Pharmer’s Market
Posted by admin in Alternative Ed, Nature As Teacher, Thinkers on July 7th, 2009
[This was originally published over at Education.Change.org. I'm putting it online here in case you missed it over there. A big thanks to Clay Burell for allowing me guest post.]
Not long ago, I finished reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book about the high price of cheap food and the disconnected thinking that produces it. It made me think that the way we produce food today–that is, ignoring nature’s logic in the quest for efficiency–is very similar to the way we produce “educated” citizens. Ignoring millions of years of evolutionary design has resulted in some interesting (if not disconcerting) similarities between the two camps. Both industrial schooling and industrial agriculture seem to have developed pathological ways of looking at pathology.
Whether in the field, the feed lot, or the classroom, issues of low productivity and dysfunction are commonly attributed to the individual, rarely the larger system that controls it. When a farmer curses a corn plant’s inability to repel a particular pest, he does so without reflecting on the fact that the plant has been taken out of its natural environment and placed into a man-made monoculture–a hotbed of disease. Plants grown in isolation lose the defenses and nutrients that neighboring species once freely provided. In homogeneous rows designed for the convenience of machinery, a plant’s exquisite defense systems become ineffective. “Corrective measures” in the form of herbicides and pesticides end up coating the plants and sterilizing the soil.
Pigs are faulted for biting other pigs’ tails as a result of being weaned prematurely and packed together tightly. Animals living in stressful conditions, denied the expression of their once useful behaviors, lose the will to protect themselves in the face of danger. As a consequence, when infection sets in on a chewed tail, pigs are put down. (It’s not profitable to nurse them back to health.) Forward thinking hog farmers, in an attempt to stamp out this “vice”, noticed that by docking the pigs’ tails they could produce a sensitive nub that would force even the most demoralized pig to fight back.
Cows, ruminants which have evolved to eat grasses and fibrous vegetable matter, are today mostly fed a diet of government-subsidized corn. Here again, we ignore nature’s design. Not having evolved for such a diet, cattle end up living in a state of permanent illness, propped up and kept in the system by a permanent cocktail of pharmaceuticals. Big Pharma is only too happy to fill in when nature is ignored.
Our education systems, seeking efficiency through standardization and conformity end up creating students, who just like their agricultural counterparts, are no longer well-adapted to their environment. Michael Pollan reminds us that, “Most of the efficiencies in an industrial system are achieved through simplification: doing lots of the same thing over and over.” Like corn planted in a monoculture, removed from the diversity that protects it, or cattle fed an unnatural diet of corn, students today are fed a standardized diet of procedures and reproducible facts. This educational monoculture does nothing to nourish minds that have evolved to seek diversity, novelty and stimulation.
Those numbed by disconnected ideas unrelated to their needs are soon labeled attentionally deficient, unmotivated, substandard. Stimulants, antidepressants and impulse inhibitors are used to conform the human mind to a deformed system the same way herbicides, pesticides and antibiotics are used in agriculture’s great disconnect. Like the corn-fed cow raised on an unnatural diet of corn, constantly anemic and never well but kept alive through the use of drugs, students raised on disconnected facts, numbing routines, and endless testing, often find themselves on the receiving end of a medical prescription. Those that don’t have the stomach for such unsatisfying fare, who prefer not to be chemically altered, who’d rather have a more free-range existence, are eventually “counseled out”. Simply put: they have not met the required production quotas of a system designed for scalable throughput.
In standardized environments, students with a high tolerance for monotony and the ability to repress their curious gene are deemed the fittest of the bunch. Strangely, curiosity, a trait nature has selected for and which has served us well, in schools, seems to be selected against. Blue ribbon students grow their grade point averages en route to graduation and a chance to compete in the “real world”. Their farm analogues, purposed for industry, have been selected to tolerate crowding, pesticides, sameness–but most importantly–to be high yielding. The corn farmer with the most bushels per acre is acclaimed for his skill at converting petrochemicals into grain. The feedlot operator’s profits depend on how efficiently he can turn grain into meat. The highest ranked schools floss in the knowledge that they can efficiently convert standards and routines into high test scores. Along the way, little thought is given to the soil that is depleted in the field, to the groundwater being spoiled by the feedlot, or to the creativity and innovation being extinguished in the classroom. How productive is all this productivity?
