Good News 5 – Necessary Education
Of all the places where we want good news, education is central. Education is what makes us human. Education is how we inherit from the generations which preceded us. Yet despite its importance, despite thousands of years grappling with the issues, we are still conflicted about what makes for a good education. What should we learn, and how can we make choices? What does it mean to be well educated? Are new technologies and more funding needed?
The perils and promise of technology were at the centre of a recent talk by Andrew Leigh, an Australian parliamentarian, based on his new book ‘What’s the Worst that Could Happen: Existential Risk and Extreme Politics’. He reminded me of a fairground barker, building up excitement before letting us into the Big Tent for the show. It was the same breathless style of presentation, emphasising all that’s terrifying, tossing in images and numbers to add to a sense of impending disaster, and scaring us because it seemed it was too late to do anything. He knew how to use evocative phrases; “tens of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at major cities – on ‘hair trigger alert’; biotechnology that could allow the creation of deadly pathogens”. From there we moved on to artificial intelligence creating machines smarter than we are and getting close to taking over; right-wing populism ceding power to demagogues; not to mention unstoppable climate change. I’m sure you get the general idea.
What can we do in the face of these and many other horrible catastrophes just around the corner? Why, pay up and come and see the show. Oops, sorry, we’re not at the circus, this is our real and very scary world. Fortunately, for each existential peril, Andrew Leigh offered his sensible solutions. For example, “to reduce the threat of bioterrorism, we should improve the security of DNA synthesis. To tackle climate change, we need to cut carbon emissions and assist developing nations to follow a low-emissions path. To lower the chance of atomic catastrophe, we should take missiles off hair-trigger alert and adopt a universal principle of no first use. To improve the odds that a super intelligent computer will serve humanity’s goals, research teams should adopt programming principles that mandate advanced computers to be observant, humble and altruistic.” Gosh, what would we have done without Andrew to help us? By the end he’d tossed in a few more ideas, like sustaining well-paid jobs, ensuring the educational system is open and available to all, and reforming democracy to represent the popular will. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Even for a politician (sorry, was that excessively cynical?), what a jumble of half-baked ideas, muddled data, and shallow thinking. As I listened, I suddenly realised what I was hearing, it was a TED talk!
Have you ever listened to a TED talk? The inaugural TED conference was held in Monterey, California, in 1984, on the basis technology (T), entertainment (E), and design (D) were coming together to change, no, to save the world. The first conference included technology demonstrations (the CD-ROM was new back then). By the time of the second conference in 1990, practical demonstrations had largely disappeared, replaced by the high-level preaching model that has been dominated the talks ever since. The approach was explained by Chris Anderson, who bought the TED in 2001: all you needed was an interesting topic attached to an inspirational story. Space travel is interesting. Travel to planets to collect the resources that are depleting on earth is inspiring. Hey, look at that, I just created a TED talk!
As far as I know, TED is still flourishing, perhaps more so while the pandemic continues, as we can watch the talks online. The story goes like this: there are many problems today that make the future a scary prospect. Fortunately, there are solutions to each of these problems, and the solutions have been formulated by extremely smart, tech-aware people. For their ideas to become realities, they merely need to be explained and spread as widely as possible, and the best way to spread ideas is through stories. What are these talks achieving? As I see it, there are three outcomes. First, they offer easily digested chunks of packaged knowledge. In my instantly invented talk on space mining, I could include exciting snippets about rocket development, more payloads and people travelling with Space-X, etc. This will convince you that travelling to planets will soon be easy and frequent. Second the talks offer a challenge, a problem to be solved, one that matters to the listeners. Hmm: how about space mining would reduce the costs of manufacturing everything from computers to cars by bringing scarce but essential elements back to make our lives easier and cheaper. Why, there might be some resources up there we don’t have down here, ones to enhance our lives even more. Finally, the talks will show the solutions are just around the corner: remember the rocket that brought back material from a comet recently, or Elon Musk’s plans to start mining on Mars.
