The Wisdom Abyss

To a great extent, we all-so-clever modern may have sacrificed Knowledge on the altar of the jealous god of Profit. That's not exactly what I said in my post last week, but it was certainly in the back of my mind. Too many of us are too willing to do whatever it takes if the cash prize is big enough. It's a sad state of affairs, I know, but what do we expect? It's the easy way out. We love to value people based on the perceived size of their bank accounts. That old Puritan notion of wealth as a sign of God's Elect has never gone away. We simply swapped out gods in the meantime.

Let me just say this much about the "Elect" before I get to my actual concerns for today: it's always easier not having to earn what you have. I know, I know, the wealthy elitists today like us to think they work hard, but they don't. The vast majority of the fabulously wealthy inherited their wealth, they didn't work for it. So when their lackeys and mouthpieces start moralizing about working hard and getting ahead, I can only sigh and get on with my life: they condemn themselves by their own mouths. No, I'm more concerned about why we've come to think these days that we can do without knowledge and why Wisdom is for all intents and purposes -- at least in public life -- reviled. Don't you find that odd? I do.

What I was alluding to toward the end of my post last week first struck me when I first came to Germany and realized what a big deal most Germans make of the distinction between "studying" (studieren) and "learning" (lernen). Most English-speakers use the words interchangeably, yet considering their differences can be an enlightening exercise. Americans have been so taken in by (and I'm guessing unconsciously revolted by) Pavlovian "operational" and Skinnerian "behavioral conditioning -- you know, getting dogs to salivate even though they won't be fed or getting rats to run mazes in ever shorter times -- that is, the whole system of positive and negative rewards for desired behavior) that they simply take this type of "learning" for granted. That's just how it's done. Gold stars, trophies, medals, ribbons, graduation stoles, certificates of achievement, special ceremonies and lots of cheers and applause are just a few of the tools of the conditioning trade. So, when we see little Emma or Noah in their rooms memorizing all the information their teachers are throwing at them so they can get good grades, we like to say they're studying, but they're not, they're learning.

The Germans, we should note, are just as short-sighted about all of this, even if it was their language that got me thinking about this. In common parlance a person learns as trade but goes off to university to study. If you look real hard at what's going on behind the scenes, you'll see that apprentices are learning, primarily through hands-on practice and endless repetitions of the same things. They are given specific tasks and jobs and they practice and practice getting it right till one day, at least here in Germany, the folks from the Chambers of Trade and Industry show up and watch them do them so they can get their journeyman's certificates. If you look at the average college student these days, they spend a lot of time memorizing (these days, Powerpoint slides or clearly defined algorithms, etc.) so that come exam time, they "get it right".

There was a time when things were quite different at university. One of the most readable and insightful accounts of how it was "back then" (and here we're talking about the early years of the 20th century), can be found in R.G. Collingwood's delightfully entertaining An Autobiography. Eventually going to take a degree in Ancient History and Philosophy, he found himself in his first few terms having to find some topic in Ancient Greek literature that would be worth exploring and then working up papers on that topic (based on original sources, it was understood) that he would have to present in person to his tutor. The book reveals the travails of a bright, young man trying to find his way in his new world, on the one hand, but it also reveals how a university-degree program was organized in those days: the student spent a lot of time figuring out what s/he wanted to know, and had to spend even more time trying to figure out to find, process, and assimilate what s/he needed to gain that knowledge. When I hear the word "studying" (in whichever language or conjugated form) that's what's going on in my head.

Two things are particularly worth noting here: first, there were a lot of basics needed for Mr. Collingwood to be able to go about his work (he had learned Greek in secondary school obviously) and this no doubt entailed a lot of rote work, practice, and memorization), but, in contrast to what we too often find today, those activities were part of the overall educational process, not its end; and second, while Mr. Collingwood was doing most of his work in his head, studying, in the sense presented here, is certainly not restricted solely to abstract or purely intellectual pursuits.

If you've ever encountered a master craftsperson, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There are cabinetmakers, just to name one trade, who can make furniture that can bring tears to your eyes: the aesthetics of the design, the interplay of light, shades and hues in the finishing, the sensuous feel of a particular combination of textures, the precision of the joining and assembly, all let you know that here is a person who "knows" wood and "knows" what s/he's doing.

What student Collingwood was doing in his head, our master cabinetmaker was doing with her hands. And end product is conceived, the required conditions analyzed, appropriate methods, techniques and procedures were identified, and the knowledge of appropriate resources and tools were applied when and however necessary to reach the desired end. What these two examples have further in common, we should note, is that though each already "knows" a lot going in, at every step along the way they are gaining knowledge, improving and refining skills (perhaps even acquiring new ones) and gaining in experience and becoming more competent at what they "do". They're certain not merely acquiring information. Put perhaps a bit more metaphorically, their hearts -- not just their heads and hands, if you will -- are in what they are doing. There's one helluva lot of emotion involved. They are passionate about what they do. Just how many of our young people today have a passion for school?

It was the Enlightenment that raised Reason to the non plus ultra of human existence. Even the short-lived counteraction of the Romantics (Goethe, Beethoven, Delacroix, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, etc.) couldn't stem the rise to dominance of reason. By suppressing all that even smacked of "feeling" or emotion, the Industrial Revolution (and all its consequent ravages and destruction) was made possible. We were made to feel as gods but without all that effeminate claptrap about "others" and "values" and such. We were masters of our fates and the progress brought on by technology would cause a tide of prosperity that would lift all boats ... or so the reasoning goes. Unfortunately, although many strides have been made, the reality hobbles along pitifully behind the vision. The reasons for this of course, is that we let our subjectivity and our feelings get in the way. Yes, we've got all the information we need to make a better world, but we can't somehow. What could possibly be wrong?

Young Collingwood and our competent cabinetmaker, as we have seen, add a healthy portion of passion to their work. The work primarily for the thrill of the chase, for the increase of knowledge that comes from their doing, for the satisfaction you get when you know you've done something well. They know as well that at the end of the day, there is no amount of money that would (or could) compensate them for what they have actually put into their projects. They work for something that money, for example, can never compensate. The knowledge they have and gain is literally and truly priceless.

