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The Leaning Tables of PISA

20 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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Australia, Gonski, Happiness, mindfulness, PISA, STEM, toursim, WASP

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When the PISA league table of international educational standards was released I braced myself for some pretty hysterical responses and I wasn’t disappointed. Once again Australia, who believes it should be competing at the top of the league, noticed its position decline. There was all sorts of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Often the first reaction when shit hits the fan is to look for a culprit. Never a good example when a government does this as they set the bar for the rest of the community. Surely the best reaction is to pause and look more closely? Only after a reasoned assessment of the facts and getting input from interested parties should a relevant action plan (with measurable milestones) be put in place. Least that’s what we do in the business world…and after all isn’t it for this very business world that we want top of the table students?

I’ve been pondering how China (in all its extended form e.g. Hong Kong, Taipei) and Estonia have managed to climb to the top of the educational league. One thought that popped into my head was the internet speed of the top performing countries. This theory held good for Singapore, clearly, with their legendary speed but came crashing down when Estonia only managed a poor 44th place on the global table of fixed broadband speed. Australia came in at a miserly 64th in terms of Mbps. Maybe it has to do with diet or age when children first start to be educated? I even refreshed myself with Outliers the great read by Malcolm Gladwell. Still none the wiser, I put the blog aside for a while!

Then I got to thinking. Does it really matter where we are on the PISA list if it doesn’t deliver what we really need as a society and nation – a happy and contented community. The WASP view of life, while still an undercurrent running through society (especially the owners of capital), has much less of a sway in terms of public policy and establishment of societal norms nowadays. The rise of the happiness and well-being movement is testament to this shift. I put this down to the greater affluence of the middle classes, which in the Western world, has expanded immeasurably. And guess what – we are none the happier for all that extra stuff we get to buy! There are some things that some people get to realise as they get older and wealthier and that is they get wiser as well. It’s a wisdom borne of experience. Invariably that experience teaches us that wealth is not correlated to happiness and even if it was it wouldn’t be dose dependent.

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Next step on what had now become a quest, was researching global happiness tables. Surprise surprise! There appears to be no direct correlation whatsoever between being a happy nation and the level of educational attainment. The first point of commonality is Finland topping out the happiness league, with an educational system ranked 7th. The Scandinavians dominate the happiness table with Denmark, Norway and Iceland claiming the next top slots. Sweden, perhaps mourning the demise of Abba, come in at a creditable 7th. In the educational stakes most of them are lower than us. Where might Australia be languishing then in the happiness stakes given our parlous educational system (16th place)? Actually on happiness we score a pretty robust 11th out of 156. If we were to aspire to be another country, I bet that a public poll would opt for the likes of those Nordic countries rather than China, Estonia, South Korea or Poland.

Silhouettes of People Holding Flag of Switzerland

No-one could accuse the Nordic bloc as being industrially backward either. But let’s consider the really big league in world commerce. Surely their economies rely on a smart source of labour and that’s why they are faring so well. Once again, I’m confounded to find Germany, arguably the world’s most advanced economy, ranks at 20 on the PISA table. Japan, similarly industrialised, ranks 15th. Switzerland, land of lush meadows, skiing, banks and great wealth – where I think we all secretly want to live – ranks 28th on the PISA scale. Go figure! It features in 6th place on the happiness scale.

In my opinion Australia would be well advised to spend our time trying to implement policies to get us higher on the happiness league table than the educational one. That’s not to say that we rank lowly in either. What policies should we be implementing to improve this position? Sadly the Government seems to want to place the emphasis on education. While more could be spent, I’m not sure that just getting us better at maths and reading (when it’s boiled down that’s what PISA measures) will actually take us anywhere meaningful. Time and again we are reminded by those who have a clear eye to jobs of the future (who are these soothsayers?) that we need creativity and soft skills. Our hellbent focus on STEM is not likely to deliver without us taking a broader brush to our curriculum. I’ve heard for calls recently to narrow the curriculum when, as a non-educationalist (but an employer who gets these cookie-cut kids when they leave school or uni), I need the problem-solving, creativity, soft skills, diplomacy and high EQ. A narrow curriculum is not capable of delivering these requirements.

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So it surprised me immensely when, within a few weeks of the PISA results being published, I learned that the Federal Department for the Arts was being folded into another large Department (Transport). While a precious few might find mathematical problem solving the highlight of their leisure time, they are far outweighed by those who enjoy a cultural experience like a concert, show, art gallery visit or trip to the cinema. It is the arts that distinguish us from being mere fodder for the production of goods. Even industrialists at the beginning of the industrial revolution got that. Case in point; Port Sunlight in  the UK where the enlightened Lever family created a village where they housed all their workers from management to the shop floor. Guess what they put into their village? A library and art gallery. In fact the Lady Lever Art Gallery is an amazing small gallery with one of the best collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings you could hope to see. Yup even the uneducated working class like their art!

