New Work New World New Education The Three

New Work. New World. New Education. The Three Must Meet. Tom Peters/09. 16. 2004

All Slides Available at … tompeters. com

1. Work Will Never Be the Same!

108 X 5 vs. 8 X 1* * 540 vs. 8 (-98. 5%)

And Now the Equivalent … White Collar Revolution!

“A bureaucrat is an expensive microchip. ” Dan Sullivan, consultant and executive coach

2. Welcome to an Age of Selfdetermination!

Anne Busquet/ American Express Not: “Age of the Internet” “Age of Customer Control” Is:

The control revolution. The potentially monumental shift in control from institutions to individuals made possible by new technology such as the Internet. Source: Introduction, The Control Revolution, Andrew Shapiro

“The Web enables total transparency. People with access to relevant information are beginning to challenge any type of authority. The stupid, loyal and humble customer, employee, patient or citizen is dead. ” Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle, Funky Business

Message: We are on the cusp of a “People’s [customer/ patient/ citizen/ etc. ] Revolution. ”

“Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy!” The Cluetrain Manifesto

“HR Employee Self-Service/ ESS” John Pask/IHRIM

B 2 E* *Business to Employee (IHRIM. link)

“Systems supporting one-toone employee relationships will add competitive advantage. ” “Employees expect far more access and control over their own information. ” Source: IHRIM. link (2 -3. 200)

“Managing Benefits: Let Workers Do It” Source: Headline, Money & Medicine, New York Times (12. 06. 00); cited are specialist companies such as e. Ben. X and Vivius of Minneapolis

“Human resource management (HRM) systems will begin to look more like customer relationship management (CRM) systems— where we must know as much about our people (existing and future) as we do about our customers. ” “Applications in the future will be much more personalizable. Every user will have a customized way of working with their information. There will be more of a self-learning and intuitive model than we have today. ” Source: IHRIM Journal (12. 2000)

“A seismic shift is underway in healthcare. The Internet is delivering vast knowledge and new choices to consumers – raising their expectations and, in many cases, handing them the controls. [Healthcare] consumers are driving radical, fundamental change. ” Deloitte Research, “Winning the Loyalty of the e. Health Consumer”

“We expect consumers to move into a position of dominance in the early years of the new century. ” Dean Coddington, Elizabeth Fischer, Keith Moore & Richard Clarke, Beyond Managed Care

Corporate Resistance to “It” “It all goes back to fear of losing control!” The Cluetrain Manifesto

How Dare They! “Surfing the net is new route to college: But counselors fear that some students will pick schools with little guidance” Headline, p 1 A, USA Today, 10. 03. 00

3. We Take Charge II: Brand You Rules!

“If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won’t get noticed, and that increasingly means you won’t get paid much either. ” Michael Goldhaber, Wired

2010 “Demographics”: By 2010, full-time workers will be in the minority Source: MIT study (28 August 2000)

New World of Work < 1 in 10 F 500 #1: Manpower Inc. Freelancers/I. C. : 16 M-25 M Temps: 3 M (incl. CEOs & lawyers) Microbusinesses: 12 M-27 M Total: 31 M-55 M Source: Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation

Taylorism to Tailorism: “Free Agency is the real new economy!” Source: Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation

“The fundamental unit of the new economy is not the corporation, but the individual. Tasks aren’t assigned and controlled through a stable chain of command but are carried out autonomously by e-lancers independent contractors - who join together in fluid and temporary networks to sell goods and services. When the job is done, the network dissolves and its members become independent again, circulating through the economy, seeking the next assignment. ” Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher

Message: Distinct … or Extinct

“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not. ” Isabel Allende

4. Edu. K 80 (Education, K-80)

“My ancestors were printers in Amsterdam from 1510 or so until 1750, and during that entire time they didn’t have to learn anything new. ” Peter Drucker, Business 2. 0 (08. 22. 00)

