When is University Counter Productive?

Some people that know me, some of my closer friends, and people I know to be open-minded and overall, less judgemental, are aware of my position on Universities.

My position is that Universities are wonderful things, for particular professions, but by and large a huge number of people are investing money in a University education for no other reason than it's what's expected of them, to work hard for degrees they will often never use or need in their careers.

Now if you plan to be a doctor, lawyer, researcher or any number of other careers, your university degree is your gateway to the next step of your career, whether it be law school, medical school, or your PhD. In these cases a university degree, and potentially even parts of its education are vital from a technical perspective.  Additionally these are all relatively highly paid careers where the investment in education can be paid of relatively quickly.  But what of the other degrees, and the other career paths?

The financially astute amongst you already know that one of the worst financial investments you can possibly make is a brand new car.  It devalues the moment you drive it away from the dealer and progressively loses value every single day from there on out.  Have you ever considered your degree with a similar critical eye?  Josh Kaufman in his book The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, claims that if you get an MBA from even a top business school, it has a useful life of maybe two years from the day you earn it, before people care less about your MBA and begin to care more about what you've done with it.

My personal opinion is and has been for a long time, that career specific working education, is far more profitable, more apropos and more valuable in the long run than a University degree that may or may not be related to what you're doing, what's more, is cash positive investment if your time, rather than a cash negative proposal; that is to say, you get paid to work and learn in a career, but on the flipside, you pay to go to University to get your degree, which for many careers (excepting the kind of career path I mentioned above) is something of gamble as to how helpful it will be in securing future gainful employment.

The problem is (to quote Jeffery Selingo in College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students); the three year degree has become the new GED; the four degree has become the new bachelors degree and the PhD/MBA has become the new four year degree.  And all of the time, colleges continue to to chase more customers and perpetuate the issue in the educational ratings game.

There has to be a way to break this cycle, where people are valued for the skills, capabilities and qualities that they bring to the table, rather than valued by a piece of paper that tells you that they can memorise facts and regurgitate them at will better than the other five guys waiting to be interviewed in the lobby.

Persistence

Just a short post, while I reflect on the instant gratification that so many people are hooked on these days, the impatient, the immediate.  Anything worth achieving in life is seldom quick or easy.  This is one of my favourite quotes.

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.(Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)

What is Creative Thinking?

Creative Thinking for me is perhaps even more important than Critical Thinking, although perhaps that's something akin to saying that education is preferable to common sense, sure you can get a job without common sense (although you'll annoy all of your work colleagues a great deal), but you'll probably get rundown the next time you cross the street.  In my opinion (which doesn't count for much I'll admit) creative thinking is the primary skill that allows entrepreneurs to do what they do, sure they have critical thinking in spades, they need to take everything they've learned and experienced throughout their lives, to solve the problems that allow them to capitalise on the next big thing.  But it's the creative thinking that separates the unique ideas from the "me too" ideas.

If you're not clear on how critical and creative thinking differ from each other, here's a quick reminder from University of Michigan:

Critical Thinking is the process we use to reflect on assess and judge the assumption underlying our own and others ideas and efforts. 

Identifying and challenging assumptions.Recognizing the importance of context.Imagining and exploring alternatives.Developing reflective skepticism. 

Creative thinking is the process we use to develop ideas that are unique, useful and worthy of further elaboration

Creative Thinkers:
Consider rejecting standardized formats for problem solving.
Have an interest in a wide range of related and divergent fields.
Take multiple perspectives on a problem.
Use trial-and-error methods in their experimentation.
Have a future orientation.
Have self-confidence and trust in their own judgment.

For me these two concepts seem to go together very well, and have a very close relationship, for me, Critical Thinking is about building ourselves a judgement methodology that we can have self-confidence in, and to be objectively self-critical.  Ot might also be tempting to try and nail down the order of the process that we use, for example to say that Creative Thinking comes first followed by Critical Thinking, but it's exactly preconceptions like these that we tend to use that box us in.  The truth is that that either could come first.  Take a look at the lists above, for my own personal set of standards, the above skills, are certainly skills I'd like to see my own kids develop, but teaching to test, however you'd like to look at it, doesn't have the scope to allow kids to explore alternatives, or encourage multiple perspectives on a problem in free form fashion, to indulge a kids natural curiosity and wonderment about the world.