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Australia’s economy relies quite heavily on tourism. In 2017 tourism contributed $49.7 bn to the GDP. Now I’d hazard a guess not tourists have come solely to visit our science museums! Many though will partake in our cultural offerings. The more culturally interested and literate we become the more likely we are to be happier. Along the way we might find also that our overall IQ increases too. It’s no surprise that those countries featuring high in the happiness scales have lashings of cultural offerings.

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So where does this leave us? Let’s not beat ourselves up, go blaming teachers, funding levels, Gonski, lack of Gonski etc. Let’s focus instead on the metrics that are important to us. Hubris too often drives our thinking when we get ranked lower than we think we should. That’s wasted effort. Let’s spend our time and energy making us a happier place. If that means tweaking some aspects on the educational system by teaching more mindfulness etc. then so be it. Let’s leave league table obsession for the other great cultural aspect of Australian Society – sport. At least sport has its own Ministry that’s been left intact. Would it have been any other way?

Aristotle and the Philosopher’s Zone

12 Friday Aug 2016

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Alec Ross, Aristotle, Asimo, Automation, Boolean, code, coders, cognition computing, CSIRO, dengue, Der Speigel, driverless cars, ethcis, ethicist, Forbes Magazine, Google Glass, Harvard Business Review, Japan, malaria, New Philosophy, philosopher, philosophy, psycho-social, robots, Scott Morrison, STEM, The Industries of the Future, zika virus

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I was at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) the other day observing their driverless vehicle compound. I remarked to one of the scientists about how difficult it is to choose a career than is future proof against the inexorable rise of automation. The conventional wisdom is that we should be encouraging students to do STEM subjects. Readers of my previous blogs will know I don’t entirely subscribe to this convention. In fact I’m thinking that the real future might well lie in concentrating on the humanities.

I posited to the scientist that they might need to employ an ethicist and a philosopher in the near future. He looked bemused. While I was being playful there was a serious side to what I was promoting. Follow my reasoning. Driverless cars require technology and software to make them work effectively and safely. It’s this last hurdle that must be cleared if allowing or using driverless cars gets given the green light. It’s about social license. Until the public as a whole are comfortable, technology can’t get mainstreamed. Google Glass being a good example. Career advisers would jump in here and point to my apparent contradiction. Surely driverless cars mean the key job skills of the future are in STEM subjects which can provide the workforce with the skill sets of coding, robotics, engineering etc.

Driverless-cars

The more the dispassionate application of science (‘because we can’) approach becomes our societal norm, the more we need philosophy and ethics to provide a counter balance. Let’s take driverless cars as an example. I put it to the CSIRO scientist that the decision a machine will need to make on some occasions in the driverless environment will be between harm and less harm. Imagine a scenario where there are only two ‘escape routes’ in an accident event. The vehicle may be confronted with say one avenue which is hitting a bus load of old people out on a day trip in one direction, or a bus load of school children in the other direction. Presented with these two options the car needs to make the decision based on mega fast computation which will itself be based on a set of codified rules. It’s cognition computing at its finest. Once again we are back to the coders. But just how will they make those decisions? Where this gets tricky is where the above scenario gets nuanced. Let’s say the bus with the ‘oldies’ is in fact a group of past-retirement age, but still working (Scott Morrison would be pleased) Nobel scientists working on a cure for childhood cancer and the school bus has a group of terminally ill children whose cancer could be otherwise cured by the other bus’s occupants. Much more complex. Would you want your freshly graduated coder writing the code on this one?

Only an ethicist/philosopher has the wherewithal to really give us the right steer here (pardon the pun). When coding up some of these decisions, deliberate and sometimes Boolean choices will need to be made explicit. There will exist somewhere in the Cloud, a set of rules that can be viewed. A sort of ‘value of life block-chain’ for want of a better description will be created. Surely the public has the right to input to these decisions. This might seem far-fetched but it’s coming as are driverless vehicles.

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That had me reflecting. Where else might a philosophy graduate add value in the workplace? I’ve been reading Alec Ross’s new book The Industries of the Future. He looks not entirely optimistically at the impacts of digitization on the future and what jobs might be gained and lost in the process, as well as what countries might gain and lose in the transition that is already underway in the digital revolution. He talks about demographics and the rise of robotics in particular in Japan. Culturally Japanese society, unlike the West, has looked after their elderly within the family unit. With a declining young population this is no longer an option for many. Not surprisingly the tech-smart Japanese industries have come up with a solution. Robots. The Japanese are pretty advanced and I think most are familiar with Honda’s Asimo which seems quite lifelike even though clearly a robot. Asimos are now capable of looking after the physical care needs of elderly Japanese patients. Increasingly, through machine learning and cognition computing, they are advancing to becoming able to deal with the psycho-social needs of the patients as well. All a good thing right?

