Maybe we should have left it as it was

John Basinger recites Milton's Paradise Lost--the entire 60,000 words--from memory.  He started memorizing the poem when he was 58.  (You can listen here.)  I can't decide what fascinates me more, that he started at 58, that he was able to memorize Milton's entire work (I have trouble with my grocery list), or that he learns something new (what he describes as "a delicious possibility") with each recitation of the 60,000 words.

So, when Newsweek reported (this month) the data demonstrating that creative thinking is declining in America and explained that "those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better," I wondered again why we've abandoned the rigor that shored up innovation.  Some of the highlights:

• A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future.
• When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. 
• A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.

And the last quote reminded me that I've written before about Proust and neural networks and the possibilities for change--change at a fundamental, personal, neurological level.  We can alter our own realities (we can debate the limits another time), far later in life than previously thought and far more rigorously in the service of creativity, education, and innovation.  The education of our grandparents and great-grandparents was largely rote memorization, which has been widely vilified in favor of more open-ended instruction.  Rigor and creativity are inextricably confounded; why do we persist in attempts to separate them academically?

People who know how to cheat will soon be on the front lines of cyber defense.

The title for this post is a quote from a recent NPR story on cybersecurity.   I read the story and a source document from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) with mixed emotion.  From the CSIS report:

The nation and the world are now critically dependent on the cyber infrastructure that is vulnerable to threats and often under attack in the most real sense of the word.  

From any perspective--strategic, military, identification theft, extortion, terror--the vulnerability of our cyber infrastructure is frightening.  And, from the perspective of a citizen, educator, and parent, some of the underlying assumptions are markedly, well, troubling. One example, from the related National Security Council report:

While billions of dollars are being spent on new technologies to secure the U.S. Government in cyberspace, it is the people with the right knowledge, skills, and abilities to implement those technologies who will determine success.  

 It is, most definitely, people who are creating both the problems and the solutions.  Highly intelligent, out-of-the box (trite, I know) thinking, creative, problem-solving people.  People who must understand how to break something in order to know how to build it to withstand breakage.  
The analogy is physicians who must understand etiology in order to heal.

But the concern (for me) comes when we reward those who cheat the system, simply for beating the system.  It's a subtle distinction, I know, but we have strong punitive measures (beginning with The Hippocratic oath) for physicians who create illness or do harm.  It's a slippery slope to reward hackers for hacking, rather than for building.  Take a few minutes to read the links, think about the implications, and work out your own position.  It's harder than it sounds.

Sometimes I'd really rather be wrong

Though I am an advocate of expressing opinions and advocating for position, I am also mindful of the damage that can be done, albeit unwittingly, through the written word.  Bright, passionate business students who are eager to make their mark in the world have difficulty understanding why I caution them about what they put in writing...to whom...and when.

The temptation to use quick and easy communication tools has landed more than one high profile person in the hot water of public outcry.  Recently, CNN's Middle East editor lost her job due to a tweet.  Though she later explained articulately and fully what she did--and, more importantly, did not--mean by the short tweet, the damage to her reputation was done.

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" is often attributed to Abraham Maslow.  I heard it countless times in graduate school as explanation for why we needed more than one theory to account for human behavior.  And, as a dear friend reminds me, New and Improved! is usually neither--the advice that served me well in the pre-Facebook, pre-blog, pre-Twitter, pre-internet days has stood the test of time.

Having a cool tool makes it oh-so-easy (and tempting) to use it when you shouldn't.  And, for better or for worse, the communication device is (still) mightier than the metal weapon.

Who knew work could still be fun?

During the past week, I've taught myself to use Prezi (you can see my first attempt here), created a web site to use for a high school technology program, and installed Google Chrome (that was actually today).  The week before, I finally mastered the web cam I blogged about earlier and actually used the administrator rights for the Facebook page for that same high school technology program.  And it's all been fun.

Fun is not a word I hear my colleagues use very often. We tend to use more academic terms such as intriguing, useful, invigorating, stimulating, challenging, cutting edge, or (if we're really going out on a limb) refreshing.  All of those are swell words--really, they are.  But multi-syllabic words don't capture what you see in a girl's eyes when she talks about how much FUN she just had at the park...or what you hear in a boy's voice when he tells you how much FUN it was to go fishing.

Call me old-fashioned, quaint, anachronistic (if you must, but not in my hearing, please), but don't take the joy out of learning something, accomplishing something (I had to create the Prezi twice, thus, twice the satisfaction of finally getting it right), or finishing something.

Life isn't, can't be, shouldn't be all about fun.  But there are places for sheer joy--and learning should be one of those places.  If we allow the fun to flourish where it can, it is partial recompense for those inevitable places where learning is just difficult.  And I do love that Prezi...

