By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jul 29, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  You know, maybe…. learning to play with building blocks is the most important activity we learn as children.
Because we continue– metaphorically speaking–to play this game our entire lives.
Everytime we experience something new or learn some new piece of information or glean some new insight about life it is like we collect a new block we can play with–to help build something with.
So, I guess we should ask ourselves each day, “What are we building today with our building blocks?” And, “Which building blocks are we choosing to build with?”
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Success milemarkers for a new business.
The day you replace the two chairs in the entrance you purchased from Wal-Mart six years ago and assembled yourself with two chairs you purchased on clearance from Z Gallerie. That come pre-assembled.
By Saul Kaplan, on Mon Jun 23, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET
 “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire” W.B. Yeats
Excuse the rant but I am outraged by the state of the U.S. education system. We have let the pilot light go out and we are failing our youth. It is time to move beyond public policy debates and institutional rugby scrums to try new solutions. What we are doing now isn’t working and far too much of the federal stimulus investment is being spent to sustain the current system.
A report last year from the nonprofit network America’s Promise Alliance showed that 1.2 million students drop out of high school each year. Only about half of the students served by school systems in the nation’s 50 largest cities graduate from high school. The U.S. public education system, especially in the country’s urban centers, must be transformed.
Only about 40% of the U.S. adult population earns a college degree. That may have been fine in the 20th century when an industrial economy supplied good jobs to those without post-secondary education. It is not fine today when a post-secondary credential is a necessity for a good job.
Our education system was built for the 20th century.
Everyone loves to point fingers at the other players in the system as the cause of the problem. Observing our education system today is like watching an intense rugby scrum that is moving in slow motion hoping the ball will pop out. Finger pointing and incessant public policy debates galore. We love to admire the problems: It’s the unions that are getting in the way. Teachers are resisting change in the classroom. Administrators don’t understand what is going on in the classroom. Parents are not engaged. Public policy makers can’t make up their minds. If only private sector companies were more engaged. Students are unruly, undisciplined, and disrespectful. Everyone is blamed and nothing changes.
The simple idea of “lighting a fire” expressed in Yeat’s quote says it all for me. Teaching is an important means to an end. Creating passionate life long learners is the objective of education. Content, subjects, jobs and requirements, will all change over time. The pace of change is accelerating and the half-life for assumptions and usable knowledge is decreasing. It has become a life long challenge to stay relevant. The only thing that is sustainable is a fire inside to keep learning
The objective of education is to light a fire for learning in every single youth. When the pilot light is on, everything else is possible. For starters, lets recognize that individuals have different learning styles. One-size industrial education models are not working and must be transformed. We have the enabling technology available to us today to create and scale an education system that provides access to killer content and experiential learning opportunities tailored to individual learning styles for every student. It is time to demonstrate that we can and will change our education system. Our country’s youth is waiting.
I am excited to be part of the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) community focused on real world experimentation for new education systems and solutions. In BIF’s Student Experience Lab we are bringing the voice of the student into the education innovation conversation and creating a network of innovators motivated to explore new system solutions. Join the conversation. The water is fine.
Lets reignite the pilot light and demonstrate that there is a better way to light a fire for learning in every youth.
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jun 13, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET If you think about it there are a lot more “Thoughts for the day” offered than “Actions for the day.”
Probably because thoughts are easier than actions.
And you probably think I am going to propose an “Action for the day.” But I am not. I am just going to let this observation count as my “Thought for the day” –and not rock the boat.
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When did teenaged kids get so together?
At high school graduation awards ceremony and some of these kids have already accomplished more than most the parents in the audience.
And look like it! All the male award recipients look like they carry business cards and one looked like he had to leave the office this morning to pick up his academic award.
I remember when I was in high school the administration was just hoping we could all sit still long enough to get through the graduation ceremony successfully.
My biggest disappointment today is that I forgot to bring my business cards to give out. Not to parents. But to the students!
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My new theory about aging.
As I close in on my 51st birthday (or 2 score years and 11, as I am calling it), I am theorizing that as humans age into the second half of life, we don’t progess from “young” to “old,” but rather develop from mammals into some form of reptile.