“The average knowledge worker will outlive the average employing organization. This is the first time in history that’s happened. … So the center of gravity of higher education is shifting from the education of the young to the continuing education of adults. ” Peter Drucker, Business 2. 0 (08. 22. 00)

“Knowledge becomes obsolete incredibly fast. The continuing professional education of adults is the No. 1 industry in the next 30 years … mostly on line. ” Peter Drucker, Business 2. 0 (22 August 2000)

REQUISITE ATTITUDE 2001: “You must realize that how you invest your human capital matters as much as how you invest your financial capital. Its rate of return determines your future options. Take a job for what it teaches you, not for what it pays. Instead of a potential employer asking, ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years? ’ you’ll ask, ‘If I invest my mental assets with you for 5 years, how much will they appreciate? How much will my portfolio of career options grow? ’ ” Stan Davis & Christopher Meyer, future. WEALTH

5. Why Does Business Abhor Training?

26. 3

3 Weeks in May “Training” & Prep: 187 “Work”: 41 (“Other”: 17)

1% vs. 367%

Divas do it. Violinists do it. Sprinters do it. Golfers do it. Pilots do it. Soldiers do it. Surgeons do it. Cops do it. Astronauts do it. Why don’t businesspeople do it [very much]?

T/D > 1. 0

“We” are not serious! Conclusion:

HR Folks: YOU – not “marketing” - “OWN” THE “BRAND PROMISE”! (If you wish. )

Titles! Manager Human Capital Assets or Manager HRIS to Employee Marketing* *IHRIM. link (2 -3. 201)

6. Independence Rules (Redux)!

Beware Lurking HR Types … One size NEVER fits all. One size fits one. Period.

48 Players = 48 Projects = 48 different success measures

“Learn not to be careful” Photographer Diane Arbus to her students (Careful = The sidelines, per Harriet Rubin in The Princessa)

The NAESP …

Attributes of Those Who “Made” the 10 th Grade History Book – Committed! – Determined to make a difference! – Focused! – Passionate! – Irrational about their life’s project! – Ahead of their time / Paradigm busters! – Impatient! / Action Obsessed

Attributes of Those Who “Made” the 10 th Grade History Book – Made lots of people mad! – Flouted the chain of command! – Creative / Quirky / Peculiar! / Rebels! / Irreverent! – Masters of improv / Thrive on chaos / Exploit chaos!

Attributes of Those Who “Made” the 10 th Grade History Book – Forgiveness > Permission – Bone honest! – Flawed as the dickens! – “In touch” with their followers’ aspirations – Damn good at what they do!

7. Losing the War to Bismarck

J. D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board “In our dreams people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. … The task is simple. (1915): We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

“Schools were designed by Horace Mann, E. I. Thorndike, and others to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled. To a very great extent, schools succeed in population. doing this. But in a society that is increasingly fragmented, in which the only genuinely successful people are independent, selfreliant, and individualistic, the products of school and ‘schooling’ are irrelevant. ” A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto

“My wife and I went to a [kindergarten] parentteacher conference and were informed that our budding refrigerator artist, Christopher, would be receiving a grade of Unsatisfactory in art. We were shocked. How could any child—let alone our child—receive a poor grade in art at such a young age? His teacher informed us that he had refused to color within the lines, which was a state requirement for demonstrating ‘grade-level motor skills. ’ ” Jordan Ayan, AHA!

