were you sprayed by the Extinction Rebellion's fake blood?

The Extinction Rebellion activists then opened up a fire hose and sprayed fake blood, which they had made from beet juice, onto the building. But they immediately lost control of the hose and ended up drenching the sidewalks and least one bystander.

It has reached the point where many, including myself, are reluctant to speak out. Who wants to be labelled a climate change denier = right winger = doesn't listen to the science, etc. etc.?

Ten years ago I read The Climate Fix by Roger Pielke jr which confirmed my belief that we were being told less than half the truth.

More recently, when people said to me things like, "Even after the (Australian) bushfires, Scott Morrison doesn't believe in climate change". The next sentence, "How dumb is that?" didn't even have to be said. I held my tongue. The Earth is not flat.

Hence, it's important that you follow this link, read the reviews and then read this book: Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger

Related:
How Badly Have Environmentalists Misled and Frightened the Public!
the ecomodernist manifesto
the environment, capitalism, modernity and marx
environmental talking points and references

the ecomodernist manifesto

ecomodernist manifesto

I'm trying to work out why ideas like this have so little traction in any significant political party. Liberals, Labour and Green are all hopeless. I've summarised some of the key points below but it would be better to read the whole thing.

1) We live in the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans

2) There are no good reasons for pessimism.

3)... we affirm one long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature, while we reject another, that human societies must harmonize with nature to avoid economic and ecological collapse

4) There is an answer to environment concerns that are heard every day. The answer is to decouple intensive human development from environmental issues.

5) in contradiction to the often-expressed fear of infinite growth colliding with a finite planet, demand for many material goods may be saturating as societies grow wealthier. Meat consumption, for instance, has peaked in many wealthy nations and has shifted away from beef toward protein sources that are less land intensive (other issues of concern outlined too)

6) Ecosystems around the world are threatened today because people over-rely on them ... Conversely, modern technologies, by using natural ecosystem flows and services more efficiently, offer a real chance of reducing the totality of human impacts on the biosphere

7) Plentiful access to modern energy is an essential prerequisite for human development

8) The energy sources we need are cheap, clean, dense, and abundant. Candidates include next-generation solar, advanced nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion

9) Our Environmental future is a human spiritual or aesthetic choice more than a material or utilitarian choice ... the decoupling makes this choice possible

10) Don't confuse modernity (good) with capitalism (questionable)

"Too often, modernization is conflated, both by its defenders and critics, with capitalism, corporate power, and laissez-faire economic policies. We reject such reductions. What we refer to when we speak of modernization is the long-term evolution of social, economic, political, and technological arrangements in human societies toward vastly improved material well-being, public health, resource productivity, economic integration, shared infrastructure, and personal freedom.

Modernization has liberated ever more people from lives of poverty and hard agricultural labor, women from chattel status, children and ethnic minorities from oppression, and societies from capricious and arbitrary governance. Greater resource productivity associated with modern socio-technological systems has allowed human societies to meet human needs with fewer resource inputs and less impact on the environment. More-productive economies are wealthier economies, capable of better meeting human needs while committing more of their economic surplus to non-economic amenities, including better human health, greater human freedom and opportunity, arts, culture, and the conservation of nature.

Modernizing processes are far from complete, even in advanced developed economies ..."

the authors

the responses (great to see that they are publishing critical responses on their site)

the internet of things

Cerf: The Internet of things is on its way. The clear evidence of that, of course, is mobile to begin with, appliances that are now Internet-enabled, picture frames, refrigerators and things like that, office appliances, appliances at home. The smart grid is going to accelerate that process because more and more appliances will be part of the smart grid and its ensemble. They will be reporting their use. They will be accepting control saying, "Hey, don't run the air conditioner for the next 15 minutes, I'm in the middle of a peak load." We'll see many, many more devices on the Net than there are people [and] more sensor networks on the system, as well
- 'Father of Internet' Reviews His Work

Siftables

MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables -- cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too.