It's the feelings, the passion that drives them to do a "good" job, for what is "good" is not determined by something or someone external to the process, it is an intimate and essential part of it. That standard of "good" will vary from scholar to scholar, craftsperson to craftsperson, but they will recognize the "goodness" of the other nevertheless. They speak similar languages of knowledge and skill, not necessarily the same cultural language. They recognize their peers by their fruits, not by their words alone.

What our examples do writ large is accomplished by untold individuals in all walks of life, each in his or her own way. Maybe its the hobby gardener next door, the shade-tree mechanic down the street, or the alto in the local barbershop quartet or the hobby cook whose zucchini casseroles should be featured on TV. There is more knowledge "out there" than the current state of the world would have us believe, but it is too often overlooked, if not simply ignored, because you really can't make a lot of money from knowledge. (Some people do, no doubt about it, but they don't do what they do for the money, that's for sure, and I'd be willing to bet a considerable sum of money that they'd be the first to tell which lucky break (not their own hard work) that got them the money-making opportunity. In the end, exceptions always confirm the rules.)

That dimension of feeling and passion, that longing for "good" overflow both easily and readily into everyday life. A fundamental notion of "good" easily changes and develops into notions of what is right and proper and what is not. Before you know it, we find it is the knowledgeable or are reflecting morally while the informed go about business as usual. The link between knowledge and wisdom is most likely just as strong as the one we saw between data and information. This is certainly not to say that you can only get to wisdom via knowledge, but that there's been a good healthy dose of feelings, emotions, and experience involved.

In the end, it would seem that the old, oft-neglected, if not forgotten, adage is true after all: our feelings tell us what to think. You can combine, categorize, reorganize and shift, sift, sort and shake data and information without having to suffer the "irrationality" of emotions, and this is why computers are the ultimate information-processors. Whether anything good or bad, worthwhile or worthless, or beneficial or harmless comes of it ... well, that's only something a knowledgeable person might know. A wise person, of course, would know for sure. There are not objective criteria for any of those pairs. There's more than a mere cost-benefit analysis or risk-reward calculation or an arbitrarily determined utilitarian output involved.

If a bridge across the abyss is to be built, it would seem that knowledge has to build it.

Is there anything left to save?

For reasons that I will go into at another time, at last check, in my mind, the following things are seriously, if not irreparably, broken (and this applies universally):

• ourselves (self-absorption, self-centeredness, greed)
• our societies (competition instead of cooperation; blame-the-victim mentality)
• our environment (global warming, excessive carbon emissions)
• our political system (totalitarian regimes, pseudo-democracies, special interests)
• our monetary system (irrespective of currency, debt-based)
• our financial system (value of debt grossly exceeds value of what we can produce)
• our economic system (too few have's & too many have-nots, unequal opportunity)
• our infrastructure (insufficient tax revenues, privatization, special interests)
• our education system (test-score mania, privatization, excessive costs)
• our justice system (Bradley Manning, incarceration rate, SCOTUS)
• our value system (theocracies, pseudo-theocracies, social Darwinism)

Oh, I suppose the list goes on, but that's about all I can handle at the moment. I'm neither whining nor complaining. Rather, I'm merely observing. For each one of these areas there are, without a doubt, more than enough "experts" running around with diagnoses and panaceas, and for the most part, these are well-meant, but nevertheless wrong. Each one looks at its own given area and ignores that some other area is equally affected. If we weren't so screwed up ourselves, our societies would be in better shape. If we had a reasonable monetary or financial system, the economy wouldn't be such a problem, and there's a lot that could be done about the environment, education, and infrastructure. That kind of thing.

Overarching everything, though, I would place our value system, for it is this that determines, at least in a sense, what it is we care about at all. Although religion once attempted to do that (and I'll let history be the judge of how successful it has been ... for it was, and to a certain extent still is, the case that religion provided different cultures a common meeting ground), that, too, has devolved into a mumble-jumble of creeds, factions, and belief systems that simply legitimize -- well, attempt, rather unsuccessfully, I might add, to legitimize -- one group's superiority over another. That is especially what religious fundamentalism (of any flavor) is all about.

It is possible, by virtue of some yet-foreseen miracle that we might be able to salvage (I'm not sure about save) perhaps the infrastructure, perhaps parts of the environment (but I doubt enough), but that's about it. Without a value system, an agreed-to set of values that are valid and applicable to everyone -- regardless of race, color, religion, creed, culture, or nationality -- we will never be able to decide which of the items on that list we should even try to save.

Why am I less than optimistic? Well, because of the first item on that list: ourselves. When it comes to change, we all know, that is definitely something that everyone else needs to do, but not ourselves, and that's one reason we can never work off the list. If you can't get past the first item, you've no chance of ever getting to the end. It will just be the end.

A word about saving

"To save" is one of those wonderful English verbs that can get our minds churning in different directions. It lends itself to ambiguity, double-entendre, and even punning. It's worth thinking about words from time to time.

We can "save" our money; that is, we can put it somewhere (under the mattress, buried in a coffee can in the back yard, in a bank ... all of which yield about the same rate of interest) so that we have it later. We can save our dessert at dinner and eat it later. Saving, in this sense, has to do with keeping something for later use.

We can also "save" a drowning man, or block a field goal and "save" our team from defeat. In other words, saving, in this sense, has to do with rescuing someone or something, preventing it from being destroyed, preserving it in some way. There is an overlap, of course, with our money (or desert) example: spending our money or eating our dessert now means we have destroyed it (perhaps in a very good cause) and not preserved it.

However, "save" can also be used in the sense of "redemption". It is said that Jesus saves, that we can be saved from our sins. Granted, this has an aspect of preservation as well. For the Christian, his or her soul remains unharmed, will a lost soul will be tortured for eternity. (After all, what choices does a Loving God have for those who insist on disobeying?)

The thoughts I have been expressing for the last couple of posts fall naturally into the second category above: keeping things from being destroyed. When considered seriously, we see that my last posted question: "What's worth saving?" pretty much answered itself: not a whole lot. Our money is broken; our financial system is broken; our economic system is broken; our society is broken; our communities are broken. Our relationships are as run down as is our infrastructure. So, when I start wondering about what is worth saving, well, the answer is rather obvious: not much at all. I don't know about you, but when I find broken things lying around, I tend to throw them away. Our consumer goods are generally not worth fixing, and we've taken this wonderfully wasteful model and applied it the rest of our lives as well.

