A Bright Side to Big Data

One of many good questions that came up at the Alternatives to Compulsory Education conference last Saturday was raised by a person who works in human resources. She noted that while she goes out of her way to seek and interview applicants with nonacademic backgrounds—and those she hired have performed well—most people in her field do not seek such applicants. Because human resource personnel have such a large pool to select from, they can ignore those resumes that are unconventional and focus on the ones that have conventional signals of success, such as graduation from college. As this person noted, those conventional signals are not particularly accurate for determining who will be a good employee, but they are customary and widely used by business, so how do we help homeschooled teenagers who don’t have college degrees find work? Must they go to college?

I responded that, first, only 27% of Americans, as of 2011, hold four-year college degrees, so the idea that we all need them in order to have the economy run and create innovation is crazy. The argument that college graduation rates are driving our economic and technological advances is a half-truth at best; our nation’s incredible growth after World War Two occurred with less than a quarter of the country having college degrees, and many important technological and commercial advances in recent decades have occurred outside the university by college dropouts. It should also be noted there are a lot more college graduates working as baristas and retail sales clerks now, too. Just graduating college doesn’t guarantee you more money and a better job than someone who doesn’t graduate. Second, there is more to be being an effective employee than owning a four-year college degree, and the cost of college is making course completion certificates and other less expensive signals attractive options to both employers and prospective employees. While the push to get everyone to get college degrees has resulted in a record-high level of Americans doing so, The Washington Post reports that “. . . in terms of future earnings, education level matters less these days than in previous generations, and field of study matters more.”

In my answer I also mentioned books like DIY U and Hacking Your Education and the value of learning computer coding on your own in order to find work today, as well as the many opportunities unschooling provides for creating a portfolio of travel, work, apprenticeships, and internships that prove to employers not only your self-sufficiency and resourcefulness, but what you actually can do.

However, the fear that your adult child won’t be considered for a particular job because a check box was not filled on their high school transcript is real for many people. The independent ways of proving you are qualified for hire that I described may seem more burdensome to some than merely presenting evidence of college graduation to an employer, so I know we need more solutions than what I proposed.

Then, on Monday after the conference, I read about Gild, a company that provides recruits to technology companies by using their proprietary software to sift through data on the Internet and locate promising developers. The New York Times reports that the new field of “work-force science” searches for talent using different signals for success: “How well does the person perform? What can the person do? And can it be quantified?” This is, to me, a hopeful path for Big Data to take: people will be judged based on the merits of what they can actually do, rather than just use a college degree as a substitute for competence. In the Times article, Dr. Vivienne Ming, Gild’s chief scientist is described: “She doesn’t think Silicon Valley is as merit-based as people imagine. She thinks that talented people are ignored, misjudged or fall through the cracks all the time. She holds that belief because she has had some experience of it.”

Gild is focused on providing programmers to Silicon Valley by searching the Internet for candidates using their algorithms:

“Is his or her code well-regarded by other programmers? Does it get reused? How does the programmer communicate ideas? How does he or she relate on social media sites? . . .

“Everybody can pretty much agree that gender, or how people look, or the sound of a last name, shouldn’t influence hiring decisions. But Dr. Ming takes the idea of meritocracy further. She suggests that shortcuts accepted as a good proxy for talent — like where you went to school or previously worked — can also shortchange talented people and, ultimately, employers. “The traditional markers people use for hiring can be wrong, profoundly wrong,” she said.

Dr. Ming’s answer to what she calls “so much wasted talent” is to build machines that try to eliminate human bias. It’s not that traditional pedigrees should be ignored, just balanced with what she considers more sophisticated measures. In all, Gild’s algorithm crunches thousands of bits of information in calculating around 300 larger variables about an individual: the sites where a person hangs out; the types of language, positive or negative, that he or she uses to describe technology of various kinds; self-reported skills on LinkedIn; the projects a person has worked on, and for how long; and, yes, where he or she went to school, in what major, and how that school was ranked that year by U.S. News & World Report.