Curious about what happens to curiosity

If curiosity were framed as a competitive advantage in the workplace, business schools would be in serious competition to develop curricula in curiosity.  Consider, if you will what might be taught in:

• Competing for Curiosity
• How Curious is Your Strategy?
• Curious Economics
• Curiosity Killed the Competition
• Accounting for the Curious
• Curious Markets I Have Known

A Google search on curiosity has 26,600,000 results.  Narrow the search to intellectual curiosity and the results shrink to 3,360,000.  Much of the accepted wisdom in the articles, news stories, and blogs is about how kids are naturally curious.  Which is why I'm wondering what has happened to those Curious Kids by the time they get to college.

Curbing the curiosity.  Is it the educational system?  Is it the demands of the job market?  Is it our parenting style(s)?  Perhaps some inextricable combination of multiple factors?  Whatever it is, I'm seeing classrooms full of students who diligently take notes, perform at (what they perceive to be) the minimum requirement to get the grade they want, and, more often than not, accept without question whatever lecture material is provided.

(Let me wander off the path momentarily to differentiate the all-too-prevalent "gotcha" students--the ones who exhibit the obsolete meaning of curiosity, which is exactness or accuracy--from those who have a desire or inclination to learn about or inquire into any subject.  The former are proliferating as rapidly as the latter are disappearing.) 

I have very little in the way of scholarly wisdom to impart; rather, I just miss having the equivalent of academic playmates who find joy in intellectual discovery of something not known at the beginning of a spontaneous episode of curious cavorting.  I make room for it in my class planning, I encourage it in my students, I demonstrate it (sometimes to the point of absurdity), and the joy of learning--for no other reason than the fun of it--seems hard to find.

What if the absence of curiosity--and the related joy of learning--is a symptom that we're teaching and studying the wrong things?

Writing crap

In the world of online reading, it's hard to know where the road will lead. That happened today when I found Danah Boyd's post about the academic impact of what we--meaning, loosely, academics--write.  In a conference presentation to academics focused on research output, Danah (a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society), calls it as she sees it:

If you didn't believe in the value of research, my guess is that you could game the system to maximize citations and publications. There are plenty of folks out there who do indeed write crap that they don't believe in so that they can stir up controversy and get people to pay attention to their work.

Impact doesn't necessarily have to be about the public, but it does have to be about the future. It is fundamentally about getting people to think and see the world in new ways. My hope is that we can find a way to get beyond discussing impact and generate research that does impact.

In this view of the world, impact includes writing for the public, which may actually make some research far better, more useful, more engaging.   Anne Davis writes about the unfortunate dichotomy between research and writing in her EduBlog Insights:

I have blogged very little since working on published research for the past two years. I can’t help but think all the published results would have been improved with input from the larger audience that would lead to better meaning making.

This isn't a new dialog; it's been around for as long as I can remember and all that's changed is the forum.  But perhaps a larger forum will generate more possibilities by blurring the line (for the better) between quantifiable research for the purpose of securing tenure and research that allows us to be better educators.  Or, as one of my students wrote:

(We) should be taught real world experiences from teachers (not researchers) with real world experiences. Researchers should be in educational walls, but in concert with teachers. Researchers provide a great foundation for the theory of the concepts used in the real world, while the actual teachers should provide knowledge of how to apply these concepts in real world situations. This would apply Bloom’s taxonomy by providing the knowledge, understanding and application from researchers and analysis, synthesis and evaluation from the teachers.

Are we taking the harder right?

"Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won."  This quote from the USMA Cadet Prayer kept playing in my head after reading student responses to Employers Want 18th-Century Skills. 

Today, I'll let the student voices stand alone; they really don't need any help from me.

Senior finance major.  The comments posted at the end of this article are the perfect example of the problems inherent to this country’s educational system. The writer of the article used a title that he did not fully clarify within his writing and instead of having an intelligent discussion about how to improve education, the entire conversation is about what is meant by the title.

In my personal opinion, colleges should be a place of elitism. It is hard to go to college. It is expensive, it is hard work and it should not be a vo-tech school. You should be forced to read classical literature, forced to learn a second language, basic math in college should be calculus and a semester of study abroad should be required. You should work hard to get a college degree and it should give each student a general knowledge of all subjects.

Senior management major.  This is the problem in Japan too. Many people are good at doing what they are told to do. That is, they have problem-solving ability. However, they are not good at thinking critically and voluntarily; they don't have problem-seeking ability.

Senior finance major.  I agree with Mark when he states that businesses are looking for employees who can both write and communicate clearly. Let’s face it. Who wants someone who has to have someone revise and edit their e-mail before they send it out to their superiors or colleagues? Secondly, who would want someone who goes around the office speaking the language of SMS, using lols, and omgs? Furthermore, to comment on the tangents being produced throughout the comments about punctuation, and grammar, most of these were minor errors. But, I do have one question. With all the elaborate word usage and detailed demonstrations put into written words in each comment…would you honestly forgo your literacy training in college for a technology skill to be taken in its place?