Clayton Christensen's disrupting school thesis

I haven't read Clayton Christensen's books but I have listened to some of his talks and read some reviews of his books. I see his theory as helpful for understanding the reasons how some businesses boom then bust but less helpful when he transfers it to education.

My understanding of his disrupting schools (Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns) thesis is taken from these reviews:

June Ahn

(1) Children learn in different ways (2) Disruptive innovations gain a foothold and revolutionize a market because they target a niche audience who normally could not consume a good (3) Online learning is a disruptive technology (4) Computers in schools are not disruptive technology (5) Computers “can” be a disruptive innovation, when used to create new learning situations
- Disruptive Innovation in Education

Steve Hargadon:

From my reading, the disruptive innovation is not online education, but the increasing expectation that our children/students will have a customized educational experience. This makes a lot of sense to me, since having watched the ed tech world for some years now, it's hard to imagine a "technology" (even one as compelling as online education) motivating educators or parents to dramatic change. There are just too many practical daily concerns to make it believable that the unfulfilled promise of computing would "disrupt" our current system. On the other hand, a shift from the industrial model of schooling to one that is more responsive to our individual children does seem like an unstoppable force, since increasing parents' expectations for the education of their own children carries huge motivation and power (the authors' claim that in many school districts already over a third of their spending is on special education students [p. 34].)
- A First Look at "Disrupting Class" by Clayton Christensen

I also note that Christensen has been criticised for overstating the case about the extent to which school is a factory model. Andy Zucker writes:

Readers may learn something about the process of innovation from Disrupting Class, but they will not learn how creative school systems for years have been applying technology in precisely the ways that Disrupting Class recommends, namely to individualize learning, to make it more effective for greater numbers of students, and to offer alternatives to students who are not being served well by existing schools
- Lost in Cyberspace: A Review of Disrupting Class

I then watched this video:

where Christensen promotes his book and noticed a couple of straw men in there, one of them identified by Andy Zucker above. He does stress too much that school is like an assembly line. He takes a partial truth and turns it into an absolute. Christensen also subscribes uncritically to the multiple intelligences model. This, of course, suits his theory of the urgent need for more individualised instruction. However, the fly in the ointment here is that multiple intelligences is pretty much discredited as a theory of cognitive development. See Dan Willingham's Learning Styles Don't Exist


I have the impression that Christensen lacks detailed knowledge of where schools are at and is not up to date with learning theories. The purpose of the business world where Christensen initially developed his theories is to make money. A disruptive innovation which ends up making money is a success in these terms. School is far more complex than this.I'm wondering whether Christensen appreciates the complexity and multifaceted nature of schools. At this stage I'm thinking that I won't buy his book because I suspect I will be disappointed in this regard. I'd be interested in hearing from people who have read the book about this.

Nevertheless, the big idea of Christensen's theory - that digital online learning can meet unmet individual learning needs to the point that this will disrupt school significantly - is plausible and well worth thinking and talking about. Education reform has a long, long history and often people ask why reform proceeds at a snails pace. In other posts I have been critical of sections of the web2.0 movement for shallowness. The Christensen thesis, despite flaws, opens a new door here because it is concrete enough and tangible enough to transcend much of the complexity of school as an institution. In a sense, it's good because it is written by an outsider who doesn't know all the complexity of real school. This fits into the general Christensen thesis that incumbents are too bogged down in their own processes to undergo significant transformation.

I also wanted to say something about theories of disruption but will leave that to another post. That is another bonus from Christensen, he puts the whole notion of disruption as a concept onto the agenda.

the medium and which message?

New digitial media is all pervasive. It penetrates into our culture like the tide penetrates into low lying land and cannot be resisted. Worst case scenario: wait for the older generation to die out (Kuhn)

On the other hand, Enlightenment ideas (non universals) have to be won by hard argument. Historically, they required revolutions before they could be won, revolutions which continue to this day (eg. Iran). Many people in modern societies have little real understanding of maths or science which makes our modernity possible.