In other words, we don’t get “old,” just “lizardy” and “turtle-like.”
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed May 28, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET Music & science may seem to be strange bedfellows – the only songs I could think of were Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science” from the ’80s (and if you’re not old enough to remember that era and its fabulous goofy technopop, check out Devo while you’re at it), and “I Sing The Body Electric” from Fame (from the ’70s, which is making me feel really old . . . but I digress)
Generally they would seem to be polar opposites – science is about concrete data and provable facts, where music is emotional and subjective. Sure, you can give a scientific description of sound waves, but that doesn’t explain why some pieces of music affect us so emotionally. (For example, I get goosebumps when I hear the french horn entrance toward the end of the 4th movement of Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony; I also start giggling every time I hear the intro to Spike Jones’ version of Hawaiian War Chant . . . ) Besides, trying to analyze the beauty of music reminds me of E. B. White’s comment about why analyzing humor was like dissecting a frog – “Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”
However, there is concrete scientific data on music’s value in aiding retention of information – it connects with the brain on multiple levels, which is why we teach kids the ABC song, or why anyone who ever learned the “50 Nifty” tune has no trouble remembering all 50 states in alphabetical order. (This multi-layer connection also explains “ear worms,” which is a disgustingly appropriate term for a tune that you can’t get out of your head. Often a TV theme or a commercial jingle . . . anyone old enough to remember “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is?”)
Science is getting a bad rap these days from people who deny climate change – an affliction common among right wing politicians and media pundits. Cosmos host Neil DeGrasse Tyson is doing his best to combat this willful ignorance, including his wonderful quote, “The good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.” I don’t have Tyson’s scientific expertise (or a TV show), but I can do my part by using music to help make the same point. (And to tie this all together, I’ve borrowed an ear-worm-ish ’80s TV theme . . . )
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Mar 21, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET I’m not talking about highest IQ-smart, most knowledge, the most deeply insightful or profoundly creative.
I am talking about useful, practical, everyday smarts that arguably is the most important kind of smart we can seek to be.
Those people. Those are the ones I am talking about.
And their intelligence is hard to define, pigeonhole or quantify.
In many cases they aren’t even described by friends as “smart” and may not think of themselves as overly bright or well educated.
It is more than street smarts, too. Although that is a big part of it.
They are the people you go to when you have an important life or work or personal problem to solve and you need help.
Maybe the best test for these kind of people is this. You know when you hear someone say–even yourself— “Well, when you think about it that way, it does make sense?” I know I say that a lot.
My theory is that the kind of smart people I am trying to describe are the ones who we never hear say that. Because they are always thinking in “that way” –the seemingly odd and unconventional way about a problem that may make little logical sense but just seems to work.
Those are the smartest people I know.
And the advice I have received from them has meant everything to me. And they probably don’t even know it because I rarely tell them how smart their suggestion is. I usually just say, “Well, when you think about it that way it does make sense.”
By Saul Kaplan, on Mon Mar 3, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire” W.B. Yeats
Excuse the rant but I am outraged by the state of the U.S. education system. We have let the pilot light go out and we are failing our youth. Particularly egregious is the way we are failing our urban youth.
We must refocus our national and regional innovation conversation on how to solve real world problems. Job number one is to design a better education system that lights a fire for every youth, creating lifelong passionate learners. It is time to move beyond public policy debates and institutional rugby scrums to try new solutions. What we are doing now isn’t working, and far too much of the federal stimulus investment in education is being spent to sustain the current system.
A report last year from the nonprofit network America’s Promise Alliance showed that 1.2 million students drop out of high school each year. Only about half of the students served by school systems in the nation’s 50 largest cities graduate from high school. The U.S. public education system, especially in the country’s urban centers, must be transformed.
Only about 40 percent of the U.S. adult population earns a college degree. That may have been fine in the 20th century when an industrial economy supplied good jobs to those without post-secondary education. It is not fine today when a college degree is a necessity for a good job.
Our education system was built for the 20th century.
