Educating the Educators

There was a kerfuffle in this great brown land over changes to funding in education to allow for a leveling of the playing field in high schools (in particular) to build a better platform for our children's future. This is an admirable sentiment - if a little pointless. We don't really want to give more opportunities to those who would never take them, but rather should allow for those who would take opportunities to be exposed to a better education. This is a different thing.

But what exactly are we teaching kids these days? The same as we've ever taught them. Teaching the same stuff in a better way doesn't improve their future - it restricts it. If you look at employability (rather than further education at University because high school just doesn't prepare young adults enough), there are things that come up again & again that we often think of as attributes rather than skills. I differentiate these because most people seem to think that attributes can't be taught.

The things that I look for in an employee are:

• Ability to think - this is creative thinking, not critical, which is taught too often
• Adaptability - change is the future
• Multi-tasking - being used to handling multiple things, & this isn't a gender thing
• Team skills - working in a team, leading a team, not working alone
• Pressure - we leave this to students who want to do well in the HSC, but all types of non-University roles come under pressure
• Soft skills in general - emotional intelligence, for example

There are many other things that are teachable & useful, but they have one thing in common - they don't fall under the traditional subjects taught in high school, & the teachers that we have are not skilled or trained in these areas. We can't expect them to suddenly start teaching new curricula. There needs to be some planning to get us to the point where we can effectively introduce & deliver these topics & work towards our children's real future.

That way, we can become a much more cleverer country.

Give me Skin

I've just listened to Nassim Taleb talking about his theories of not bailing out failures in the financial services, but rather encouraging those who experiment on a small scale (with less likelihood of large losses). Similarly, those who fail massively should not be encouraged to continue doing what has been proven to not work - that is, traditional dollar-following behaviour. Those who take large corporations to the brink should suffer from their own misdeeds, directly - that is, should themselves be made bankrupt before the company is. The rule of Hammurabi - the architect of a house that collapses should be punished.

The same should be said of politicians. Small failures are seen as loss of face, & those who might otherwise try something new are discouraged from doing so because the people (or media) will lose faith in them - politicians are expected to be "always right". But those who fail spectacularly by not experimenting - by taking the tried & true course of the past into an unknowable future - are simply retired or shunted aside to do it again somewhere else, with sizable pensions & their dignity intact.

Surely, this is wrong. At the least, it is illogical. The theory of evolution is all about survival of the fittest - organisms experimenting until the most apt becomes dominant. Many inapt variations will not become dominant. The previously dominant - which did not adapt - will die out along with all of the others. This is why it is such a neat theory - people understand that, to progress, we must try different things to find the best way forward.

No-one believes in a straight-line evolution where a species changes over time from one form to another, by hitting on the one & only advantage that will cause successful evolution. Note, too, that evolution is a process that we usually only see as an historical progression from the distant past to now, forgetting all of the deviations that didn't make it this far. It would be arrogant to believe that we - the mankind of today - are the ultimate end of God's plan. If that's the case, then what's the point?

If we don't change our approach to new problems, then we are not evolving. We are engineering our own extinction. Political parties that rely on their past to formulate their future are the dinosaurs of today. Some unexpected event will see their rapid demise, due to their own lack of change. If they do not have the ability to adapt, then they will not be able to face change.

Politicians who will not evolve are holding back progress. Here, progress means making the world a better place. Politicians who will not adapt should not be allowed to stand in the way of those who can. Politicians who stand in the way of progress & manage to fail, should be chastised to the point where such non-evolutionary conduct is discouraged. That's having a direct consequence of non-productive behaviour. Those with the courage to stand up for trying new things & succeeding - for evolving - should be rewarded with greater support & responsibility.

Change is inevitable. What that change is, is unknowable. Good government is about leadership in times of crisis, contingency planning in times of flux, & good management in times of short-term predictability. Without all three, no politician or political party can be a part of good government in the long term.

