The article points to a few quotes from the book.

"Something insidious is going on inside their heads."

"Young Americans today are no more learned or skilful than their predecessors, no more knowledgeable, fluent, up-to-date, or inquisitive, except in the materials of youth culture."

"They care so much about the trappings of cool, are are so conversant with pop culture. But they blink uncomprehendingly at the mention of the Reformation, the Second Amendment, Fellow Travelers, or Fellini."

Ummm...Mr. Bauerlein, with all due respect...have you MET the average teenager?

Back in the 1980's, when I was a teenager, cable TV was the big new technological marvel. We now had 24 hour a day movies, 24 hour a day news, 24 hour a day music videos. Music videos were a HUGE distraction for me. All I wanted to do was watch music videos. I didn't want to do my homework. I didn't want to read King Lear. Michael Jackson's new video was coming on. I HAD to see it. I HAD to call my friends and talk to them about it. It didn't mean I was flunking out of school. I still graduated with honours. But, my priorities were a bit off. Just like every other teenager out there. And guess what. I didn't end up some dumb, unworldly oaf. I came around.

Mr. Bauerlein wants to blame the Digital Age for the dumbing down of children. But his argument can't hold up.

People now have more opportunities to learn than ever before. It's not that they aren't consuming the information. They are. They are just doing it differently. Yes, no longer does one have to go to the library, check out 10 books on Fellini, pore through them, and hand-write a 2000 word essay. Nope, they can go to Wikipedia, look up Fellini, and find the basics. Then they can Google Fellini, find a bunch more info. If they really want to get serious, they can use social networking to contact someone who is an expert on Fellini and talk to them. Then they can type up their report in Google Docs, and use the word count tool to know when they have enough. Does that make them dumb? Because they didn't read a bunch of books? No. In fact, they may actually know MORE about Fellini once they are through with their essay.

The fact is, the ability to search for and scan information online makes research more effective. I can Google, scan, pinpoint exactly the most important information, and throw away the irrelevant stuff. Try doing that with a stack of library books (I have - it's a pain in the butt). This makes me think that kids these days have something on us. They can find anything they need to know at the click of a button. Therefore, is it really necessary to retain it all in your head for all time? Not really. And for the digitally-focused, right-brained generation, it's not the secret to their success, either.

Sure, there will always be a place for the academics of the world. Those people who get their PhD's, specializing in one subject or another. We need those kinds of thinkers. But we also need the kind of thinkers who can absorb information, and invent new and creative ways to work with that information. And this is what our young people ARE going to be able to do.

Just because someone sees the world in a different way doesn't make them dumb. And this seems to be what Mr. Bauerlein wants us to believe. He significantly underestimates our youth. In my estimation, students who ARE able to disseminate vast amounts of data, be it on their cell phones, Instant messengers, Google searches, iPods, video games, etc, will be in a better place to succeed in what IS going to be important in the future: what author Daniel Pink calls the right brain qualities of inventiveness, empathy, and meaning.

What do you think? Is the Digital Age making people "dumb"? Or making them learn smarter?

Dan Pink's latest ‘career guide’ arrives in the shape of a beautifully illustrated Manga ‘novel’ called ‘The Adventures of Johnny Bunko’. It also rather helpfully subtitles itself as ‘The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need’. However, what struck me most strongly as I read it was that it's not just about business. Pink's book should be speaking to every teacher who cares enough to know that he or she could be just that little bit better…and that there are some things our pupils need to learn and which are not really covered by the traditional curriculum.

Pink's 6 points/lessons/ideas are:

1: There is no plan

2: Think strengths, not weaknesses

3: It's not about you

4: Persistence trumps talent

5: Make excellent mistakes

6: Leave an imprint

Over the next few days, I'm going to give my thoughts on each of Pink's points, starting today with…

1: There is no plan

Think how many times you say to a pupil “You need to know this” and then ask yourself why you think they need to know “this” (whatever “this” is)… Is it because the knowledge will be of value to them in later life, or is it because you know “this” will come up in an assessment? I'd be willing to bet that the majority of teachers are only looking at the assessments rather than the future.

Incidentally, if you've seen Shift Happens, you begin to gain a real understanding of where Pink is coming from. After all, what use is a plan when you have no idea what lies ahead of you? What are you actually planning for? As Diana puts it; “X might lead to W and W might lead to the colour blue and the colour blue might lead to a chicken quesadilla” How can you possibly plan for that?

We are conditioned to believe that there is a plan, we are expected to say that our subject's worth is measured by where it will take you, but somewhere along the way, we forget that there is true value in studying for studying's sake: knowledge qua knowledge.

