Learning

Learning

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

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.

Homework is the result of poor time management

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Dan Meyer is a mathematics teacher who doesn’t believe in the value of homework for homework’s sake. His argument is quite clear. If the teacher is organised, then instruction and practice can be completed in class. He also found in his research that few students actually benefit from mathematics homework. The “A” students don’t need it and the “D” students don’t do it.

From Dan:

The issue for most math teachers, I believe, is one of time management. If your class is slow to start the period and quick to finish, if your transitions are labored, or if you waste time disciplining your class, then you won’t have the time to get through forty problems. The only year I assigned homework with any regularity was during my student-teaching, when my class management plainly sucked, failing by every one of those metrics and more.

It was such a criminal arrangement.

By assigning whatever practice we didn’t finish to homework (I’d like you guys to finish this for homework) or by using homework to compensate for underplanning (tell you what, I’ll let you guys start your homework early) I was transferring the cost of my poor teaching onto my students.

Yikes.

One more time: my time management was a bust so I helped myself to whatever time I wanted from my students’ personal store, whenever I wanted.

I’m not a teacher, but I see an interesting connection between the industrial classroom and the corporate workplace. When I started working on my own I suddenly had much more time to get my real, client-related, work done.

In my previous, traditional job, much of my day was spent in meetings that were not related to my official work. I would have to spend time on internal functions that added no value for my clients. I would then have to work early or late or on weekends in order to get my billable work done. Even my time in the military was filled with ‘secondary duties’ that did not relate to my operational role. On my own, I can accomplish as much in one day as I would in almost a week in my old office. The only meetings I now attend are the ones that I decide to attend, and those are few.

Perhaps teachers and managers have too much control over the discretionary time of those whom they direct. Perhaps teachers can’t or won’t optimize instruction and practice in the classroom. Perhaps managers can’t or won’t optimize their workers’ time. Where is the problem? Not with students and workers.

Global Civics 101

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The Web is making the spread of ideas a lot easier. Videos, online & offline, are also a great way to get ideas across. I’ve seen a few good documentaries lately and I think that it would be rather simple to set up an “uncurriculum” for global civics. This is my term for developing an understanding about our interconnected economies and societies and the forces at play, both human and natural.

First, I would recommend An Inconvenient Truth, just to set the stage that we humans are messing things up on a global scale, but that we have the capacity, though not yet the will, to start correcting things. You can rent or purchase the movie. There is also an education guide available on the website.

I would also suggest Who Killed the Electric Car?, to show how corporatism stifles progress and innovation. You can rent this video too.

Speaking of corporatism, you have to include The Corporation, in this uncurriculum. I’ve reviewed this film before, and would recommend it to anyone.

Finally, I would recommend Why We Fight, which is available as a free Google video. This movie shows the power of the military-industrial complex, and may have you questioning why we are involved in current conflicts.

All of these movies can help to start some good conversations and they’re better than almost anyone’s lecture could be. With this suite, you can start your Global Civics 101 informal learning program.

Any other recommendations would be appreciated, as this will be part of our unschooling for next year.

Intangibles

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Jay Cross just created a short video discussing the importance of intangible assets. When examining value networks, which we will discussing in our free Value Networks Workshop on March 20th, one looks at tangible and intangible types of value, the latter described by Verna Allee as:

Intangible knowledge exchanges include strategic information, planning knowledge, process knowledge, technical know-how, collaborative design, policy development, etc., which flow around and support the core product and service value chain.

Intangible benefits are advantages or favors that can be offered from one person to another. Examples might be offering to provide political support to someone. Or a research organization might ask someone to volunteer their time and expertise to a project in exchange for an intangible benefit of prestige by affiliation. These are intangible “products” that can be exchanged, as indeed people can and do “trade favors” to build relationships.

The relationship between intangibles and tangibles reminds me of the informal/formal learning continuum. In each case, it seems that the formal/tangible component is easier to measure, so that is where our industrial management methods have concentrated their efforts. As our organisations become inter-networked, and relationships create more of our value, we realise that we have to pay attention to the silent majority that is intangible/informal.

For further reading on value networks, check out Patti Anklam’s blog at Networks, Complexity and Relatedness.

Everything is Political

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This blog is not supposed to be about politics; well at least I didn’t set out to discuss politics three years ago. However, Jon Husband recently quoted Dante Alighieri, who said that, “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

Then along comes Jon (again) referring to a piece by Joe Bageant that ends with this line – “Divisive politics once again beats the snot out of reason.”

All of this reminds me of my current read, Thomas Homer-Dixon’s, The Upside of Down. From the Chapter “Cycles Within Cycles”:

For the vast majority of us who sell our labor in the marketplace, our economic insecurity and relative powerlessness impel us to play by the rules. And in capitalist democracy, playing by the rules means not starting fights over big issues like our society’s highly skewed distribution of wealth and power. Instead it means focusing on achieving short-term material gains – such as bettering our contracts with our employers. Put simply, our economic elites have learned, largely through their struggles with workers in the first half of the twentieth century, to protect their status by creating a system of incentives, and a dynamic of economic growth, that diverts political conflict into manageable, largely non-political channels. As long as the system delivers the goods – defined by capitalist democracy itself as a rising material standard of living and enough new jobs to absorb displaced labor – no one is really motivated to challenge its foundations.

