stimulant

As people have pointed out, I’ve been derelict in living up to the “weekly” name in addressing a question. And I’ve found that I’ve made the silly mistake of delaying writing about other things because I want to get out “this week’s weekly” first. So, I’m suspending them. Which doesn’t mean I’m actually suspending them, just the named practice. I’ll continue to ask and answer questions, but I think getting off a schedule is a good thing, particularly because I’m not going to be thinking wholly about that question each week. In fact, my activities are pretty far removed from the questions I’ve asked so far.

Let me know if there are any problems or irregularities.

So, Nagle made the point recently that I’m not always as clear as I could be on this blog. This blog serves several purposes, for me. I write to figure things out; I write to figure out how to communicate well; I write to avoid forgetting; etc. So, I’m going to set expectations a bit better: each week, I’ll start the week by declaring the question or issue I’ll be investigating in the following week. [At least] once weekly, I’ll invest significant effort into writing something coherent, cohesive, and approachable: a post where I focus on communicating ideas well to others. Outside of this, other posts during the week will be building up to that post, fleshing out pieces of the ideas, but not necessarily in a publicly-palatable way. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I’ll be writing about one topic, weekly. But it does mean that I’ll try to limit it to one difficult topic, weekly.

I’ve been looking for some way to give my thinking some schedule and structure, and this seems like a good opportunity. There is one other lesson here: I’m hungry for feedback, and I’m always happy to hear suggestions or complaints. Don’t hesitate to let me know.

Silly typo after some theme tweaking broke everything.

Site should be back up and running now; let me know if there are any problems.

So let me know, if you run into any trouble.

So, I’m retiring the beautiliful page for lack of use. firstnamebasis will still function. As a token replacement, I’m linking to a growing Google Notebook of quotations I collect¹ on my reading page. Quotation, source, and citation, slowly refined. Feel free to suggest quotations for contribution.

1. And yes, eventually I’ll have them all tagged [↩]

a problem

Reform efforts exist on a spectrum spanning two extremes. One extreme feels that reform can only start outside the ailing institution. The other extreme thinks that only by working within the system can we change it. Unsurprisingly, the answer usually lies between the two extremes. Those who think that outside reform is the only possibility think the existing infrastructure offers no hope, that the system is beyond repair. These reformers feel disenchanted with and disenfranchised from the channels that are intended to address their calls for change. These channels typically include the judicial and legal resources nominally available, as well as the organization within the object of reform itself (i.e. the mythical complaint department and its relatives). Unfortunately, those dedicated to working solely from within [the system] are often also disempowered, being sabotaged by their misplaced trust of the creaky institutions “outside” reformers eschew.

Given that the sweet spot of empowerment is somewhere in between refusing to participate and being co-opted by the existing infrastructure, it is unfortunate that the methods of education reform are so polarized. In relying on existing infrastructures, “insider” efforts are intrinsically self-documenting, but stagnate quickly. For this same reason, “outsider” efforts are intrinsically incomplete and poorly documented, which is a shame, since they are often more dynamic, but less influential.

a linchpin

Both approaches to reform seek to empower collective action. Insiders point collective action at our governing institutions, outsiders seek to empower collective action to create alternative institutions. It is a truism that grassroots efforts are desirable, robust, and effective. Despite this, Barack Obama’s netroots campaign has captured a great deal of attention for its success. The success of Obama’s campaign is due in part to his ability to create emotional and social capital among voters. But I think the piece missing historically has been a good understanding of the profile of scales involved. By this I mean the character of the organization of power and action within an effort. While it’s clear that we’re looking to differentiate between top-down and bottom-up organization, this vocabulary ends up being incomplete.

Consider the United States government: we have multiple scales (federal, state, and municipal), and at each of these, there is a strongly hierarchical bureaucracy in place. What we’re really talking about are the scales at which structure exists, and then the type of structure in place at these scales.

My involvement with the Center for the Future of Civic via MAS.712 has shown me a number of projects aiming to empower people in civic contexts by creating tools intended to facilitate collective action and communication. Historically, I’ve found efforts that focus on raising awareness or fervor around an issue underwhelming. Typically, they fail to mobilize the emotional and social capital they create. For many reform movements, this means that their primary functionality is promoting socialization and bringing like-minded people together: a function that falls frustratingly short of the promise (and often, self-stated mission) of these organizations.

Reform efforts frequently couch themselves one-dimensionally, in opposition to the status quo, failing to offer — and make central — the positive, alternative they propose.¹ An unfortunate consequence of this habit is the marginalization and isolation of the reform effort. The more serious this mistake, the less permeable the line between the reformers and everyone else, meaning the reform efforts are more likely to be seen as extremist.

To oversimplify: successful reform efforts focus on the problem, not the problem-solvers. This is not to say that the problem should be the focus to the exclusion of the problem solvers, but reform efforts emasculate their efforts by hyperfocusing on the group’s identity. When everyone is working on a problem, the primary function of a reform effort is not social[ization]. When a reform falters, taking longer and occurring slower than expected, reformers understandably band together, seeing themselves as a cohesive (and unfortunately, separate) social unit. Integrating opposition into your identity encodes at a very low level the assumptions your group makes. Reform efforts set themselves up for failure by taking for granted an adversarial rather than cooperative process.

a recipe

Thus we seek to bestir the people into an awareness of their own condition, provide inspiration for their thoughts and rouse them to pursue their true interests.