“How many artists are there in the room? Would you please raise your hands. FIRST GRADE: En mass the children leapt from their seats, arms waving. Every child was an artist. SECOND GRADE: About half the kids raised their hands, shoulder high, no higher. The hands were still. THIRD GRADE: At best, 10 kids out of 30 would raise a hand, tentatively, self-consciously. By the time I reached SIXTH GRADE, no more than one or two kids raised their hands, and then ever so slightly, betraying a fear of being Every school I visited was participating in the suppression of creative genius. ” identified by the group as a ‘closet artist. ’ The point is: Gordon Mac. Kenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace

“The main crisis in school today is irrelevance. ” Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation

“Our education system is a second-rate, factory-style organization, pumping out obsolete information in obsolete ways. [Schools] are simply not connected to the future of the kids they’re responsible for. ” Alvin Toffler, Business 2. 0 (09. 00)

8. In Need of that “White Collar Revolution”

J. D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board “In our dreams people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. … (1915): The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

Milwaukee: $6, 951 per student. Central administration: $3, 481. Instruction: $1, 647. A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto (Research reported in Education Update, Fall 1990)

9. An Unnatural Way to “Learn”

“Every time I pass a jailhouse or school, I feel sorry for the people inside. ” Jimmy Breslin, 07. 11. 2001, on “summer school” in NYC [“If they haven’t learned in the winter, what are they going to remember from days when they should be swimming? ”]

“The time bomb in every classroom is that students learn exactly what they are taught. ” Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

“What [standardized tests] actually measure is the tractability of the student, and this they do quite accurately. Is it of value to know who is docile and who is not? You tell me. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

“Schoolteachers aren’t allowed to do what they think best for each student. Harnessed to a collectivized regimen, they soon give up thinking seriously about students as one-of-a-kind individuals, regardless of what they may wish were true. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

“The best evidence that our schools are set up to ‘school’ and not be usefully educationally lies in the look of the Rooms with no clocks, no telephones, no fax machines, no stamps, no envelopes, no maps, no directories, no private space in which to think, no conference tables on which to confer. rooms where we confine kids. Rooms in which there isn’t any real way to contact the outside world where life is going on. ” A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto

“It is absurd anti-life to be compelled to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. This cuts children off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety. … It is absurd anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy. … In centuries past, children and adolescents would spend their time in real work, real charity, real adventures, and in the search for mentors who might teach them what they really wanted to learn. ” A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto

“I discovered the brutally simple motivation behind the development and imposition of all systematic instructional programs and tests – a lack of trust that teachers can teach and that children can learn. ” Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

“It is an inescapable reality that students learn at different rates in different ways. That creates the need for a schedule of sensitivity that only teachers close to the particular student can devise – not some theory-driven, central-office, computer-managed schedule. ” Ted Sizer

Schools’ “Kafka-like rituals”: “enforce sensory deprivation on classes of children held in featureless rooms … sort children into rigid categories by the use of fantastic measures such as age-grading, or standardized test scores … train children to drop whatever they are occupied with and to move as a body from room to room at the sound of a bell, buzzer, horn, or klaxon … keep children under constant surveillance, depriving them of private time and space … John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

Kafka-like rituals (cont. ): “assign children numbers constantly, feigning the ability to discriminate qualities quantitatively … insist that every moment of time be filled with lowlevel abstractions … forbid children their own discoveries, pretending to possess some vital secret to which children must surrender their active learning time to acquire. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

“[One factor contributing to widespread teacher dissatisfaction] is the extremely shallow nature of intellectual enterprise in schools. Ideas are broken into fragments called subjects, subjects into units, units into sequences, sequences into lessons, lessons into homework, and all these prefabricated pieces make a classroom teacherproof. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

Ted Sizer, on the “logic” of high schools: “If we spend more than a day on the Bill of Rights, we can’t get to Grover Cleveland before Valentine’s Day. ”

“We interrupt classes with public address system announcements, utterly forgetting that Hamlet’s soliloquy may lose something from the interjection of information about where the cheerleaders should meet after school. ” Ted Sizer

“We parade adolescents before snippets of time. Any one teacher will usually see more than 10 students and often more than 160 in a day. Such a system denies teachers the chance to know many students well, to learn how a particular student’s mind works. ” Ted Sizer

“The myth is that learning can be guaranteed if instruction is delivered systematically, one small piece at a time, with frequent tests to ensure that students and teachers stay on task. ” Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