It seems that despite (or maybe because of) our fetish with productivity, many of humanity’s most pressing issues seem to be getting worse. The unnatural selection playing out in schools creates what every educational institution’s mission statement pledges against: the creation of uncritical, passive, challenge-averse individuals, unwilling and unable to tackle the challenges of the 21st-century. It’s simple to blame the students for being unproductive, unmotivated, for lacking curiosity. Indeed, they often are seen as the problem, especially by those who’ve designed the system. Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank however, reminds us that, “The seed of poverty is in the institutions we have made, not in the person.” With more effort and an inward gaze we’d see the deeper connections. We’d see students acting rationally in environments that ignore their evolutionary history. We’d understand that avoiding challenges and dropping out are simply logical responses to a system that discourages risk-taking and too often treats curiosity as a challenge to authority.
In their quest for efficiency and value, consumers have failed to notice the creation of false economies. We are now using more energy (in the form of oil and gas) to produce a calorie of food than we ever have in our history. What nature used to do for free through biodiversity and solar power, now requires pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and pharmaceuticals. In the bargain, our industrial agriculture is destroying our two most important environments: our bodies and our planet. Cheap food has led to obesity, type II diabetes and heart disease. Meat marinated in medicine and the effects it has on people (never mind the animals) never seems to make it into the cost-benefit analysis. Polluted air, toxic water and soil depletion are not billed at the supermarket register. Tax payers, subsidizing the food that malnourishes them, complain little. Tax payers, supporting educational systems that miseducate them, complain little. What’s the true cost of an educational system which “through simplification: doing lots of the same thing over and over”, causes mind and spirit to atrophy, suffocating students’ natural desire to know? Maybe the biggest loss comes from the creation of generation after generation who cannot tell the difference between a bargain and a heist.
Michael Pollan writes, “Our food system depends on consumers’ not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing.” Education today requires the same relationship. Educational policies seem to display a meager understanding about the importance of curiosity, awareness, or how we fit into larger systems. Education’s checkout scanner–tuition and taxes–provide only a partial accounting of its true costs. Similar to industrial farming, industrial education produces no bargains while diminishing itself in the process. The price of producing a “successful” student may be higher than we think.
Craig Venter on Education
Posted by admin in Alternative Ed, Thinkers on July 3rd, 2009
Just a quick snippet from WIRED Science show on hulu. Now that I have some more bandwidth and am in the U.S., I’m starting to get into hulu. Consider it another great option in your non-textbook educational toolbox. The feature, which I used in the clip below, allows you to select just the part of the video you want to use. After you set the start and end point, you’re provided with the embed code. Perfect for teachers preparing optimal lessons. Also great for websites and blogs. (Apologies if you cannot see the video outside of the U.S. Hopefully, hulu will change their policy on international broadcast.)
Nature, Inc.
Posted by admin in Natural Capital on June 24th, 2009
Nature, Inc. from the BBC, looks to be an excellent series. The idea of natural capital is an important issue, which to date, has gotten very little press. Below is the trailer for the series. At bottom, I’ve provided links from the BBC for the online versions.
—Series 1—
NI looks at the cost to the almond industry of a fall in the bee population and the vital role of fruit bats in the chocolate industry.
NI goes to New York, Ecuador and Jordan to see how protecting our most precious assets, water and biodiversity can save billions.
This episode of NI. is a keyhole into the price nations are paying for failing to stop species invasion.
NI investigates a claim that our coral reefs are worth $30 billion a year giving us work and food but we are destroying them.
NI goes to the Andes and finds disappearing glaciers that people in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru rely on for their drinking water.
NI looks at the new breed of investors who are making substantial and sustainable profits by going long-term and investing in keeping ecosystems healthy.
—Series 2—
Nature Inc. finds out how much better off we are – and safer – in places where natural barriers to disaster remain intact.
Natural selection is a three billion year old product design process that can’t be beaten.