Our political, economic, and social structures are in such a state that we certainly don't want to bury them on a desert island like so much treasure. They've pretty well lost their value. What is a political system worth when the individual has nothing to say? What is an economy worth when only a tiny percentage benefits from it? What is a society worth when its is based on fear and loathing of "others"? They are in such disrepair that we can't prevent them from being destroyed. We've already destroyed them, which is why they are no longer the treasures that we once thought they were. And Lord knows, we can't keep them from going to Hell. In fact, for a growing number of people, they have become Hell itself.

Whatever we do decide to do is going to demand of us courage. We've pretty much got to start over and that means from a state of maximum uncertainty. I'm not sure how good we are at that anymore.

What's worth saving?

You might think this post will be a primer on taking care of your money in troubled times. You couldn't be more wrong. These past few hot and lazy weeks of summer have sent my thoughts to cooler climes. Well, cold, might be a better word. I can't help but think there are some cold, dark times ahead.

Those who know me also know that I'm not the world's biggest optimist. Oh, sure, there are those times when I am willing to admit that this or that will pass, regardless of how we feel about it, but the overall tenor of what I'm feeling these days makes me think these things will pass ... away.

Much of what I write is intended to rouse enough emotion that we pull together and go out there (wherever "there" is) and save those things that should be important to us: the arts and literature, education, society, our democratic systems of government ... you know, the usual suspects. Are they even worth saving?

The truth of the matter is that we value art based on its asking price in the market, not because of the insights it might provide into human nature. Who reads ... or can read -- really read, as in critically and thoughtfully ... and literary success is judged by the number of copies sold. Dan Brown and John Grisham may write entertaining and filmable novels, but what do they tell us about the human condition or show us about our common plights? What kind of education have we got when we've reduced everything to reguritatable facts and testable items? That's mere schooling, not education. What kind of society is it that is based on mistrust, dishonesty, scheming to gain advantage, securing one's own interests at the expense of others, wealth and prestige? And I don't even have to say any more about "democratic systems of government" when corporations and monied interests pick and sponsor the candidates and then tell them which of their own hand-written legislation to pass. That's simply not democracy anymore.

The disciplines and systems that we once held to be valuable have been degraded into consumable decorations. They exist in name only so that we can lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that what we do and how we live and where we live is still OK. It isn't.

Two-thirds of the world's population know that they live in abject poverty with little or no hope for improvement and that their lives will simply be painful, brutish and short. The other third's lives are not really much better, but they can deceive themselves into thinking that what little they have is worth saving, not realizing that they really don't have much of anything left to save.

Lack of freedom?

Now that we've seen that maybe we're not as educated as we believe ourselves to be, the question raises itself whether we're as free as we believe ourselves to be. It's not a silly question, it is a dead serious one, for as Goethe once noted, "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." That was a bright guy; Goethe was truly, and in every sense of the word, a highly educated man. No, there certainly aren't many like him anymore. We could use a few of them though. Just a few would be a really good start.

How free are you when your government knows your every move (potentially), knows what you are thinking, knows on a daily basis what your opinions are? How free are you when private companies collect so much information about you that they can present you with custom-tailored advertisements, individually tailored products, and offers you simply "can't refuse", but in a truly non-Godfatherish way? How free are you when you owe so many people so much money that you can't afford -- literally -- to lose your job (or even for your significant other to lose theirs), take a cut in pay, or even take the day off because of other pressing needs? These are all legitimate questions whether you like them or not.

I know plenty of Americans who define freedom in terms of how many and what types of weapons they can own, or where they can build their houses, or where they throw their garbage, or what they do with their property. As I mentioned two posts ago: freedom is one of those words that is simply defined different ways by different people. Still, it is legitimate to ask whether any of these people, in any of the just-mentioned situations or holding the just-mentioned beliefs are really "free".

If anyone, be they public or private, is gathering information on you personally so that they may at some point in the future use that information to ensure that you act in a certain way, you are not free. If anyone has more right to your assets (e.g., your house) than you do, then you are not free. If you are so obligated to others that you cannot simply act and decide according to your own desires and wishes, you are not free. If you are a citizen of an allegedly democratic society but you are not allowed to vote because of some ridiculously restrictive rule, you are not free. If you speak your mind, express your doubts, or raise critical questions without being pressured from without, you cannot be free.

And all those things are simply a part of our everyday, mundane reality. They are things we are confronted with and are exposed to and with which we have to deal each and every day. Oh yes, we believe we are free ...

Lack of education?

Just because the Egyptians might have a long (democratic) row to hoe does not mean that we should advise them against it. Remember, Jefferson said that education was essential to the proper functioning of a democracy, but he did not say that it was a guarantee.

We only have to look at ourselves, or at the United Kingdom, or Germany to know that having a well-educated populace does not guarantee effective democracy. This is particularly questionable in light of the degree of surveillance that the Anglo-axis in the West has been pursuing. So many people acted so surprised when they found out because they didn't "know" how bad it was.

Does this make them uneducated or simply uninformed? Obviously they were uninformed, but does that excuse them for (a) being so surprised and (b) not being willing to do anything substantial about it. Anyone who has a critical slant of mind has suspected for quite sometime that there's more going on behind the scenes than "they" (in this case, the "powers that be", or PTB) are telling us. After all, there are a lot of facts and tons of information available to all of us in the newly declared Information Age, so apparently access to information isn't all that helpful in certain critical areas, such as our rights to privacy and freedom from intrusion, or even oppression.

What my little digression into literacy rates last time tells us is that in the West, at least, we're sending everybody to school, and just about everybody can read and write, but not everybody can think. When I say "think", I mean "think critically". Thinking critically is not complaining about anything and everything, it is not whining about others doing things I don't agree with, it isn't viewing everyone with a different opinion as mentally deficient. No, in fact, critical thinking is precisely the opposite of all that: it's raising questions, especially uncomfortable ones; it is trying to understand why others act as they do and why it is different from how we ourselves might act; it is engaging other opinions and testing them for their accuracy and validity. And that, my dear friends, is what I hardly see at all anymore, especially in all those allegedly highly educated societies (whereby I am including the US here, for simplicity's sake: we know they don't have nor want a society anymore, they are apparently more than satisfied just with their economy).