“A substantial amount of testimony exists from highly regarded scientists like [Nobel laureate] Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, and many others, that scientific discovery is negatively related to the procedures of school science classes. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

Messenger: “The mind is a machine, but a virtual machine. A system of systems. …” Helen: “Perhaps it isn’t a system at all. ” Messenger: “Oh, but it is. … If you’re a scientist, you have to start with that assumption. ” Helen: “I suspect that’s why I dropped science at school as soon as they let me. ” Messenger: “No, you dropped it, I would guess, because it was doled out to you in spoonfuls of distilled boredom. ” David Lodge, Thinks …

But Are They Being Taught to Think? “Students who receive honor grades in college-level physics are frequently unable to solve basic problems encountered in a form slightly different from the one in which they have been formally instructed and tested. ” From MIT & JHU: Howard Gardner, Unschooled Minds

10. Higgins Knew!

“Andrew Higgins , who built landing craft in WWII, He believed that they only teach you what you can’t do in engineering school. He refused to hire graduates of engineering schools. started off with 20 employees, and by the middle of the war had 30, 000 working for him. He turned out 20, 000 landing craft. D. D. Eisenhower told me, ‘Andrew Higgins won the war for us. He did it without engineers. ’ ” Stephen Ambrose/Fast Company

11. Doing Stuff that Matters!

“Education, at best, is ecstatic. At its best, its most unfettered, the moment of learning is a moment of delight. This essential and obvious truth is demonstrated for us every day by the baby and the preschool child. … When joy is absent, the effectiveness of the learning process falls and falls until the human being is operating hesitantly, grudgingly, fearfully. ” George Leonard, Education and Ecstasy [1968]

“Children learn what makes sense to them; they learn through the sense of things they want to understand. ” Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

Per George Miller: Children as “informavores, ” who “eat up new knowledge. ” Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

“During the first years of life, youngsters all over the world master a breathtaking array of competences with little formal tutelage. ” Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind

“The goal of the child is to develop, and he is intrinsically motivated toward that goal with an intensity unequalled in all of creation. … [Children] appeared immensely pleased, peaceful and rested after the most strenuous concentration on tasks they had freely chosen to do. All destructive behavior … had disappeared. ” Paula Polk Lillard, Montessori: A Modern Approach

“Her approach to children in the classroom could be summed up by one word—respect. She accorded them the dignity, trust and patience that would be given to someone embarked on the most serious of endeavors and who was, at the same time, endowed with the potential and desire to achieve his goal. … She was constantly in a listening state. ” Paula Polk Lillard, Montessori: A Modern Approach

“He cannot stand still; he is impelled toward conquest. … The child seeks no assistance in his work. He must accomplish it by himself. … The essential thing is for the task to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s entire personality. ” Paula Polk Lillard, Montessori: A Modern Approach

“ ‘Schooling’ takes place in an environment controlled by others. … ‘Education’ describes efforts largely selfinitiated for the purpose of taking charge of your life wisely and living in a world you understand. The educated state is a complex tapestry woven of broad experience, grueling commitments, and substantial risk taking. ” A Different Kind of Teacher, John Taylor Gatto

“We underrate our brains and our intelligence. Formal education has become such a complicated, self-conscious, and over-regulated activity that learning is widely regarded as something difficult that the brain would rather not do. … Such a belief is probably well-founded if the teachers are referring to their efforts to keep children moving through the instructional sequences that are prescribed as ‘learning activities’ in school. … We are all capable of huge and unsuspected learning accomplishments without effort. ” Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

“Each of us has a design problem to solve: to create from the raw material around us the curriculum for a good life. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t the same for any two people. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

Mary Foley, homeschooling mother of four, Cape Cod: “If we are not free to educate our children, liberty is an illusion. I do not have a curriculum. The state does not have the power to standardize children. My method has been successful enough to produce a daughter who is a member of the National Honor Society and twin sons who tested in the top one percent on a national placement test for two consecutive years. The priorities of our curriculum are daydreaming, natural and social sciences, self-discipline, respect of self and others, and making mistakes. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