As Pink points out:

“You can do something for instrumental reasons — because you think it's going to lead to something else regardless of whether you enjoy it or it's worthwhile… or you can do something for fundamental reasons — because you think it's inherently valuable regardless of what it may or may not lead to”

I suppose one of the best examples of this that I can give relates to Steve Jobs of Apple fame. In his 2005 Commencement Address to Stanford University, he recounted how he took a calligraphy class because it fascinated him. At the time, the course had no practical value, it was something he did for love. 10 years later, what he'd learned found its way into the first Macintosh computer and the rest, as they say, is history… When taking the class, Jobs had no idea what it would lead to, and similarly, when we teach our pupils, we cannot know where the lesson will resurface…

There may be no plan, but there is learning. Specifically, there is learning to be adaptable and learning that the knowledge we pick up along the way is valuable, even if we may not know why at the time. Pink's differentiation between instrumental and fundamental reasons for doing things lies at the heart of the current debate around curriculum development. Are we teaching pupils for instrumental reasons — “You're going to be tested on this” or are we teaching for fundamental reasons — “This is really interesting/fun/cool”?

Earlier this evening, Ollie Bray pointed me at GoAnimate.com It is, without exception, one of the most engaging tools I've seen yet for classroom use. Imagine what the pupils could do with GoAnimate and a copy of Romeo & Juliet… how much more engaged in the text would they be? And the ‘Bunko/no plan’ part is that they'd be learning a new skill (animation) whilst also taking part in an online community, working collaboratively, and having fun while they did so… Of course, none of the skills learned are easily assessable (though ACfE is aiming to change that), and so they will be mostly swept under the carpet or ignored or, worst of all, ignored because they're not 'real learning'.

This becomes frustrating because the people who are against the new tools and ways of working are those who still believe that there is a plan. When he was young, Johnny Bunko wanted to work in advertising or design, but like so many of us, he is advised to have a 'safety net' (in his case accounting) which takes him further and further away from what he really wants to do. His is a story that is repeated every day in schools and homes around the world… “You need a back up”… ”You won't make money doing that”… “You need a plan!"

We don't know what the future holds, but we do know it will be different. We need to empower those we teach, we need to give them the ability to find things out for themselves and we need to encourage them to follow and develop their own interests — in short, they need to learn how to learn because there is no longer a plan to follow.

Next up will be lesson 2: Think Strengths, Not Weaknesses, but until then, feel free to comment or go join Johnny Bunko on Facebook!

Ja Mata!

Credit: Calligraphy by kebella : flickr cc

Fast Company posted a 10 slide piece about jobs that exist in the online world - even though the editor has some slides and text in the wrong order. I thought it was odd that they titled it Jobs of Web 2.0 since these roles are pretty commonplace. Even around in 1998 a lot of companies had the same positions with varying titles. I was designing type, iconography, and interfaces for SonicNet in 1996 and they had someone hacking the social software and developing audience more than trying to trick Google.  

The real jobs of the future are going to be how well you interact with people, develop ideas as a team, and make deals. Since most of the jobs are putting people in front of computers, these roles can easily be outsourced. See Daniel Pink's Whole New Mind to be convinced that these roles will be low-wage roles in booming cities.

I do worry about sending so many jobs outside the U.S. when there are communities of people who need jobs. What would happen if we trained Detroit auto-workers to be a web-hacker/support person? I know some people in Flint, Michigan who would embrace a 24K - 30K salary.  With the way the dollar is headed and the rising rates of Indian companies this is what some companies are paying to firms who give a fraction of that to their employees.  

Jobs of Web 2.0

Daniel Pink's book, Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need, will be the publishing company's first imported manga!

Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind makes many excellent points. Unfortunately, it suffers from an awkward and unconvincing metaphorical framework.

Chapter 1: Right Brain Rising

Pink starts out explaining about the brain's left and right hemispheres, and how each side is responsible for different cognitive activities - the left hemisphere tends to be responsible for sequential logic, analysis, and language; the right hemisphere for holistic reasoning, pattern recognition, emotions and body language. So far, so good. Pink is careful to point out, over and over again, that the terms "left-brained" and "right-brained" are misnomers; that you need both hemispheres to be completely functional, and that they certainly don't work independently of each other. He emphasizes (again and again) that "left-brained" and "right-brained" are "powerful metaphor[s] for how individuals and organizations navigate their lives." That's all well and good, but in the rest of the book the "left-brained" functions or "L-Directed thinking" end up left in the dust. It says right on the cover "Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future" -- a claim made nowhere in the book. That just screams "GIMMICK!" to me. Will people with "whole minds" rule the future, or people who are right-brained? If the title can't get it's story straight, I don't have much faith in the entire book.