Linchpin by Seth Godin

Lots has been written about Seth Godin, and much has been written by him; some people love what he has to say, others have a favourite book and find his other works "very similar".   Whether you love him or not, one of the key principles in his books is creative thinking, perhaps more colloquially refered to as "thinking outside of the box".  Many of the ideas he presents are controversial, although less so more recently; and one of my favourite topics is when he talks about schools and universities as they exist today being rooted in the premise that we need to create lots of little cogs that make the big machine work as whole.

Here's an excerpt from the book (reproduced with permission, thanks Seth),

Does School Work?
If I drill and practice and grade and reward you for years on doing math with fractions, what are the chances that you’ll learn fractions? School does a great job of teaching students to do what we set out to teach them. It works. The problem is that what we’re teaching is the wrong stuff.
Here’s what we’re teaching kids to do (with various levels of success):
Fit in
Follow instructions
Use #2 pencils
Take good notes
Show up every day
Cram for tests and don’t miss deadlines
Have good handwriting
Punctuate
Buy the things the other kids are buying
Don’t ask questions
Don’t challenge authority
Do the minimum amount required so you’ll have time to work on another subject
Get into college
Have a good résumé
Don’t fail
Don’t say anything that might embarrass you
Be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback
Participate in a large number of extracurricular activities
Be a generalist
Try not to have the other kids talk about you
Once you learn a topic, move on 

Now, the key questions:
Which of these attributes are the keys to being indispensable?
Are we building the sort of people our society needs?
The problem doesn’t lie with the great teachers. Great teachers strive to create linchpins. The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead.
Here’s what Woodrow Wilson said about public education:

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

After retaining brutal Pinkerton men, trainloads of strikebreakers, and even the National Guard to violently put down strikes, Andrew Carnegie decided that the answer to worker unrest was a limited amount of education. “Just see, wherever we peer into the first tiny springs of the national life, how this true panacea for all the ills of the body politic bubbles forth—education, education, education.”
The model is simple. Capitalists need compliant workers, workers who will be productive and willing to work for less than the value that their productivity creates. The gap between what they are paid and what the capitalist receives is profit.
The best way to increase profit was to increase both the productivity and the compliance of factory workers. And as Carnegie saw, the best way to do that was to build a huge educational-industrial complex designed to teach workers just enough to get them to cooperate.
It’s not an accident that school is like a job, not an accident that there are supervisors and rules and tests and quality control. You do well, you get another job (the next grade), and continue to do well and you get a real job. Do poorly, don’t fit in, rebel—and you are kicked out of the system.

Seth's book proposes treating our endeavours, work, jobs as art, to work creatively, and encourages creative thinking to make your work, more inspired, more fulfilling, not just for yourself, but to affect those around you too; to be inspired and be inspiring to others. To think creatively about what you do, see it objectively and ask yourself is this the best way to approach the situation or is the fundamental approach flawed due to dogma, staid, simply because "we've always done it this way".  As the Buddhists say, "there is no good work or bad work, there is only work; and our prejudices, biases and thoughts colour it so". Seth challenges you to challenge yourself.  Buy a copy, and challenge your own status quo; decide for yourself if you want your kids growing up to be Linchpins, or Cogs?

What is Critical Thinking?

I'm guessing that since I opened this particular can of worms, it behooves me to be clear about the terms I'll be talking about in coming posts.  So here's a statement by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul, presented at the 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Summer 1987.

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue; assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking — in being responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes — is incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking, anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and philosophical thinking. 

Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of information and belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit, based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behaviour. It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of information alone, because it involves a particular way in which information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of those skills ("as an exercise") without acceptance of their results.

There are many definitions but this seems to the most useful that I've found, you can find the full definition from the page it came from here: https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

I think the key points that I find salient are in the second half of the third paragraph where the contrast is stated, specifically, "...the mere acquisition and retention of information alone..." because this is how the teach-to-test system works, they're not teaching our kids to solve problems, they're teaching them to retain specific information and have a specific approach to solving a specific set of predefined problems (the test agenda).