“Let’s put everything in and let the data speak for itself,” Dr. Ming said of the algorithms she is now building for Gild.

There are other companies described in the article who are also doing what Gild does, so it is likely this area will grow beyond just the search for talented programmers. The article notes that Dr. Ming “wants to expand the algorithm so it can search for and assess other kinds of workers, like Web site designers, financial analysts and even sales people at, say, retail outlets.”

Using Big Data to create a true meritocracy is an interesting concept that holds more promise for unearthing talent than our current system, where socio-economic status often trumps merit. Homeschoolers and unschoolers can definitely benefit from this innovation, as can employers. I wonder: is there any support or interest among hackademics to explore this technology and ramp it up for use by those who can’t, or don’t want, to attend college but who nonetheless have marketable skills and knowledge?

The Diamond in the Rough

I’ve known for weeks that this was going to be a busy and exciting week for me: several writing and editing projects I’m working on are due, I have two speaking engagements (one, at Harvard on April 27, I’ll be writing more about soon; the other is a private talk to homeschoolers at a local library), and my band is playing a gig on Saturday night (we’re the opening act for a record release party at the All Asia in Central Square). But the horrors from last week color everything I think and do now.

As I write a funeral service is being held in a Medford church for one of the bomb victims and a huge American flag is draped across Medford City Hall. My wife, Day, has gone back to work at school after a week off, but she was warned last night to deflect questions about the bombing to the school’s administration: it turns out the “White Hat” bomber was a student at the school during 2005 (though Day did not know him). The events of last week continue to unsettle us in myriad ways, and probably will for some time. I now have an inkling about how people who live in war zones or areas afflicted with constant terrorist activity must feel as they attempt to keep their lives “normal” in the face of surprise attacks—and all I suffered was anxiety.

Like many Bostonians, I have a strong sense of being violated because the fabric of my everyday life is deeply stained by these recent events. Traveling, working, and living in and around Boston since the mid-1970s, my familiar stomping grounds include Copley Square, Watertown, Cambridge, and Belmont (my wife’s family is from Belmont and Watertown), and I have nothing but fond memories of all the marathons I attended during college or watched from the Holt office (729 Boylston St.). In fact, I was at a meeting in Watertown on Thursday night, leaving the area just a couple of hours before the firefight and explosions started not far from where I was.

After I arrived home from Watertown, my mother-in-law called to be sure we were all home safe because she just learned that an MIT officer was shot and killed earlier on Mass. Ave. That call put us a bit on edge, but the news reports we watched didn’t conclusively link the shooting to the terror suspects, and we eventually turned the TV off and went to sleep. My daughter Alison and I both woke up an hour or so later because we heard distant explosions (Watertown is about four miles away), but we went back to bed when it became quiet again, not certain if they were explosions, trucks backfiring, or something else. Then, around 6AM, our phone started ringing with urgent messages: Bunker Hill Community College called to tell Alison school was canceled “for safety reasons.” Day’s dad in Florida called next to be sure we knew about the firefight in Watertown (where he grew up as a teenager), and from that moment on we had the television on. Then came calls from local officials telling us to stay off the roads, stay indoors, use caution, and the stream of messages on the TV seemed just as dire: close down your business, stay home, don’t open the door except for police officers with proper identification. When I came home Thursday night from Watertown I thought life was going back to a ”new normal” after the marathon bombing; I had no idea the new normal would include being in lock down while the police conducted a huge manhunt.

I write not to whine, but to understand how even someone who is just tangentially touched by the horrific events of last week can be so deeply affected by them. My band was scheduled to play three sets at a restaurant in Chelsea that Friday night but our younger band members led the move to cancel the gig because they were so worn out by the events of the day. I’m glad we canceled so we could rest from the tense week and especially that weird Friday; but I’m also sad we canceled because it would have been an epic, cathartic gig that celebrated the capture of the second terrorist; but we had no idea that was going to happen when we made the decision to cancel earlier that evening.