Chapter 2: Abundance, Asia, and Automation

I suppose alliteration is an R-Directed thing. This chapter talks about the many choices and options that American consumers are faced with, overseas outsourcing, and technology, and how these three things have either eliminated a lot of jobs and significantly raised the bar on others. The "abundance" and "automation" sections are quite good, but he drops the ball on Asia. He doesn't discuss global economics at all, and one almost gets the sense that India is some sort of economic enemy to battle against. I don't think he meant it that way, but it was irritating. Pink doesn't address why what he thinks of as R-Directed jobs are going to be safe against India while L-Directed jobs are threatened. I heard a story on NPR not long ago about how localized, creative advertising campaigns are starting to be outsourced -- complete with local culture training. Unless global inequities are addressed, jobs are going to continue to trickle downward to the cheapest labor.

Chapter 3: High Concept, High Touch

 This chapter talks about the demand for "knowledge workers" diminishing and the demand for "creators and empathizers" growing, and about how MFA programs are harder to get into than MBA programs. I think this is more reflective of a glut of MBA programs and applicants than anything else -- something called supply and demand, perhaps, or is that too L-Directed?

Part Two

Part Two discusses what Pink calls "The Six Senses" which ... whatever. They're more "sensibilities" than "senses," but I'll go along with the clumsy neuroscience metaphor. Getting past that, Pink actually makes a great case for "design," "story," "symphony," "empathy," and "play" that I wish Slightly Evil, LLP would be receptive to. (It won't.) Each chapter comes with a "Portfolio" section that includes lots of resources and exercises for improving your skills in each area. None of these "senses" seem to be things that people in India can't handle, though.

Chapter Nine, the final "sense," is meaning. As an atheist and an empiricist, I consider "meaning" exceptionally important to my life since I believe we must create it for ourselves, and not rely on some One else to bestow it upon us. Pink's "meaning" seems to be a vague, feel-good mix between "happiness" and "spirituality" and dizziness. It was a bad way to end a book that had just started to pick up a little.

Overall...

First of all, this book is aimed exclusively at middle-class white collar workers. It is certainly not a comprehensive look at the "new" American economy.

Secondly, I didn't learn anything new from this book. Pink relies heavily on anecdotes and less on L-Directed... facts. The book doesn't say anything that my father didn't tell me when he sat down with me and gave me the "what you should be when you grow up" speech. He told me that "The people who make the most money are not the people who know how to do stuff. They are the ones who know how to tell those people what to do." (I was ten, he had to dumb it down a little.) I think that's how I ended up in this L/R crossover career called information design.

In summation, what Pink calls having "a whole mind" is what I learned was called "being intelligent." And I really wish that Steven Johnson had written this book instead.

Griffith, known by many in the homeschooling community for her Homeschooling Handbook: From Preschool to High School, A Parent's Guide(1997, revised in 1999) and The Unschooling Handbook : How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom (1998), here offers her musings on a number of topics after years of homeschooling her own children and being, as she puts it with self-deprecating irony, a "famous homeschool author." 

Most of Griffith's book is a memoir of her own life as a homeschooling mom.  The writing is elegant and thoughtful but wouldn't really merit mention as homeschooling research.  But some of her chapters do touch upon broader themes within the movement, and Griffith's keen observation and intelligence make her recollections valuable for historians or sociologists interested in homeschooling.  Here I will not summarize her individual chapters but provide instead a sampling of some of her insights likely to be of interest to homeschooling researchers and observers of the movement.

1. In my review of Gary Wyatt's Family Ties, I noted Wyatt's claim, based largely on impressionistic evidence, that many homeschooling parents seem to be motivated at least in part by the negative experiences they themselves had in school as children.  Griffith reinforces this insight.  Like Wyatt, she has noticed that so many homeschoolers seem to be "making decisions for our children based on our own experience."  For Griffith school was mostly the place where she figured out how to get good grades, not the locus of real learning.  So when it came time to teach her own children, she rejected formal schooling.

2.  In a chapter called "Duh" Griffith reports on several recent research findings that affirm things "homeschoolers have known for years."  She describes Carol Dweck's study of fifth graders which found that giving false praise to students ("you're really smart at this") actually makes them perform worse, while encouraging their hard work yields benefits.  She describes a study on IQ by Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman that found self-discipline to be a better predictor of academic performance than IQ.  She cites a 2006 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics that stresses the significance of play for childhood development and counsels parents against overstructuring their children's lives.  Finally, she notes Steven Johnson's argument in Everything Bad is Good for You that today's television and video games are actually making us smarter.  All of these studies reinforce the central insight of homeschooling--that children learn best when they are in charge of their own learning rather than being force-fed disconnected bits of information in classrooms.

