Category Archives: Education

Learning To School: Federalism and Public Schooling in Canada – Jennifer Walker

“The evidence therefore indicates that the provinces have defied the odds and found a way to develop and maintain similar policy activities and fashion a de facto pan-Canadian policy framework for elementary and secondary education without the direct intervention of the federal government.”

Canada is the only OECD country without a national department of education. It might be reasonable, therefore, to expect it to have a highly fragmented system, with each province pursuing a unique educational strategy. In reality, however, there is a large amount of standardization between provinces, in terms of financing, curriculum, and assessment.

Whether left or right, all of us find silver bullets appealing: we confront problems or challenges in the world, and we look for the one thing that can solve it all. Of course, most silver bullets seem to corrode when exposed to sunlight, but one that has mostly kept its appeal is education: teach people to be good citizens, to act morally, to be responsible, and a whole lot of problems disappear.

I’m not convinced it’s that easy, but it still means understanding education has a certain appeal. Unfortunately, though I think Learning to School might appeal to specialists, it’s heavy for a general reader: it can read like a phd thesis at times. Her central finding is that the subnational governments do cooperate often without federal intervention, and that learning and cooperate can lead to significant policy similarity – an important finding, but honestly exactly what I would have expected. I had hoped to have an analysis of the effectiveness of those policies, but the book instead focuses on how they evolved. If you want to understand how policies, particularly those about education, can evolve in a federal state, the book is comprehensive: if you want to learn about education, I think there are better choices.

The Knowledge – Lewis Dartnell

If you were one of the few survivors of some sort of global apocalypse, what sort of knowledge would you need to rebuild a functioning society? Building an iphone isn’t exactly easy, and I think most of us would struggle with even more basic things like a lens (for science), a bike (for transportation), or a system of crop rotation that would keep sufficient nitrogen in the fields (essential for food), never mind something like a pottery kiln or steam engine.

The Knowledge has two goals. One, to teach future survivors how to rebuild a technologically advanced civilization, ideally advancing them as far as possible without creating things too difficult to repair or maintain (there’s no point in jets if you can’t repair jet engines). Two, to examine the fundamentals of science and technology that are very remote from most of us. To do so, Dartnell covers the basics of food, shelter, and water plus some more ambitious projects, explaining to the reader how to get an arc furnace going to work metals; recover antibiotics, X-rays, steam engines, and photography; and reproduce electricity and cement, trying to strike a balance between useful detail for the survivor and overwhelming a casual reader.

The book is interesting even given the low odds of an apocalypse (depending on time scale – just ask this documentary produced by Stephen Hawking), and it’s even better as a way to provoke a thought experiment on what you think should be passed on. Theory of atoms? Evolution? How to make cement or grow food? Chemistry? As a social scientist myself, something I wondered is the role of social invention in all this. Are there social technologies that should be passed on? The Knowledge mentions only physical tech, but what about how to design a democracy, the importance of trade, or a la Steven Pinker, how to restrain violence? Overall, though sometimes a bit heavy into the detail of engineering that I must confess I skimmed, the basics of the technologies that underpin our society have shaped the way we live, the way we talk, and the way we think. Dartnell does an excellent job highlighting all of these, from how we say o’clock to show we mean clock time, not solar time, to the advantages of golf cart batteries over car batteries. Read it to learn more about the basic technologies we use, but whether you read it or not it’s interesting to think about what you would want to pass on.

Disclosure: I read The Knowledge as a free advance reader copy – it is released on April 3rd. You can get it here (or in the UK or Canada). You never know when such knowledge might be handy!

Who Killed Canadian History? – J.L. Granatstein

“[T]he achievements of the past, and even the failures of the years gone by, can be a source of strength to meet not only today’s challenges, but tomorrow’s, too.”

Yup, it’s another Canada post. In my defense, I do try to focus on the underlying themes of these books, but I grant they’re not interesting to everyone.

Granatstein disapproves of how history is taught in Canada, and I have a suspicion he feels that way about how history is taught in a lot of places. For him, history is about narrative and causality, about learning what happened in the past, and he worries that too much of history today is about exploring political themes like racism and sexism. He doesn’t disagree that those are important, of course, but argues they should be in politics classes, not history: history should include them, but not be limited to them.

In saying so, he’s not afraid to take a controversial stance. Social history, labour history, women’s history: all as equally important as political history, he says, but too often taught at the expense of political history. In practice those are the sorts of ideas that historians fight internecine wars over, and I suspect the knives were out for him when the book was released.