The Family Unit

As loathe as I am to start an entry with a reference to the IT industry - one of the most important parts of delivering a solution to a problem is having a good model of the problem in the first place - one based on the real world or the business process. This seems obvious.

Yet, we often use a bad model in business processes & then promulgate that mode into the rest of society - or else keep a model that is so out-dated that it loses relevance.

A classic example of this is ownership of things. Traditionally, people who owned things were those in power - the ruler, the local lord, the man of the house. Everyone else was beholden to them. This has, I believe, changed. These days, anyone can own things. More to the point, some things aren't owned by one person alone.

In everyday life, we should change our concept of who "owns" things. In the case of big things, now that people can easily own their own homes, the "persons" who own the property have to be listed & are held responsible for the loan, etc. I have already used different nomenclature in describing this scenario - persons own a property, families live in homes. Why can't families own homes?

A child may not be held responsible for a mortgage, but a family is not parents & children. Up until recently, it was next to impossible for a single woman to take out a mortgage, or two people who weren't married, whether that was a de facto relationship, siblings, or parent & child. These are all perfectly good examples of family, from societies point of view, but not examples of collections of people that a bank would consider worthy of a mortgage.

In solution modelling, you would say that an important part of the system is a person. For a mortgage, you would allow for two people - with restrictions on who those people are. Why? A marriage these days is not a permanent thing. De facto relationships are so common & lasting that they are indifferentiable from marriage to, say, the tax department or social services - & this does not even come close to relationships which are not recognised by the state (gay marriages). This still limits non-traditional groups of people who have even stronger ties - siblings, for example.
We need to model the system that allows for a certain group of people (to be specified) to act as a unit in the same way that a lord was once thought of - as a possessor of things.

Even something as simple as a credit card or a car seems to be a problem in collective ownership. A car must have one & only one registered owner (or corporate entity). Yet, in my own case, we have one car in the family - it is shared amongst three drivers. I am now the only member of a motoring association.

A family unit is hard to put your finger on, socially. I know some families where each parent & their children have different surnames - & a family from one country where each individual gets their own surname, not a family name. How do you "name" that family unit? It's not the "Daffy" family because they share a surname. It might be "Daffy's" family to some people, or "Daisy's" family to someone else. Regardless, we should be able to register a group of people as a unit - a family unit - & treat it in the same way that we currently treat individuals & (only) some relationships.

People form their family units in any way that they want to - because there can be no laws to stop them (forming a group - there are laws over what they can do within that group). We should model the system - government - in such a way that it recognises these family units & treats them with the respect that they deserve.

Tribal Politics

It's not often that I get topical on politics, but I think this is useful with an election coming up.
Australian politics is too tribal.

You might laugh at that statement, but it's true. Most democracies are tribal - you belong to a tribe, even if you don't see it in the ethnic sense. The swinging voters in the political system are really those who don't identify with the tribe options available.

When we get presented with the idea of tribes in politics, the immediate thought is racial division, like Fiji, or religious division, like Syria or Egypt. The reality is that demographic division, like Australia & the UK, is just as tribal. Labor is considered working class. Liberal is considered ... not. If you identify with the ideals of the former - socialism, unionism, etc, then you are an ideological member of that tribe. If you don't directly believe in those things, then you are a member of the diametrically opposed tribe. If you don't like either tribe, or have been ostracised by one, then you have no tribe to belong to.

This notion of the tribe - the need to convince the tribe that there is still a strong leader who will be able to feed them with media pap over the cruel winter of the parliamentary year - drives politics. If the government did not represent one tribe to the detriment of the other, & did not need to pacify its own tribe or else make it grow, then politics would become nigh on boring, except for the occasional interesting issue where individual opinion comes into play - gay marriage being one such.

