The Essence of Play

Children were everywhere – flying in the air, sprawling on the ground, underground (I wouldn’t be surprised), climbing into suspended aluminum containers that made for make-belief space travel, crawling inside metal structures, and playing inside the top of a large mechanized caravan. This wasn’t a Disneyland that designed the perfect dreamworld. This was raw and dirty. Makerfaire presented you only the primitive blocks, showed you the possibilities, and then gave you the chance to let your imagination take over. Kids were in awe, kids were learning through play, kids were asking questions, kids were experimenting and failing. There was so much I didn’t know, I felt like I was a kid again.

The Art of Make-Belief

Enter Steam Punk. The League of STEAM (Supernatural and Troublesome Ectoplasmic Apparition Management) paraded some sophisticated equipment for detecting paranormal activity – all beautifully finished with neo-Victorian detail: leather, wood, cast iron, lead and black paint. They even demoed an ornate steam-powered gun that would fire a zombie-catching net onto the unsuspecting walking dead. Kids gawked in awe, as the Steam-master rattled off specifications on leather-clad detection devices that would have had a fighting chance of working, had zombies existed. Too convincing!

More Magical Moments

Amongst the robots (Arduino and Android were a strong force this year), radio controlled devices, arts, crafts, jewelry, science experiments and food, the most effective demo was, if audience reaction was a measure, the van de graaf generator manned by a grey haired scientist in a lab coat. He smiled unflinchingly as he charged his generator, at which point his hair would stand up like a dandelion. He’d then invite members of the passing public to shake hands, at which point the static discharge would make touch guys squeal, toddlers laugh, children smile, and friends roar.

Also note-worthy was Fossil Fool who used to be a bike-powered electric guitar played by a single man, but now it’s an entire band, with drums, guitars and their own stage on the lawn.

But perhaps the most spectacular was the ArcAttack twin Tesla Coil coupled to an electric guitar. The guitar player (decked out like the Stig from Top Gear) used discharge from the tesla coils to emulate musical notes. One word: awesome.

The Power of a Generous Passionate Community

What struck me the most was the ease in which enthusiastic inventors wanted to share their creations. Everybody was welcome to touch, play, participate and ask questions, and nobody was allowed to leave unsatisfied. We learned that a jetpack does exist: it is powered by 93% Hydrogen Peroxide, is propelled by steam at 180 bar and propels you 3 meters into the air for 30 seconds (good luck finding a tree). But most importantly, when using a real jetpack, you don’t really look that cool: you’re lifted by your armpits and have your legs dangling below you in sympathy. Sadly we weren’t allowed to try the jetpack, but the scientist behind it was so enthusiastic, we might as well have!

Nurturing the next generation of Makers

It dawned on me how we are gradually losing this spirit of tinkering in Singapore, eroded by our rapid pace of progress. We now have trouble even fixing the simplest of things (guilty as charged). Well, solutions! Every parent can encourage their kids to make their own toys instead of buying one ready-made off the shelf. You’ll be surprised at how many nifty things one can make out of trash! For the bolder parents, I recommend fifty dangerous things you should let your children do (I heard there’s a sell-out Summercamp in the US on the same topic of guiding children to play with dangerous objects in a safe manner). For the educators reading this, one simple idea: dedicate a small corner in your school, make an announcement to accept old electric appliances and computers, throw in some tools for good measure. Let children play, take things apart, put things together, fail, get hurt, learn, and try again.

For instance, most people do not actually work for money, but they work to earn a better quality of life – big idea in building a startup culture! People fork out real cash to purchase Farmville cash, so they can spend less time playing on Farmville (they call it a time hook, but aren’t we a walking paradox?) Do couples choose not to conceive because baby bonuses are insufficient, or because they simply cannot afford the quality time – might Europe’s mandatory maternity and paternity leave set an example?

I’ve found that the most valuable thing that anybody can give you really, is their time. Time too, in it’s natural passing, is also a human construct. Perception of time is time itself, and can expand in times of boredom, and contract in times of flow. Our psychological perception of time affects our decisions. And our decisions affect our lives.

A Balanced Appreciation of Time

In The Time Paradox, Philip Zimbardo (better known for the Stanford Prison Experiment) and John Boyd suggests that each of us hold biased time perspectives with which we make decisions with, that ultimately become ingrained as a mental habit. Some of us are trapped in the past, some relish the present, and some simply live in the future. Past-orientation can be focused on good memories or trapped in miss-opportunities; present-orientation can be hedonistic or fatalistic; and future-orientation can entail excessive goal achievement and risk taking.