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Not necessarily so. The imparting of wisdom accumulated from years of success and failures is a feature of all societies especially in Japan. What we now confront with Asimo is a break in a key anthropological aspect of society where the young learn from the old. There is a clear philosophical component to be considered here before we rush headlong into a robotic solution. The presence or not of some automation should not be limited only by the fact that the ‘technology isn’t there yet’.

One of the reasons robots haven’t featured at the top end of society yet is the time it takes for an individual robot to learn. With cloud computing robots are learning from the collective experience of just not themselves but all the other experiences of the other inter-connected robots. This clearly has an ethical/philosophical component as well. If ultimately the children of busy working parents are going to be raised by robots, do we really want the wisdom passed to our next generation to be a synthesized fusion of collective experience? Presumably robots learning at a global level and at digital speed are going to make fewer and fewer mistakes. Some of the best lessons I’ve learned have been what not to repeat from earlier mistakes I have made. To not have access to this wisdom, borne of the school of hard knocks, may have profound impacts on future generations and we may well not realise this until too late.

But all this is over the horizon. We might assume we have time to get it right. Well I don’t think so. A skills shortage of philosophy graduates right now would suggest we need to be encouraging bright young students in our schools to take up a contemplative life where thinking for the sake of thinking is the main component of the position description. We need such minds now. There are moral and ethical issues with stem cell research which are obvious. Others that readily spring to mind are free trade agreements, food additives, ethical investing, DNA sequencing etc.

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There are subject matters that mightn’t be so obvious that would definitely benefit from a philosophical approach. Zika virus is one that strikes me needs careful consideration. We have the technology now to eradicate the most dangerous animal in the world – the mosquito. No brainer really. Think of how much suffering we could avoid by having no more malaria, dengue and zika. Pause for a moment and consider from a philosophical perspective though. According to Marian Blasberg, Hauke Goos and Veronika Hackenbroch writing in the Der Speigel one of the main reasons that we have the Brazilian rainforest still largely protected from development is the scourge of the mosquito. Without those green lungs in reasonable order the world would be a much worse place with arguably just as much misery as the mosquito ever caused. This is an issue for us right now as scientists are hitting the field with genetically modified mosquitos in the back of their Land Rovers. Who are we to deliberately decide the extinction of an entire genera?

At work we have recently introduced a journals club to put into a proposed Research, Reading and Reflection Room (3Rs for short). The usual suspects are there e.g. Forbes Magazine and Harvard Business Review. One that might raise a few eyebrows, but is I think an essential read for modern managers, is New Philosopher. In case the auditors think I’m getting profligate I will leave it to master philosopher Confucius to justify the subscription. ‘Learning without thought is labour lost. Thought without learning is perilous.’

 

Your SCHEEME is Rad Man

30 Monday May 2016

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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analogue digital, BCEC, Charles Dickens, Copurnicus, Design Conference 2016, EduTECH, Einstein, Gradgrind, Jessica Hische, Powerhouse Brisbane, procrastaworking, rad, SCHEEME, STEM

keepfresh

I’ve been putting my mind to the whole notion of innovation lately. It’s really easily to jump on board the innovation bandwagon. As this train departs the station I can, hand on heart, say I was an early passenger. That said, I feel somewhat fraudulent up here in first class. To transition our economy we have been told we must innovate. No arguments there…but how?

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I’ve been to two conferences lately, one being the Design Conference at the ever funky Powerhouse in Brisbane and the other the massive EduTech conference at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. They couldn’t have been more different. The former was an exploration of issues of creativity and how to marry this with client demands and the latter was all things education with a real push on promoting STEM. STEM seems to be everywhere at the moment. You could be forgiven for thinking that STEM is the new black. It would appear we have too few students taking these subjects through school and higher education and this is a roadblock to the transitioning of our economy and our nation’s future prosperity.

STEM-logo

What’s remarkable about this assertion is that it is in and of itself putative i.e. it has no evidence base. Clearly our future can only be measured when we get there and when we do if STEM didn’t deliver the transition or prosperity we envisaged how can we disaggregate that cause from other causative factors, known in science as variables? Truth is we can’t. Just seems odd to me as the STEM community should know better than to promulgate their cause with such poor advocacy. I’m lucky; I’m not a scientist. I believe much more nowadays in intuition and based on my gut feel (becoming increasingly scientific by the way) I think STEM is not the way to go at all. Let me explain.

I attended by neighbour’s son’s BBQ on Sunday. He’s a really smart young man with a good mature head on his 6ft 9inch shoulders (yes I’m already looking up to him) and he’s just turned 15. He has just decided on the subjects he will be taking for his Year 11 and Year 12 (final two years of high school). The three key electives he has chosen are Maths C (the really hard subject), Physics and Chemistry. The STEM community will be chuffed as this is the calibre of candidate they want – smart, focused and hard working.