Tribe membership is generally long term - there is a personal investment of your ideals when you join a tribe. Occasionally, the tribe lets you down & you decide to leave it. You might even join the opposition tribe. In a time of war (elections), this may mean fighting (voting) against your former neighbours. There is a tendency to be the cruelest warrior in the new tribe - seeking revenge for past wrongs (real or imagined). But then, who are you really hurting? Did you leave the old tribe because it had so changed that their ideals no longer matched yours? Or did you simply leave it because the ideals represented in the tribe didn't match as closely as you'd once thought? Does your new tribe match your personal beliefs any better? Will the world be a better place if your new tribe rules over your old tribe & tries to impose their beliefs on you?

As a metaphor, this can be stretched to breaking point, but too few people put themselves in the position of understanding why they act in a particular way, & what the consequences will be. My brother-in-law, long-time working class, changed his voting preferences in recent years. He knows what he's no longer supporting, but I often wonder if he understands that he now supports the opposite - whatever that may be. "They must be punished!" I hear him thunder. Must is so strong a word.

Children of the Community

Children are an important part of the community - they become us. I mean that in the sense that, many years from now, they will be the driving force, the adults in power, & take our place in the community. I also mean that they will become like us - they will take their guidance from what they see us do. If we are mean-spirited, then they will be. If we are generous, then they will learn from that.

The children of different cultures grow up to be different adults as a result of this. Those who were brought up to respect their elders expect that respect out of their children. Those who were brought up secluded from the world will keep their naivety & transfer it to their children. In some cases, this is the promulgation of social norms, in others it is a deviation in one family that singles them out & their future generations. This is a form of social genetics - small mutations in each generation make the whole of society evolve.

We, as intelligent humans, do get the opportunity to change the social genetics if we act consciously, as opposed pre-destined genes. If we have the vision to see what is happening around us, we can determine what we prefer our society to be, &, hopefully, take some responsibility for changing it.

Our choice is the first step - taking responsibility.

I look on children as inspirational. If I see a few toddlers running around in circles giggling, it makes me laugh. I have no idea what they find funny, but they have such joy in their lives. If a stranger sees me smiling in public at such children, there is the risk that I get seen as a pedophile. The worst part is that the person who thinks that will probably not do anything about it - they will just move on with the thought in their mind. They will take no responsibility for that thought they had. It's a worst-possible-scenario case that they allow to fester in their own mind. After all, it's not their children.

If the average person sees two young teenagers in a fight, they will avoid it - turn away, walk quickly past, keep clear - because they don't want to get involved. Not their children. It's the modern way.
My wife, on the other hand, comes from one of those backward countries where children are a part of the community. You can be guaranteed that someone will recognise one of the children, the two will be broken apart, & each will be cuffed around the ear. Not only that, but the parents of both children will be informed - & both boys know it! - so they can look forward to another cuffing when they each get home.
The children of that community know how they should behave, & are reminded of it. They are appropriately admonished by society as well as their family. That is a very healthy community.

If I go back to the Australian scenario, there is always a little old lady up the street who notices the boys' fighting. She's the only one who might go to the parents with the tale. If she tried to break up the fight - the only one who would try - then she'd be knocked over by one of the boys. When she gets to the boy's home, the mother is shocked that her son would be fighting "Not my little Johnny - he's never been in a fight!" When Johnny comes home, he is asked about the incident. He feigns innocence. His mother is justified in her opinion. The boy escapes justice - & then plots his revenge on the nosy old lady up the street.
Who has been punished? Who has learned a lesson here?

We, as intelligent humans, get the opportunity to change our society.
It just takes a first step - taking responsibility.

Political Voodoo

With an election looming, the blame game has started & is now in full swing - politicians on both sides are telling us what the other side is going to do if they get into power, or how what the other side has done has foiled their grand schemes. Scapegoats are sought & appropriately sacrificed to the media bonfire. The government, of course, has been doing this for some time. We call them "scandals" because "incompetence" has too many syllables for prime time, & "blame" sounds too dull.
In fact, that's all we're really doing - finding someone to blame for a failure in the system somewhere, rather than finding out what really went wrong & fixing that - that would be too hard, require time & resources, & wouldn't make the prime time news. Once upon a time, you had to be quick enough to make the morning edition of the paper, but with twenty-four hour news, there's the trickle of newsworthy stuff to keep the media hungry, & then the big release each day to prove that the politicians are indeed awake.