The ‘triple crunch’ of climate, credit, and energy insecurity has forced states to see the “green economy” as a way to make a sustainable recovery.
Agribusinesses and farmers are beginning to see sustainable profits and productivity in encouraging crop diversity.
There are moves afoot to put an economic value on the carbon stored by tropical rainforests.
Eminent scientists have warned of climate change’s effect on our economies – where a 3°c warming could kill 40% of species and displace 200 million people.
Can Wise Crowds Help With Search and Rescue?
Posted by admin in Participatory Culture on June 17th, 2009
I’m currently thinking a lot about participatory culture, especially in the context of large networks like the Internet and got to wondering: What if the wisdom of the crowds was used to help find the black boxes of Air France’s ill-fated flight 447? What if searchers set up a website that allows anyone to venture a guess about the missing data recorders’ latitude and longitude? It seems that, considering the large amounts of money, resources, and human effort that go into search efforts, setting up a website and eliciting the wisdom of the crowds could be a relatively simple and cheap addition to the efforts already being mounted..
source: NTSB
In James Surowiecki’s fascinating book, The Wisdom of the Crowds, the author explains how, under the right circumstances, high quality information can be gleaned from individuals working independently and how this simple idea can have powerful results. In the book, we find various examples of how people from diverse backgrounds, having various levels of expertise, can often provide an aggregated result that’s better than anything created by the single most expert person in the group. Combinations of amateurs, novices and professionals using their own ideas, can predict, with amazing accuracy, the number of jellybeans in a jar or the weight of a bull. As far as I know, Surowiecki’s findings have not been applied to missing craft or missing people but it seems like maybe they should. I know that these ideas are being used with powerful results in prediction markets, policy decisions for companies and organizations, and in surmising where and when the next terrorist strike might take place, among others.
Surowiecki points out that in order to get the best possible results, certain criteria need to be met. There needs to be diversity of opinion. It seems like the Internet is perfect for this. Just read the comments on a blog, Digg or YouTube video. People’s opinions need to be independent. This would mean, in the case of a downed aircraft or missing person, only searchers would know the coordinates being guessed by participants. (Once the search is over, users’ predictions could be made public.) To achieve high quality results, there needs to be decentralization. Again, we’d be hard pressed to find a better example of decentralization than the World Wide Web. And last, there needs to be some mechanism which allows for the aggregation of submitted predictions. In the case of latitude/longitude data, this could be done with little effort.
Once the search effort is publicized, (which is easy enough to do via the Internet), participation, I believe, would be considerable–certainly large enough to allow this approach to potentially provide useful results. The World Wide Web 2.0 and the growth of participatory culture has shown us that people are willing to help each other due to intrinsic motivators, often for little more than occasional praise and the chance to gain some social capital. To tap into the motivating power of social capital and people’s need to be liked and feel appreciated, the supplier of the most accurate prediction (in the case of a successful search and rescue event) could be made known to all.
If you feel that this idea has legs, please share it with anyone who might be able to help put it into practice. If you know of any examples of the wisdom of the crowds being used in search and rescue, please make them known in comments below.
Worldschooling
Posted by admin in Alternative Ed on May 2nd, 2009
I’ve been dabbling in Facebook for a couple weeks, looking for ways to connect with others interested in education that’s outside of the classroom box (a polite form of confinement, as some would say). I bumped into the Worldschooling Facebook group, and considering what I’m currently trying to do with Participatory Learning, found it quite interesting.
The author, Eli Gerzon, has a blog at: http://eligerzon.wordpress.com/
The group’s information blurb reads: “The whole world is our school: school isn’t our whole world!”
This group is for anyone who learns from the whole world around them!
It’s for anyone who thinks travelling the world and exploring cultures very different than your own offers invaluable learning experiences!
And it’s for anyone involved in unschooling and free self-directed education!
Unschooling is a term invented by John Holt years ago and it’s when students are free to follow their own interests instead of someone else’s curriculum. It’s having confidence/trusting in a person’s ability to do that. And amazingly, it actually works: people learn what they need to learn and a lot more!