And that’s just it: We don’t really know what’s going to happen.

From the minute the bombs went off the media reported all sorts of information about what was going on that later proved to be inaccurate, false, or of no consequence; for me, the media rollercoaster ride was as exhausting as the events themselves! I got a headache trying to follow the breaking news and I have a deeper respect for law enforcement professionals who, despite all the dead ends they had to follow, continued to stay focused and energetic about their work.

All the uncertainty and randomness of life got thrown in our faces in Boston last week, reminding us of the thin line we walk each day between life and death. The bombing also displayed the kindness of strangers, as demonstrated by the many civilians who helped the wounded and calmed others at the bomb site. We are, indeed, “our brothers’ keeper,” and, particularly in the midst of tragedy, common people are needed to help as much as specialists. That, to me, is the diamond to be found in the rough of the past week’s terror.

A Gift and a Correction

April 14 is John Holt’s birthday, and to celebrate the occasion I am offering free downloads of the new digital edition of John Holt’s Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children.

From Saturday, April 13 until midnight, Monday, April 15 there will be free downloads of the Kindle book, Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children by John Holt. If you don't own a Kindle, you can read Kindle books on your computer or smartphone using these free apps from Amazon.

A Correction

Yesterday I emailed this site’s newsletter, Learning All the Time. In it I made some announcements, but, unfortunately, I overlooked two things before I hit “Send,” much to my regret. First, I left a typo in the title of the new book; the correct title is:

The Legacy of John Holt: A Man Who Genuinely Understood, Trusted, and Respected Children

Second, I accidentally left off the name of a contributor to the book, Wendy Priesnitz. Many apologies, Wendy. Here is the correct list of contributors:

Roland Meighan, Vita Wallace, Nelson, Kirk, and Strobe Talbott, Alec Clowes, Berrien Moore, Thomas Armstrong, Jerry Mintz, Peggy Hughes, Merloyd Lawrence, Wendy Priesnitz, Larry and Susan Kaseman, Theo and Anita Geisy, Peter Bergson, Patrick Farenga, Susannah Sheffer, Aaron Falbel, and Jenny Wright. The introduction is by Kirsten Olson.

I’ll be publishing excerpts from the book in the next Learning All the Time newsletter.

Shocking Increase in A.D.H.D. Diagnosis in the United States

Today the NY Times reported “Nearly one in five high school age boys in the United States and 11 percent of school-age children over all have received a medical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

What is shocking to me, after decades of reading and following the controversies surrounding the A.D.H.D. diagnosis, is how little outrage there is among parents. The article reports there is a 53 percent increase in A.D.H.D. diagnosis in the past decade in the United States. Are other countries witnessing such a spike in A.D.H.D. diagnosis? Apparently not, but it depends on the definition a country uses for A.D.H.D., and since the United States is enacting a new, broader definition this year we are likely to continue to remain the world leader in A.D.H.D. drug consumption.
   
The heart of the critique has always been that A.D.H.D. is so amorphous (it’s definition has been a moving target over the decades) yet so easy to convince schools and parents of the need to dose children (a pill that makes your difficult child compliant and smarter!), as well as being very profitable for the pill manufacturers, that the disease is ripe for over-diagnosis. That fear was expressed as far back as 1975 in the book The Myth of the Hyperactive Child, and repeated by Dr Thomas Armstrong in 1995 (The Myth of the A.D.D. Child). This new report indicates that some key doctors today think so too, such as Harvard's Dr. Jerome Groopman (“There’s a tremendous push where if the kid’s behavior is thought to be quote-unquote abnormal—if they’re not sitting quietly at their desk—that’s pathological, instead of just childhood.”), but apparently no one listens to them in the medical field. Big Phama’s ad campaigns for A.D.H.D. treatments, such as those that admonish parents to “Do everything you can do to help your child succeed,” are wildly successful. “Sales of stimulants to treat A.D.H.D. have more than doubled to $9 billion in 2012 from $4 billion in 2007,” according to the Times article.

