This post began as an effort to recommend some summer reading and as my posts often do, ended taking a slightly different focus.
First the books – these are links to informative sources for those interested in the “short version”, but I encourage reading the books by these authors:
Friedman, T. Hot, Flat and Crowded
Ford, M. Rise of the robots
My argument here concerns education and the focus of so-called educational reforms. I believe that education must lead citizens to new thinking but the reforms being advocated fall prey to old values.
Allow a couple of arguments by analogy.
1) Educators perplexed with the preoccupation of poor, inner-city kids with sports and sports stars try to warn these kids and their parents that Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and Stephen Curry are extremely rare and kids would have a higher probability of life success working at McDonalds and investing their wages in lottery tickets (guess that did a little snarky).
By analogy, the odds of making a fortune coding al la Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg face similar odds. Even given similar skills, success depends on many other factors (see Outliers).
2) There is an expression used by economists to describe the foolishness of investing in stocks that were recently on the upswing – “chasing the market”. The notion is that the “easy money” has already been made and purchasing at the new higher price is unlikely to result in the same success.
Flooding an area in which great success requires great talent reduces rather than increases the average benefit to those adopting a given focus.
The books I recommend present some serious challenges:
- globalization
- increasing income inequality
- climate change
- reduced need for employees in many professions including what used to be regarded as professions
Technology and scientific knowledge may help address some of these skills, but it must also be recognized that technology contributes to these challenges. We need skills in sociology, psychology, economics, political science, ethics, recreation, etc. to address the human contributions to the problems and realities we are creating. It is very possible that in the future a more socialistic ways of functioning will be necessary to achieve an equitable society. It is very possible that too many people are competing for a diminishing number of job opportunities and shorter work careers will be necessary. It is very possible that immediate productivity will have to be curtailed unless costs to society in general are considered and addressed (e.g., greenhouse gas generation).
Narrowing the focus of education will not be a solution on my list.