Worldschooling is in some ways a more positive term for unschooling but it’s also a little bit different: it’s when you temper what you want/are interested in with what’s going on in the world! It’s unschooling beyond your neighborhood without the support of your family and friends and learning and DOING what you gotta do! In some ways, worldschooling is when you grow up!
-School: “Do what you’re told.”
-Homeschool: “Do what you’re told… by your mom.”
-Unschool: “Do what you want.”
-Worldschool: “Do what ya gotta do…”
-Unschool – Trust yourself, your child, and the individual.
-Homeschool – Trust your family, friends, and community.
-School – Trust school, government, and institutions.
-Worldschool – Trust the world and the universe.
-School teaches there are few possibilities for you.
-Unschooling teaches there are infinite possibilities.
-Worldschooling teaches you which are truly for you.
~Worldschooling is when the world schools you.
Worldschooling is when you get your ass kicked… in a sacred manner. And then learn from it… in a sacred manner.
“Because the world owes us nothing, and we owe each other the world.”
-Ani DiFranco “Joyful Girl”
Brief, clear definitions for homeschooling, unschooling, and worldschooling: http://www.eligerzon.com/worldschoo
Feedback that Lifts
How many of us know kids that don’t get good grades, yet know they’re smart? I suspect many.
What happens to these kids over time? What I’ve noticed, is that they stop trying. They give up. Too many of them start to view themselves as unintelligent and as incapable. Unfortunately, they don’t realize their labels are coming from testing that is narrow, decontextualized, uses simplistic metrics, and is often invalid to begin with. (If you don’t think this to be true, walk into a random classroom, look at an assessment and then analyze it using these principles. Heck, just look at the SAT and how poorly it fares.)

Crushing vs. Uplifting Feedback
All this makes me think of how important it is to avoid the kind of negative labels and categorizations that are tattooed on people at a young age and which play a great role in lowering effort and persistence. (It’s interesting to note that precisely when grades start getting heavy emphasis, kids in elementary begin to dislike school.) We need to explore forms of feedback that don’t kill desire. In the video below, Malcolm Gladwell, talking about his newest book Outliers, states that talent is simply desire. He points out that high achievers see difficulties as opportunities. In other words, high achievers are in environments where they are encouraged to take risks–which is nothing like most schools–which are places that discourage risk taking through the hickory stick called grades. Why would a rational person choose the difficult task when it will lower the likelihood of a high grade?
In a fascinating article Gladwell wrote for the New Yorker, the importance of feedback, especially the kind of feedback that pulls the learner in an effortful direction, is recounted in this teacher observation:
Then there was the superstar—a young high-school math teacher, in jeans and a green polo shirt. “So let’s see,” he began, standing up at the blackboard. “Special right triangles. We’re going to do practice with this, just throwing out ideas.” He drew two triangles. “Label the length of the side, if you can. If you can’t, we’ll all do it.” He was talking and moving quickly, which Pianta said might be interpreted as a bad thing, because this was trigonometry. It wasn’t easy material. But his energy seemed to infect the class. And all the time he offered the promise of help. If you can’t, we’ll all do it. In a corner of the room was a student named Ben, who’d evidently missed a few classes. “See what you can remember, Ben,” the teacher said. Ben was lost. The teacher quickly went to his side: “I’m going to give you a way to get to it.” He made a quick suggestion: “How about that?” Ben went back to work. The teacher slipped over to the student next to Ben, and glanced at her work. “That’s all right!” He went to a third student, then a fourth. Two and a half minutes into the lesson—the length of time it took that sub par teacher to turn on the computer—he had already laid out the problem, checked in with nearly every student in the class, and was back at the blackboard, to take the lesson a step further.
“In a group like this, the standard m.o. would be: he’s at the board, broadcasting to the kids, and has no idea who knows what he’s doing and who doesn’t know,” Pianta said. “But he’s giving individualized feedback. He’s off the charts on feedback.” Pianta and his team watched in awe.
Talent: “It’s the desire to practice. It’s that you love something so much that you’re willing to make an enormous sacrifice and commitment to that task, sport, game…what have you.”