Yes, the reactions of those around me to what has happened in Egypt said much more about us than it will ever say about them. We are in the process of equating information with knowledge, of assuming that being informed is being educated, of believing that everybody else is all screwed up but we've got our ducks in line. What's becoming ever clearer to me, though, is that we really don't know if they're ducks, and we've got even less idea what order they are in.

Lack of education

The recent events in Egypt tell us a lot, not necessarily about the Egyptian people, but about ourselves. The first step in self-recognition is your own "opinion" about what's happening there. For the moment, I don't care whether you're for or against, think it's a good idea or bad. What I would be more interested in, though, is how you would use the words "freedom" and "education" in your arguments. An unlikely pair in this context, I know, but they belong together nevertheless.

The first thing that the two words have in common is that they have no universally accepted definitions, and I'm not talking about their other-language equivalents, though that too shows an endless variety. No, I'm simply talking about all of us who speak the same language ... allegedly. I've kick around the "freedom" concept on more than one occasion, so I'm not going to go over all that again here. Instead, I want to look at the role education plays in all this, for, after all, I have been going on a bit about education lately.

Ever since Jefferson, the accepted wisdom has been that a well-educated populace is essential to the proper functioning of a democracy. When we look at literacy rates, for example, that is, the proportion of the people who can read and write, we find that it still varies considerably, even 500+ years after Gutenberg (all values rounded to whole percentages):

Country	Overall	Males	Females
United States	99%	99%	99%
Germany	99%	99%	99%
Egypt	72%	80%	63%
Saudi Arabia	87%	90%	81%
Syria	80%	86%	74%
West Bank	96%	98%	93%

Now before anyone gets the idea that I'm picking on the Middle East, I would like to point out that Saudi has a relatively high literacy rate, but is not a democracy, nor is Syria, but there is something of an intuitive correlation between literacy rate and stability on the one hand. Egypt is striving -- uneasily, I'll admit -- toward self-determination, but if there is anything to Jefferson's notion of what's required, they certainly have a long way to go.

Granted, literacy rates are one, rather limited, way of approaching the issue, so next time, we'll dig a bit deeper.

The language of language

Most of you probably hated English class. I was one of those weirdos who didn't, but I know a lot of people, then and now, who are still wondering why we had to read Shakespeare and write essays and wasn't Ben Franklin's autobiography the absolutely most mind-numbing read in the history of printing. I don't blame them for not getting excited about it. Motivating my students was always my biggest challenge in teaching.

But, apart from all the prim and proper, upstanding, prudish, school-marmish notions of English instruction that we all had to suffer through, there is another -- darker, more fun, livelier, and challenging -- side to it as well. It's about communication, but not as any of you who have had to suffer through a communication class are now imagining. English (and here, any of you can substitute your own native language from your own native culture ... everything I have to say applies mutatis muntandis for your own) is about the magic -- and I use the word consciously -- of language. The person who said the pen was mightier than the sword knew what he was talking about. Words -- and I can't say this often or emphatically enough -- are the most powerful weapons known to (hu)man(ity).

We suspected it for a long time. When the notion of higher education first arose, you studied the Trivium after your general education. The Trivium consisted of just three subjects (and you need to think this as analog to a bachelor's degree today): grammar (how words are fit together to make sense), logic -- actually dialectics (how to combine ideas to make sense), and rhetoric (how to influence others with what you say). That's it. It was all about using language to make friends (and enemies) and influence people. No more, no less. These days we all complain about most people's terrible spelling and using 50 words when 5 would have done the trick and pull our hair out trying to figure out what they meant in the first place. Oh yeah, we've come a long way, haven't we?

Regardless, I'd like to ask you to do a little exercise. It won't take long and I guarantee it will tell you more about yourself than you ever really wanted to know. This is it; I call it Fivers:

1. Which are the 5 words you find most uplifting?
2. Which 5 words upset you the most?
3. Who is your favorite person to listen to?
4. Who is your least favorite person to listen to?
5. List the last 5 books you've read and the years in which you read them.

Now comes the hard part: Look at your answers and think long and hard about how they relate. Satisfied? Regardless, the answers to those five simple questions tells you (and everyone else) all they need to know about what floats your boat, what gets your goat, how they can get you to go along, and whether they even have to worry about you figuring out what they're doing.

Really. Think about it.

When values aren't valuable

When we look at the development of, say, the United States (though just about any Western liberal democracy ... as some like characterize them ... would do), we realize that, once again, we're going through a period of real turmoil: income disparity is reaching critical proportions, the middle-class is being seriously squeezed, debt is rampant, crime rates are decreasing while overall violence is increasing, a lot of young people (worldwide) are expressing their dissatisfaction in the streets. As Dylan noted, "Something is happening, and you don't know what it is./Do you, Mr. Jones?"

It would seem that, once again, history is repeating itself. This isn't the first time that there's been a lot of societal turmoil related to wealth inequity (to put it in more formal terms). In fact, Perkin (The Third Revolution) maintains that every great civilization in the history of the world has collapsed when the wealth disparity became unbearable. No Diamond's-Guns-Germs-and-Steel, just simple too few haves, too many have-nots. This isn't an argument we can simply slough off. We need to take this one seriously.

I have tried to make clear that education cannot be the solution to our current dilemma. It's probably the root cause. The collusion of industry and education is not a good thing, because industry is over-represented by wealth. Over 80% of all stocks are held by the wealthiest 10% of Americans, for example. The wealthy elite send their kids to elite schools so that they retain their elite status. The vast, vast majority of schools and colleges are there to merely prepare drones for work in the wealthy's hive. So we buy into the myth that a college education is necessary, but college educations have become mass produced, and more than anything else, they have become so expensive that without a huge amount of debt, you can't even get one anymore. The average American (and increasingly worldwide) student owes so much money when s/he gets his or her sheepskin that they can't afford (literally) to say "no" to any employment that comes along. The more this is the case, the more wages are depressed (this is simple economics), the more difficult it is to pay it all back. In other words, you may be out of college, you may have a degree, but the bank still owns you, and the banks, just like the companies you will most likely end up working for, are owned by the same people who aren't all that interested in you having very much to say about anything.

