Thank You For Being Late Part 2 - Advice for the Education Sector

Thomas Friedman's Thank You For Being Late
and the Education Sector

In my previous blogpost (May 1), I summarized Part I and II of Thomas L. Friedman's ground-breaking book Thank You For Being Late.

In the first half of his book, Friedman shows how three factors - technology, globalization, and environmental stresses - "...are driving change around the world..." and explores how these factors are impacting people and entire nations. (15)  In Parts III and IV, Friedman presents what he terms "the best adaptation ideas" for people and nations so that the anxiety gap created by these accelerating forces can be narrowed and people and societies can thrive in "this age of accelerations." (202).

Although the author elaborates on adaptation ideas for the workplace, geopolitics, politics, ethics, and community, the focus of this blogpost will be on ideas for those in the education sector.

In writing about the changing requirements of the workplace, Friedman is succinct: "Average is officially over". (202)   While rapid advances in technology are making many routine jobs that involve tasks such as answering phones and taking messages obsolete, new and more dynamic jobs are emerging that require greater proficiency in " ...the three Rs - reading, writing, and arithmatic - and more of the 4Cs - creativity, collaboration, communication, and coding." (211)  Those entering today's work force need to be highly adaptable to change and committed to lifelong learning.  States Friedman, "Like everything else in the age of accelerations, securing and holding a job requires dynamic stability - you need to keep pedaling (or paddling) all the time." (205)

The author maintains that, to prepare young people for the requirements of the workforce in the age of accelerations, educational systems "...must be retooled to maximize these needed skills and attributes: strong fundamentals in writing, reading, coding, and math; creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration; grit, self-motivation, and lifelong learning habits; and entrepreneurship and improvisation - at every level." (212)

Friedman also recommends that schools leverage technology in order to provide learners with the personalized, flexible, and just-in-time learning that they need.   He lauds innovations such as Google's TensorFlow, which "...offer a course online to teach to anyone in the world within three months" (222) and intelligent assistant systems such as the one offered jointly by the Khan Academy and (American) College Board.  The latter "...not only offer free SAT prep ...but they also created an amazing practice platform to help students fill their knowledge gaps....." (227)  A student's results on a practice SAT (PSAT) are fed into a computer, which using [artificial intelligence] and big data, then spits out a message: 'Tom, you did really well, but you need some work on fractions. You have a real opportunity to grow here. Click here for customized lessons just for you on fractions." (228)  For the author, such programs are "worth studying" in that they provide concrete examples for educational systems and institutions on "...how we can make the transition to a different education-to-work-to-lifelong-learning social contract in the age of accelerations." (229)

Friedman also makes a strong case that, as Jeffrey Garten (former dean of the Yale School of Management) writes, "Education will need a strong dose of liberal arts" in this age of accelerations. (343)  The author comes to this conclusion based upon his shared belief with Leon Wieseltier that "There is always a lag between an innovation and the apprehension of its consequences", and that as we are currently "...living in that lag, ...it is the right time to keep our heads and reflect." (340)   The author uses the example of the challenges that have emerged from the development and proliferation across the planet of social media as a case in point.  Unintended social media issues that we are now grappling with include:

-  the rapid spread of rumours that "confirm people's biases" (ie. fake news);
-  its echo chamber effect as we communicate only with like-minded people and "mute, unfollow, and    block" those who have different perspectives; and,
-  shallow engagement with otheres as "...our social media experiences are designed in a way that
   favours broadcasting over engagements, posts over discussions, shallow comments over deep    
   conversations." (275)

 Only through a curriculum that approaches STEM (science, tech studies, engineering, and mathematics) instruction through a moral and ethical lens and develops students' reflective capacities can we ensure that innovations in the age of acceleration help as oppose to hinder humankind's progress and our fragile environment.  Writes Friedman:

               The first line of defence for any society is always going to be its guardrails -
          laws, stoplights, police, courts, surveillance, the FBI, and basic rules of decency
          for communities like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.  All of those are necessary,
          but they are not sufficient for the age of accelerations.  Clearly, what is also
          needed ...is to think more seriously and urgently about how we can inspire more
          of what Dov Seidman calls "sustainable values": honesty, humility, integrity, and
          mutual respect. (347)  

Friedman also maintains that an ownership culture needs to be established (or re-established) in the education sector.  Specifically, he would like to see greater autonomy for teachers so that they will feel more engaged in their enormously important task of preparing the next generation to meet the challenges of the age of accelerations.  The author believes that teachers should have an increased role in determining standards and developing curriculum and increased time for professional learning. Teachers should not be "...disengaged from the tools of their own craft, like a chef whose only job is to reheat someone else's cooking." (322)



  

 

  

Thank You For Being Late - Part 1

Thank You For Being Late 

by Thomas Friedman

Author Thomas L. Friedman explicitly states, on the first page of Thank You For Being Late, his purpose in writing this book:

               I will argue that we are living throuh one of the greatest inflection points in

               history - perhaps unequaled since Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum 

               Gutenberg, a German blacksmith and printer, launched the printing revolution 

               in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation.  The three largest forces on the

               planet - technology, globalization, and climate change - are all accelerating at

               once.  As a result, so many aspects of our societies, workplaces, and geopolitics 

               are being reshaped and need to be reimagined. (3-4)  

Of the book's purpose, he goes on to write: "[The book] aims to define the key forces that are driving change around the world, to explain how they are affecting different people and cultures, and to identify what I believe to be the values and responses most appropriate to manage these forces." (15)

This being a lengthy and thought-provoking book, I have decided to create two blog posts for it.  The first post will cover the first half of the book, which outlines the 3 forces and their impacts. In the second post (scheduled for mid-May), I will explore Friedman's adaptation ideas, which he offers as ways of helping people become more resiliant and feel more confident and hopeful in this "age of accelerations". (202)

The Three Accelerators 

Friedman identifies the year 2007 as the dawn of the great acceleration.  In this year, the first of the 3 drivers of rapid change - technology - made a great leap forward.  Around that time, not only did the speed and power of microchips begin to exceed the expectations of Moore's Law - which postulated that the power and speed of computational processing power would double roughly every 2 years - but as well a number of transformational social media platforms emerged, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Two other innovations emerged around this time - the Smartphone and the cloud.  The latter is software and services that operate on the Internet as opposed to on individual computers but is "...actually a vast network of computer servers spread all over the world...." (82)  

Friedman prefers to refer to the cloud as the supernova (83), since it, compounded by the other aforementioned hardware and software innovations, has created an explosive acceleration in technology and impacted society on an unprecedented level.  According to the author, the mobile phone, dramatically cheaper, faster, and more ubiquitous broadband, and the cloud have greatly accelerated the flow of knowledge and new ideas across the world.  They have also "...vastly amplifiing the power of one ...[and] the power of many." (87)  What he meams by the latter is that while, through social media, any one person has the potential to impact the world (for better or worse), at the same time, cloud computing has made collaboration among people around the world easier, faster, and dramatically more impactful. 

Friedman shares the story of Airbnb as an example of how the cloud is "...enabling individuals or small groups to emerge from nowhere [to enable] ...radical changes in the cost, the speed, and the manner in which things are done...." (108)   In October 2007, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, to make a bit of money, decided to turn their house in San Francisco into a bed and breakfast during a conference.  Not having proper beds, they purchased a few air mattresses, "...inflated them and called ouselves 'Airbed and Breakfast'. (108)  From these modest beginnings, but through the power of the cloud, they created a multi-billion dollar company that offers a "...global network through which anyone anywhere could rent a spare room in their home to earn cash." (108)  Airbnb is now larger than all the major hotel chains combined!