The last word in the article is given to Dr. Ned Hallowell, who was a cheerleader for A.D.H.D. drugs. He has changed his mind about the safety of A.D.H.D. drugs since the diagnosis has become so common.

“I think now’s the time to call attention to the dangers that can be associated with making the diagnosis in a slipshod fashion,” he said. “That we have kids out there getting these drugs to use them as mental steroids — that’s dangerous, and I hate to think I have a hand in creating that problem.”

Participate in a Study of Grown Unschoolers

Dr. Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn, is seeking adults who were unschooled for a new study he is conducting. He writes:

[This is] a study of adults—age 18 and older—who were “unschooled” during at least the last two years of what otherwise would have been their high school years.  For this study we are seeking the participation not just of those who were in the initial sample of families, but also anybody, anywhere, who fits the criteria.
For the sake of this study, “unschooling” is defined as follows: Unschooling is not schooling. Unschooling parents do not send their children to school and they do not do at home the kinds of things that are done at school. More specifically, they do not establish a curriculum for their children, do not require their children to do particular assignments for the purpose of education, and do not test their children to measure progress. Instead, they allow their children freedom to pursue their own interests and to learn, in their own ways, what they need to know to follow those interests. They may, in various ways, provide an environmental context and environmental support for the child's learning. In general, unschoolers see life and learning as one.

For our study of unschooled adults, we are seeking people who meet the following criteria:
a.  Participants must be 18 years of age or older.
b. Participants must have been unschooled (by the above definition) for at least two years during what would have been their high school years.  AND
c. Participants must not have attended 11th and 12th grade at a high school.

If you meet these criteria and are willing to participate in the study, or if you have any questions about the study, please send an email to Gina Riley at this address:  professorginariley@gmail.com.  If you have questions or comments about this study that might be of interest to other readers, please post them here.  Either Gina or I will answer any questions.

If you know anyone who qualifies for this study, please tell them about it and send them Gina’s email address and/or a link to this blog post.  If you belong to an unschooling group of any sort, please send them a link to this post.  To make this study most effective, we want to reach as many unschooled adults as we possibly can.

THANK YOU for considering this request!

The Legacy of John Holt

I’m working on the final touches of a new book about John Holt that contains 16 essays about John’s lasting influence on the authors, all of whom knew John personally as colleagues, friends, or homeschoolers (both parents and children). I expect the book to come out in the next four to six weeks and I’ll announce it here when copies are for sale. It is titled The Legacy of John Holt: A Man Who Genuinely Understood, Respected, and Trusted Children.

28 years since he passed away, John’s personality and writing continue to influence those of us who were his friends and those who only know him through his writing. It shows how sound his ideas and writing are, as well as how ahead of his time he was regarding how children learn and what adults can do to help them. One of the things I hope to do with this book is break the rigid interpretation of Holt’s ideas that some unschoolers, and many teachers, have about his work, namely that all Holt is saying is provide freedom and access to the world to children and they will easily learn everything they need or want. In Aaron Falbel’s essay, “John Holt: A Man Who Saw Things Clearly,” I think we get an important clarification about this key insight of Holt’s. Here’s an excerpt about it from Aaron’s essay. What do you think about this?

In many ways, I think many people have misunderstood or misinterpreted what John Holt had to say about learning, and therefore discounted it. He was fond of saying that children were good at learning, that they don’t need to be made to learn or to be shown how, and that what we need to do is give them access to the world, to people, places, tools, resources, and so on, and as much help and assistance as they ask for, not more. I think many thought John was implying that, since children were good at learning, therefore they would learn everything they needed to know as long as they had access to it. All one had to do was to get rid of the nasty element of coercion, and then children would effortlessly and joyfully learn all the things we want them to know. But I don’t think John was saying this. He knew that there were no guarantees when it came to learning. He knew that when we try to ensure or guarantee certain outcomes, that’s when we get into trouble. In the revised edition of How Children Learn, John wrote, “All I am saying in this book can be summed up in two words: Trust Children” (p. viii). If being good at learning meant that learning would be automatic or guaranteed, then we wouldn’t need to trust children. We only need to have trust and faith in something or someone when we don’t know the outcome, when the outcome is not guaranteed, when it might not happen.