No prizes for guessing – I happen to be excessively future oriented.. which comes at a high price in terms of family, health, and present enjoyment. I soon figured that at the rate I was going I might delay simply living my entire life! That would be a pretty bad deal, and definitely not much fun. There is a point in time where delayed gratification has to be taken in moderation.

Life changes when you achieve a full appreciation of time. Keeping an optimal temporal balance in mind, I make extra effort to appreciate the past for providing the identity and accompanying backstory that no one can deny, to focus on always being present and live life with vigor, whilst still keeping my healthy dose of optimism and excitement for what the future holds.

Generation NOW

At times, I do find myself a slave to time. It manifests in the frustrating five seconds when a page takes a longer time to load than I am used to; those moments where a hundred thousand things pile up on my to-do lists. It’s those times when I feel a impulse to be on top of current affairs, or be led by my curiosity and know everything I can possibly know about a subject.

There is a new expectation of immediacy, and and an accompanying need for action. Call it the attention economy – brands are just paying to grab our mind-share. In this cacophony and bombardment, we are expected to respond, respond, and respond.

But with what basis can we respond if we do not have time for thoughtfulness?

Clarity of Thought

This isn’t surprising. We spent most of our early school years marching to the beat of timetables, optimized for input. We were all was trained to think in 40-minute blocks of time, each with it’s own function of what to do and how to think. There was a time for Math, and then a scurry to the time for History. A time for play, which often meant being late for the time for English. We developed an incredible ability to absorb information without rumination, and to switch between various mental modes required for each domain.

I recently volunteered at an elementary school and met one teacher who had an extraordinary respect for her student’s time. After recess, the little ones streamed back into their classroom and laid their heads down on their desks. The lights went out, and soothing music soon filled the classroom as she started to narrate scenes of meadows and butterflies. “And now we shall all learn with calm minds and fill our hearts with generosity…” I saw the boys recovering from their beads of perspiration, and noticed some others who had dozed off to sleep. It was just 5 minutes, but it felt like a spiritual experience.

How often do we reflect on our intentions and actions? To reason and contemplate meaning? And to explore the whole substance of an issue? How frequently do we think with a sense of priority? Do we even give ourselves enough time to change our minds?

Budget Time for Inaction

Because I’m pretty lost without my calendar, I have resorted to budgeting time for all the important things – having free but bounded times for thoughts that matter.

To all founders, teachers, and parents, inaction is not a waste of time. Between action is the reflection, analysis, the study of why, and the prioritization of what is to come. Give yourself time. Be patient with your thoughts, and remember the following -

“It is not the time it takes to take the take that takes the time. It is the time it takes between the takes that takes the time.” – Roy Scheider, American actor

Think about it.

My respects for Jeroo and the folks at Aflatoun. What a feat of bringing together the accelerators with convening powers, the mavens of academics, the practitioners of financial education with immese ground experience and just about everyone who has done relevant work in this space. There’s a new exciting movement that is brewing to chart the way forward for financial education and access for children – at the age where habits start forming (from the researchers), and at the time when the marginal rate of investment is the greatest (from the policymakers).

Some quick lingering thoughts -

In some circles, the term financial literacy has become as taboo as entrepreneurship or web 2.0. The new focus is now on financial capability, with the ultimate goal of behavior change, as the result of having received a financial education. Yet, measuring behavior and action (what does it look like?) or involvement in existing financial systems (or a lack of involvement?) may not serve as good indicators of financial capability, especially in less-developed countries. The smartest of the poor deliberately exclude themselves from traditional financial institutions, rejecting savings instruments that offer 6% when inflation is standing at 16%. In fact, there were fascinating insights into what money management looks like in the poorest communities in the world. Recommended reading: Portfolios of the Poor.

Another exciting theme surrounds financial access, and the debate in creating child-friendly banking products with possible certification, ensuring appropriate safety and quality levels bounded by an ethical framework. Talks of easing in control gradually until kids turn 14, removing transaction fees and a minimum balance. No surprise that the bankers were demanding a business case, mirroring the rather tragic move when UK scrapped their Child Trust Funds just a few weeks ago, which I thought was a brilliant scheme when first introduced.