“I want to give you a yardstick, a gold standard, by which to measure good schooling. The Shelter Institute in Bath, Maine, will teach you how to build a three thousand square-foot, multi-level Cape Cod home in three weeks’ time, whatever your age. If you stay another week, it will show you how to make your own posts and beams; you’ll actually cut them out and set them up. You’ll learn wiring, plumbing, insulation, the works. Twenty thousand people have learned to build a house there for about the cost of one month’s tuition in public school. ” John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

“The most extraordinary result was the unanimity and conviction with which boys and girls—aged 8 to 11—called for a broader curriculum, with much more science, history, geography, history, art, craft, woodwork, electronics, cooking and technology. They wanted, above all, more work which allowed them to think for themselves, to experiment, to engage in first-hand observation. ” Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

“Learning is never divorced from feelings. ” Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

The Learner’s Manifesto The brain is always learning. Learning does not require coercion. Learning must be meaningful. Learning is incidental. Learning is collaborative. The consequences of worthwhile learning are obvious. Learning always involves feelings. Learning must be free of risk. Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

James Coleman, 1974: “Develop in youth the capabilities for engaging in intense concentrated involvement in an activity. ” Source: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Barbara Schneider, Becoming Adult

“What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. ” —George Bernard Shaw

“While not every child will develop interests as fascinating as Darwin’s, without the enthusiasm that leads to intense, concentrated activity, a child will likely lack the perseverance needed to face the future successfully. We may not know what jobs will be available to young people ten years from now. … But to the extent that teenagers have had experiences that demand discipline, require the skillful use of mind and body, and give them a sense of responsibility and involvement with useful goals, we might expect the youth of today to be ready to face the challenges of tomorrow. ” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Barbara Schneider, Becoming Adult

“Growing up to be a happy adult gets more and more difficult as occupational roles become more vague and ephemeral. Young people can no longer count on a predictable future and cannot expect that a set of skills learned in school will be sufficient to ensure a comfortable career. For this reason, we need to take a long look at the conditions that prepare youth for a changing, uncertain future. ” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Barbara Schneider, Becoming Adult

Gatto’s Lab School ONE. Independent Study. A day out of the school building, chasing ONE BIG IDEA. TWO. Apprenticeship. THREE. Community Service, a day a week. FOUR. Team up with parents, yours or someone else’s, for Family Teamwork Curriculum. FIVE. Class work. Jamal Watson, 13, from Children’s Express Quarterly; from John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

Gardner’s MI 7: Linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Spatial, Musical, Bodily -kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal.

“Actual content may not be the issue at all, since we are really trying to impart the idea that one can deal with new areas of knowledge if one knows how to learn, how to find out about what is known, and how to abandon old ideas when they are worn out. This means teaching ways of developing good questions rather than memorizing known answers, an idea that traditional schools simply don’t cotton to at all, and that traditional testing methods are unprepared to handle. ” Roger Schank, The Connoisseur’s Guide to the Mind

“Apprenticeships & Projects” – Howard Gardner

EBF* to EBI** * Education By Fiat ** Education By Interest

“From the media, we hear these great tearjerker stories of kids who succeeded despite the odds. But all of our kids are instead facing the odds of an education system that is all wrong. The odds are against them because the system works against them instead of with them. … I see it every day: kids who people have dismissed as ‘dumb in math’ or ‘uninterested in science’ or ‘nonreaders’ doing incredible things in these exact same areas because they were (finally) allowed to start with something they were already interested in. A 9 th-grade kid who ‘hates science’ sees a movie about freezing people, then decides to read a college biology text on cryogenics, and then gives a presentation on it that blows your socks off. ” —Dennis Littky, The Big Picture