A lot of discussion about educational reform thinks that the new media is the message and has stopped thinking about which message is important

Related (from a previous blog):

A computer does computation. And most people don't really understand computation and what it is capable of. I was struck by this passage from Rodney Brooks book, Flesh and Machines, where he compares the impact of the computation idea (not disruptive intellectually, continuous with existing ideas) with the impact of quantum mechanics or relativity (which marked a sharp intellectual discontinuity with previous ideas) :

... computation was not disruptive intellectually, although the consequences of the mathematics that Turing and von Neumann developed did have disruptive technological consequences. A late-nineteenth-century mathematician would be able to understand the idea of Turing computability and a von Neumann architecture with a few days instruction. They would then have the fundamentals of modern computation. Nothing would surprise them or cause them to cry out in intellectual pain as quantum mechanics or relativity would if a physicist from the same era were exposed to them. Computation was a gentle, nondisruptive idea, but one that was immensely powerful... [pp. 188-9]

netbooks and schools: an evolution

I am presenting on this topic at Computer Education Group of South Australia (CEGSA) in July

I have finished my slides and notes. If you want a copy then leave a comment or send me an email (billkerr at gmail dot com) and I'll organise something.

Synopsis:
The presentation consists of a review of some modern technologies and attitudes towards technologies.

Technologies reviewed: smart phones, ebook readers, (educationally customised) handhelds, enhanced screen (Mary Lou Jepson), Cloud computing, OLPC and netbooks.

Attitudes reviewed: Just a tool, Them and us (damnation, salvation), Us as them (augmentation), The pencil metaphor (Seymour Papert), Misuse of computers (Larry Cuban), Disruptive innovation (Clayton Christensen), Software as medium, The historical analogy of the printing press, Personal dynamic medium (Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg)

It is only intended to be a broad introductory document to the interaction between these technologies and attitudes. Hopefully it will lead to further discussion

Update (15th June): I now have the presentation uploaded to my website: netbooks and schools: an evolution

Digital infancy

Mark Guzdial's blog: Does "There's an App for That" Hurt or Help Computing Education?

Apple's shallow consumerist thinking: "There's an app for that"

A deeper position: "There is or ought to be an argument going on about that" (but still mainly confined to oral or textual form)

Regret that the future has stalled: "There is a more powerful medium available now to express and argue with but we haven't learnt how to use it properly yet"

Read the whole comment thread of the above blog

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists
(quoted by Ian Piumarta in a paper advocating widespread unreasonable behaviour)

the singularity man

Here are some video interviews for a fascinating introduction to Ray Kurzweil's ideas about where the exponential growth of technology will lead. There are four shortish videos, just follow the sidebar after viewing the first one.

One aspect of the video medium I like is that you pick up clues to the author's personality far more so than through the writing medium. His flippant comment about the current recession / depression reveals some intellectual detachment from important current issues. Nevertheless, without question he is very smart guy and the testimony from Stevie Wonder indicates a person of compassion, also.

Predicting the future is a very hard thing to do. The exponential growth of technology and nanotechnology is fascinating. Where will it lead us?

Rodney Brooks has some critical thoughts about Kurzweil's ideas in an Edge discussion about Biocomputation:

"A long time ago the brain was a hydrodynamic system. Then the brain became a steam engine. When I was a kid, the brain was a telephone switching network. Then it became a digital computer. And then the brain became a massively parallel digital computer. About two or three years ago I was giving a talk and someone got up in the audience and asked a question I'd been waiting for — he said, "but isn't the brain just like the World Wide Web?"

The brain is always — has always been — modeled after our most complex technology. We weren't right when we thought it was a steam engine. I suspect we're still not right in thinking of it in purely computational terms, because my gut feeling is there's going to be another way of talking about things which will subsume computation, but which will also subsume a lot of other physical stuff that happens"

Mary Lou Jepson: it is about the screen

Some extracts from Mary Lou Jepson's Pixel Qi [pronounciation : chee] Mission Statment:

In 2009 we are on the cusp of "cloud computing". 3G wireless services, WiFi and mesh networking are widely deployed. Ebook readers, digital photoframes, and richly-featured touch-screen phones abound. Mini-notebook computers – netbooks – are growing rapidly in adoption ...

