We're here because we’re failing generations in how to think through problems

 

One of the main issues in education and society is the lack of teaching systems thinking.

We’re programmed throughout our education to search for unitary or limited- view causes. And so long as our education system treats us this way, we’re none the wiser. It’s akin to the saying: “Don’t ask a fish what the temperature of the water is?” It wouldn’t have a scooby; its whole life has been in that environment.

On occassions there are simple solutions, but in human related problems that’s rarely the case. But we’re not taught that.

On a programme I’ve been running with colleagues for a decade we attempt to instil in our cohorts problem-solving (simple to compound) by considering different variables (often hidden) using systems.

We pose a number of problems in which we try and let them train themselves in understanding how different answers they may not have considered come into play.

For instance climate change is not just about climate and business, but a raft of other factors which must work together. The myth is people are not designed to think that way. Not true. It’s training that’s needed. It’s effortfull so requires training.

Here’s another interesting thought process that emerges in some guise in Sat tests. Which one is the odd one out? Pick one!

When the test was carried out on villagers in what was the USSR some years back, the answers astounded researchers. But what we now know is that the conceptual framework being used by the researchers was no better than those used by the villagers.

In other words, and to stretch it broadly, if you’re urban interacting with a villager to solve a problem, you’re no more smarter than they are by using conceptual thinking, such as the above.

This above patterning will work differently on differently people and cultures. Yet somehow researchers have convinced the world that these serve a great examples to decide a person’s intelligence.

Game Changers

I liked the phrase "game changer", used by a senior Yahoo exec when I interviewed him.

I have wanted to also write about some of the things that get me worked up in Education and the Media so I have combined the good, bad and well help from friends to russle up something in an area that we all have something to say.

That's next week. but you can glimpse the front page at viewmagazine.tv

Image shows former International Masters Journalism Students from 2006 - doing amazingly good things at present. Couple of videos in the pipeline e.g Rania in Egypt - one of the few women editors to edit a national newspaper.

Get mentored, Get going - Young Journalists

Soon the summer breeze will still and autumn leaves daintly sneak onto the ground.

The din of chatter, excited screams, alongside dim faces: something stirs.

It's term time.

Another intake of enquiry minds looking for a career in one of the toughest, open-end career paths, the media.

I will be smiling as I ready myself for first contact. Academics will know that feeling, a weeny tinge of stage fright, and expectation. What will they, her, him, be like?

Huh! that grey hair has grown.

This time around I'm likely to feel a little bit different. My thoughts turn to the challenge, that the stakes need to rise. This for both an industry slow to catch up, but now trying, and for my own peace of mind.

There's nothing more enriching than to find new cohorts who crave the exchange of knowledge. I'll be asking, as I do, whether: "We can either do this, or we can go down the rabbit hole".

Here, nothing is scared. It was made by mortals and can be deconstructed and constructed anew. This year I will be seeking such a challenge myself looking to a PhD to indulge new lines of thinking and applications.

This year I also hope the essence, the new philosophy of journalism will be less unsettling.

Last year when I mentioned how as a print journalist you would have to acquire some skills with video, if you wanted your CV to be in the tray," next interview call back", the mood in the hall darkened.

Masters' student Kathy Land's blog captured the moment and afterwards in her blog.

Hello Kathy if you see this, I hope all's going well.

The job of a trainer/lecturer has many sides: knowledge broker, examiner, inspirer, friend. And in this rubik's cube of an industry, keeping up to date and being relevant with developments is a high priority to assist Kathy and her colleagues.

"Those who observe will learn from their surroundings. Those that look but cannot see will leave non the wiser". This gem I saw at a museum is so apt. Delicate, impressionable minds in the hands of professionals.

But there are some things, such as life experiences - a module within MBA - that we can't short circuit, but I like to talk about with students. Adhocly here are some observations and post it notes from my school of life.

1. Try and see lectures as a two way conversation. You too can contribute by asking questions. There's no such thing as an irrelevant question. But if you've read up on something, been curious about something in the past, ask.