“When they tell the story of their project, they are irresistible to admissions officers!” Dennis Littky

“If we are to configure an education for the world of tomorrow, we need to take the lessons of the museum and the relationship of the apprenticeship extremely seriously. … to think of the ways in which the strengths of a museum atmosphere, of apprenticeship learning, and of engaging in projects can pervade all educational environments. ” Howard Gardner, Unschooled Minds

“Questions, questions. They disturb. They provoke. They exhilarate. They humiliate. They make you feel a little bit like you’ve at least temporarily lost your marbles. So much so that at times I’m positive that the ground is shaking and shifting under our feet. Welcome to Socrates Café. Christopher Phillips, Socrates Cafe

12. It’s all About Questions!

U. C. Ed Dean Walter Karp: “From the first grade to the twelfth, from one coast to the other, instruction in America’s classrooms is almost Answers are ‘right’ and answers are ‘wrong, ’ but mostly answers are short. ” entirely dogmatic. Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

Richard Paul, Director, Center for Critical Thinking: “We need to shift the focus of learning from simply teaching students to have the ‘right answer, ’ to teaching them the process by which educated people pursue right answers. ” Frank Smith, Insult to Intelligence

“Actual content may not be the issue at all, since we are really trying to impart the idea that one can deal with new areas of knowledge if one knows how to learn, how to find out about what is known, and how to abandon old ideas when they are worn out. This means teaching ways of developing good questions rather than memorizing known answers , an idea that traditional schools simply don’t cotton to at all, and that traditional testing methods are unprepared to handle. ” Roger Schank, The Connoisseur’s Guide to the Mind

TP/08. 2001: The Three Most Important Letters … WHY?

13. Tom’s Edu 3 M Manifesto* *Manifesto for Education in the 3 rd Millennium

Education 3 M Learning is a normal state. Children are learnavores. Prodigious feats of learning are common as dirt. [Watch an H. S. QB studying game film. ] We learn at different rates. We learn in different ways. Boys and girls learn [very] differently. In a class of 25, there are 25 different trajectories. Learning in 40 -minutes blocks is bullshit. Learning for tests is utterly insane. There are numerous rigorous evaluation schemes, of which testing is but one—and abnormal, by “real world” standards.

Education 3 M We learn most/fastest/most completely when we are passionate about what we are learning and it matters to us. [Salience rules!] Think EBI/LBI: Education by Interest/Learning by Internship. Classrooms are abnormal places. We need changes of pace. [Japanese recesses between each class. ] International test scores are not correlated with hours-per-year in class. Big classes are slightly problematic. Big schools suck. Period.

Education 3 M “All this”—the right stuff—fits the NWW/New World of Work hand-in-glove. [NWW = Age of Creativity. ] U. S. schools circa 2001 are a vestige of the Prussian-Fordist model, more interested in shaping behavior than stoking the fires of lifelong learning. Cutting art-music budgets is truly dumb. Learning is a matter of Intensity of Engagement, not elapsed time. [Aargh: 11 minutes on the Battle of Gettysburg. ] Teachers need enough space-time-flexibility to get to know kids as individuals. Scientific discovery processes and the teaching of science are utterly at odds. [Exploration vs. spoon-feeding. ]

“Reform” 3 M: Losing The War Against Bismarck all Over Again!

Education 3 M Our toughest “learning achievement”— mastering our native language—does not require schools, or even competent parents. [It does require a desperate need-to-know. ] Great teachers are great learners, not impartersof-knowledge. Great teachers ask great questions—that launch kids on lifelong quests. The world is not about “right” & “wrong” answers; it is about the pursuit of increasingly sophisticated questions—just ask a ski instructor or neurosurgeon.

Education 3 M Most schools spend most of their time setting up contexts in which kids learn not to like particular subjects. [Evidence shows that such antilearning sticks!] Vigorous exploration is normal … until you are incarcerated in a school. “Bite size” education-learning is neither education nor learning. Learning takes place rapidly on the cheerleading squad, the football team, the school newspaper, the drama club, at the after-class job--just not in the hyper-structured classroom.