There was a clear dichotomy in the problems faced in the developing vs. developed worlds. At the lower levels of poverty, asset building is non-monetary as people invest in cattle, jewelry or relationships that may offer a better return. Was surprised to learn of the 90% savings rate in one case study, where survival literally depends on the ability to save up meager, irregular and unpredictable incomes – you don’t need to teach them how to save. I made a case that unlike the developed world, entrepreneurship in this instance is no longer a choice, and resonated immensely with the Teach a Man to Fish initiative in Paraguay – a rural education where students learn earned income strategies and graduate with a business. Ironically we have savings problems in developed countries, where you find complete financial inclusion but amateur knowledge on getting involved. It led me to scribble down this framework, revealing the importance of timing and matching financial education, capability and access. An important question raised in the academic track to ponder as well – Are we to claim that money is the equitable currency across the board?

On a side note, (this was not on the agenda but arose out of private discussions). I’ve always resonated with Mohd Yunus’ principles and the microfinance model, but have become a little apprehensive of how it’s evolved. Some MFIs are now a monolithic corporate structure, with funding from commercial banks and private equity firms, set in deregulated environments charging anywhere from 30%-85% interest, with a high repayment rate. This makes for a reliable super-profit machine with returns of over 50% and naturally attracts an overabundance of capital. Disbursement pressure skews responsible action and loan placements. Why does this already sound familiar? Even if we ignore the business case and revisit first principles, shouldn’t we advocate putting savings into business capital instead of just taking out a loan? It’s a myth that most of the poor cannot save.. transferring the control of money to the women sometimes works wonders.

And so I left with even more questions than before, but am ever so excited to get involved in these discussions going forward and hope to shape a product that could fundamentally solve the problem. At the heart, we all believe in the empowerment of children and to treat them as part of the solution. There’s always a fine balance between over-strategizing, and gaining momentum with madly passionate folks who have the gut-level indignation of the status quo. And I guess it’s only fitting to end off with Audrey‘s famous quote of the meeting – Let’s not forget to just let the kids have fun.

When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn’t mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP – kitchen police – as my highest duty.)

All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests – people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was.

Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles – and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too.

In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.

One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand.

“The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.”

Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.”

“Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so god-damned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

Caught this by accident on Discovery Channel and got hooked.

I previously read about the mad competition and hot-house preparation that kids (and parents) undergo in India to gun for top Kindergartens, but I never expected the same cut-throat reality in New York.. but it IS New York afterall, what was I thinking! If you feel like watching 4-year-olds being subjected to three IQ tests (to gain entry into the privates), interviews being masked as play dates, and parents stressing out over self-inflicted pressure, the whole documentary is available on youtube :)

“Every education system in the world is being reformed at the moment. But it’s not enough. Reform is no use anymore, because that’s simply improving a broken model. What we need is not evolution but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else.”

Amen.

The Krishnamurti Schools

“The ignorant man is not the unlearned, but he who does not know himself, and the learned man is stupid when all he relies on are books, on knowledge and on authority to give him understanding. Understanding comes only through self-knowledge, which is awareness of one’s total psychological process. Thus education, in the true sense, is the understanding of oneself, for it is within each one of us that the whole of existence is gathered.”

“When there is that intelligence that is born out of compassion and love, problems will be solved simply, quietly.”

I’ve been fascinated by the depth of Krishnamurti’s philosophy and his pursuit of educating the integrated human being. Integrated – it is a concept I still don’t fully understand. To be integrated in mind, body and soul; to be integrated in thought and action; to be integrated with the environment; or to be integrated in understanding the wholeness of life without being a specialist or idealist in just one domain?

Krishnamurti was an advocate of breaking away from psychological zones of safety – from the institutions, religions, and techniques that that put an end to independent thought and spontaneity. These forms of authority breed fear, and block an intelligent and unbiased understanding of life.

With such a level of disregard for authority, and a heightened sense of self-awareness, he then built his own philosophy of education from ground up. One with mentors that designed a curriculum around each student, one that brought back the art of inquiry. I have more questions than I have answers, about how these philosophies have been translated into execution, but I’m very intrigued and hope to pay a visit this Summer. One of his schools, Oak Grove, hosts a teacher’s academy for educators to visit and learn his methods.