Everyone loves to point fingers at other players in the system as the cause of the problem. Observing our education system today is like watching an intense rugby scrum that is moving in slow motion hoping the ball will pop out. We have finger pointing and incessant public policy debates galore. We love to admire the problems: It’s the unions that are getting in the way. Teachers are resisting change in the classroom. Administrators don’t understand what is going on in the classroom. Parents are not engaged. Public policy makers can’t make up their minds. If only private sector companies were more engaged. Students are unruly, undisciplined and disrespectful. Everyone gets blamed and nothing changes.
The simple idea of “lighting a fire” expressed in Yeat’s quote says it all for me. Teaching is an important means to an end. Creating passionate lifelong learners is the objective of education. Content, subjects, jobs and requirements, will all change over time. The pace of change is accelerating and the half-life for assumptions and usable knowledge is decreasing. It has become a lifelong challenge to stay relevant. The only thing that is sustainable is a fire inside to keep learning.
The objective of education is to light a fire for learning in every single youth. When the pilot light is on, everything else is possible. For starters, let’s recognize that individuals have different learning styles. One-size industrial education models are not working and must be transformed. We have the enabling technology available today to create and scale an education system that provides access to killer content and experiential learning opportunities tailored to individual learning styles for every student. It is time to demonstrate that we can and will change our education system. Our country’s youth is waiting.
We need actionable platforms to enable real world experimentation for new education systems and solutions. We need to bring the voice of the student and student experience directly into the education innovation conversation. And we must create a purposeful network of innovators motivated to explore and test new system solutions. Join the conversation. The water is fine.
Let’s reignite the pilot light and demonstrate that there is a better way to light a fire for life long learning in every youth.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Feb 4, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET After much deep and reflective thought, I have decided not to sign up to use the widely advertised online IQ enhancer, Luminosity.
Luminosity apparently trains your brain and makes you much smarter. Well, that sounded pretty good to me. And Lord knows I could use a few extra IQ points.
But after thinking it through with my God-given brain, I have concluded that if I use Luminosity to improve my brain and IQ, I will lose all my friends with less than genius IQs (and that would be all my friends, except one, who I frankly don’t care much for). These friends I would lose like me because I am forgetful and disorganized and earnest and apologetic and hapless and like joke about it all.
I fear I will lose all my friends and they won’t like me anymore if I become some super-brainy guy who knows all the answers to Jeopardy —and seems to be much smarter than all the other people (who don’t use Luminosity).
I wonder if anyone has done a study on the impact of the alienation from friends that Luminosity has caused its users?
I am not waiting around for such a study. Common sense tells me it’s not worth the trade-off. I’d rather not be a Luminosity super-genius than lose all my friends! And I am not changing my simple non-luminous mind about that!
I sure hope my friends appreciate this sacrifice when I tell them about it….and don’t all start using Luminosity themselves and leave me behind!
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jan 15, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET Is it possible to prove God exists through higher mathematics?
I recently saw a discussion on this matter and it got me to thinking. Suffice it to say, that I do believe it’s possible to use higher mathematics to prove God’s existence.
And I even have first hand experience on this very matter.
No, I’m not going to get all highfalutin talking to you all fancy-like about mathematical ideas you won’t understand. Not at all.
But here’s how it happened for me. I escaped high school only having taken Algebra and Geometry. I always loved math. But once they started introducing letters into it, I figured they had just run out of practical uses for math and were trying to make it deliberately harder—or they were just showing off. After the letters started up, I just lost interest.
My only exposure to calculus was four week of pre-calculus my freshman year in college. That’s all it took for me to realize the stuff had to be Divinely inspired –because it made no logical sense to me.
But that’s not the part about calculus that convinced me to believe in God. Into my fourth week of this class –and convinced I was going to fail– I started praying nightly for God to please help me–some how, some way. And the next week it happened. My friend and mentor, junior Allen Ragle, explained to me about the college phenomenon of “dropping” a class. If you are taking a class and it turns out you hate it or it is too hard for you, no problem. You just “drop” the dang thing and all you get is a little ole “W” on your transcript. High schools don’t allow this but colleges do.
It was a religious experience for me just hearing this good news! I dropped the class the very next day and had never felt such a rush of Grace in all my young life.