Pixel Qi has a belief on the future of the computing - it's not about the CPU or the OS - It is about the screen ...

We see the future of the portable electronics as simply the display - with embedded electronics eventually right in the display glass itself. This is the future laptop, the future cell phone and the future PDA. Instead of focusing on higher speed (more MHz) and larger memory (more GBytes), we work toward new device designs by focusing on displays that we can read, as easily as paper - indoors and out - with battery life measured in days not hours ...

Displays for computers need to be optimized to crisply display text, they need to be optimized for a reader just 30 centimeters from the screen; they need to allow for widespread variations in ambient lighting; they need to support lowering the overall power consumption of the entire device

The display is the most expensive component in a modern laptop, and the most power hungry, and it's uncomfortable to read when compared with paper. We aim to fix this ... The battery is the second most expensive component in the laptop or portable. We propose to massively lower the power consumption of the screen and thus also slash the cost of the battery and dramatically boost how long your machine can run on it before you have re-charge it

We will do all of this while making LCD screens lower cost, higher resolution, easier to read and sunlight readable. We've already shown the first step of this at One Laptop per Child by creating a display that is 5X the resolution, 1/3 the cost, 1/10th the power consumption ...

brief listing of arguments that support radical educational change due to technological innovation

Which is the best way to argue for the necessity for radical educational change based on underlying technological innovation?

1. The pencil analogy (Seymour Papert)
2. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points (Alan Kay)
3. Disruptive innovation and Creative Destruction (Clayton Christensen)
4. Four funerals and a wedding (Damian Conway)
5. How the printing press changed the world (historical analogy)
6. The medium is the message (Marshall McLuhan)
7. In all of history there are only 5 media for storing knowledge: DNA, Brains, Hardware, Books, Software (Philip Armour)
8. The Singularity (Raymond Kurzweil)
9. A new literacy (James Gee, Andy diSessa)

Change is happening anyway but we also need philosophers of change who can articulate some meaning in these changes. The arguments I like best are those to do with new and powerful ways in which knowledge can be represented. Here is a sample from alan kay, who combines a few of the above threads:

Another guess I made long ago—that does not yet have a body of evidence to support it—is that what is special about the computer is analogous to and an advance on what was special about writing and then printing. It's not about automating past forms that has the big impact, but as McLuhan pointed out, when you are able to change the nature of representation and argumentation, those who learn these new ways will wind up to be qualitatively different and better thinkers, and this will (usually) help advance our limited conceptions of civilization.
- http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_8.html#kay

I forgot to mention "21st Century skills"

kay and van dam discuss engelbart's ideas

Program for the Future (video, about 80 minutes) where Alan Kay and Andy van Dam discuss Doug Engelbart's ideas in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the mother of all demos

(I picked this up from mark miller's site: Tales of inventing the future)

This video is very good, hard hitting analysis about how great visions can be spoiled, that we could have done better. Everyone knows that Engelbart invented the mouse but his broader vision has been largely forgotten. Engelbart is present and is treated with great respect and affection by both speakers.

Some of the ideas mentioned here, briefly. Try to make time to view the whole thing for some high level, stimulating discussion. I'd like to transcribe some sections but am too pushed for time at the moment.

The need to remain focused on the high level goals: augmentation of human intellect (Engelbart) and human-computer symbiosis (Licklider)

It's difficult to capture and summarise group wisdom, more needs to be done. Google searches are crude.

Putting training wheels on bikes diminishes the efficiency of a bike. Computer systems are like that today, keeping users at a baby level (at 32 minutes)

We are wedged today in the way computers are designed both conceptually and technically. We might as well burn the whole thing and start again.