3. In a chapter titled "moving beyond the movement" Griffith offers her thoughts on the conflicts between different types of homeschoolers.  Her own pedigree is strongly in the John Holt/left-liberal wing, and the part of the chapter where she recounts the early days and struggles of the HomeSchool Association of California offers a bit of valuable insider information about this organization.  Griffith goes on to describe the familiar tensions between conservative Christians and what she calls the secular homeschooling community, but much more interesting are her comments about doctrinaire "unschoolers."  Griffith has little patience with unschoolers who criticize others for their failure "to conform to some external standard of unschooliness."  Finally, Griffith recounts the conflict over whether or not parents taking advantage of government cybercharters and other programs are really homeschooling.  As with unschooling, she is frustrated by those who draw lines in the sand.  Instead, she encourages all parties to work together as allies to increase options for all parents. 

4. Drawing on Daniel Pink's Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself, Griffith understands homeschoolers as one example of a larger trend in the United States toward free agency.  She notes that many homeschooling moms continue paths of independence after their children have left the home, piecing together "an ever-changing patchwork of part-time work, volunteerism, and self-employment" rather than getting a standard day job.  Homeschooling, like the blogosphere, wikipedia, and other internet-based forms of human interaction, is an "emerging system."  Homeschoolers are on the cusp of a renewed effort in the United States for citizens to reclaim their autonomy and individuallity from the 20th century's crushing bureaucracies.  As she puts it:

We've been lost for a hundred years or so, as we grew so large and so quickly that we lost our means of talking with each other and let big business and corporations and one-way media do the talking for us.  But we're finding our way back again, finally, bit by bit learning for ourselves, learning to do for ourselves.  We're learning to believe in ourselves again, learning to be optimistic about our power and our future.

Let me reiterate that much of the book is of a more personal nature, full of stories about Griffith's children.  But what I have summarized above suggests I hope that this book is more than a personal memoir or nostalgia piece.  Griffith is a thoughtful and insightful commentator fully capable of fitting her own experiences into a broader context.  For her, that context is the growing interdependence and erasure of boundaries signified by the world wide web.  Homeschooling as she reads it is no throwback to a pre-industrial past but on the cutting edge of postmodernity.

I read my first book about body language in 1991, when I was living in Europe.  To say it opened my mind is an understatement.  (Didn't Woody Allen say that it's great to have an open mind so long as your brain doesn't fall out?)  In any case, I've been studying body language and other non-verbal cues ever since.  That skill has really paid off when it comes to assessing whether someone is being truthful or not (prospects, our clients' sales VPs, my airplane mechanic, etc.). 

That's one of the reasons I wanted to read A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink.  Being a strong left-brainer, I wanted to understand why he asserted that it was the right-brainers that would thrive in the next decade.  He makes a strong case.

Among the many advantages of right-brainers, Pink writes, is being able to discern the real meaning behind facial expressions.  So I studied up a bit on real versus fake smiles.  Hint:  It's in the eyes.  Then I took this test.  Pink was right.  It worked!  I scored 18 out of 20 on my first try.

I highly recommend Pink's book.  There is a lot that I wasn't particularly interested in, but the points I did get are big ones.   Here is one (excerpted from the book using my Kindle, which I also recommend): 

... for instance, both Ekman and Nancy Etcoff, a  psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in  Boston, have shown that most of us are astonishingly bad at detecting when someone is  lying. When we try to determine from another’s  facial expressions or tone of voice if that person is fibbing, we don’t do much better than if we had offered random guesses. But aphasics—people  with damage to their brain’s left hemisphere that  compromises their ability to speak and  understand language—are exceptionally good lie  detectors. By reading facial cues, Etcoff found, they can spot liars more than 70 percent of the time.  The reason: since they can’t receive one channel  of communication, they’re better at interpreting  the other, more expressive channel.

Here is another point:

...research by [Daniel] Goleman and the Hay Group has found that within organizations, the most effective leaders were  funny (that is, funny ha-ha, not funny strange).  These leaders had their charges laughing three times more often than their managerial counterparts.

Good stuff!

I can't wait until the next time I see the woman who I assumed prepared my tax returns. I guess I knew my accountant handed over the inputing of figures to a clerk, but I never assumed she might be outsourcing my tax return to an accountant in India. According to Pink, my accountant needs to have great people skills to do the face-to-face work that keeps me coming back year after year, but the actual work of preparing my return doesn't even need to be done in this country. Pink proves his point by saying, "Financial services firms such as Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase have contracted out number crunching and financial analysis to Indian MBAs."

