Football, Sports, High School…My Fury

We don't need more of these...

This week's blog posting. It's all about how furious I am that schools are using windfall Covid funds from the government to pay for...more sports. Not education. Sports.

Argh.

https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/post/football-sports-high-school-my-fury

On leaving Cambridge College

Just finished teaching what will probably be my last ever class at Cambridge College. I was surprised (and yet not surprised) by how sad that made me feel. To leave the building and know that I would probably never be in the place again was, well, rather a melancholy thing.

It is a good school and I've met good people there. I will miss them.

Still, there will be other classes. I will teach in other places. Or, so, at least, I trust.

More on Machines that Think, and What We Need to Do About Them

Hi, everyone,

Well, as you’ll recall, I’m doing one of my infamous series, this one on machines like Watson (the famous IBM computer that was on Jeopardy a while back) and the effect they’re going to have on the world of work. I’ve been arguing that such systems and software are going to put a lot of white-collar workers out of work. The professions, which have so long defined success in America, are going to become ever more sparse in terms of jobs.

I’ve also argued that the only thing we can do about it is to stress what we humans do well, and what machines do badly. We need, I suggest, to stress our capacity for creativity and invention.

However, I’m going to conclude my little series by saying that we’ve got a serious problem on our hands. To wit, we’ve got to learn to be creative. (And when I say “we” I mean our children. They are the ones who will rise or fail in the world that Watson made.) Ah, but there’s the rub. Right now our educational system is not geared up to produce creative people.

If anything, it is meant to stamp out creativity.

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I’m quite serious about that. If you have children, think about the number of worksheets…all basically identical…that your son or daughter brings home in their bulging backpack every evening. Think of the endless exercises they are required to perform—again, all basically identical, all requiring the mastery of one or two basic rules (when this do that…divide by two…pick a verb). Think about the underlying assumption about work that is to be found in those exercises. And, consider, too, that the real lesson being taught here. It has nothing to do with numbers or words. It is rather that success comes from servility and passivity.

And we train them that way because that’s the skill you need to perform most white-collar jobs—i.e., you need to be able to sit down and perform certain prescribed tasks according to a limited number of fixed rules on an enormous number of data points.

But, as I’ve already said, Watson does that better than we can. And Watsons are going to be everywhere. So, for us to train our children to be Watson-esque is like training them in the arts of buffalo hunting and buggy whip manufacture.


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What all this means is that our educational system has to change. And soon.

We need to teach our children to be creators. We need them to be innovators. We need them to be pioneering scientists, engineers, and technologists who don’t just apply the rules and turn the crank, but rather defamiliarize the obvious, and discover the obscure. We need them to be artists, musicians, actors and playwrights, filmmakers, and writers who ask uncomfortable questions, and perceive unexpected realities. We need them to be business entrepreneurs. Yes, entrepreneurship, too, is one of the creative arts. Perhaps, indeed, it is the most demanding of them all…the most requiring of invention and wisdom.

And, happily for us, we know how to do this. We know how to train children to be creators. There are no mysteries here. Maria Montessori and John Dewey explained it all a century ago. John Henry Newman, in his _ The Idea of a University _, did the same earlier still. You give children science, mathematics, literature, art, and philosophy as their toys.

You let them play.


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Mind you, I’m not being “liberal” or idealistic, or utopian. This is not the chaotic classroom that some people blame for the decline of American education. It is a form of discipline…an unstructured discipline, perhaps, but discipline all the same. It is a system in which the teacher has authority, but an authority that leads rather than forces the way into learning. And it is ancient. It is the ultimate “back to basics.” It is the way of Socrates, Aristotle, Plato…and the Prophets, and Christ, and the Buddha. It is the way of the sage.

And, besides, we have no choice.

The reality is that Watson and his successors will reshape the workplace utterly. If we continue as we have in the past, our children will fail. They will be outclassed by the machine’s brute force. And, not just them, but our culture may perish utterly.


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This is my argument. This is what I believe about Watson.