I’ve previously written about Corporatism Run Amok, but I may take more forays into the political realm, particularly as politics continues to affect my own intersection of interest – learning (state-run education), work (support of corporations) & technology (digital copyright & IP) .

Team Sports and Ethics

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When we mention that we will be home-schooling, many people say that our children will miss important socialisation activities, especially team sports. Personally, I was never interested in most popular team sports and neither was my wife, so our family doesn’t have a history of playing hockey, basketball, football, baseball and other team sports.

This report released by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, which surveyed 5,275 high-school students across the USA, shows some interesting findings regarding ethics and team sports, such as:

Some Sports Are Worse Than Others. Boys engaged in baseball, football and basketball are considerably more likely to cheat on the field and in school and to engage in conduct involving deliberate injury, intimidation and conscious rule-breaking than boys involved in other sports. Generally, boys participating in swimming, track, cross country, gymnastics and tennis were markedly less likely to cheat or to engage in bad sportsmanship than their male counterparts in other sports. Girls involved in basketball and softball were more likely to engage in illegal or unsportsmanlike conduct than girls involved in other sports.

They also found that “Many Coaches Teach Negative Lessons”, specifically – Illegal holding; Using the other team’s playbook; Faking an injury; llegally altering a hockey stick; Illegal start; Wrong player shooting free throws; Altering the field of play; Soaking the field to slow down the other team.; Throwing at a batter; Mistake in score; Trash talk; Showboating; Motivation through insult; Swearing at official to motivate team; and Holding back an athlete in school.

ethics.jpg

Like anything else, we have to be careful about generalising, but these data show that we shouldn’t take for granted that all team sports teach good socialisation skills.

PKM Unplugged

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Jerome Martin responded to my last PKM article with an excellent reference document. Several years ago, Jerome wrote a chapter on Personal Knowledge Management (PDF) for the book, Managing Knowledge: Case Studies in Innovation.

Even though it’s seven years old, I would recommend this 10-page chapter as an introduction to PKM. I don’t think that many people were even using the term at the time, but Jerome has a great list of random thoughts, namely:

  1. Spend time with creative people
  2. Go to conferences that are fascinating and apparently irrelevant
  3. Learn about a new area
  4. Travel
  5. Read voraciously
  6. Create a private personal knowledge web resource
  7. Tell your story

The first five points can be done while unplugged from the Net, so don’t think of PKM as a web-only affair (just look at the good books I’ve read in the past few years) . Today, I would slightly disagree with #6, because I have found that you get more value with a public than a private knowledge resource, but then these recommendations were made in 2000. Finally, #7 is much easier today with blogs.

TED Talk Videos

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Many of the presentations from TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talk are available on YouTube. I’ve watched a number of these recently and some of them are absolutely fantastic. These 53 videos are online and free and make for great informal learning and discussion. We have been watching some of them as a family with favourites being Sir Ken Robinson, Al Gore and Dan Dennett. I think that they are an excellent break from online reading, which many bloggers do a lot of.

These videos are also good conversation starters and I’d think that the 20-25 minutes format would be perfect for a quick lunchroom view and chat. I really appreciate the fact that TED Talk has made these available.

For those in the learning field, check out Richard Baraniuk from Rice University on A vision for free, global (online) education which looks at the publishing industry, academia and open source.

Calgary eLearning Network – PKM

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calgaryelearning.gif

I will be presenting a 90 minute online session to the Calgary eLearning Network on April 18th. The theme will be Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). Barb Krell, an alumna of one of our informal learning unworkshops, is the chief organiser of this session.

I thought it would be best to put my session info online so that participants could link to it, ask any questions in advance or review some of the references.

This post from Lilia Efimova, best sums up PKM:

To a great extend PKM [personal knowledge management] is about shifting responsibility for learning and knowledge sharing from a company to individuals and this is the greatest challenge for both sides. Companies should recognise that their employees are not “human resources”, but investors who bring their expertise into a company. As any investors they want to participate in decision-making and can easily withdraw if their “return on investment” is not compelling. Creativity, learning or desire to help others cannot be controlled, so knowledge workers need to be intrinsically motivated to deliver quality results. In this case “command and control” management methods are not likely to work.

Taking responsibility for own work and learning is a challenge for knowledge workers as well. Taking these responsibilities requires attitude shift and initiative, as well as developing personal KM knowledge and skills. In a sense personal KM is very entrepreneurial, there are more rewards and more risks in taking responsibility for developing own expertise.

Here are my perspectives on PKM from 2005 and later revised in June 2006. My latest reflection on PKM was in Aug 2006, following an unworkshop.

For the April 2007 session, I intend on covering the two main tools – Social Bookmarks, like del.icio.us; and Aggregators, like Bloglines. If there is time, I’ll discuss blogging in general terms. These three tools, in my mind, form the basis of PKM on the Web.

Comments and suggestions are always appreciated.