Pop culture is to be incurious about the past and the future

A big problem with the web is that the browser removed WYSIWIG functionality. Hardly anyone complained.

thoughts about OLPC cutbacks

Some thoughts about the OLPC project cutting back on 50% of their staff (refocusing on our mission)

When this happens the prophets of doom, such as wayan vota (olpc just got gutted) and arstechnia (OLPC downsizes ...) publish quickly and with a tendency to sensationalise and catastrophise. We are all familiar with this style of journalism.

This really is a 40 year story going back to when alan kay first envisaged the dynabook. We need to take a long term view. It is also a good time to revisit Walter Bender’s 23 questions which is another insightful way of viewing the big picture

The Surface Mission is to bring education to the children of the Developing world using the XO as a vehicle. This is a serious and realistic although a very hard to achieve goal.

The XO-1 has been a partial success. However, it did not achieve its initial (problematic) goal of selling to the Developing world governments in millions. Clearly, the stakeholders are not satisfied and cutbacks have now occurred. Also the 2008 give one, get one was a relative flop, with only 7% of the sales of the G1G1 in 2007 (source). But Negroponte keeps pushing forward. The dual screen XO-2 (article) may achieve the scaling that was hoped for but did not eventuate with XO-1.

Sugar, the new OS, has been a partial success. It is diverse, free (FLOSS) educational software with unique built in (when sugarized) collaboration features. But some / many aspects of Sugar are buggy and / or unfinished. There is still a lot of work to do.

All of this does spin off in multiple directions – Walter’s question categories are Computer Science, Engineering, Education, Economics and Social Sciences. There was some discussion about his 23 questions at OLPC_news (comments). It would be good to see more.

Different people bring different skills and expertise to the Project. Everyone who has been involved with it has been broadened and deepened in some way. No regrets. I'm not aware of anyone who has been involved who wishes that they hadn't been.

There may or may not be ultimate success. But there is ongoing partial success as the consciousness of every participant, adult or child, of the social possibilities of disruptive technology is increased.

One aspect is that the Projects are in more or less constant turmoil. I see this as inevitable.

We have cutting edge, complicated, disruptive technology – hardware and software.

We have a difficult, hard to answer social question: How best to help the impoverished children of the Developing world?

We have conflict between FLOSS and Proprietary pathways. Can FLOSS alone deliver the goods?

We have division between expert and non expert enthusiasts in different areas. Some fields demand democracy and transparency, eg. FLOSS. But even FLOSS has benevolent dictators as a concession to expertise. But in some other areas democracy is frankly a waste of time. For example, there is little point in Mary Lou Jepson consulting with non experts about the latest in screen technology. This can be extrapolated, more or less, to many other parts of the Development process.

We have conflict over the best methods to educate children. Constructionism is not well understood and is not the only path.

How much should local issues influence global development? (refer to the Bryan Berry thread on Its An Education Project)

How do hardware experts, software experts and educators work together effectively to produce a better product?

There is limited money and people to carry out this project. Even though a Keynsian approach – spend money on public works to increase employment - in economic crisis would suggest generous funding for this project. Sounds like a good idea but I doubt that it will happen.

We have entrenched, powerful interests who are threatened by these developments (Intel, Microsoft, educational bureaucracies, existing NGOs)

How could there not be continual turmoil?

At any rate, the XO / Sugar Labs projects continue to be excellent objects to think with and to act through. In the words of David Farning:

"I would like to offer a _heart_felt_ thanks to everyone at One Laptop Per Child who has made Sugar and the XO the products that they are today.

You still are at the forefront of a revolution in learning such as the world has not seen since the invention of the printing press.

But, this revolution, as with all revolutions, is hard to plan; there are no maps, there is no rule book, there is no gray bearded sage to guide your way"

The xo and sugar labs will continue to transform the world for the better. By just how much remains to be seen.

the lively kernel

The web could be different. It started with structure (HTML) and then progressively new things have been added (CSS, DOM, XML, JavaScript) to make it more dynamic.

