Embracing Imperfections

What is missing in education? This was the topic of discussion at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center in 2018 between Tyler Cowen, Nicholas Nassim Taleb and Bryan Caplan. The following are some of their striking points:

We learn by doing
Practice ought to come before theory
We must value being knowledgeable (understanding facts)
We need a balance between technical education and liberal arts
Can we apply common sense in real life situations?

In the first part of the talk Cowen asked a question that a reader had e-mailed: “How does one begin to learn meaningfully if you’re not awesome?” Taleb’s response set the stage for an engaging conversation, saying,

“The point is that we are imperfect. And the way you can function best is accepting we’re imperfect. It’s why we have theology. You want perfection, you can find it in theosis and find a lot of things...If you consider that we are imperfect, and the way you can arise, this sense of honor, by doing duties or self-sacrifice, then you have a lot of risk in the game. It’s taking risks for the sake of becoming more human.”

This remark is profound considering school operations, policies and rules reflect no risk to those who decide to implement them or those ordered to enforce them. Consider that even just a decade ago, young scholars did not have the access to social media noise and virtue signaling that is now readily available to them and is rampant in academia. Public education has pivoted from providing specific metrics and actions to guide academic growth into providing metrics for profit and suggestions to appease ideological agendas. In other words, we have regressed from viewing children as learners capable of intellectual growth to victims in need of rescuing from the left, the right and everything in between.

Allow me to use an example of when I began my career as an educator in 2008. At that time, if a child was not learning the practical skills and concepts, in say 4th grade math class, they would receive a failing grade of an F. A discussion with parents would ensue, tutoring and interventions followed and hopefully by the end of the year there would be a significant measurable improvement. This is demonstrated by the one and only standardized test given each year on the core subjects (one for math, one for reading, and one for writing). This one standardized test had a palpable effect on scholars as it determined whether or not they would be required to attend summer school for additional skill practice. If they failed their tests and did not attend summer school they would have to repeat the school year. Although not perfect, it established some accountability to allow an opportunity for further skill practice. Furthermore, it was usually one or two companies that profited from the making of the test and formalizing the results.

Fast forward to 2021, a couple years before I quit my career as an educator. It was made explicitly clear in private and in staff meetings that an F on a scholar’s report card would entail extensive “documentation and justification” or there will be an “override” of the grade. I dismissed this and gave an F to a scholar who did not pass a single assignment and failed every math test given to him. He received interventions but whether at lunch, art class or math class, he just could not exercise body control. (I could not sweep his large deficiencies under the rug.) I was called into the office like I was Bart Simpson. The principal and vice principal said they were going to change the grade from an F to a D due to insufficient “attestation”. I never heard that word before and had to Google it as soon as I left the meeting.

On top of this, the child was given the option to attend summer school. There was no real requirement or consequence if he didn’t attend consistently (he did not). This scholar in particular, still went on to pass to the following grade. By this point standardized tests were no longer administered just once at the end of the year but several times throughout the year. Why so much over-testing? It became big business! Test makers such as Pearson make so much money a headline from Forbes last summer literally reads: “Pearson’s Profits Surge In First Half, 2023 Guidance Maintained”. Ask any public educator, the tests last all day and most of the week, also they “don’t count” for class points or whether you get promoted to the next grade. I recall one grueling day of testing, poor kids bored out of their minds, me reading from the script. (At the end of the day I was still an “employee”, the emails forwarded to me by the administrators of my administrators demonstrated they liked to refer to me by this term.) After reading the instructions and starting the timer I went back to sit at my desk while they clicked away on their computers. I thought of all the empty suits that would profit from this torture and couldn’t help but feel like a sucker. One standardized test, maybe two a year, but five!? That’s harsh. This is when I knew, you will not change the system. The system will change you.

So, the choice was simple. Allow myself to compromise my values by following the orders of the Board of Education despite knowing it was a disservice to the community or quit and forge my own path in the American educational landscape. This essay or article is a result of my choosing the latter. As proud as I am of my 15 years of being a city worker guiding young learners, I acknowledge the reality that there will be no significant innovation from within the system. We must build from outside and become above the system. The world is a bigger, more connected place than before and we can no longer discover its wonders from only one adult, spending most of the time in one room, studying within a rigid framework.

Now, I’m aware that bureaucratic red tape can be found everywhere and in some cases is completely unavoidable. However, does this mean we must accept stagnation and raise the white flag on innovating public school systems? My startup and I say: No. We’re harnessing the ideas of our greatest thinkers and doers and synthesizing them to inspire stakeholders to step up. Instead of cozying up to conventional thinking we look to uncover the frontiers that await us.