I've worked in the IT industry for some time now.  I recall the time that Microsoft originally introduced the MCSE qualification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Certified_Professional#Microsoft_Certified_Solutions_Expert_.28MCSE.29), as is typical in the IT certification world, each test is based on a collection of multiple choice questions, but the fervour surrounding the qualifications was intense, and it was widely known that if you were an MCSE, then your skills were highly sought after and money would shower down upon you in abundance.   The natural progression of this was for a large quantity of IT training companies to appear that taught to the test.  In other words, they new what questions were going to be asked in the exams and taught curricula specifically around this.  I recall this experience because I ran a team of engineers that were almost all MCSE certified by these teach to test schools, and after passing were thrust out in to the work place as "domain experts", because they had the piece of paper to prove this.  Now some were adaptable (remember schools still weren't quite as broken as they are now), and they were able to take some of the knowledge and apply it in creative way; yet others had been trained by their schools to pass exams, not so awesome, because when some of these domain experts were asked to perform a particular set of technical skills, the response was "we weren't taught how to do that!".  I know from experience that the things I was asking them to do, weren't a great leap from the things they'd learned, but their lack of critical thinking prevented them from taking the information they already have and using it as reference to base the extrapolation of a solution to the problem at hand.

To take the above example a step further, imagine that the majority of people in the work place have been conditioned to be able to pass tests instead of think, the future might look pretty bleak.  Now imagine the converse, where the majority of people in the workplace, are not only well educated but have the ability to model the sum of their experiences, their knowledge, their background and turn them into solutions to abstract problems.....  which do you think holds the key to a brighter future for humanity?

Teach to Test

I have some very strong views about education and teaching.  First off, I think it's important to point out that I'm not an education professional; I a parent with school aged kids first and foremost. Secondly I'm a recent import to the USA, I was educated in the UK originally, so I probably have a different set of benchmarks to work within than perhaps other parents in a similar situation to me.  This should prove to be an excellent starting point for professional educators to question my validity of my personal opinions on the subject.

I called this blog "Teach to Test" because it's one of the frustrations I currently experience as a parent and a great example of many of the things that are wrong with education today.   I don't believe the title is as important as the content, so I'm not that concerned about it.

When I was looking at schools to teach my children, one of the most important things for me, was that they taught critical thinking and creative thinking, both of these things are extremely important to me. In my professional life I've found that having the ability to create mental models, apply those models to different situations and thereby solve the problems has proven to be key in some of the most successful people I've met (and I've met a lot).  Success doesn't mean monetary success, although admittedly many of the successful people I've met have also been wealthy; what I actually mean is becoming extremely adept at anything you choose to pursue, and to stand out amongst others in the same field.   Creativity plays a huge role in this.

My disappointment is that despite searching extensively and finding a school for my kids which said all of the right things and made all of the right noises, I find after placement that they still teach to test, and testing is the most important thing for them.  Now I don't agree with this, but I do understand why they do it.  Obviously the better the grades that are achieved by the school, the better the quality of students they attract, they become "the school to get your kids into" because they're the best test scores in town, and with that recognition (I'm assuming) it becomes easier to secure better teachers and more budget, etc.  I'd opine that the knock-on effects are manifold.

All of this is wonderful, assuming you want your little one to grow up being able to pass tests, and regurgitate information on queue, to go on and become a 4.0 student with awesome test scores that is potentially useless to future employers.  For them to go to a great university and gain an awesome degree packed full of information they'll never use, and carry a student debt for a large chunk of their adult lives.  To be a carbon copy of their parents, perhaps?

I understand that this is a very contentious and inflammatory remark and will ruffle many feathers. That's kind of what I'm hoping for, since nobody ever paid a second thought to a point of view that they agreed with, they simply nod politely and go on their merry way.  I have many opinions (and that's exactly what they are, my opinions), that I will assert here, and my hope is to, maybe, make people think and challenge their comfortable cotton-wool-wrapped-reality with some things that maybe they don't agree with.

You be the judge.  Watch this space.