2. Find a mentor or be grandfathered/mothered. Professionals in the industry love the contact with you, but at a convenient measured time. But please try not to start your email with "I'm looking for a job". It may on occasion work, but execs don't have a list of jobs in their desk waiting for you.

3. In Autumn when you're starting your career that's the best time to start looking for a new friend, a mentor - someone who you think I'd love to be like you. By July the following year, first contacts are a bit late and everyone else is looking for a job, so... yep you've guessed Mrs Mentor is receiving a fair few requests by now.

4. Unless you're Madonna or Brad Pitt, your email ( which is the most convenient form of first contact) will not be answered immediately. Don't despair.

5. Devise a one page easy-to-read, fairly professional web page or blog, which would be of interest to your mentor.Embedd the link in your email.

6. In your email; three paragraphs max. A simple header and a polite sign off.

7. Engage, engage, engage. Unlike your previous life where when the bell goes off it's a relief, the end of lectures should be the time for you to want to test some of what you've learned.

8. Party and make friends. We're not all doom merchants. Play is an important part of learning.

9. Over the years the dominant group in journalism Masters are women. Men are becoming thinner on the ground and minorities almost invisible. The industry hasn't changed to where it should be for minorities. I recall the push for sex and ethnic equality extensively in the late 80s. So if you're from an ethnic background you've got industry inertia to wrestle with.

10. Experiment, test, enquire, be positive. Life's experience is as it says on the tin, and you won't find that always in fron the the screen. And if I am around on campus, as many of you have done, lets chat.

Shashank when did you want for us to get together?

The beauty of video

The beauty of video isn't just its aesthetic but its true power and simplicity; the progressive capturing of reality. We could take an array of software to produce the likes of 8 Days , but you'd agree that sometimes the simplest is the most powerful.

Take a camera, choose a backdrop and ask a simple question.

In this case it was if you could chage one thing, what would that be?

The students then, that answered this were untainted; their views crystal, their honesty obvious, their heads and hearts ruled.

Who knows, but as they climb the totem pole of journalism, will their views change? So for me as much as them, this is a tad anthropological - a freeze frame of history. No, really their history, when they might ask themselves in years to come, was I right.

In1992 I did the same with a 13 year old uncertain of South Africa's future. She lived in a small town near Pretoria. Here's veronique back then in Through the Eyes of a Child

The piece is equally dear to me: I'd barely been in South Africa when one of the top independents asked me to produce direct this with three day's notice and a turn arounf of two days. .

Fast Forward today. This observation of ones views is more acute in politicans, who start their careers with an alacrity to change the world. Few survive the course with scruples.

As journalists we all go through a pupae phase - almost akin to Stephen Covey's dictum (Seven ways of Success): dependecy, independency, and interdependecy.

And along the way, do we really change. Will this generation born into the web mass-niche media alter its views to accommodate the traditional generation?

Itumelang - one of South Africa's dynamic twenty somethings said something that was neat explaining change in South Africa. "We've had a political change, but not a social one". Ditto Journalism?

What will become more important? So far, the environment, social interaction, the "us" culture as opposed to the didactic era of Thatcherism and dare we say Thatcherism. 2.0 (Blairism)

Of the Masters students in this video, many are doing well. Sub editors, and editors-in-chiefs of lively journalistic organs.They hail from four corners of the world. It was a thorough joy teaching them,as it was the out going group this year. I tip my cloth cap.

Their curiosity welded the old and new, the future and the now, and a freshness that we as cynical journalists admire - for once we were honest truth seekers. Yes, many of us still are, but the knocks of the profession, the relentless culture which often eschews what matters for what is tantalising is burdensome.

When a daily paper can run misleading headlines of Sharks off Britain's coast knowing it's not true, but bask in the circulation of a three fold increase in sale, you're inclined to ask the question again. What is it we do?

On the full version of What If Doug, a successful ( I hope he won't mind) designer cum journo in California wants to change cooking books. They're too bland and don't bring out the essence of this great art, he comments.

This isn't frivolity, but a microcosm for all things that take up space doing nothing in particular. So go on. What would you change? And if you happen to record it, will it stand the test of time in years to come.