Sun Labs Lively Kernel

You need to download safari browser(now available for Windows too) to explore this. Then click the "enter lively kernel" tab at the above site.

"Lively Kernel is alive on the web, meaning that you do not download it or install it"

It's all done with JavaScript and SVG. It demonstrates that browsers will behave very differently in the future - bypassing the HTML, CSS, DOM etc and using JavaScript to develop direct visual drag and drop web programming

It's fairly amazing but needs more development. Not all of the commands work on my keyboard, by the look of it you need a Mac

Dan Ingalls explains The Lively Kernel on this You Tube presentation:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gGw09RZjQf8

It's a long video but if you watch the first 10 minutes you'll get the idea.

You can move objects around on the screen by dragging, copy objects, edit objects, compose objects (drop one object on top of another and they stick together), scale objects, rotate objects, resize, write scripts, objects can inherit behaviour from other objects, etc.

Fun is one goal of this project

Thanks, Jecel

waiting for the perfect scifi writer

Tom Hofmann:

"The best tool for understanding the intersection of technology, society and politics taking place now and in the near future is good science fiction set more or less in the present. Kim Stanley Robinson's "Science in the Capital" trilogy, and Little Brother, being notable examples"
- what really stings about obama and FISA

I think that claim for science fiction is too strong. Tom sort of admits this anyway in the final paragraph of his blog. Science fiction can show us possible techno-scientific-imaginative pathways into the future but usually fails if it tries to make too much objective social commentary. For me, one of Cory Doctorow's better scifi writings was the challenge to Asimov's three laws of robotics. ie. scifi writing is just another area where different ideas battle it out.

It would be great if we had someone who deeply understood technology, (science), society, politics and was also a great writer of futuristic imagination who could create believable characters on the page. We don't, so we have to try to stitch it together the best we can.

For an imaginative futuristic feast I'd recommend the Rudy Rucker trilogy, Software; Wetware; Freeware. This had me up at 3am, terrified of the aliens outside my window.

My all time favourite is Ursula LeGuin's, The Dispossessed , because she can do incredibly good social commentary as well as imaginative writing with great characterisation. (The great characterisation is where many scifi writers disappoint me.) She describes perfectly how groups founded on equality and continually proclaiming equality can generate incredibly sophisticated and devious methods of power seeking

btw Marvin Minsky co-authored The Turing Option (link to some unpublished chapters), with Harry Harrison as an original way to promote his ideas about AI.

educational leadership

Greg Whitby offers some educational leadership in Discernment vs digital by asking some big questions which would provide the basis for a worthwhile discussion forum:

1. What is today’s world like?
2. How do young people learn in today’s world?
3. How do you make schooling relevant?
4. How do you supports good learning?
5. What are today’s pedagogies?
6. What tools are needed to support todays pedagogies?

By contrast, after searching, I can't see anything of real educational significance coming out of the 2020 summit.

Moreover this article (Criticism for Rudd school plan) suggests that the wheels are already falling off the Gillard / Rudd so called "digital education revolution" with a leaked letter from dissatisfied school Principals:

It appears that the Government has failed to address a number of issues such as: funding for the ongoing maintenance and eventual upgrading of the computers; the provision of adequate and safe power points, security and associated infrastructure in traditional classrooms that have not been designed to house this extra equipment; the need to modify building requirements; provision of software and site licences; professional development for teachers; and curriculum support needed for the minimal ICT skill standards that have yet to be articulated.

Not very surprising. The underlying issue is that we have a government that came to office promising an "education revolution" but has yet to articulate what that might mean.

Related:
"digital revolution":
fresh turns to stale
a conversation with Mark Pesce ...
rudd's non vision ...

greg whitby:
21st Century school
catholics storm school heaven

slipping into the darkness of non creative safety

Is it possible to stay on the high road of creative virtue without constant temptation from the dark side of the force?