So, am I saying that we should boycott education, that we shouldn't educate our young? No, not at all. What I'm saying is that we can no longer allow the current system of education to continue. What I'm saying is that we just can't continue schooling our children as we always have, we actually need to educate them, and this might just have to happen outside the current system.

Hmmm, I'm guessing that's too much for some of you.

Even more concerns about the future

Yes, yes, yes, I've been thinking a lot about the future lately. The more I think about it, though, the less likely it seems that there will be much of one. I know that sounds pessimistic and cynical, but it's not really meant as such. It's really a mere straightforward observation. The powers-that-be -- regardless of who you might think that is -- aren't really all that interested in you. They're certainly not interested in your kids or grandkids or nieces and nephews, or anybody other than themselves, and maybe their own.

A few posts ago, I mentioned that the end of education, as it appeared in the Late Enlightenment and Early Industrial Age, was an educated public that was crucial to the success of a functioning democracy. Actually, that's not true at all. I know, that's the accepted wisdom and all, but when we take a serious, critical look at history, we find that deep down, education has always been more about upholding the reigning interests of the time. Do we really believe that with the rise of the nation-state after the Treaty of Westphalia that all those monarchs who founded universities were interested in an enlightened populace? Not really. They were looking for bureaucrats and managers to run their ever expanding realms of influence and power. Even in America where we avoided the hereditary aristocracy ... well, at least until the fabulously wealthy started passing on their wealth to subsequent generations, then it became hereditary after all ... the idea was to school and socialize the populace to become conformists, upholders of the status-quo.

Fichte, the German philosopher who really jump-started mass education, did so in order that "Germans would become better Germans". You only need one day in any American public (or private) school to know that the primary aim of American mass education is to ensure that "Americans become better Americans". What we need to ask ourselves is what "better" means in these contexts. I'm not saying that there is anything fundamentally or inherently wrong with the status-quo values that are the primary object of education, but I am questioning the wisdom of indoctrination and suppression of critical thinking. You can't have both.

I don't know why we're so afraid of those who think critically. If the values you uphold are truly worthwhile, wouldn't they stand up under critical scrutiny? One would think so, but we find out that more often than not, the values being propagated are very good for some, and not so good or downright harmful to others. That's the problem. It's becoming clear that what is being said is policy is not really what is policy.

More and more people are starting to see the cracks in the facade.

More concerns about the future

Since I was going on about not-having-to-be-a-genius last time, I think I should just pick up here where I left off. If the system we have is not going to work in the future (and it isn't going to), then we need to think seriously about what we have to do so that we don't screw our children over. Unfortunately, too many of us have bought into the capitalist lie: there isn't enough to go around, because as one wise person once noted, if all the rich people sat down to divide up all the wealth, there wouldn't be enough to go around. There's always someone who thinks they are entitled (and it's at the top that true entitlements are believed in) to more than everyone else.

Oh, and by the way, for all of you who are thinking this really isn't your problem ... because you don't have kids or disowned your kids, or just because you don't like thinking anymore, or whatever, I just want you to know that you're the biggest problem of all. And that's all I have to say about that.

Just like I have shown that our most fundamental concept of education is no longer applicable to the reality with which we are confronted, it should be increasingly clear that our entire notion of economics isn't really all that sustainable. Education as we know it, no longer applies. Economics as we envision it, no longer applies. For the quick-witted amongst you, yes, politics as we know it is also so dysfunctional that it's only a matter of time until it collapses.

Such events are threats as well as opportunities, of course. Any collapse can be utterly destructive, but any time one thing outlives its usefulness, an alternative has the opportunity to establish itself. The question is whether we're satisfied with how power and wealth is determined, seen, acknowledged, and, yes, distributed.

I really don't know if any of this is really sinking in, but it should be slowly obvious to the most casual observer that the way things are are not the way they can remain. Things are changing, whether we like it or not, and they are going to change in ways that we may or may not like, but for all of you who think I've got mine, let the others fend for themselves, well, I'm afraid you may be in for a rude awakening. Oh, I'm not talking about some bottom-up revolution and guillotines or anything. No, not at all. For all of you who think you've got yours and you're secure: you're not. And it's not that have-nots that are going to destroy you, it's the haves. They haven't got it all yet and they are not going to stop till they get it all ... including whatever you think is yours. I don't want to reveal the end of the story, rather, I feel simply obligated to tell you what's written on the wall over there.

Concerns about the future

For those of you who have been following the last few posts, it will be clear by now (I hope) that we're all debating and talking about one thing when it's really about something else. So what else is new? This happens a lot these days.

The response to the so-called, alleged skills shortage is not more education and training, there are more than enough unemployed, skilled, and capable potential employees out there, but if you, as a company, are not willing to pay them a livable wage to do the work, you shouldn't be surprised when they don't want to work for you. The response to still not finding "qualified employees" is not allowing extra-cheap labor in from foreign shores. That simply undercuts the home market and exacerbates the problem. The real problem is that there are simply not enough jobs to go around, any way you cut it. We have high unemployment primarily because there are not enough jobs to go around. If so many -- particularly transnational corporations (TNCs) -- are making record profits, the lack of skilled labor can't be the real issue anyway. Something else is going on.

There is an old adage in the IT community, namely if a computer can do it, eventually it will. If whatever it is you do -- bookkeeping, quality control, information dissemination ... it doesn't really matter -- can possibly be so organized and programmed that a machine (or computer/software) can do it, eventually, it will be. There are lots of things that computers are doing instead of people, be it taking orders on Amazon or any other online marketplace or calculating and preparing your tax return. The more the machines can do, the more we will let them do ... no, encourage, no, insist, they do. Why? Primarily because we trust machines more than people, and deep down, we have a very ambivalent attitude toward them (cf. my "Prometheus" series on Daily Kos).

The consequence of this thought is simple: we may have a declining absolute population, but we have a more rapidly declining number of employment slots to go around. This is the real problem. We're not ready for this at all. And, the main reason we're not is because we refuse to admit that this is really the problem.