So ends the principles of the Knight Foundation. It’s an exciting, articulate sentiment that directs our attention to the raw materials of change: awareness and motivation.

Many projects aiming to empower a population first focus on bringing those involved together, facilitating communication, and enabling the group to make their needs and desires heard in a cohesive way. Given that we can “rouse them to pursue their true interests,” how do we capitalize on that? This is a question reforms rarely answer. Bringing people together gives you access to social, emotional, technological, and even fiscal capital. But how do you transform that into meaningful action? While grassroots efforts are made robust by the power of decentralized systems, the problem of coupling that to action is difficult. Essentially, we’re looking to design leadership into an effort, from the ground up. The concerns raised by the types of infrastructure in place at various scales is difficult and poorly addressed.

I have no general answer for this question. Even the direction to proceed is unclear. But going back to the specific case of education makes clear that this framework makes some progress.

a guess hope

a friend of mine runs summer camp which will be in its third year this summer. Parents and kids love it.

Camp Kaleidoscope, a summer day camp in Somerville for 6-12 year olds, will be running this summer for its third year! At Camp Kaleidoscope we build kites, launch rockets, make video games, paint pictures, control robots, and do whatever else seems like a good idea.

Essentially, Camp Kaleidoscope is a hands-on instantiation of a free-school for two months. This same friend is looking to start a creative, hands-on school for kids this fall. Whereas parents beat a path to his door to enroll their kids in camp, finding parents willing to employ the same pedagogy during the school year are few and far between. Parents have a prudential interest in their children’s future, meaning that they see school as a serious endeavor (in contradistinction to summer camp).

We see a diluted analogy to this in the progression of pedagogical flexibility from pre-school to high school. Unfortunately, this makes extending pedagogy shown to be successful in the primary grades an uphill battle. But, I had fingered the relative ease of experimentation as the cause of primary school’s comparative progressivism.

It wasn’t until recently, when reading Scott Nearing’s The New Education that I came across a historical explanation for this, as well. The early 20th century was a time wherein many students (particularly among poor and rural neighborhoods) did not finish middle school. Progressives decided that if they were to be reached by the edifying hand of the Movement, this must be done in primary school.

Setting history aside, what lesson do these observations suggest about the nature of successful reform? How do we design an educational revolution?

a guess

What if a university were to plunge students into real world pursuits? What if students were innovators and inventors who were learning core skills and knowledge on the fly, as they solve real world problems? What if this school were revolutionary in a host of ways which did not threaten the conventionally prudential value of the education? I’m betting that the vision of high school students taking on world-class research and design problems is not only possible, but the closest thing to a positive defense available to pedagogies implemented within the traditional schooling framework.

I’m guessing that the successes of students at this university will endorse our pedagogy strongly enough to catch people’s attention. This attention would lubricate dealings with the traditional educational infrastructure, and the model and design of the university itself would be scalable and easily decentralizable, giving grassroots support a natural, actionable outlet: making your own [university]!

The fundamental tension between top-down and bottom-up reform efforts comes from the fact that the institutions involved in each approach are coupled by design. Our government is designed to serve our needs and desires. Unfortunately, we are afforded a tiny sliver of experimental leeway to explore how we want to solve the problem of education, meaning we end up with poorly articulated — and worse, wrong — “desires” because we haven’t had the time and space to iterate. My hope is that a single, educational institution will be able to not only capture the ear of the traditional infrastructure, but provide people with a blueprint for changing education at its most flexible point by anticipating the excuses people usually use to exclude evidence (dissimilar demographics, financial situation, etc.)

a rain check

I’m sure my rambling has made it clear by now: I’m struggling with the framework and vocabulary with which I want to discuss and design this reform effort. Everything feels sloppy, still. Nonetheless, I believe that there is a fundamental structure to reform, and I think that we can take advantage of this for real change. However, I am dubious of my tendency to abstract and generalize. I’m wary of hidden assumptions and this convoluted discussion. So please, push back and help me refine these ideas.

1. Worse, they often lack a sufficiently concrete, positive, alternative vision. Even if the status quo were to do an about-face and give reform groups the reins, many would not be prepared to take action [↩]

Updated OPML/feed file; read everything I do. Still behind on updating the rest of that page.

So, that little red nub on Thinkpads? It’s part of the so-called “Trackpoint” system. And on my Thinkpad, running Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, when I attempted to scroll with it (using the middle mouse button), if I deviated to the left or right while in Firefox, Firefox would attempt to go Back or Forwards. This was pretty annoying — I was constantly going back and forward without meaning to — but, I found a fix, preserved here.

In Firefox’s address bar, type about:config, and then change the following variables to the following values:

mousewheel.horizscroll.withcontrolkey.action = 3;
mousewheel.horizscroll.withcontrolkey.numlines = 1;
mousewheel.horizscroll.withcontrolkey.sysnumlines = true;
 
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action = 0;
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines = 1;
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines = true;
 
mousewheel.horizscroll.withshiftkey.action = 1;
mousewheel.horizscroll.withshiftkey.numlines = 1;
mousewheel.horizscroll.withshiftkey.sysnumlines = true;

Is that for a good reason? Is it annoying, to you guys? If so, let me know.

Until then, all posts beginning with “comment:” will be exactly that: comments I’ve posted elsewhere, linked and recorded. It’ll even have its own category, along with a newly created category for all those “overheard” posts.