15Ever since learning I could drop my pre-calculus class, I’ve never doubted that God existed. And, in fact, when I graduated college, I had a whole host of “W’s” on my college transcript to prove God’s mercy was very much alive and real in my life!
Hallelujah!
For Jerry Eifler, Lee Whitlock, Gene Thompson, Ivan Schoen, Jim Sichko and my other friends who are also well-connected with the Big Guy…. I would have included a list of friends who had likewise established themselves in the field of mathematics, but don’t seem to have any at the moment…. Which, I guess, is what happens when you leave math at pre-cal.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jan 14, 2014 at 2:19 PM ET  UK President Capilouto  U of L President Jim Ramsey The two largest universities in Kentucky — the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville — have been friendly rivals on the court and gridiron for decades.
(OK, sometimes, not so friendly…).
But they are united by the fact that they boast of Presidents who are deeply committed to the ideals of higher education — especially academic freedom.
And today, The Recovering Politician was proud to break the news that U of L President Jim Ramsey and UK President Eli Capilouto each joined the growing list of college and university leaders (192 and counting) who have denounced the American Studies Association’s pernicious academic boycott of Israel. (Read about it here.)
Here’s Ramsey’s statement; and here’s Capilouto’s statement.
Please join me and thanking them for their principled stance on behalf of academic freedom by signing the petition below:
Thank you Presidents Ramsey and Capilouto for Supporting Academic Freedom
Read the petition
Share this with your friends:
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By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jan 14, 2014 at 1:44 PM ET This morning, we reported that University of Louisville President Jim Ramsey joined the growing list of college and university leaders (191 and counting, according to intrepid blogger Avi Mayer) who have denounced the American Studies Association’s pernicious academic boycott of Israel. (Read about it here; and read why boycotts like this are so pernicious in my book, The Liberal Case for Israel).
Well, make it 192: University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto.
While U of L and UK may be big rivals on the basketball court and the gridiron, they share the distinction of boasting outstanding Presidents, who both are advocates of free speech and a strong US/Israel relationship. Here’s President Capilouto’s statement, “Open Inquiry is Essential in Higher Education”:
A college campus – perhaps more than anywhere else – is a cherished crucible for the free exchange of ideas and beliefs.
This is a fundamental characteristic when you consider that our faculty and staff are charged with developing new scholarship, and our students are at an age when their civic and personal philosophies are evolving. Over time, these necessary attributes of a campus have been challenged, debated and protected. Though honoring it can be demanding at times, our commitment to academic freedom, fostered in a safe and respectful environment, is at the core of our work in a university community. It is who we are.
UK President Capilouto Recently, I was reminded again of that fundamental tension as members of the American Studies Association (ASA) endorsed a resolution boycotting Israeli academic institutions for that country’s policies toward Palestine. The proposed boycott has elicited strong responses from other professional organizations in the academy — ranging from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to institutional organizations such as the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). Administrators and faculty — individually and collectively — at several colleges and universities also have engaged in the debate.
Their statements clearly indicate a national dialogue, one happening on college and university campuses like ours. I disagree with the ASA’s resolution to boycott academic institutions in Israel.
The values of inquiry and discourse in American academia – applied within a scholar’s responsibilities as an academic – reflect the foundation and principles of our system of higher education.
As institutions of higher learning, in particular, we are tasked with producing independent, testable scholarship, while educating the next generation of civic and business leaders. If we hope to advance our own understanding of the world around us, a scholar’s capacity to build a body of work in his or her field must run unimpeded by politics and external forces. At the heart of that process is the idea that many voices — sometimes in harmony, sometimes discordant — are critical to education and community.
Our capacity to foster constructive dialogue is at the core of what we do at the University of Kentucky. We should resist at all times temptations — or voices — that call on us to circumscribe or inhibit that dialogue. No matter where such temptation comes from, or however well-intentioned it may be, it is a self-defeating proposition.
We are better than that.
Here’s the link to Capuilouto’s full blog post.
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You know, maybe…. learning to play with building blocks is the most important activity we learn as children.