In fact, I’ve written an op-ed piece to this effect. I’m sending it about to magazines and newspapers.

Will it ever be published? I sort of doubt it.

There is a lesser and a greater reason for that. The lesser is that Watson is now old news. In an age of high-speed journalism, and higher speed opinions, he has already been discussed and judged by all the People Who Know Best. They have long ago moved on to other things.

The greater is I’m sending it to people who are editors and journalists — that is, people who have succeeded in the current system, people who are the products of J-schools and professional development seminars

Such individuals will not find my ideas particularly appealing.

But, even so…

Even if my manuscript lingers long upon the shelf until it eventually drops from view… I’m right.

And, in the end, Watson will prove it.

Time… and machines… are on my side.


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Onward and upward.








Copyright © 2011 Michael Jay Tucker

Schools, and automated CEOs

Everyone says our schools are broken.

And everyone seems to have a fix to flog—more money or less, crush teachers unions, merit pay, charter schools, and on, and on, and on. A hundred different solutions battle it out. Some, like the libertarian proposals to abolish the Department of Ed, will probably always remain in the realm of fantasy. Others actually have money behind them. Thus, the Republicans had their "No Child Left Behind." The Democrats have their "Race to the Top."

In theory, all these are very different. However, at least as I read the various proposals, they actually have a lot in common. They hold as an unstated but dominant belief that schools should prepare children to be white-collar employees of some large business entity.

But is that wise?

Let's think about how hiring has changed over time. In the 1950s, the norm was the massive industrial corporation with large numbers of workers on an assembly line and a smaller but still respectable number of white-collar employees in "the office."

Except that's not the way it stayed. All businesses seek to reduce their operating costs. One way to do that is to cut staff. So, in the second half of the twentieth century and the first years of this, American corporations did just that. They automated. Or, they went offshore. And we had a wave of blue-collar layoffs.

But, we reassured ourselves, there'd always be white-collar jobs. Surely, corporations would always hire managers, clerical workers, and accountants.

Except they didn't. Starting in the 1970s, corporate America famously flattened and mid-level staffers became an endangered species. Today we've got far fewer white-collar employees, and those who remain are working much harder.

And now… it's Upper Management's turn.

I predict we'll see the same process there. Some of the functions of top management are going to go offshore, or, believe it or not, be automated. If you don't think that's possible, then consider the following: the majority of trades on Wall Street today are carried out not by brokers, but by computers. It's called "Algorithmic Trading."

I'm not saying that we'll have a business version of the Terminator taking over the world. Corporations will always be run by human beings. But, it is also true that the natural evolution of corporations is away from employees. It is always in their interest to hire as few people as possible.

If so, then teaching our children to be cubicle denizens is idiotic. It is more likely that they will find jobs in small businesses and/or be self-employed. Which means we need to be training young people to be small-scale entrepreneurs. They don't need MBAs. They need basic business skills, like bookkeeping and salesmanship.

And we ought to re-value the trades. Let's face it, right now, it is lot easier for young people to make money repairing cars or fixing plumbing than it is for them to get entry-level positions in big companies.

Finally, maybe most of all, we ought to promote creativity in students—a proven business advantage, and something that will be difficult or impossible to automate or outsource any time soon.

And to make this happen, our schools are going to have to change—root and branch.

But we're going to have to change with them. We've got some major values to shift. We've got to do some re-defining of the word "success." We're going to have to get used to the idea that being a solvent plumber is better than being a bankrupt white-collar worker.

Until we do that, education in America will continue to be a problem. All the reforms proposed by Right, Left, and Center will fall short.

And our Race to the Top? All too likely a mad dash, confused and stumbling, without a goal, without a map…

Into the abyss.


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Special Note: I'm off to New Mexico in a couple of days. So, I won't be posting an Xcargo next week or the week after. But, in the meanwhile, have a great holiday, and I'll see you in January 2011.

Twenty-eleven? Oy. How did that happen? Wasn't it just yesterday that 1975 was impossibly far away in the future?

Ah well…

Onward and upward.