The remarkable story of Airbnb also serves as an effective introduction to the second rapidly accelerating force that is transforming society - globalization.  Friedman maintains that cheaper, easier, and ubiquitous access to the cloud is allowing unprecedented numbers of people to become "makers and breakers" in the digital world, resulting in a more financially interdependent global village. (121)  He argues that the Big Shift in the market first theorized by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison is underway: "...were moving from a long period in history in which stocks were the measure of wealth and the driver of growth  ...to a world in which the most relevant source of comparative advantage will be how rich and numerous are the flows [digital exchanges] passing through your country or community and how well trained your citizen-workers are to take advantage of them." (127) 

In the new marketplace, it will no longer be enough for individuals, communities, and entire nations to acquire and stockpile goods, services, and knowledge.  Instead, they need to be "in the flow" - that is, they need to constantly participate in and contribute to the rapidly accelerating digital flow of ideas via the cloud.  Failure to be in the digital flow will result quickly in stagnation, obsolescence, and financial loss.

The third factor identified by Friedman is environmental stresses such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and population growth.  The author explains that the Earth's climate has only been hospitable to human beings for the past 11,000 years, although the planet is 4.6 billion years old.  This Garden of Eden geological era that we have been enjoying for the past 11,000 years has been dubbed the Holocene Age.  However, the author contends that "...since the Industrial Revolution - and particularly since 1950 - there has been a vast acceleration of human impacts on all the Earth's key ecosystems and stabilizers [such that] ...many scientists believe [we are being driven] ...out of the relatively benign Holocene into a new, uncharted geological epoch." (164)  Friedman notes that the new precarious geological age that we are entering into has been dubbed Anthropocene - 'anthro for 'man', and cene, for "new". (173)

During the Holocene epoch, several planetary conditions that support human life have prevailed.   However, the author refers to Rockstrom and Steffen's 2015 planetary boundaries health report to show that we have now reached and are dangerously close to passing a tipping point at which the boundaries of these conditions are breached.  In addition to breaching the boundaries for climate change and biodiversity, the report indicates that the boundaries in other areas such as deforestation and freshwater use are being, or soon will be, breached.

At the same time that we are experiencing a rapid deterioration of our environment, we are also challenged by a population explosion.  The author points out that, over the next 30 years or so, the world's population will grow by over 2 million people - from 7.2 billion to 9.7 in 2050.  

After examining the 3 accelerating forces that are changing our world, Friedman turns his attention to describing the enormous challenges these forces are creating. He summarizes the essential problem as follows: "The accelerations we've charted have indeed opened a wide gap between the pace of technological change, globalization, and environmental stresses and the ability of people and governing systems to adapt to and manage them." (198)   Earlier in the book, he puts it this way: "Indeed, there is a mismatch between the change in the pace of change and our ability to develop the learning systems, training systems, management systems, social safety nets, and government regulations that would enable citizens to get the most out of these accelerations and cushion their worst impacts." (28)

Eric Teller, CEO of Google's X research and development lab, created a graph which Friedman presents in his book to illustrate the above point.  The chart shows the rate at which humans can effectively adapt to technological changes over time.  The issue is that although the line representing human adaptability rises only slightly over time (suggesting that our capacity to grow and learn as a species has improved only somewhat over the past century), the line tracking the rate of technological change rises more and more steeply over time.  Most alarming of all about Teller's graph is where he placed a dot to represent where we are right now - not keeping up with change!

The adaptability gap has resulted in a policy gap as governments have been unable to develop quickly enough regulation systems and laws that are needed to help people adapt successfully to technological, marketplace, and environmental changes.  Freidman warns that the policy gap is producing an anxiety gap with political and social implications  as "...too many citizens in America and around the world [are]feeling unmoored and at sea, prompting an increasing number to seek out candidates from the far left or right.  So many people today seem to be looking for someone to put on the brakes, or take a hammer to the forces of change - or just give them a simple answer to make their anxiety go away." (202)

Teleer's Adaptability Gap Graph