of their business. We have shut students out of virtually every real decision that has an effect on their schools and their learning.

They are learning that the voice of authority is to be trusted and valued more than independent judgment. The hierarchical nature of school puts knowledge in the teacher’s domain. —US Teacher (no longer online)

John Taylor Gatto’s 7-Lesson Schoolteacher essay also elaborates on these underlying messages in public education.

There is no correlation between homework and learning. If succeeding at school is your objective then homework is not necessary to achieve this. As I’ve asked before in this forum, do reasonable amounts of homework contribute to learning? The authors of The Homework Myth, The Case Against Homework and The End of Homework, strongly disagree, and cite several studies to support this position.

I believe that we have arrived at a point in the development of our industrial education system that many of us realise that it is not helping to prepare our children for productive lives, no matter which measure you use. Bill Gates has called for the abolition of schooling as has renowned author Alvin Toffler, who says that we should “Shut down the public education system” now.

After 100 years of schooling, homework has not been proven to improve school performance. Also, school performance shows no correlation to later success in life. Jay Cross has stated that there is no correlation whatsoever between school grades and later success, measured in any terms – financial, status, happiness or some other criterion. The only correlation is between school grades and university grades, two systems closed off from the real world.

David Warlick is speaking today to educators in Fredericton. Obviously, his opinion matters, as he has been invited to speak at the Literacy & Learning in the 21st Century conference. Let me quote from David’s blog:

we have an 18th century form of government depending upon a 19th century industrial model school system to supply a 21st century electorate capable of making the monumental decisions we will face in the coming years.

A recent presentation by Sir Ken Robinson, sums up how inadequate our industrial school system is in addressing the issues that our children will face on graduation. They need to be creative and we are teaching them to do as they are told. Sir Ken states that “we are educating people out of their creative capacities” and that “suddenly degrees aren’t worth anything”. He says that “our education system has mined our minds in the way that we have strip-mined the earth for a particular commodity”. The system is completely inadequate, as Toffler explains:

The public school system is designed to produce a workforce for an economy that will not be there. And therefore, with all the best intentions in the world, we’re stealing the kids’ future.

And this is where I return to homework. It appears that the education system will not change overnight, in spite of its lack of relevance. However, our children need to prepare for THEIR future now. One way to allow them to prepare is to give them back their personal time. The school system has had 100 years and six hours a day to do its job. That is more than enough to achieve its antiquated goals.

Homework Ban

Now is the time to abolish homework, and let children, families and communities use that time to prepare for a future where creativity and flexibility will be essential.

Defending against Sp@m

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In the past year I’ve registered over 104,000 comment sp@m on this blog. I’ve been using Akismet, which works well, but at +1,000 per day, they were chewing up bandwidth and slowing the system. I liked Akismet because it allowed me to accept new and anonymous comments, without the hassles of captchas or Turing tests, which I personally dislike.

I’ve just added Bad Behavior to my defence arsenal and it’s reduced trashy comments by almost 50%, but that’s still a lot. My recent change has been to enable “Strict Mode”, which is supposed to be more effective, but may block some legitimate comments. I’ve learned that Bad Behavior in strict mode may block comments from those behind firewalls, especially government and corporate systems.

If you are reading this from a government or corporate system, how about posting a quick comment and seeing if you get through? New comments are moderated, so it may take a while before your comment shows. Thanks.

It’s the Model, Stupid

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In recent discussions about building new businesses or community economic development projects I’m beginning to feel that the largest obstacles to effective communication are the outdated models that we use.

Given the dominance of the corporate governance model in business, government and non-profit organisations, it’s no wonder that many of us don’t see any other options.

For instance, last night our local chamber of commerce was briefed on the NB Self-sufficiency Task Force. We heard about the need to create 70,000 jobs and that it’s not a question of big business versus small business, but export versus services. According to the logic, exporting companies bring in wealth while support companies just shift money around inside the province. We need more export companies to be self-sufficient, and we need more large companies to create jobs, and of course we need more people due to our aging demographics (more retired people than younger taxpayers). Framed in this way, it’s hard to argue with this logic.

However, it’s like Marshall McLuhan said, “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future”. My readings and conversations over the past few years give me cause to question the line of reasoning from the task force and other policy influencers.

For instance, Thomas Homer-Dixon proposes that we build more resilient communities that can take care of themselves when our tightly-coupled global supply chain cracks as the result of some highly probable event such as an oil crisis, an environmental disaster or a pandemic. An export orientation won’t help if global shipping is significantly reduced for six months, but local greenhouses would make us more resilient.

Yochai Benkler shows how the Internet and open source development are enabling the social production of knowledge. According to Nine Shift, creating knowledge is the fastest growing segment of our economy, as manufacturing jobs continue to decrease. Dan Pink sees the rise of a free-agent nation and surmises that creativity is more important for economic success than industrial style productivity. Jon Husband sums up this change, from hierarchy to wirearchy :

Wirearchy – a dynamic flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

pyramid_bruno_girin

The corporation is a model developed for the industrial age, using command and control systems. It enabled the dominance of the salaried employee as the primary means for most people to generate wealth. However, the Industrial Age will be over in North America and Europe by 2020. All data and trends indicate a rapid decrease in the importance of the manufacturing sector, our primary vehicle of economic development for the past century.

At the same time, we are facing complex challenges to our civilization that cannot be addressed by linear or command and control solutions. Unfortunately, our organisations are ill-equipped to deal with these complex issues. Complex environments are unpredictible, whereas our institutions are based on predictibility. Take for instance government budgets, corporate quarterly growth expectations or educational curricula that are slow to change and assume the same standard for everyone.

Basically, we have the wrong models and inadequate tools to even begin to address our most pressing issues. Our problem is that we cannot even talk about our problems. Reframing the conversation may be our biggest challenge for the short term so that we, as a society, can start to think about the long term.

Value Network Analysis Resources

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We had a very informative session on value networks yesterday in Saint John. The workshop, conducted by Patti Anklam, Hal Richman and Gordon Smith, received positive reviews. Due to the weather we had several last-minute cancellations, but that meant more good food for everyone, as is evident in this photo:

vna-workshop-break.JPG

Therefore, as a follow-up to our workshop, here are several resources to further explore value network analysis and how it can be used in your organisation:

Once again, I’d like to thank our partners, NRC-IRAP and PropelSJ for helping us to put on this workshop.

For me, a key understanding about value network analysis is that it is a process which is more art than science. Humans work in complex environments and we are by our very nature unpredictable. The result of a VNA allows you to ask better questions but it doesn’t give specific answers (it’s not a tool for bean counters). I think that VNA is an excellent change management tool. I can see the use of VNA and the resulting concept maps enabling better communication within organisations, with clients, with funders and throughout communities.

All in all, it was a good learning day for me :-)