It is this third element that is critical, of course. At the end of a TED talk we want to be inspired, excited at being on the edge of something new. Some talks are quite commercial, encouraging us to use products or services, updated snake-oil selling. Others are more subtle. In some cases, they are reassuring, that we are on the edge of breakthroughs and the disasters just described will be averted. Often, they sell the importance of science and technology, innovation, transformation. Let’s get on board with the changes that are happening, change our lives and lifestyles, and ensure our children are learning skills needed for the future that’s almost here. Pay your money (TED talks aren’t cheap) to learn how technology will save us.
TED talks aren’t good news. Rather they fail us in two clear and damaging ways. First, they offer solutions that are almost always unrealistic, forward-looking stories that seldom come to fruition. If I was to give my talk on space mining, you might believe that it is about to happen, and will deliver the rewards I describe. Well, one day there might be some mining on the moon or other plants, but that’s a very long way away, with little benefit likely for current generations. Recent critiques of the TED approach document the extensive unreality and the failures of most of the proposals that are aired. However, it is the second aspect of the talks that is the more worrying. As media theorist, Benjamin Bratton has suggested, TED’s rhetorical style has helped popularise “middlebrow megachurch infotainment”. Their influence on intellectual culture has been “taking something with value and substance and coring it out so that it can be swallowed without chewing. This is not the solution to our most frightening problems – rather, this is one of our most frightening problems.” As I see it, the talks replace education and thinking with instant information, right up there with fake news and much of corporate advertising. Education replaced by entertainment.
I know, calm down, that’s an exaggeration! As I was despairing over the effects of TED, I discovered there was one on CAMFED, an agency well worth knowing and supporting. The CAMFED Association explains its past on its website: CAMFED “was formed in July 1998 when 400 recent school graduates from rural Zimbabwe came together to discuss what their futures would look like. Some of them were still wearing their school uniforms – the only presentable clothes they owned. Most were daunted as they looked at a future with limited opportunities for women like us. But as they discussed their challenges, they found strength in their shared background of exclusion, and expressed their deep commitment to making sure every girl gets the chance to go to school and determine her own future. They discovered that together they could lead the change they wanted to see, for themselves and their communities … CAMFED, the Campaign for Female Education, empowers girls and young women, and they in their turn reshape their countries.” As one of the people who has raised funds for CAMFED, writer and journalist Nicholas Kristof believes girl’s education may be the highest return investment in the world today. It costs on average $150 to support a girl through a year of high school in the rural areas where CAMFED works, where poverty and low academic self-esteem are the biggest barriers to their education. Worth every cent.
Moves to support essential education are evident in Australia, too. One example is Dymocks, a bookseller, whose Books Charities were set up to promote a love of reading and improve literacy outcomes for children in Australia. “Dymocks runs four programs that provide brand new books to children in priority locations in Australia. It supports children who have little or no access to good books. Its programs restock priority primary school libraries, community centres, hospitals, classrooms and provide books for children to take home and cherish. It doesn’t work alone, but partners with other non-profit organisations, to reach the most vulnerable children in society to ensure more children have access to good books so they can do well in school and lead healthier and happier lives. The charities believe all children should have the tools they need to thrive, regardless of their circumstances.” In the 2021 financial year, Dymocks provided over $1m worth of books.” That’s good news.
Enhancing basic education is essential. To provide educational opportunity for young women in Africa is clearly good news. TED provides a means which can assist in education, and which is neither good nor bad in itself. If many TED talks offer a partial, narrow and often rather self-serving window on what people might want to know, they could be less egotistical. After all, talks are an approach with a long history. For years, I would go to lectures offered by the Royal Society for the Arts in London. Years before that I would attend presentations at the British Astronomical Association at Burlington House. Talks on an artist at a gallery; talks about recent arrivals at a bird sanctuary; talks about books at the local library: all these are part of what some describe as continuing education. The provision of continuing education in a multitude of areas is good news. If only it was that simple.