If you don't have time to buy and read Johnathan Zittrain's book then read these articles instead:
Protecting the Internet without wrecking it by Johnathan Zittrain
review: The future of the internet (O'Reilly)

This short blog is just a brief introduction to a discussion we have to have.

The development cycle from creative disruptive technology to regulated, safe but non creative gee whiz appliances. Initially, the generative tools, the disruptive technologies like the PC and the internet crushed their non-generative competitors like the stand alone word processor and restricted proprietary on line services

But the generative tools generated a lot of stuff that many people don't like - spam, porn, online paedophiles, bullying etc.

So now many opt for non generative tools that are safe: the iPhone replaces the Apple. Both have been produced under the leadership of the same person (Steve Jobs) but the iPhone is totally locked down whilst the Apple was totally open for exploration

Will we opt for open systems with all their rich potential for both unbridled, creative exploration and dark maleovalence or safe, useful but closed appliances?

The al upton blog closure issue is a tiny but important pimple on the enormous pumpkin about the future of creative humanity.

update:
video presentation about his book by Johnathan Zittrain (entertaining as well as comprehensive - 60 minutes)

thoughts on reading "we earth neurons"

Thoughts after reading We Earth Neurons (1999) by Daniel Dennett:

Some years ago a friend of mine in the Peace Corps told me about his efforts on behalf of a tribe of gentle Indians deep in the Brazilian forest. I asked him if he had been required to tell them about the conflict between the USA and the USSR. Not at all, he replied. There would be no point in it. They had not only never heard of either America or the Soviet Union, they had never even heard of Brazil! Who would have guessed that it is still possible to be a human being living in, and subject to the laws of, a nation without the slightest knowledge of that fact? If we find this astonishing, it is because we human beings, unlike all other species on the planet, are knowers. We are the ones–the only ones–who have figured out what we are, and where we are, in this great universe. And we are even beginning to figure out how we got here.

There are plenty of students in schools who have about as much idea as why they are there as those Indians know about the state of Brazil. Also there are lots of adults around who think the knowledge state of those Brazilians who don't know they are Brazilians is just as valid and valuable as our western knowledge.

Have we lost the will to educate because we haven't understood what makes us special as a species?

Humans are knowers.

If we see the purpose of education as more to do with entertainment, socialisation or vocation then our students won't see the main point.

If we capitulate to the post modern view that "all viewpoints are relative and equally valid" then our students won't get it, either.

If teachers think they have to compete with celebrities and sporting stars then will our students "get it"? No.

If we spend more time celebrating diversity and personal identity then understanding how the world actually works, then our students won't get it.

If schools are controlled by people who think child safety is more important then child learning then will our students get it? (al upton blog closure)

If society continues to treat educators like second rate citizens - if knowledge is not valued as that special, important human thing - then will our students get it?

There are plenty of students who think and some who say, "school is shit". Do we know what to say back to them?

Are we afraid of facing the future?

... if you want to find anxiety, despair, anomie today, look among the undereducated young people scavenging their dimly understood heritages (or popular culture) for a comfortable identity. Among intellectuals, look to the fashionable tribe of postmodernists, who would like to suppose that modern science is just another in a long line of myths, its institutions and expensive apparatus just the rituals and accouterments of yet another religion. That intelligent people can take this seriously is a testimony to the power that fearful thinking still has, in spite of our advances in self-consciousness. The postmodernists are right, of course, that science is just one of the things we might want to spend our extra calories on. The fact that science has been the major source of the efficiencies that created those extra calories does not entitle it to any particular share of the wealth it has created. But it still ought to be obvious that the methods and rules of science–not just its microscopes and telescopes and computers–are the new sense organs of our species, enabling us to answer questions, solve mysteries, and anticipate the future in ways no earlier human institutions can approach. The more we learn about what we are, the more options we will discern about what to try to become. We ... have long honored the “self-made man” but now that we are actually learning enough to be able to re-make ourselves into something new, many flinch. Many people would apparently rather bumble around with their eyes closed, trusting in tradition, than look around to see what’s about to happen. Yes, it is unnerving; yes, it can be scary. After all, there are many entirely new mistakes we are now empowered to make. But it’s the beginning of a great new adventure for our knowing species–and much more exciting, as well as safer, if we open our eyes. (We Earth Neurons)

venturing into impossible

Arthur C Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the originator of the idea of geostationary satellites has died