When it comes to blaming someone for something so that we don't look too deeply into the problem, politics is becoming masterful. Many a minister of questionable background has been foisted into a portfolio for which they are unsuited or have no interest, only to be blamed when something within that realm - over which they had no control - falls apart at the seams due to a fundamental policy problem brought down from above, or else an incompetence in the implementation of a perfectly good policy carried out at the lowest levels.
I look with dismay at the political career of Peter Garrett - someone not well suited to the Labour Party, but who got them a lot of votes because he appealed to them. Within Labour, as an outsider, it was easier to treat him with disrespect. He had the credentials as Environment Minister, but was shunted into lesser roles when policies were mishandled. His fault? I doubt if he had the administrative background to oversee the implementation - that's for the public service. He did, however, know how to talk to environmentalists about the issues. He had real opinions. He was muffled, however, & his fellow politicians could not allow him to deviate from the party line.

From the perspective of a voter (or the media), when a policy fails, then someone must pay the price for the failure. We choose to pick on the Minister because they are a face. We use them as a voodoo doll & stick pins in them in the hope that causing them pain will somehow make our lives better. This is, of course, particularly silly. We should take responsibility for the actions of ourselves & our society, rather than looking for a puppet to hurt. When questionable insulation installers roamed the streets "taking advantage" of the "windfall" in the industry, where were the industry representatives who did not certify these people? Where was the community that allowed such people into the homes of their neighbours who knew no better?

Ah, but there was a Minister to blame. Problem solved. That'll learn 'em. Those dodgy installers won't do that again!

Progressive Politics

The more I look at politics in this & many other western democracies, the more the looking is tinged with dismay. The media often portrays the childishness of "he said/she said/they said" statements as so much throw-away sound-biting. When you look closer, it appears that that encompasses the whole substance of what political parties represent - mutual opposition.

That childishness reminds me of children playing in the sand - where there's only one shovel & one bucket. One child may have the majority (both implements), & they build while the other child fumes. If there is a sharing of power, then the two children will work at cross-purposes. When one child loses power, the other child will demolish all that they have built & start again, re-creating their vision from the last time they had power.
Both children are subject to the child & the support (& approval) of adult supervision, but they seem to ignore both, intent on their idea of how to build a castle in the sand.

Let's step back into reality. The two most important factors in government are, the general feel of the electorate - which can be affected through good leadership, & the climate of the times - (often external) factors not immediately under the control of the government. These are the adult supervision & the changing tide mentioned above. Many politicians think that the adults are a changing tide, & ignore it accordingly, as if there is no influence. This is inherently not just defeatist, but ignorant.

You modify the opinion of the electorate through how your actions are interpreted - this is party through performing the right actions, & partly through manipulation of how those actions are represented (through the media, for example). Does this sound obvious? This means that approval of castle building can be manipulated, to some extent.

You cannot change the tides, but you can monitor, anticipate, & harness their energy & impact. If you continue to ignore them, then it's at your peril - your sand castle will be washed away, in the same way that a child can be told by its parent that it's time to give up the bucket & spade.

Criticism is all well & good, but progressive politics needs a solution. Building castles that last comes about when there is co-operation in the sand castle building. Asking the other children to watch the tide or offer advice on how to deal with it, delegating the power of the shovel or bucket, building on others' successes & learning from their mistakes (rather than forgetting or ignoring both), are all things that lead to better sand castles. These are also things lacking in modern politics.
The "I am right, you are wrong" (or "I am right, you are left") way of looking at government assumes that the tide is irrelevant (never changes) & the approval is fickle. Going forward, progressive politics must take both into consideration & deal with them appropriately.

Embrace change. Embrace the future. Create good government. Go forward.