Niall Ferguson disses Media Studies in the City of Marshall MacLuhan

Media studies guru and one of Canada's favourite sons, Marshall McLuhan

The Munk Debates were held at a packed Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto last Friday where the motion to be resolved was 'Does the 21st Century Belong to China?' Henry Kissinger, 88, took this opportunity to promote his new book and debated in public for the first time in his long career.  Joining him in the 'con' position was CNN personality Fareed Zakaria. The statesman and the journalist squared off against the scholars, Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson and his partner, Tsinghua University international economist David Liu (李稻葵). As is standard for Munk debates, a pre-debate tally of audience opinion was taken with 21% undecided on the motion and the 'cons' at 40% were only one percentage point above the 'pros' at 39%. The audience was overwhelmingly open-minded with 96% stating they would be willing to change their outlook based on the outcome of the debates. It was going to be interesting.

And it was. All the main issues were brought up, the widening gap between rich and poor as the downside of China's meteoric rise, China's recent military activity, demographic problems, growing geopolitical importance, domestic infrastructure challenges, African investment etc.. The interaction was engaging, professional and scholarly. At one point though, Ferguson may have gaffed and gaffed badly.

In driving home his point regarding increasing innovation in China (which he gauged by the increasing number of patent applications) he also mentioned the vast population of Chinese students that are studying abroad.  Ferguson paradoxically tried to defend the Chinese nation as innovative by implicitly claiming that Chinese will learn innovation through their careers at Western universities. He then began listing the types of degrees that would be of benefit to China, engineering, and hard sciences mostly, and finished off before sitting down by stating dismissively, "And not a PhD. in 'media studies'".

The tone seemed to suggest that media studies as a field was somehow not useful when it came to promoting innovation. Worse yet, he said it in such a way as though he were passing off the idea of 'media studies' as a joke unto itself. Ferguson laughed a little at his own joke as he took his seat but I think even he was aware that the Toronto audience my have been clapping but it was not laughing with him.

It's safe to assume that Ferguson is not particularly aware of the history of media studies (though he borrows the distinctly techy term 'app' in his new book) or he may have known that Toronto has played a major role in that history since its beginnings. In 1963, the grandfather of media theory, Marshall "the Media is the Message" McLuhan established the world's first ever media studies programme at the Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto (where the charitable foundation of event host, Peter Munk, established the Munk School for Global Affairs in addition to the Munk Debates).  Doubtless some members of the audience studied at that institution. Some may even have had PhDs. and they are acutely aware of and proud of the role both the University of Toronto and the city itself have had in forwarding media studies as a respectable academic endeavour. Famous for his research skills, Ferguson really ought to have known this about media studies before slighting its capability of contributing to practical innovation and doing this in the city where it first became an academic field.

When Zakaria offered his rebuttal, there were several points he could have addressed but it seemed he had read the crowd's non-reaction to Ferguson's attempt at humour and only discussed that point. He mentioned research and development expenditures of Microsoft and compared it to that of Apple. The R&D expenditures at Apple are significantly lower in both absolute and relative terms because rather than hiring strictly software engineers and computer scientists, Apple's approach is all about design and focuses on how humans interact with the machine interface. "Exactly the kind of thing one learns with a PhD. in media studies," concluded Zakaria before sitting down to thunderous applause. So, in addition to possibly offending members of the audience by poo-pooing media studies in general, Ferguson was also apparently wrong about the source of innovation in the IT industry and Zakaria took both factors and went straight for the jugular with them.

Though the debate was argued well on each side, an initially very undecided audience voted heavily in favour of the 'con' position in the end. It's impossible to say how much an effect Ferguson's mini-slight on media studies may have had on that outcome but if it cost the 'pro' side even a little bit, it does prove McLuhan's own axiom that "A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding."

On The Importance of Ritual in Time Management for Today's Student

Confucius 孔夫子- one of the greatest educators in history.

How relevant is a word like 'ritual' to college students when less than 30% of them in the US don't sleep regular hours and the vast majority don't eat a well rounded breakfast. The short answer is, not relevant or important enough.

As important as it is for us here at Neopaedeia to make sure the most appropriate educational solutions are found and applied to reflect the needs of today's students, this is not something that is done by reinventing the wheel or actively ignoring the past. In fact, many of the most important lessons are found in the oldest of texts. The value of these texts have proven themselves if only by their ability to withstand the test of time if nothing else. These are ideas that are as relevant to the human condition (of which education has always been a large component) when they were written thousands of years ago as they are today.