Similarly, if John Holt were alive today, I think he would be saddened by the efforts of some people who try to turn his term “unschooling” into some sort of a system, into a set of rules that must be followed. John trusted parents to learn from their experience with their children. He didn’t say, “If you’re going to call it unschooling, you’re going to have to do it my way.” He wanted them to figure out what was right for them, for their whole family. His advice and ideas were available as guidance for those who wanted it, but he didn’t want to turn unschooling into—of all things—a type of curriculum for parents. This, I feel, was to his credit. It revealed the deep humility of the man.

A Million Dollars to Create Self-Organized Learning Environments

Sugata Mitra’s work is well worth following by anyone interested in how children learn. Now that he has won the million-dollar TED Prize Wish for his inspirational work, Mitra has decided to use it to continue his work with online learning. Like John Holt, Mitra’s training is not as an educator so he didn’t bring all the preconceived notions taught in schools of education about what children can and can’t do at certain ages to his experiment. As an engineer he conceived a simple experiment, “What would children do with a computer that is made freely available to them in their rural village in India?” The results of his experiments are surprising to most educators, but hardly surprising to parents and teachers who work with children in nonschool ways. In short, without any adult help, 30 percent of the village children not only learned how to use the computer fluently, but learned English well enough to navigate the Internet. Mitra found the children taught themselves and each other how to do those things. When Mitra added an adult to the mix, he did not chose a professional teacher but rather an adult who cared about the kids. This person was asked to simply encourage their activities,  not to explicitly direct the children. With this type of help, Mitra noted that 50 percent of the children learned English and how to use the computer fluently, all without conventional school professionals or curricula. The implications for how we can best help children learn and what the proper role of adults and mentors should be are fascinating; given Mitra’s standing with TED and some quarters of the education establishment, he might be able to shake things up so genuine self-directed learning becomes more acceptable to conventional educators.

If you’re unfamiliar with Mitra’s work, this video of Mitra’s acceptance speech provides a good summary of his work and his wish to build a school in the cloud, “a learning lab in India, where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online.”

For homeschoolers, and unschoolers in particular, there is an opportunity to be part of Mitra’s research by using what Mitra calls his self-organized learning environment (SOLE) toolkit and joining the Challenge:

Part experiment, part contest — your challenge is to test the SOLE method with students in your school, home or after-school program and to share what you learn with TED in the form of a 500-1000 word blog post. What was your experience like in setting up SOLE? Tell us about your SOLE adventure and the students who participated. What were the challenges, how did you overcome them and what did you learn? How do you believe SOLE can be used at your school in the future?
Up to three winning submissions selected by Sugata and the TED Prize team will win a weekend trip for you and your child to attend TEDYouth 2013.

If any homeschoolers enter this challenge I would really like to know how you make out. I like Mitra’s work and want to support anything that seriously challenges the status quo of school, but I do worry about his emphasis on learning environments. It seems from his very first hole-in-the-wall experiment that there is no need for a special learning environment—it took place under a tree in a rural village—and, in fact, humans have been learning without special learning environments since the dawn of time. Our proper learning environment is the world at large, not some special place designed just for learning. However, I think I’m being too judgmental at this early stage of the project: perhaps learning environments in the SOLE project will be defined broadly to include any type of space that children create or use for their explorations and play and the focus will remain on self-organization—what children actually do when given the freedom to talk, play, and explore together on their own—rather than what they do when placed under the anxious eyes of educators.