This isn't just a young-people problem. For those of us who are coming into our so-called "golden years", most of us live under the delusion that we paid into the system, therefore we are simply cashing in on our investment. Unfortunately, that's not how the social-security systems in the Western world work. No, those who are working pay for those who are no longer in the pool. We paid for our parents, our children have to pay for us, our grandchildren for our children. With a declining population, however, it doesn't take a mathematical genius to recognize that at some point (and it's not all that far away) that those working can't possibly pay for those who have stopped.

It's not a matter of a bankrupt system, rather it is a simple matter of numbers and how the system functions. It also doesn't take a genius to figure out that the chances that any of our children will ever see a penny of "retirement" are somewhere between slim and none. Oh yeah, we love our children, but we screwed them over anyway. There is a big downside to boomer selfishness, it would seem.

Concerns about the end of education

This is a time of ends. For years we've been talking about the end of just about everything, but the word itself has two very distinct meanings, and which one is meant in any given phrase in which it is used. Ah yes, there's always a bit of twist in just about everything we say and do.

The word "end" has to primary meanings, namely the stopping point of a temporal experience or event (as in Judgment Day is what many believe will be the end of the world.), or the goal or purpose of something (as in The ends should justify the means.) So, which one am I talking about here? And is so often the case, the answer is, "well, both, sort of."

If a person can learn things, acquire skills and develop competences without having to go through a formal process to do so; if a person will most like do these things more often than not outside of formal educational systems or processes, the we have to ask ourselves just what good is a school, in this case a vocational-training institution? Are they needed at all? If a person can get recognition elsewhere for what s/he can do or is capable of, then it doesn't take much more thinking to realize that the school, as we generally understand it, becomes rather superfluous rather quickly. In a sense, then, this is the end of education (in the first sense of the word).

Of course, if this is the end of the institution, then we have to ask ourselves if the institution serves any purpose, any end (in the second sense of the word), if it has any reason for existing at all. We would be justified, it would seem, in raising the question of the real end of education, as we now understand it. If I can get what I need elsewhere, why do I have to support a large apparatus that is providing no real value? This is a legitimate (though short-sighted question) and it is one which an increasing number of people are thinking maybe we don't.

The Late Enlightenment and Early Industrial Age thought that an educated public was crucial to the success of a functioning democracy. Citizens who could read newspapers, think for themselves, form opinions and express them were considered a necessary, if sometimes uncomfortable, element of a democratic society. It was generally agreed that each and every person should have the opportunity to learn to read, write, and reckon (the 3 R's), and it later turned out that having a basic understanding of literature, science and mathematics would help everyone get along better in the modern world. In other words, society decided that everyone would be better off if everyone knew more. The school of the Late Enlightenment, of course, looked very different from the school of the Industrial Age, and with the current rapid development of technology, especially information technology, we realize that our current notion of school may be at its end, because the end it has to serve needs to be redefined.

What we have seen in the last few posts is that there is shift of thinking taking place from the "old style", (for us) traditional forms of education which was input oriented (e.g. subject-centered ... so many hours of math, science, literature, phys. ed., etc.) to one that is output oriented. This reorientation brings with it the obsolesence of large portions of the education undertaking, and it is time for us to start thinking about what the education for tomorrow should look like. It should also be clear by now, that the mere requirements of business, the demands of capital, the specifications of employers cannot be the answer: too much of what they want can be gotten outside the structure of formal education. But, if we are to preserve our societies, then we need to think hard about what education means and what it will look like in the future.

I hate to say it so tritely, but our entire future depends on it.

More concerns about non-formal and informal learning

Our little exercise from last time brought up a point that many of you had probably not thought of before: experience. Just how much of what you do are you able to do simply because you have gathered enough experience to do it well (or even, to do it at all)? I think we all agree on the answer: a lot.

All of us have had that experience of sitting in a classroom and suddenly realizing that what the teacher is talking about is actually the solution to another problem that has been plaguing you: maybe it was how to deal with your girl/boy friend while in literature class, maybe it was some insight to your hobby that appeared in science class. It doesn't matter, but all of us have had the experience of being in a learning situation (classroom, lab, etc.) and learning something that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual subject at hand. This common experience has a name: non-formal learning. A lot of our learning happens this way.

Even more learning occurs outside the classroom, in the "college of hard-knocks" as the Americans like to call it. This is the real venue for "live and learn". Building a soap-box racer, a model rocket, sewing clothes for a doll, building a float for the homecoming parade ... the list is endless: no matter what we do, as humans, we learn something just from doing it. We have all kinds of useful knowledge, not so useful knowledge (e.g. trivia), handy skills, and the ability to do something that others you know can't do, and all of this has come from the fact that you have survived as long as you have. Imagine now, you could get some kind of "school credit" for that. This is what is known in the (education) trade as "informal learning".

Common sense tells us that a lot of what we know and are capable of doing has come from activities that weren't necessarily intended to achieve those results. If it were possible to somehow "document" that learning, then there would be a whole lot more we could put on our resumes that might be applicable to the job we are seeking. Given the fact that talk's cheap and too many people are simply willing to lie to get what they want, having these knowledge, skills, and abilities documented by a competent authority, that is, officially, would solve that problem. This is what we also know in the trade as "accreditation of prior learning" (APL). And this is a program that the European Commission has been rightfully pursuing as well.

Yes, the two ideas I've been talking about in the last two posts constitute what could be called a "revolution" in education and training. What?! A revolution! Yes. For as harmless as they appear, these two concepts have the potential to change the (education) world as we know it. Why? For the simple reason that I mentioned at the beginning of these ponderings from Prague: they appear like good ideas on the surface ... but think them through to the end.

That's where we are headed next time.

Concerning non-formal and informal learning

My friend's misadventure with the semiconductor company took place a while ago, which only indicates to me that this is a problem that's been around for quite some time. Naturally, he ended up taking a very different career path, and though he was very fortunate in how his life progressed, others have been just as unfortunate in what came after such an experience. Not everyone is as lucky as everyone else, and we have a responsibility to think about them.

