Posts Tagged: education

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29
Nov 10

No sort-term fix to unemployment

Jerry Jasinowski, Former President of the National Association of Manufacturing:

“All of this talk about short-term stimulus, even with the good ideas that are sometimes laid out, misses the point that there is not a short-term fix to this high unemployment problem. We are in a new slower growth economy with higher unemployment and we are going to have to invest a lot more in skill training.”

He goes on to say the skills we have are not the skills we need. All the more reason I believe that your ability to learn and adapt is your most valuable skill. Read more in the PBS Nightly Business Report, Private Sector Jobs Rise & So Does Unemployment.

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3
Nov 10

The Undocumented TPS

Glyn Lumley on learning:

“For years, Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System would not allow anything to be recorded about it. He argued that to do so would crystallize the process and stall the drive for never-ending improvement. I can see that copying others will work well in an organization that has a command and control management style where employees are told to follow a certain path as it will be good for the business and good for them. But if you want to develop a systems-thinking environment, copying will get in the way of deep-seated learning.”

Seems like simply making a procedure can prevent learning from happening. So why do we make procedures? To outsource the work? To be consistent in what we build?

But if we become consistent by using a procedure, we prevent learning.

If you had to choose between having employees learn, and have employees be consistent, which would you pick?

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20
Oct 10

Vocabulary

Dewey’s Treehouse on the importance of words:

“Freedom lies in our ability to discern truth and choose right actions. Leadership, courage, hope, conscience, character, faith, critical thinking, magnanimity–all those things are available to those who take and read–but only if we develop the vocabulary to understand.”

Reminds me of this Quote of the week that Scott Berkun posted:

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. - John F. Kennedy”

Start reading.

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10
Oct 10

Declining Creativity

An interesting article on creativity, from Newsweek:

“With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.”

It seems like there are a lot of areas where creativity is celebrated with much less enthusiasm than following a prescribed plan.

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2
Oct 10

Emerging Adulthood

File this in the I-suspected-it-was-changing-but-couldn’t-put-a-finger-on-it category: Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?

“It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un­tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.”

Interesting read. I especially liked the bit where the Robin Marantz Henig calls out our confusion “in our scattershot approach to markers of adulthood”:

  • can vote at 18
  • don’t age out of foster care until 21
  • can join the military at 18
  • can’t drink until 21
  • can drive at 16
  • can’t rent a car until 25
  • if students, the IRS considers them a dependent until 24
  • Parents have no access to college records if the child is over 18
  • health insurance under parents’ plans till 26 (or 30)
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