I don’t know what the right way to teach history is: one has only to look at textbooks in the West Bank to see how difficult it can be. Even an attempt to have each side write alternating pages of a textbook failed in that particular case, as the views of the two sides were so different as to be irreconcilable. As this blog may betray, however, I personally love history, and so definitely believe that knowing history is important in order to be a successful citizen of a democracy. Based on the polling data, it’s not clear North Americans (I haven’t seen data for anyone else) are learning any history at all, and so there is definitely room for improvement. As perhaps with all school subjects though, the challenge is finite hours and almost infinite subjects people think should be required. Assembling a common list appears to be almost as difficult as coming up with a common history.

The Origin of Wealth – Eric Beinhocker

“This book will argue that wealth creation is the product of a simple, but profoundly powerful, three-step formula – differentiate, select, and amplify – the formula of evolution. The same process that has driven the growing order and complexity of the biosphere has driven the growing order and complexity of the ‘econosphere’.”

I can’t quite decide what I think of The Origin of Wealth. The book has considerable strengths: it contains one of the better histories of economic thought I’ve read, and its rich discussions of various economic studies and experiments are wonderful. I also found its thesis both interesting and compelling. Parts of the book, however, also feel like retreads of old ideas, with little particularly new to recommend them. I suppose what I can say is that it is excellent, but were it half as long, it would have been even better.

Focus on the good. Beinhocker is worried economics has got it wrong. When economics began, it emulated the ideas of physics, particularly equilibrium. Shortly after, however, physics abandoned the idea, and the real model for economics, Beinhocker argues, should be biology. He points to a meeting between physicists and economists in the 90s, when the physicists remarked that the economics reminded them of Cuban cars. The ingenuity of the Cubans keeping their cars running with salvaged parts was phenomenal, but they were still old cars.

The real economy, Beinhocker suggests, is determined by evolution and non-equilibrium physics. The supply of things is determined by the process of locally reducing entropy: we humans impose order on our world to create things we want. Our demand for things, in turn, is controlled by our preferences, which are determined by evolution. When you buy a shirt, it wasn’t designed: it evolved, in response to the demand of the market.

For what it’s worth, I suspect he’s probably right, and to be fair to economics it’s starting to adopt the ideas he discusses under the heading of ‘complexity economics’. The other strength of the book, however, is in some of its examples, and I liked a few of them so much I’m going to talk about them in detail later this week. So wait till then!

If you want to pick up The Origin of Wealth, you can get it here (or in the UK or Canada).

Academically Adrift – Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa

“Historians remind us that higher-education institutions initially were created largely to achieve moral ends. A renewed commitment to improving undergraduate education is unlikely to occur without changes to the organizational cultures of colleges and universities that re-establish the institutional primacy of these functions – instilling in the next generation of young adults a lifelong love of learning, an ability to think critically and communicate effectively, and a willingness to embrace and assume adult responsibilities.”

For many, education is the silver bullet that can fix society’s ills, resolving inequality, safeguarding democracy, and inspiring the next generation of leaders. Given the expectations laid on it, it is hardly surprising that it is a fiery issue, subject to significant controversies on method, motivation, and goals.

For me, the most difficult aspect is that we do not have a single way to measure what education produces, or even agree what it should be producing. Some things correlate with increasing income later in life, others with increased self-confidence or improved results on standardized tests. In Academically Adrift, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa try to summarize the quantitative literature on undergraduate education, attempting to draw lessons from what research exists.

In brief, they draw four lessons. First, that modern universities place a low premium on learning, leading to students who feel academically adrift. Faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents, all tacitly acquiesce to a collegiate culture with a low premium on learning and an absence of moral guidance, forcing students to attempt to find meaning in other activities. Second, that the gains in student performance from attending university are disturbingly low; students do little better at the end of their education than at the beginning on various critical thinking and writing exercises. Third, that individual learning is characterized by persistent and/or growing inequality of outcomes. Finally, that while overall learning is low, there is significant variation within and between institutions, suggesting that improved results are possible.

These are useful and important lessons. Unfortunately, I found none of them particularly surprising; though I don’t have mental numbers in mind for size of most effects they cite, the direction of the effects comes as no surprise. I didn’t know hours per week spent studying had declined from 25 hours in 1961 to 13 in 2003, for example, but I had assumed the direction. For me, therefore, the book is useful as a reference work but is dry for general reading. I have Michelle Rhee’s Radical further down my list (the hugely controversial ex-chancellor of the D.C. public schools), which though I suspect will be less informative, I hope may be more interesting.