Education 3 M The “school reform” “movement” is a giant step … backwards … embracing the Prussian-Fordist paradigm with renewed vigor—at exactly the wrong time. There are large numbers of superb schools, superb principals, superb teachers; sadly, they not only fail to infect the [largely timid] rest, but are ordinarily supplanted by wusses & wimps. Alas, the teaching profession does not ordinarily attract “cool dudes & dudettes. ” Schools of “education” should by and large have their charters revoked.

Education 3 M “Education” must “develop in youth the capabilities for engaging in intense concentrated involvement in an activity. ” [James Coleman, 1974. ] [Hint: It doesn’t. ] [Hint: Understatement. ] Stability is dead; “education” must therefore “educate” for an unknowable, ambiguous, changing future; thence, learning to learn & change is far more important than mastery of a static body of “facts. ” [Was the “War of the Roses” really over roses? (1) I don’t remember. (2) Not remembering has not been a handicap. ]

Education 3 M I never took a speech course. Hemingway couldn’t spell. Etc.

14. Bringing Out the Best

My Education: People. (Damn few. ) Mrs. Landers. Mrs. Gaver. Miss Churchill. Mr. Chapin. Mr. Hooper. Prof. Liang. Prof. White. Capt. Anderson. Gene. Allen. (Warren. ) (Susan. )

They made me fall in love. They helped me figure out who I was. My “educators’ ” secrets:

Grameen Bank/Bangladesh “It’s not people who aren’t creditworthy. It’s banks that aren’t people worthy. ” $2. 3 B to 2. 3 M [typical 1 st loan: $15. ] 98% recovery rate [94% to women!] 1/3 rd out of poverty; 1/3 rd up to nonpoverty threshold Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor

“The Grameen loan is not simply cash. It becomes a kind of ticket to self-discovery and self-exploration. ” Muhammad Yunus

Why Don’t Most Biz Mgrs. Think This Way? “Coaching is winning players over. ” * Phil Jackson *Not: “planning, ” “implementing, ” “clear communication, ” “getting the org chart right. ”

Insights from 80, 000 managers: “People don’t change much. “Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. “Try to draw out what was left in. “That is hard enough. ” Source: Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently

“Teaching is listening. Learning is talking. ” — Message painted on a Met advisor’s truck by his students (from Dennis Littky, The Big Picture)

“It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say. ” Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect

“It is impossible to claim that all good teachers use similar techniques: some lecture nonstop and others speak very little; some stay close to their material and others loose the imagination; some teach with the carrot and others with the stick. But in every instance, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work. ‘Dr. A is really there when he teaches. ’ ‘Mr. B has such enthusiasm for his subject. ’ ‘You can tell that this is really Prof. C’s life. ’ ” Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

“One student said she could not describe her good teachers because they differed so greatly, one from another. But she could describe her bad teachers because they were all the same: ‘Their words float somewhere in front of their faces, like the balloon speech in cartoons. ’ ” Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach

Leaders Do Not “Transform People”! Instead leaders-mentors-teachers (1) provide a context which is marked by (2) access to a luxuriant portfolio of meaningful opportunities (projects) which (3) allow people to fully express their innate curiosity and (4) engage in a vigorous discovery voyage by which those people (5) go to-create places they (and their mentors-teachers-leaders) had never dreamed existed. And then the leaders-mentors-teachers (6) applaud like hell, stage “photo-ops, ” and ring the church bells 100 times to commemorate the bravery of their “followers’ ” explorations!

Explore!* *Damn It!

Objections Focus on elite students. Caricature education “reformers. ” Underrate the # of “good” reformers. Overrate schools’ & teachers’ capability for fixing themselves. Underrate communities/ parents/ societal impact (“the schools we deserve”).