Being able to effectively use time has been an issue for some members of the population since the invention of the plough ushered in the agricultural revolution freeing large parts of the population from the burden of food production so they could do other things like invent writing systems and the State as well as philosophies and legal systems and wage war. In China, the Confucian scholar gentry class (士- shi) would have been one of the first to deal with the problem of a flexible work day as the nature of their work was different from the other social classes in ancient China. Peasants (农- nong) had their work day dictated by the rising and setting of the sun. Their work was physical and honest as was the work of the artisans (工- gong). The reviled merchant classes (商-shang) shared in common with the gentry, a work day that was not physical but the biggest distinction between these two occupations, respectively at the top and the bottom of the Confucian social hierarchical system, would have been on the importance of 'li' or rituals observed by the Confucian scholar and barely understood by the merchant.

The Confucian classics dedicate much space to the importance of 'li' (理) or 'rituals'. Much of it does not necessarily read in a way that is immediately accessible to the modern student but as old ideas are recycled and repackaged as they are in this article in a Harvard Business Review blog, the most immediate benefits to developing rituals become more obviously applicable to people in the 21st century.  The examples of rituals provided in the article are set up for business people with families but the principle of developing "highly specific behaviors, done at precise times, so they eventually become automatic and no longer require conscious will or discipline" are as important to the 21st century student as they are to the business person. In fact, they become doubly important to students because they are important to business people.

Education should not only be seen as the epistemic transfer of knowledge in its most abstract sense, it should be about the incorporation of practice for developing skills and behaviours required to be successful in the professional, cultural and social climates of our times. Though it requires discipline to develop these rituals into habits, once they have become behaviours as such, the rituals are observed as a matter of course. Like drilling in sports, ritualised elements in other facets of life become effortless and automatic when applied. They are the basis upon which civilisations grow and make possible what otherwise might not be.

"People's natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart."
- Confucius (551-479 BCE)

Grade Eight Student Asks Toronto Sun to Remove Scammer Ads: No Reply but Ads Gone

Here are the facts: After it came to Jim Chen’s attention that work at home scammers were advertising on the online edition of the Toronto Sun, Jim felt obliged to contact the editor-in-chief, James Wallace to let him know it was happening. Mr. Wallace failed to respond to Jim’s email, however, a short while after the letter was sent, and a few other steps taken, the offending advertisements were nowhere to be found on http://www.torontosun.com.

There is no way at this point to prove a causal relationship between Jim’s letter and the disappearance of the ads in question but Neopaideia is willing to give Jim the benefit of the doubt and applauds this young man’s sense of civic duty.

Below is a copy of the email:

Thu, 3 March, 2011 18:37:46

To James Wallace, Editor-in-Chief of the Toronto Sun,

My name is Jim Chen. I am a Grade 8 student in the gifted programme at Cummer Valley Middle School. Like most 21st century learners, I have to do much of my researching online. I recently became aware of advertisements that don't seem like they belong in a major national news publication like the Toronto Sun.
        Attached is a .jpeg file I have of a screenshot of a Sun article with the advertisement I'm talking about. It displays an ad that I have found to be truly unethical. It portrayed a single and 'unemployed' Vancouver mother who made $6,397/month. Online. How is it possible that a single mother is supposed to sit in front of a computer all day and automatically get a paycheck towards their banking account?
        This advertisement was obviously targeted to young, single, and unemployed mothers. Clicking on the ad sends users to something called the “News Daily 7” that has a newspaper-like format. It has been proven to be illegitimate. Apparently, in order to learn the secrets of earning money online, the mother must fill out personal information, including full name, e-mail address, and phone number. She must then pay $20.40 via Paypal or a credit card for an Automated Profit Package. When I tried to exit the page, a popup then showed a message, “Special $10.00 Activation Discount, click “Cancel” to view this offer!” The new price was then $10.18. Why would such a package lower its own price by over 50%? That’s because it is a scam, and the ones receiving money have nothing to lose.
        In my opinion, it is deplorable to cheat money from single mothers who are most likely receiving state assistance. They are one of the main groups of people in the GTA suffering from poverty. Those mothers used a portion of their little income in hope of a package leading them to great job opportunities. However, after paying, they realized that they were being cheated the entire time. Taking money from the poor through false promises is wrong and disgusting.
        It want to believe that your advertising department ignored the importance of analyzing the advertisements sponsoring the website before displaying them to the general public. New media requires new literacies, and one of the ways 21st century readers can gauge the value of the information we find online is in looking at who sponsors the information. If the Sun did not have a printed newspaper component, I'd think this was all scam material and thoroughly untrustworthy based on the advertising I've mentioned.
        Toronto Sun has always been praised for its great articles. This type of advertisement should not be allowed on the website to disrepute the newspaper itself. I wish that you will take time to communicate with your staff and remove the advertisement as soon as possible.
Sincerely,                        
Jim Chen

Jim has yet to receive a reply. After trying again to contact someone at the Sun but still to no avail and as the adverts were still there after several days, Jim made a complaint to Advertising Standards Canada (ASC).  The ASC did reply and took the complaint seriously enough to assign it a case number and made a request for further evidence which Jim provided. 