Want to keep reading? You can get Academically Adrift here (or in the UK or Canada). Or, just join the Subtle Illumination email list to your right!

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character – Paul Tough

The classic study on self-control is the marshmallow experiment, conducted by Walter Mischel. Children were asked to resist eating a single marshmallow, and if they managed it they would be rewarded with two marshmallows later on. The most successful students would sit on their hands, sing, or otherwise distract themselves. One young overachiever even took a nap! Later in life, the children who could resist the marshmallow best did better on almost every measure of life outcomes. (Interestingly, one measure they didn’t do better on was avoiding problem drinking: alcoholism did not appear to correlate with lack of willpower).

How Children Succeed follows on from this work and examines the importance of character (things like self-control, optimism, and grit), not just intelligence, in adult outcomes. Tough points out that measures of character are as good at predicting success in later life as measures of intelligence, and that measures of intelligence can be disturbingly flawed: one study found that offering M&Ms for each correct answer increased IQ scores by 12 points for kids at the bottom of the distribution.

One of the most fascinating chapters, though, is on stress. On the savannah, when we see a lion every possible system activates in order to get us out of trouble: we breathe faster, we have more white blood cells, our muscles tense, etc. This response is essential for survival, but wears our body out over time. He argues the same happens today when people have stressful childhoods: their systems become overloaded and wear out, and they find it difficult to regulate thoughts and emotions later in life. If we measure stress levels as children and control for them, the effect of poverty on adult outcomes almost disappears.

Perhaps even more interestingly, evidence from rats suggests the opposite of some suggested parenting styles: the rats with nurturing and attentive mothers while they are young become more independent and self-reliant when they are older.

The evidence is clear that character is extremely important to outcomes, and it’s not clear our modern society accounts for that. Policy interventions are therefore critical. Stress reduction among children can contribute to measures meant to tackle poverty, and ensuring that students rate themselves on non-cognitive measures can go a long way to encouraging the right behaviour, as some charter schools that offer a character report card have discovered. Intelligence is not enough, as many an intelligent adult can tell you.

You can keep reading How Children Succeed here (or in the UK or Canada) – for those interested in education, I’d highly recommend it. Or, join the Subtle Illumination email list to your right, and we can try to build our characters together.

Training Genius: The Genius in All of Us (David Shenk)

“The genius in all of us is our built-in ability to improve ourselves and our world.”

David Shenk thinks you misunderstand genetics. It’s not personal – he thinks pretty much everyone does. He argues in The Genius in All of Us that in trying to distinguish nature vs. nurture, we have missed the fact that who we are is determined by their interaction. Genes are turned on and off by the environment in which we live, and in the vast majority of activities for which we never reach our genetic limitations, it is practice and context that will determine just how talented we are. All of us have the potential to be a genius.

He points to Cooper and Zubek’s experiments with maze-bright and maze-dull rats, chosen as such because they descend from generations of rats who have been relatively good or poor at solving mazes. In normal conditions, the bright rats impressively outperform the dull ones. In enriched or restricted environments, however, both types of rats performed almost the same, whether as geniuses or dullards. Genetics do make a difference, but that difference can be overwhelmed by the influence of context and environment, despite what humans usually assume.

Shenk makes an important point, that we often neglect or underrate the importance of environment and its interaction with genes. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the shortness of the book (136 pages of argument, plus 200 of endnotes and citations), it can often feel like he hasn’t explored the ideas, but rather just rushed through them without examining their implications. He focuses, for example, on the idea that we can all be geniuses with a supportive environment: equally meaningful, however, is the implication that no one can be a genius without hard work and environment, and I am suspicious his choice of one perspective over the other is intended to sell books, not provide insight. He also sometimes seems to get carried away by his own arguments, so much so that he leaves his focus on interactions and seems to imply that environment is actually dominant over genetics, a suggestion he rightfully criticizes in the inverse.

The nature of heritability is always a controversial one, and the debate is often unfortunately ideologically, not factually, based. In that respect, Shenk has done a good job attempting to stick to the science, referring to many studies and explicitly citing his research. Nevertheless, a more thorough examination of the issues would likely be more compelling, and less likely to leave the reader feeling unsatisfied.

Cultivate your own genius and join the Subtle Illumination reading list to your right! Or, keep reading (or in the UK or Canada).