The School of One

Fast forward, and we’re now living in a data-driven world. What if we leveraged technology and applied mass customization to education? This is exactly what The School of One has done, collecting data to profile each student, and then applying smart algorithms personalize a customized syllabus. I’m glad that small group and large group instruction have not been lost in the School of One, because I don’t believe technology should ever replace human interaction and discourse.

A great video has been put together of their Summer pilot, and I’m really excited by the potential of where we can take this. No longer does a tailored curriculum denote cottage-size schools as technology has enabled scalable, yet personalized instruction.

Taken Together

it’s interesting to contrasts these two methods, a century apart in conceptualization, but both based on the same ideals of putting the focus once again, on the learner. Fundamentally, the awareness of self has to complement academic rigour, and one should not exist without the other. What a joy it would be to marry these two methods!

Do you know any other schools which have an individualized curriculum?

Welcome to the life of a grade chaser.

1. Choice of Subjects
Always pick the easiest topics if you have a choice. Take a level-one Japanese language class even though you mastered the language in high school. Intentionally do poorly on the aptitude placement test so you are assigned a more basic class. Study past-year statistics of classes across the board and pick those in which more than 70% of students score above an A-. If there are multiple professors offering the same module, pick the one with an easy professor. Even better, if he’s known to be constantly traveling to give conference keynotes, you get more holidays! Once you pick the right subjects, half the battle is won.

2. Impression Management
Ask good questions in class (although you might already know the answer). Borrow homework and notes from seniors so you always turn in perfect answers. Make your answers neat to show you’re conscientious. Ask your professors even more questions outside of class. In some systems, this sets the impression that you’re a star student, and when you get anything below an A-, you have the liberty to simply waltz into the professor’s office to demand a grade-raise. A quick Google search even revealed a how-to guide on changing your grade.

3. Stay only within the syllabus
Because there’s no other incentive not to. Past-year papers (more affectionately known as ten-year series) give you model answers so that every hardworking student can produce the correct responses from a cookie-cutter. Exams are then a mere test of conscientiousness rather than intellect or understanding. There are only so many types of questions that can be set, that you soon learn the frameworks, and can spot topics and questions. In the event that no syllabus is present, and there are two sides to an argument, always respond with what your professor wants to hear, or what is politically correct, even though you might be strongly convicted of the other stance.

4. Exam Strategies
There’s a whole industry of books written about taking exams that I’m sick to the stomach. On the softer side, you learn from your teachers the “how” of answering questions more than the what and the why. You learn that graders are human too – they make mistakes, want more family time, do it for the money, and get bored marking thousands of cookie-cutter answers. Your sole purpose is then to make their job easier. You learn what keywords they’re looking for, write them bigger and highlight them so the grader doesn’t have to read through every single word and will not miss your answers. You thank them at the end of the paper to make them feel a little more appreciated and might just give you a few sympathy marks.

5. Project Politics
Form a dream team in which you can take classes together and group up for projects. If you don’t happen to know anyone in class, get impression management right – A very nuanced strategy is to dress smart and ask a few questions in the first class, that magically gets other bright kids attracted to you to group up. Two things then happen, you either free-ride everyone else’s work and intellect (especially if there is no peer evaluation component), or spoil the market by going over and above what is required for the project. Take note especially of the project assessment criteria and nail it according to the grading weightage.

I’m not even going to talk about the art of cheating (a higher level of creativity), which is far more rampant than I imagined – more than 90% of high school students and 92% college students cheat on a regular basis according to David Callahan. I hear from friends who went through China’s education system, that you’d be sure to be at the bottom of class if you didn’t cheat, they were left with Hobson’s choice. It’s simply baked into some college cultures.

And so we continue to use standardized tests to measure students across the nation, but what do they really measure? Is there seriously no better alternative? The tragic protagonists are the genuinely motivated learners who can’t be bothered with fitting into the system and are hence not rewarded by it. They are soon either forced to succumb, or are shadowed in comparison to those who simply make the right moves. Sometimes, they can’t fathom why in all earnestness, and are driven to depression and suicide.

At the end of a formal education, many who have been duly rewarded for their efforts have mastered three skills extremely well 1) pattern recognition 2) finding loopholes in a system and 3) gaming the system inside out. It’s such a great way to prepare generations of young people for life ahead, and I can only laugh at the irony to see so many of our systems broken and being exploited.

Before you criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them.