At the same time I heard Andrew Leigh speaking, I was reading about book banning efforts spreading across the US. It’s a country where challenges to books about sexual and racial identity are nothing new, even if the tactics change from decade to decade. This time around a county prosecutor’s office in Wyoming is considered charging library staff for stocking books like “Sex Is a Funny Word” and “This Book Is Gay.” The Oklahoma state senate is considering a bill to prohibit public school libraries from keeping books that focus on sexual activity, sexual identity or gender identity. In Tennessee, the McMinn County Board of Education voted to remove the graphic novel “Maus” from a module on the Holocaust because the mice were naked and swear words were used. Perhaps it isn’t surprising, but in the highly divided USA, today’s bans are focussed on legislative tactics, with politicians from the progressive left to conservative right engaged in the latest battleground. Book lists intended to promote more diverse reading material are the target. A US advocacy group, No Left Turn in Education, maintains lists of books it says are used to spread radical and racist ideologies to students, including Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Banning books has become part of the hotly contested ‘freedom’ agenda, where parents should be free to direct the upbringing of their own children. Of course, it gets complicated. Some say prohibiting certain titles violates the rights of other parents and the rights of children who believe access to these books is important. As a result, some school libraries already mechanisms in place to stop individual students from checking out books of which their parents disapprove.
It is complicated (is that the worst form of cop-out??). Removing titles that deal with difficult subjects can make it harder for students to discuss issues like racism and sexual assault. Some that are challenged involve oral sex and anal sex. Do children have to reach a certain age to ready for that kind of material? Did I say complicated? A Washington State school district voted to remove “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Their objections included that the novel marginalized characters of colour, celebrated “white saviorhood” and used racial slurs dozens of times without addressing their derogatory nature. More? In the current cultural wars, no book has been targeted more than The 1619 Project, a best seller about slavery in America supported by many historians and Black leaders. Australia has seen similar attempts to ban or replace schoolbooks dealing with the early history of Europeans in the country.
Andrew Leigh ended his presentation with some unobjectionable ideas. He suggested those who care passionately about the future of humanity should consider how to stem populism’s rise. This means sustaining well-paid jobs in communities hit by technological change; ensuring that the education system is accessible to everyone, not just the fortunate few; and reforming democracy so that electoral outcomes represent the popular will. Instead of angry populism, he said the cardinal Stoic virtues – courage, prudence, justice and moderation – can guide a more principled politics and ultimately shape a better world. Well, yes …
Ensuring the education system is accessible to everyone makes good news, a necessary, but scarcely sufficient step. We are lucky in Australia. Despite its horrible resource imbalances, from well-funded private schools to marginal classes on Aboriginal reservations, debates over the education curriculum are far less partisan than in the US. We have occasional fights in our ‘culture wars’, excitements over a suggestion to ban a specific book, but by and large the curriculum is sensible and broad. The healthy Australian desire to avoid being unduly influenced by those claiming to be experts helps; in Australia this is called ‘cutting down tall poppies’. Perhaps not ‘well-educated’, but most children leave the compulsory system with a good basic education. That’s good news. It could be much better than that, as positive, broad-based and equitable educational reforms still seem unlikely in the short-term.
Outside of compulsory education, how do we continue to learn? Some opportunities, like TED talks, are often marketing endeavours (after all, that was true for the one on CAMFED). They sell the virtues of largely technocratic solutions to challenges and problems, often more inspirational than practical, often predicting rather than describing, often not borne out in practice. Does this matter? It only matters if those listening are not well educated, spend little time on other sources of education, and have lost a healthy level of cynicism! There is some evidence to suggest enthusiasm for TED’s technological boosterism is losing support.
Basic education is the key. When we turn to endeavours in the developing world, there are many inspiring attempts to bring education to the underprivileged in Africa, Asia and South America, especially with programs focussed on young women and members of minority ethnic groups. Many rely on charity, as UNESCO and other agencies still battle to increase government focus on educational needs. It is to the developed world’s shame that inadequate education (and hunger) remains a challenge for more than half the world’s population. Much more needs to be done, but there has been progress, and that is good news. But this is more than an issue of funding, as it leaves out the contested and difficult topic of content. A goal of ensuring every person in every country acquires the skills to read, review and understand personal, scientific, cultural, social, and political issues is unarguable. However, working out how and when to address topics like domestic violence, sexual practices, bullying and hate in educating young people is a challenge with no simple answers, let alone religious issues, particularly as these topics are often swept up into larger political agendas in both developed and developing countries. There’s progress and failure: good news, but we could do better.