Someone has been ... in fact, a lot of people have been, and as a result, two key concepts have taken on a very deep significance in European education policy: learning outcomes and accreditation of prior learning (which I'll call APL for short; it goes under a variety of names, but this one is as easy as any to recognize).

The traditional approach to education has been, whether you were aware of it or not, input-driven, and content-centered. We all went to school to learn those things that someone somewhere at some time decided were necessary for us to learn. Nobody ever asked any of us if we wanted to take physics or college algebra or world lit. We did it because it was on the schedule. End of story. That sums up, by the way, the education of 99% of all the people who have ever gone to school even a day in their lives.

Whether justified or not, the EU educational-policy people took industry seriously and said to themselves, "Well, if that's what the prospective employee is supposed to look like in the end, then let's focus on the outcomes and redesign our curriculum and training programs to ensure that this is what comes out in the end." They turned the whole process around and started working from the outcomes, back to what a learner would have to know, do and how well in order to perform as expected. It all seemed so innocent in the beginning, for the simple reason that it makes so much sense.

Believe me, this has kept training people and educators busy for years. When you think how old most of our school systems are and how long they have been input-oriented, well, you can easily imagine how hard it is to break hundred-years' old habits. Only now (and I've been involved in this for over a decade) are we starting to see some headway. It's not easy, believe me. In fact, try this little exercise to get an idea of what we are dealing with:

Think about the job you do: what would one have to learn/study to do your job? what knowledge (general and specific) is required? which skills are essential? which competences are required? And, once you have that sorted out in your mind, imagine what it would mean to document that so that anyone anywhere, if s/he followed that program of learning/training would be able to replace you. Right. It's not an easy task, but that's what an outcome-oriented approach attempts to do.

Next time, we'll take this a step further.

Concerning education (and training)

It would seem that a sound part of current educational policy, then, is what we call "employability". Anyone who knows me knows as well that I'm a staunch opponent of the concept (cf. here, here, here, here, here, and here). Letting industry into education, be it general, vocational or higher, is like inviting the fox to guard the hen house. It will simply be bloody in the end. Considering what is happening to labor worldwide, I don't think it's too radical to accuse them of wanting little more than obedient wage-slaves. (There are exceptions, I am sure, but I don't care at the moment: if there are, they are too few; if there are more than I think, they're not making themselves visible enough.) It cannot be that we -- who are supposed to know something about education and training -- simply roll over and let the least qualified among us (let's be truthful: what qualifies an employer in regard to the needs of education?) tell us what needs to be done. Well, that's really what industry thinks, and oddly enough, that's pretty much what education and politics are doing.

We saw last time that the so-called skills shortage is little more than a red herring. There are, I would bet, more than enough qualified people to fill all those allegedly unfilled jobs. So what's the problem? Well, if industry can't snow us with the unrealistic-compensation-expectations argument, they can always fall back on the doesn't-have-the-right-piece-of-paper argument. I'm sure many of you have experienced that.

I know a guy who once interviewed with a major semiconductor company, and when I say major, I mean major. He had a degree in chemical engineering from a nationally well-respected university and since semiconductors weren't exactly his thing, he spent a good deal of time prepping for the interview by boning up on semiconductor production. The interview went spectacularly: the interviewer and my friend hit it off from the start; technically, according to the interviewer, my friend was top-shelf, remarking in fact that he'd never met any interviewee who knew as much about semiconductor production as he did. But ... it will come as no surprise ... my buddy didn't get the job. The reason: well, without some kind of documentation ... you know, a course or two in electrical engineering, a minor in computer science, well, something ... he could never justify the hire. So there was my friend with great paper, but not the right paper; in-depth knowledge but not documented knowledge. And, without the paper, no job.

Yes, something is terribly wrong with this picture, but it's anything but an isolated incident, and many, many of you will know for yourselves. So, how do we get past this barrier? We'll look at one possibility next time.

Concerning skills shortages

The EU has set education as an exceptionally high priority. Youth unemployment, particularly in Southern Europe has reached pandemic proportions. It is growing elsewhere. Industry and politics are crying for highly trained, qualified candidates to fill much-needed high-skilled jobs. We're in the midst of a crisis. The problem is, it's not the crisis that politics and industry are wringing their hands about.

You hear similar tones in much of the American political debate, if they can ever get away from defense, healthcare, or gun ownership. Everybody's got their priorities, even if they're all screwed up. Still, we have to ask ourselves what is this crisis all about -- really? If industry's not hiring, it is easy to say they'd love to if they could only find the right people for the job, and politics, believing them, runs off and starts pushing vocational education and training (VET) or higher education, or whoever it is that they think they can push around to solve the problem. The problem is, if there's a problem, it's not that problem, it is another one, and it's a much bigger one, too.

At a recent conference in Brussels, in regard to this crisis only in the IT sector, industry made the case that there were five reasons why they couldn't find qualified personnel. Among the usual suspects of low levels of practical and job-related skills, interpersonal competences and the like, there was #5, which stood out like a sore thumb: unrealistic compensation expectations. Yes, you have to let that roll across the tongue. I'm dying for help, you could help, but you want to be paid too much to do it. That's the nice way to put it. I once learned there was such a thing as supply-and-demand: when supply decreases, demand increases, prices rise. Apparently that does apply in real economies. The solution? Hire Far- and Southern Eastern help at a fraction of the cost. Bingo! Immigration reform is a sudden priority.

If that's not bad enough, it gets worse: even though the so-called "law" of supply-and-demand has been somehow nullified, because even if the domestic candidate is willing to be underpaid for what s/he is going to do, it still isn't low enough to compete. These worthless hand-out-wanters apparently don't know a good deal when they see one. They will have trouble making ends meet on what they earn, they will most likely have to seek some kind of government assistance to help them keep their heads above water, but we've got an unsolvable skills-shortage problem. And industry keeps beating up politics to get them to do something about it. The problem is, the only thing politics can do is flail around, but it's a good distraction from the real machinations of industry which is purely and simply more profit.

No the real problem is not a skills shortage, it's a profit shortage.

But, it gets worse ... more next time.

Post-Prague concerns

Oh yes, why was I in Prague to begin with? It is only fair. You deserve an answer.

