Harper Reed, CTO of Obama 2012 made an interesting observation on the non-role and non-relevance that education often plays in non-preparing young people for the world of work. He said in an interview with Tech Crunch here:
"I realized about probably three-quarters of the way through my education that in terms of computers, I actually wasn’t learning anything I needed to learn to get a job later on. I did learn some coding concepts in college, but more importantly I figured out that I’m an experiential learner. I need to put my hands on things and really see them, and really chew on them. It was better to do it in a real context, where it mattered if I did it right. Like where there was money at stake. So, I did an internship in Iowa City, IA. I worked for a real company that was trying to make a profit. The company built ecommerce apps. As an intern I started learning web apps to build web pages. Given my way of learning, it was fascinating to see how the management dealt with me. I was a child. I asked questions like a child does. “Why is the sky blue?” They just said, “It’s just blue. Go with that.” I said, “No! Tell me why we’re doing it this way. What is this?” It was client services, so we were just doing it because the client wanted it done, with no thought behind it. But all the questions I asked gave me this opportunity to see how things worked and the value of asking things that seemed obvious to everyone else. It gave me a lot of hope. It really kicked off the career that I have now."
This reminds me of the Mark Twain quote:
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
Dominic Grieve MP said at the Liberty Fringe event at the Conservative Conference in Manchester on September 29 2013:
"[Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights] could be interpreted as a sign that Britain is not interested in creating a better world. It could mean breaking other treaties such as the Good Friday Agreement which paved the way for peace in Northern Ireland. If we leave it then we have to take the international reputational consequences of doing so. It's a cost-benefit analysis in terms of whether we think we will benefit of doing it and what the down sides are."
In response to remarks made by first minister Peter Robinson, Patrick Murphy wrote in the Irish News September 28 2013:
"The first minister's behaviour is symptomatic of a long-standing illness in our society."
He continued:
"Stormont is built on sectarianism and cannot operate without it. Power-sharing on a sectarian basis merely gives power to the most sectarian. The system works in that it stops both sides killing each other, but the price is that they are allowed to kill democracy and good government instead."
"Our average "poor" man, who also usually has an old car and various creature comforts, likewise has a material lifestyle that would have been the envy of our forebears."
Ciaran Carson wrote in the September 23 2013 edition of The Gown:
"In 2009 I published a book of poems called On the Night Watch, poems written in a very spare, skinny form that went down the page in short lines. It wasn't until halfway through that I realised that I'd taken some of that form from the kind of poems Seamus had been writing in the 1980s."
He finished by saying:
"I think the generation of poets here that came after Seamus thought of him as a father of sorts."
David Foster Wallace explained the standard liberal arts analysis:
"[An] exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad."
DFW explains the problem with the standard liberal arts analysis:
"[The above analysis] is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us."
"So before I was nine I learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother, me and my brother against my father, my family against my cousins and the clan, the clan giants the tribe, and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel."
As it was put elsewhere, little has changed since the seventh century, except for the weapons.When it comes to Northern Ireland we could put it like this:
"So before I was nine I learned the basic canon of (Northern Ireland) life. It was me against my brother, me and my brother against my father, my family against my cousins and the clan, the clan giants the tribe, and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel."
President and CEO of Blackstone, Tony James said during a recent interview on Bloomberg News:
"I love my Job and I've got the best job in the world. When I got out of college what I worried about more than anything else was not being able to use my brain and being bored and not being able to use my creativity. So I can do that now and Id be very reluctant to let that go. I'm stretched everyday and people listen to me."
My concern is for the lack of brain-stretching opportunities for graduates. Many of the roles are no more than corporate sweatshops which offer acres of tedium and a culling of brain activity.
Mark Stephenson, a possibilist, futurologist and author of 'Optimists Tour of the Future' recently featured on Radio 4's show, 'Bremner's One Question Quiz, What Does the Future Hold?' He laid out some fascinating insights into what the future holds. Here's an example:
"As we move out of industrialism, we become a much more networked society. Our political system is not built to deal with long term thinking. As we become more and more connected, people are coding their way around those inefficiencies. By, for instance, taking their town off grid, therefore getting together and actually doing stuff. Networks of people who are designing healthcare in their community; Redesigning the energy supply in their community. I think we're moving to a world where we become citizen and state."
Mark then made reference to Douglas Adams who had said that there were three types of technology:
1. Technology invented before you were born which you don't think of in technology. Like sewers and paper.
2. Technology invented between the ages of 0 and 35 which you get super excited about. For many, this is the Internet, mobile phones, etc.