Clark's three laws of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Someone posted the second law as a comment to Al Upton's blog about his year 3 student's blogs being shut down by the South Australian Education Department. See Order for Closure

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible

Education should be more like science fiction - the youth will spend more time in the future than the bureaucratic old farts, lets give them a chance to invent it.

It sounds like a miracle

an out of context response to Tom Hoffman:

"We -- meaning many US K-12 educational bloggers -- tend to do a lousy job of differentiating between various schemes and strategies for school or educational reform. We just sort of wave our hands a vague morass of undifferentiated correct-sounding happy talk. Rarely do we try to determine which of these things have more or less value than any other. In that sense, we haven't even started a conversation
- Compare and Contrast"

out of context because I'm ignorant about UbD, superficial about Bloom and Miguel writes far too much for me to keep up

But I wanted to say something about school reform and how it is framed

People have been talking about radical school reform for a hundred years (Dewey, Holt, Illich, Papert etc.) but it never happens in a way that scales significantly

Now we have a new radical school reform movement (web2.0) with bloggers becoming frustrated that it's not scaling and whinging about it - why don't other teachers follow my example and do what I do?

Well, this is because the cutting edge doesn't scale because it is the cutting edge. If it did scale then it wouldn't be the cutting edge. Often people are more advanced than others and they don't realise that because it just seems obvious to them because they "get it". At any rate, many teachers shut the door and teach and don't talk or think about epistemology at recess, lunch or after school as they sit in their "teachers cupboard" (a teacher once told me that when she was in Primary school she thought that after school teachers didn't go home but sat in their teachers cupboard)

eg. my favourite, Papert's constructionism, didn't scale not because it didn't work but because it demanded far too much from the average teacher

The only things that scale in education are those that follow the KISS principle

I've recently discovered Teach for America and would like to find out more about it because it does seem to be scaling, making a real difference in quality and is simple enough to qualify for the KISS principle

I've ordered this book to learn more:
One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach for America and What I Learned Along the Way by Wendy Kopp

This scheme claims to be succeeding in mobilising large numbers of high quality teacher learners, in cutting bureaucratic red tape (5 week teacher training course), targeting the disadvantaged and appealing to the powerful sentiment of "making a difference"

In the context of a hundred years of failed radical school reform, this sounds like a miracle

"What I have learned in building Teach For America and from our corps members and alumni suggests that it will take three things to raise achievement levels in low-income schools.

First, it will take committing ourselves to the vision that one day, all children in our nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education...

Second, we must recognize that accomplishing our mission will take more of just about everything - including more time and, ultimately, more resources...There's an understandable discomfort with the idea that it will take more money to make schools in low-income areas work. We've all seen and read about too many examples of wasted resources in schools. In some cases merely reallocating the resources already spent in low-income areas can make a difference. And I learned through my experience with Teach for America that money isn't everything, that tough financial situations force high-quality, innovative thinking. But I've also learned that although resources are not the solution to everything, they are necessary to carry out the big plans...

The third aspect of realizing our vision is the recognition that it will take a long-term, institution-building approach...when people think about what makes great organizations work, they see it's not a unique strategy. It's that the organizations have built the systems to achieve results, respond to change, and continually improve...Building effective school systems will not be easy. It will take superior leadership and a lot of hard work. It will require a critical look at all the forces - from how school boards govern to how states regulate - that could prevent school district leadership from taking any an institution-building approach. The good news is that there's no mystery about what it will take. The solutions are within our reach.
- Wendy Kopp, from this amazon reader review"

The Teach for Australia plan, based partly on Teach for America maybe our best shot to improve education