Some time later there was still no reply from the Sun or its representatives and so Jim decided to contact a number of other local Toronto publications but not many of them were interested in the story. In fact, the only publication to respond, and kudos to them for it, was Chill magazine, the free semi-seasonal Beer Store magazine (nice to know that the publishing voice of an alcohol monopoly of the Ontario provincial government took the time to respond to Jim when so many other ‘community oriented’ publications ignored him). In her response, Stacy Bradshaw, 360° Digital Director at Chill,   explained that the ads probably ended up there in the first place as a result of google adsense policy and not the Toronto Sun. That may explain how it happened but it doesn’t absolve any publisher from the responsibility they have to be able to vouch for the legitimacy of their sponsors.

Coming back to the facts, as of the date of this blog entry’s publication (and possibly earlier), the Toronto Sun is completely free of the advertisements that were of concern.  They can still be found out there in cyberspace, not in major Canadian news publications but in the places where they belong at the fringes of the internet in places such as semi-legal streaming sites for circumnavigating copyright regulations and watching heavy pixel laden pirate copies of popular TV shows.

Congratulations to Jim Chen. He wanted to see the ads gone. He sent them a message. They may not have had the courtesy to reply directly but in the end, the ads are gone. Mission accomplished.

This blog entry is part of a series related to Project Athene dedicated to promoting digital literacy in new media users.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Marks the Second Anniversary of 'Parent Revolution' in the US: Is the Revolution Floundering?

While the Parent Revolution's website touts the success of their movement and congratulates itself on its second-year anniversary, the LA Times paints a picture of a well intentioned movement in the throes of chaos.

According to their mission statement, the "Parent Revolution aims to transform public education rooted in what’s good for kids — not grown-ups — by empowering parents to transform their own children’s low-performing schools through community organizing."

Empowered by the Parent Trigger Law, their mandate to increase accountability in the public school systems, this America wide movement claims to be a community initiative that started out of Los Angeles County, CA that collects its own data on school performance.  It does not use standardised testing as a measure of 'success'  rather looks at issues of engagement by analysing figures such as drop-out rates and percentages of college admissions.

On the surface, this movement that encourages greater participation in the education process from parents as stakeholders on behalf of their children appears to be an encouraging one. Late in 2010, however, the Parent Revolution put forward the bid to enact the law at McKinley Elementary in Compton, one of the lowest ranking schools in the state. Since then, accusations from both inside and outside of the movement have been laid against the Parent Revolution and have ranged from being simply chaotic to intimidatingly conspiratorial. At McKinley Elementary, the Trigger Law has received its first test and is struggling to achieve a passing grade.

The accusations of chaos seem to come from the idea that while the movement encourages parental participation and contributions, beyond the instituting of a charter, there doesn't seem to be any means inherent in the movement of establishing any kind of consensus with regard to school reform once the Parent Trigger is enacted. Parents have claimed they have been tricked into signing in order to hand over power to the charter holders themselves. Charter schools operate on a charter that, among a set of other criteria, are free from union regulations.  As the parents themselves in the Revolution have formally formed a 'Parent Union', far from facilitating greater parent involvement, this has produced the danger of effectively cutting parents out of nearly any influence in school operations while the school works to meet the conditions of their charter.  It is this lack of consensus too that brings about accusations that far from being an organic movement, it is actually an initiative by charter school operators in league with professionals and funded by billionaires and corporate giants such as Bill Gates.

In the days that have followed the second anniversary of the Parent Revolution, it seems unclear at this point whether it is an inspiring move by parents to enact real and necessary education reform or a cynical bid to further the move toward the standardisation of education. In any case, charges of intimidation and the ongoing and ruthless battles between parents and teachers do not seem to serve the best interest of the children. This seems to be an example of the Parent Revolution falling short of their mission.

Animated Sir Ken Robinson

The video above is one of the most poignant and important talks on education in the 21st century.

The speaker in this video, Sir Ken Robinson, had his contributions to education recognised by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II who knighted him in 2003. His visionary commentaries on the subject of ways to identify and address problems inherent in today's education systems are a perfect spot for Neopaideia to begin.