3. Then there's the technology developed after you're 35 which you see as pointless and which makes you angry.
Mark said of that:
"For my generation that's things like 3D tv and Twitter; I've got friends who are literally furious that Twitter even exists."
Mark further said:
"The people who determine the strategic direction of a nation or an organisation are usually in the last category. Yet most of the population are in the second category and so you get institutional bewilderment."
"The big secret of the US is class and empire; Everyone knows there's a class system and empire, but it's not officially admitted. In England those are the subjects we're brought up with the milk of our mamas. Whereas it's intuitive, it's instinctive [for English people]."
Eamon McCann puts his faith in the normalised and non-aligned of Northern Ireland:
"No solution based on reconciling the Orange and the Green will work. Fortunately, there is a swathe of Northern opinion – polls suggest it currently runs at about 30% – that does not adhere to Orangeism or Greenery. Of course, this isn’t reflected in political representation. Sort that one out and we might be in business."
"Our fathers learned, on the savannahs of Pleistocene Africa, to make sense of their surroundings by finding patterns, and this tendency is encoded deep in our DNA."
"Every leader should take this advice to heart: never shy away from opposition; welcome it — better yet, encourage it, then encourage it some more."
And here's some examples:
"If you surround yourself with too many like-minded colleagues, that is, you can create a culture of group think. That’s not good. Just take a look back at U.S. history. Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of military action in Vietnam, John F. Kennedy’s invasion of Cuba — many historians have argued that these mistakes were fueled by too many team members refusing to voice their opposition."
The Sunday Times of September 15 reported that students are critical of teaching standards. Sian Griffiths and Alastair McCall wrote:
"The results [of the national poll by the ST] highlight fears that academics at some universities may be more interested in their research than in their students."
Sir Chris Woodhead, professor of education at Buckingham University and a former chief inspector of schools, said:
"It does not surprise me that top universities are criticised by their students, because they are responding to the excessive emphasis that the government has put on the research they do. This policy needs to change if we are to do justice to the brightest young people."
Rosemary Bennet explained things in The Times. 'Cameron urges interns to report exploitation' was the title of the article, published September 16 2013. She said:
"David Cameron will urge unpaid interns to report their employers to the authorities if they are being asked to do a job rather than just work experience.
He has thrown his weight behind a TV campaign this autumn that will inform young people of their rights and employers’ responsibilities when they accept unpaid positions.
The campaign, which will be led by Channel 4, will call on unpaid interns to call the national Pay and Work Rights Helpline if they are being exploited, and the employer will be investigated. The Department for Business is working with the broadcaster on the production.
Basil McCrea, leader of NI21 confronts the faceless men and self-appointed community gatekeepers who orchestrate the decoration and desecration of our streets with flags that operate as symbols of tribalism and sectarianism. Originally posted on Slugger O'Toole here, the address received a warm response from the Slugger comment community. Alan in Belfast also covered it with analysis here. You can also provide thoughts and feedback to the message on the NI21 website here.
Read Basil's statement in full below:
Does the Union flag represent the United Kingdom or is it a marker in a sectarian battlefield? When the flag of the country hangs tattered from a lamppost, so does our society. When it is wrapped around someone during a riot or used to attack the police, it is defiled. In no other country would this be allowed.
Oliver Jeffers chastises the practice and the taking advantage of new talent with the promise of that tired, laboured cliche. He said in an interview with Ideas Tap:
"A lot of people want to take advantage of art college students right out of university: “Oh hey, you do work for me for free; it'll be good for you to get your work seen”. That works up to a point but you have to know when the “opportunity” is not actually an opportunity but a pain in the ass."
Writing in The Telegraph Tim Stanley counters suggestions Americaisn't exceptional. He said:
"Vlad is wrong: America is exceptional. But it's not exceptional because of its military or the unique genius of its people. It's exceptional because of its revolution and the Constitution that it created. Putin disregards this because he disregards democracy and human rights. Obama, however, doesn't help matters on the exceptionalism front because he fails to promote the principles and ethics of that Constitution. Limited government, free markets, respect for the individual and religious liberty: these are what makes America unique. Alas, they are not things that Barack Obama very much cares or talks about – so if the US doesn't seem particularly exceptional right now, that's why. It's led by a man who doesn't really understand his own country, so he doesn't really understand how to represent it on the world stage."