Given I had just attended a conference that did not use the acronym STEM once, but was constantly using the word ‘rad’ as a key descriptor in their lexicon, this got me reflecting. A quick trip to Google perfectly argued my point in the kind of succinct way I never could. ‘Rad’ is defined in the Webster Dictionary (around since 1828) as:

‘A unit of absorbed dose of ionizing radiation equal to 100 ergs per gram of irradiated material.’

‘Rad’ is further defined in the Urban Dictionary (I suspect established a lot more recently than 1828) as:

‘An abbreviation  of ‘radical’ – a term made popular by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Still primarily used by people on the West Coast who find words like ‘cool’, ‘awesome’, and ‘tight’ to be tired and overused; ‘rad’ is generally considered to be a much higher praise than the aforementioned superlatives. Also used as a general expression of awe.’

You get my point. Two opposing sides of the brain with a completely different view of things, with a differing lexicon. So which direction should you take? Clearly those of a left-sided brain bent will, of necessity, gravitate to the more science-based subjects. Those more creative, drawing on the right hemisphere, will take the more ‘arty-farty’ route. Those trying to influence Governments in terms of education and industry policy are clearly pushing a left-hemisphere agenda to the potential detriment of those not of this persuasion. I think this is not only wrong but may have a deleterious impact on our economy. Here’s my reasoning (and intuition). STEM is unashamedly based in the world of science. Einstein though, perhaps the foremost scientist ever, suggests that creativity is essential when he says:

‘It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.’

pull-quote-jessica

So I’m going to posit a new acronym that I think is a much better recipe for success or subject line-up for year 11 and 12 students. I’m calling it SCHEEME. It works too because it is so catchy! It stands for Science (yeah I’m not dissing it entirely), Creativity, History, Engineering, Economics, Mathematics and Environment.

In more detail here is my pitch for each.

Science – of course we need science to keep pushing the boundaries and improve the lot of humankind. Also without the scientific method we can fall prey to all manner of charlatans and opinion, however expressed, can become the abuse of power. It was only in the 16th Century that the earth was the centre of the universe. Without Copernicus and colleagues we would still be laboring under this misapprehension. Perhaps the modern day analogue is the denial of climate change. That’s why we need scientists.

Creativity – this is the way I see it. You can have the best looking, most advanced TV with the most rad streaming service but if the content’s shite then what’s the fun in that? We need creativity for our well-being but more fundamentally we need it to help solve problems by thinking outside the square. My experience at the Design Conference last week showed me a whole world of bright, focused and gifted people with so much to offer from their particular right-sided brain perspective. We ignore this demographic at our peril. Gradgrind, after all, is not one of Dickens’ heroes.

History – Simply put we will commit the sins of our forefathers if we have no understanding of what went before us and the context in which such events unfolded. The current rise of fascism in Europe and America is a reminder that the horrors of not that long ago could re-emerge if we do not keep a weather-eye on whence we have come. A few more Wall Street types could have fared better if they had just done some economic history instead of throwing dwarves.

Engineering – we are in the post-industrial age so engineering is a core plank of how we progress. Key health breakthroughs will involve engineering whether it be genetic or robotic. You will get no argument from me here.

Economics – Economics is at the art-science nexus. Part science with a set of laws, it also requires a more expansive mind to really understand its full complexity. In economics one will find their core beliefs in terms of social policy. To know that is to begin to know oneself.

Mathematics – I guess maths sits as the immutable laws underpinning science so let’s throw it in there. About time we got some of the art teachers to teach it though. Kids learn mathematics (or not as the case may be) in different ways. I suspect we need a different modality to teach left-sided concepts to right-sided people. I’ve heard mathematical geniuses describing numbers in colours in the same way as artists might of a work of art. Surely there is something further to be explored here?

Environment – I’ve not seen anyone throw this into the mix. Climate change is real and it’s happening now. If we cannot imbue in our STEM students an appreciation for and love of our planet then solutions that might be in science may not come to the fore. Biology is that poor cousin subject in the sciences that often gets dropped because the curriculum calendar can’t stretch to one more. The mathematically-minded struggle more with the natural world, which is a real shame. Einstein himself recognized the need for a deep contemplation of the environment.

Einsten

If there is no planet the STEM versus SCHEEME debate becomes arbitrary anyway.

So next time you see STEM being advocated in our schools and learned institutions, it is worth considering the motivations of those pushing this agenda. The key question to ask is what are they trying to achieve by pushing us headlong into a future world that looks overly dispassionate? When all is said and done what do most famous scientists do of an evening? I suspect it’s to put on a great record or go to the theatre where the breadth and complexity of the human spirit is laid bare. For it is only through this can we continue to grow as individuals, community and a nation.

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