As I implied last time, I was there on business. CEDEFOP, the EU's organization overseeing vocational education and training (or VET, as it is commonly known in these parts), held their annual ECVET Forum. (And since most of you don't know: ECVET is the European Credit System for VET, and its premise is quite simple and noble: you learn a trade or occupation and what you learn should be creditable and acceptable wherever you go in Europe; the system wants to make the acceptance of things learned elsewhere and elsewhen easier all across the Union.) As are most annual conferences, this one was also about getting interested stakeholders together, exchanging ideas and simply making known how far everyones' efforts have brought the program. As conferences go, yes, very standard fare. So, why should I mention it at all.

Every once in a while we come up with new and exciting ideas that promise to make the world a better place. These are very well-intended ideas, to be sure, but we all know where the road paved with good intentions leads. Sometimes it helps to slow down and think some thoughts through to their end. Let me start, though, with the smaller issues and work my way up to the deeper, more profound ones.

I think most of us would agree that it makes a lot of sense to accept that, say, a machinist or an automotive mechatronics technician, or a logistics dispatcher, who was trained and has professional experience in Place A should not have too many difficulties being recognized in Place B as a trained and experienced professional. That, however, is the case. Too often, a young trades- or craftsperson from one country moves to another and hiring companies in the new country are hesitant to recognize those qualifications, simply because they're from somewhere else. As is too often the case, citizens of one country like to think that their qualifications are simply de facto better than those from other countries. Chauvinism takes on many forms. Now we have an unemployed immigrant on our hands. And, yes, you are right: now we have a problem.

For my American readers, you have to understand that the EU consists of 27 countries that speak 25 different languages, that have over 50 different histories (depending where you were when), and 25 different general and vocational educational systems. We should also keep in mind that education is something that is very deeply rooted in every culture. There are simply a lot of pre-set barriers that have to be overcome. That is the idea behind ECVET.

But, as you can well imagine, progress is slow. Old habits die hard. Not-invented-here and if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it syndromes abound. Bureaucracy too easily gets in the way. These are all significant challenges. The upside is that Europe is willing to take them on. It's a good fight, for a good cause ... at least on the surface.

Next time, we dig a little deeper.

The courage to educate

Picking up on the theme from the time-before-last, let me just say that school choice is a red herring. All that I can advise any of you is to follow the money. I mean, if you want you children to be a certain way and you find a school that will make them that way, well, then I suppose you are perfectly free to put them there. But it's really just a form of child abuse. Harsh words? Not really. Think about it.

Let's say you're one of those parents who believes the Creationists. It's your right as an adult, but at some point, whether you like it or not, your child has to go out into the world and live on its own, makes his or her own living. You can hide the child away until well into their 20s, maybe even 30s, but then? OK, you're safe if you stay in America where such nonsense is not only tolerated, but promoted, and then? Whether we like it or not, we live in an increasingly globalized world and sooner or later your child is going to have to face the world. What have you done to prepare them for that? Nothing. In fact, you may have lessened the child's real-world survival skills, and why should you get tax dollars for that?

Or, what about you supposedly upward-mobile types. You're betting the bankers and rich folk are going to get away with it in the future like they have in the past. I have the feeling that this isn't where the smart money is. No, those with the money are doing everything they can to ensure that you folks are firmly entrenched between them and the unwashed masses. When it gets down to it, they'll be in the Caymans, you'll be here and your kids ... well, they won't know how to think for themselves or do much of anything for themselves because you've just brainwashed them a different way.

Personally, I think we should give kids a chance, the chance to be themselves, to become what they might be able to be, not what we want. The leading cause of screwed up kids is screwed up parents. Period. But it takes courage to be a real parent, just like it takes courage to be a real teacher, but we're doing everything in our power to ride those types out of town on a rail. If we want to have a chance in the future, and if we want our children to have a chance at all, then we have to have the courage to raise them to be able to survive on their own ... not just physically, not just socially, but mentally as well.

We need to be teaching our children to think, and the most effective way to do that, IMNSHO, is to teach them to question. They need to be able to ask the tough questions that need to be answered if we're going to get anywhere any time soon. But, as the story of Socrates shows us all too well, those who question will question authority, and authority, by and large doesn't like being questioned. This is so because at bottom it knows that it is in place not because it deserves to be but because it exerts enough force to be there. Questioning people tend to unmask force's inadequacies, and we can't be having that, can we?

True parents, true teachers allow their authority to be questioned because they know that the only true authority is that which can withstand the scrutiny of the most penetrating questions. They are not afraid of what might be found. They have the courage to educate.

Turning the tanker

At a recent project meeting, we had a presentation on what things looked like employment-wise in the high-tech sector. Yes, there were the usual sad statistics about how few young people were looking for jobs in technology and engineering, and how difficult it was to get kids interestend in math and science. That's nothing new. What was sort of new -- at least in a way -- was the presenter's plea for a broader-based education. It seems one of the most common complaints of employers is that their new-hires are seriously lacking in interpersonal skills. In other words, they know very little about anything other than what they know technically, and they have as good as no idea about how to get along, let alone work, with others. Isn't that surprising? I thought so.

OK, I'm not surprised like "yikes! where did that come from?" No, in light of the persistent pleas for employability somebody apparently overlooked the fact that understanding other people and communicating clearly and effectively are just as essential in the workplace as knowing what you are doing on the job. The question that popped into my mind, of course, was why were these skills no longer part of the curriculum.

When I went to school (granted quite some time ago), those were precisely the things our English (or fill-in-you-own-native-language) instruction. We read stories that were about how people did or didn't get along, about what made life worth living and we learned (or at least our teachers tried to teach us) how to form a coherent thought in a sentence and to take just a little bit of pride in being able to spell correctly.

The last thing I want to do is turn back the clock, but I do think it's time we re-thought some of the things we have decided aren't so important in the meantime. To many, art, literature, and music may have seemed like a waste of time, but they were anything but. We saw that there were multiple ways of expression, that words, pictures and tones could stir feelings ... right, feelings. Not just sensibilities that are too easily offended, but feelings that we had ourselves and that others had as well. We at least had the chance to learn that others weren't really all that different from us.

Even in that hard, cold world of work and business, it would seem that there is recognition that we really can't just make everything about money.