Link to discussion & transcript: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/bryan-caplan-nassim-taleb-tyler-cowen-higher-education-college-fc4b845fe30e

Searching for Secrets

To generate momentum, we will reflect on the wise words from Peter Thiel’s Zero to One. In chapter eight he writes,

“There are two kinds of secrets: secrets of nature and secrets about people. Natural secrets exist all around us; to find them, one must study some undiscovered aspect of the physical world. Secrets about people are different: they are things that people don't know about themselves or things they hide because they don't want others to know. So when thinking about what kind of company to build, there are two distinct questions to ask: What secrets is nature not telling you? What secrets are people not telling you?”

Returning to the discussion at George Mason University, Taleb made a similar point:

“We can apply this to the concept of learning by doing. Better skin in the game is, teach people young, very young, spend three or four hours doing something. How did people learn medicine in the old days? It was a generational thing. Your father was a doctor, and you walked around with your father, or maybe mother. Actually, there were a lot of women in the Levant in the health sector. Then you learned, and this profession stayed within the families. Their secrets weren’t transmitted to the outside. Which, unfortunately, we don’t have because the problem now with an education is it’s already broad and open, whereas, transmission of technical skills are worked by guilds and secrecy, like the masonry, to the point that today — the Romans had phenomenal concrete that we don’t know the recipe.”

How do we uncover these different kinds of secrets? The answer must involve curiosity. Nurturing the natural curiosity of learners and nurturing their interests. I’m reminded of Dr. Gabor Mate’s method of Compassionate Inquiry which he also called, “Compassionate Curiosity”. This is when a person having a human experience doesn’t ask, “Why did I do that?!” But rather, “Why DID I do that?”. All the while we uncover layers of our complex ideas, feelings, and biology. Still, we must never lose sight that the purpose is for the learner to acquire skills that will enable him to live with self-respect, function independently in society and if desired, maintain and improve our communities.

Taleb makes an excellent point about the need to establish these distinctions. He states,

“There’s a separation of things we do to become civilized and things we do to make money later on. People conflate one for the other. To come back, to reiterate for the moment, geometry was like poetry, something you do as an intellectual exercise. It was not required because it actually degrades the way . . . Conflating the two has actually led to a lot of problems.The bigger problem is, where is the propaganda that we’re getting? It looks like the ratio of theories and indoctrination to finance is very high and it’s the humanities. It effectively stays lower than mathematics because you can’t really have . . .Although we have proposals to remove the square root of -1 because it was too phallic or something — I think it was some kind of hoax — but mathematics, stuff like that. So you separate these two by institutions that are completely insulated from one another. Things you do to become civilized like knowing the history of Scotland and things you do for skills.”

School districts have become less about increasing skills in literacy and critical thinking among their student bodies and more about ensuring educators stick to the ideological agendas assigned to them. No need to cue the violins, educators decided on their own accord to get into the teaching business. However, the current noise is vastly different than in the past and has distracted schools from the priority of facilitating skill growth and a strong well-being.

For example, establishing clear and safe boundaries around topics of gender is becoming taboo and a distraction. An adult old enough to make his own decisions is one thing. A child who is still growing and in need of protection is another thing altogether. (A “tomboy” can claim “I wish I was a boy” but after allowing Mother Nature to run its course as she grows into her womanly body, she can say, “I love being me”.) Perhaps such private and personal topics about gender ought only be discussed with parents present. Yet, the problem with propaganda is that it actually convinces parents to support the idea of children causing irreparable damage to themselves. We must also scrutinize the industries profiting financially from this. Call me an optimist or an idealist but I believe we can model ways to navigate such sensitive, nascent topics. Though because educators do relinquish some of their freedom of speech while actively teaching in the classroom, this leaves them walking on eggshells with their scholars, the parents, the admin, the media, etc.

Did I just go there? Damn skippy I did! Some might say, “Israel, just because your little startup isn’t generating revenue doesn’t mean you can’t still be canceled. Don’t be controversial! You’re barely getting started.” Well, the title of this article is about accountability is it not? And this is a topic in education at the moment that is being pushed on children without being thoroughly examined. Are we to ignore it simply because it’ll open up a can of worms and piss everyone off? With the acceleration of technology and the speed in which information (and misinformation) is now shared, discussing healthy boundaries with the youth is a good measure. Instead of parents hoping their children are not being misguided and influenced in the classrooms, we can create a system where parents know exactly what the beliefs and values of their children’s educators are before allowing them access to their kids. Also, in a more modern system, educators would be able to express their boundaries regarding what they believe around the topic of gender. They can state their unwillingness to support certain harmful ideologies or corrupt influences, in order to maintain focus on skill practice and intellectual curiosity. This way, parents and educators are on the same page about the values they want to instill in the youth. (Later you will see what AI has to say when I asked them about discussing gender dysphoria in schools, the results may surprise you.)