IOUSA
Posted by admin in New Economics on April 26th, 2009
A former student recently sent me a link to a interesting little documentary. It begins, “I would argue that the most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but our own fiscal irresponsibility.” The doc is I.O.U.S.A. I highly recommend it. How nice it would be if instead of talking about tea bags, more people actually started discussing the issues.
I find it interesting that while many see the inherent peril of spending economic capital faster that it is being earned, few show any qualms about spending natural or human capital in a similar fashion. Maybe if people understood how much more difficult it will be to get out of economic debt when the things that make earning economic capital are destroyed (clean air, water, functioning ecosystems, beautiful vistas, fertile soil…) then maybe more of us would make an effort to live sustainably, which by definition means not spending any more than what’s being earned be it money or the sun’s energy. Future generations will be saddled with an ecological debt every bit as problematic as the economic debt that is now their birthright. Trying to pay off our national debt while living in a diminished environment may be too much to ask. In nature however, there is no bankruptcy court and debts are never forgiven. This is nature’s invisible hand at work. It understands that the road to recovery ultimately requires payment, while transferring debt to others, just amplifies the pain and diminishes the chances of recovery.
The trailer:
Watch the 30 minute version here.
Introducing Plearn
Posted by admin in Alternative Ed on April 21st, 2009
After 15 years of working in schools and observing and reflecting on the practice, I’d like to attempt something different. I’m curious to know if it’s possible to get fifty people (or possibly an institution or two) on this wired planet to step out of the mainstream of education, if only for one class, and participate in a course that operates under a very different educational paradigm than the one they’re used to. I’d like to know if learners are willing to put their own creative desires and curiosities ahead of doing what’s educationally “safe”. Is the dissonance between how people learn on their own today and how they are taught in schools jarring enough to make them want to try something new? Can the Internet’s currently evolved state and the culture of sharing, collaboration and participation that it has fueled, lead to a new educational paradigm where independent educational contractors (IECs), working in more decentralized environments, are able to offer a variety of courses serving the long tail of educational consumers in a way that more hierarchical institutions cannot?
In order to try to answer these questions, I’ve quit my job as a teacher for next year and built an online space–a class (ParticipatoryLearning.net)–based on the principles of participatory learning, among others.
The definition of participatory learning which I find most useful, is the one which was offered for the Digital Media and Learning Competition, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation:
Participatory Learning includes the ways in which new technologies enable learners (of any age) to contribute in diverse ways to individual and shared learning goals. Through games, wikis, blogs, virtual environments, social network sites, cell phones, mobile devices, and other digital platforms, learners can participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another’s projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together. Participatory learners come together to aggregate their ideas and experiences in a way that makes the whole ultimately greater than the sum of the parts.
In their book, Disrupting Class, authors Christensen, Johnson and Horn state that innovation and change often happen when individual actors work outside of the regulated sectors, offering goods and services through independent commercial channels, eventually getting noticed by the regulatory systems once enough people, through their own choice, opt out of the dominant offering. The authors mention that change rarely happens from within institutions, being that those institutions are more likely to hammer down the sharp edges of innovation to fit their current way of thinking, in the process, sustaining the approach it has always used.
In a recent Education Week article titled, Breaking Away From Tradition, Michelle R. Davis writes:
“Online education is absolutely moving beyond the distance-learning model into a whole other category unto itself,” says Michael B. Horn, a co-author of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, a book published in 2008 that has stirred debate about the growing role of e-learning in K-12 schools. “This technology allows for a lot of creative arrangements.”
It is hoped that if this approach works, many other IECs will be motivated to hang out their own e-shingles. Students of all stripes and ages will have a much larger selection of courses and learning formats to choose from. Classes offered by experts, many in unique circumstances, connected to interested others, unshackled from obtuse regulations, could provide an incredibly rich, eclectic and tailored experience in ways that today’s monolithic institutions simply could never match.
I invite you visit ParticipatoryLearning.net and, if so inclined, make suggestions on how to improve the learning space. If you have ideas or suggestion on how to increase the likelihood that a project of this type succeeds, your ideas would also be most welcome and appreciated. I’d also ask kindly that if you find this approach worthy, to help spread the message about its existence via your own networks.
Thanks, Bill Farren





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