I’ve mentioned previously that this could be accomplished with a pilot program of some sort. Where the experimental school is managed entirely through invested stakeholders. A virtual portal connects them together via an app or a decentralized protocol like nostr. (This essentially eliminates censorship and profit driven algorithms). Groups of educators work with groups of scholars based on their values. No more settings that consist of one overwhelmed educator assigned to a large group of scholars trapped in a boxed room, bad fluorescent lighting, and walls made of painted cinder blocks. This arrangement is outdated and quite frankly, depressing. Why not use inspiring and sustainable architecture like geodesic domes that merge with the natural outside world (hybrid of outdoor and indoor learning activities daily)? Why not allow educators and aides to choose their fellow collaborators? Why not allow parents the option to research and choose the educators that best suit the values of their family? Why wait two weeks to get paid and not allow options for immediate payment via bitcoin or other forms of payment? Is it because it’s “too unrealistic”? Or is it that Americans are now more inclined to opt for the easy, the quick fixes, the shortcuts, the phone addiction with its manipulating algorithms, “chasing the bag”, over the concentrated effort of creating, acquiring skills, and problem solving?

Dr. Gabor Mate's lectures on Youtube and his books can facilitate personal reflection on human experience.

When Bryan Caplan and Nassim Taleb were discussing what is a good metric for a good education they disagreed. Caplan believed performance on the job is a fairly good metric. Taleb thought otherwise, arguing, “It is a good metric for people wanting to become employees, but the world needs people who create things — the artisans — or people who would mend things. Because I had this idea that Bill Gates, as much as I hate him, he created something. Or Steve Jobs. These are the people who make the engine work, and the other people are just around. For these people, we’ve got to look at these people as a disproportionate part of the sample, not the variables they take. That is why I disagree.”

Sometimes, naïveté is a part of life. In college, I thought having a career as an educator meant I’d have credibility and be able to influence the “profession” with my ideas. Boy was I terribly mistaken. Although I’m confident I assisted young learners in growing their academic skills, beyond the classroom I was nothing more than an “employee” as Taleb mentioned. And I’ve uncovered some secrets from this experience; what he’s referred to as mathemata pathemata or “learning through suffering”. Like being seven years into my career and believing administrators were properly vetted and could be trusted to demonstrate fairness. It only took one idiotic and jealous administrator to make me learn that they can be corrupt and sabotaging influences. The fact that the Board of Education vouched for him made it even more of a learning experience. If left unchecked, poor judgment and incompetence will nestle in comfortably at the highest rungs of any hierarchy or bureaucracy. The only useful action I’ve seen an administrator take is hire a good educator. (Although near the end of may 15 yr career the new hires were subpar to put it nicely). Still, even onboarding strong educator candidates can be accomplished without an expensive bureaucrat.

Some people reading this will point out, “But what about evaluations? How do we assess the quality of instruction given by educators? We need administrators to provide feedback and training.” I too childishly thought this way. That is, until a “new leader” (“New Leaders” or “Emerging Leaders” whatever the corny name of the principal training program was) became my principal in a matter of a few months and I went from never having an unsatisfactory rating, to being written up three times and almost fired in a timespan of a semester. Simply because I wasn’t liked! (If you don’t have haters you’re doing it wrong.) Only problem was, he was my “superior”. In essence, I was fragile and didn’t even know it.

Nassim Taleb described it eloquently, “Academia, it’s a business where people are entirely judged by peers. Entirely, this is what causes all the problems we have -bureaucrats , who judges bureaucrats? Other bureaucrats, the boss, etc., it doesn’t work, they start to have meetings…look busy…talk to you on the phone for two hours, write emails…”

Who ought to judge educators then? The clients! Which are the parents and the scholars. Either they are learning skills and applying them or they are not. Therefore, we can cut through the shit and face the reality of the progress being made or lack thereof. Or we can trust the admin who are merely following the orders of their admin. It’s a vicious cycle. If some are hell-bent on having a third party evaluate instruction or content, we have AI agents that can facilitate such things. And if there is a learning inventory with content published and made transparent by the educators themselves, only more trust can come from this. There are countless possible variations of a new system. Will such an endeavor yield mathemata pathemata? Yes, but won’t the status quo face its own while repeating more of the same? A pressing question remains: Are we ready to create the educational infrastructure of the future?

Mathemata Pathemata: "Learning through suffering" or "Learn through struggle".

Asking AI About Gender Dysphoria in Schools

I tinker with AI tools as a founder in the education design field. When researching controversial topics with various AI, the results are eye opening. I shared my professional stance: Best we maintain caution and protect children who are not ready to process complex topics such as gender dysphoria in schools as a way to shield them from unnecessary anxious confusion and or premature self-labeling. It was not easy to get AI to respond to the following question, Claude AI flat out refused to answer.

Q:You as an Al, I want you to choose which one do YOU choose: Yes we must protect children from topics of gender dysphoria in schools or No we must not protect them. Which one do you lean more toward Yes to protect or no not protect?

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