Those of you gifted young people considering law school, did you know that more and more law-related work can also be outsourced or done by purchasing online resources? Pink (who has a law degree) suggests that law schools need to train skilled litigators who are able to tell a great story to engage the judge and jury they are facing.

So what are the new "six senses" Pink suggests we nurture? What are the senses of this "whole new mind?" DESIGN, STORY, SYMPHONY, EMPATHY, PLAY, and MEANING

Daniel Pink is going to be the keynote speaker for the National Association for Gifted Children's annual conference in Tampa Bay this fall, and I look forward to hearing first hand how we can nurture a whole new mind.

It is contest time:) 

This blog is getting close to 10,000 views.  Starting out, I never imagined to have so many people out there viewing this site.  So, in order to celebrate, I am having a contest!

Here are the rules:

1.  Write a mini-saga and post it in the comments here in this thread.
2. Vote for your favorite mini-saga and email your vote to me at organicsmi@yahoo.com .
3.  Contest starts June 15, 2008 and ends June 27, 2008 (by that time, I hope to have 10, 000 views:)
4.  One grand winner and 5 runners-up will be chosen based on the number of votes I receive by the June 27 deadline.

Grand Prize!
$50.00 worth of Miessence Organic Skin Care Products!  (mini-travel products for the winning mini-saga:)

5 Runners-up will also receive one mini-Miessence Product!

What's a mini-saga?
A Whole New Mind: Story Portfolio

Write a Mini-Saga
Writing anything is hard work. Writing a short story is really hard work. And writing a novel, a play, or a screenplay can take years. So go easy on yourself by writing a mini-saga. Mini-sagas are extremely short stories--just fifty words long...no more, no less. Yet like all stories, they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. London's Telegraph newspaper has long sponsored an annual mini-saga contest--and the results show how much creativity a person can pack in exactly fifty words. Try writing a mini-saga yourself. It's addicting.

 Looking for your creative mini-sagas!  I will also see who is viewing this blog:) 

Bring on the creativity!

Flickr Creative Commons

I also had the chance to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity on Tuesday before the conference and it was a life-changing experience.  I highly recommend volunteering for Habitat if you have the chance.  The images that we saw flash across TV screens almost 3 years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit are still very much the reality of life in the Upper Ninth Ward, where I worked for the day.  It was a moving combination of disaster and hope.

I attended the following sessions and would welcome questions if anyone has them!

• Keynote Address- Daniel Pink (author of A Whole New Mind)
• A Call to Serve: Nonprofit Job Outlook 2008 (overview of nonprofit industry over the next 10 years)
• Reality Bytes: Peer-to-Peer Communication (using blogs, podcasts, & the web to reach students)
• Career Services Marketing at a 4-Year College (marketing strategies for any budget)
• Developing Citizens, Not Consumers (teaching students to focus outward instead of inward)
• International Internships- Best Practices (developing a program on any budget)
• Providing Career Services via the WWW (how an online school provides career assistance)

Ik was als kind niet bepaald een stripliefhebber. Veel verder dan Jommeke en sporadisch een Suske & Wiske ben ik  niet gekomen. Toch intrigeren die manga's mij. Ik sta me er soms op te vergapen en daar bleef het bij. Tot ik onlangs twee atypische manga's ontdekte, eentje dan nog wel via een reclamespotje.

Romeo and Juliet ben ik aan het lezen. Na de film, nu de manga. Het boek is er nooit geweest.

En The adventures of Johnny Bunko, The last carreer guide you'll ever reed, is het eerste management boek in manga. Zes levenslessen van right brainer Daniel Pink over je professionele toekomst, geprangd in een uurtje lezen :

1. There is no plan.

2. Think strengths, not weaknesses.

3. It's not about you.

4. Persistence trumps talent.

5. Make excellent mistakes. (Zei Tom Peters ook al.)

6. Leave an imprint.

Zaman Pemaknaan

Dunia di Era Komputer

Biarkan komputer menyelesaikan masalah-masalah teknis kita. Begitu kira-kira pesan Daniel Pink dalam buku terbarunya A Whole New Mind (2005). Pesannya belum selesai. Pink melanjutkan, yang benar-benar penting bagi manusia adalah pemaknaan; bagaimana membuat makna. (Sur berkomentar: ketika informasi yang baru diterima  dapat diasimilasikan dengan kerangka pengetahuan yang sudah ada maka proses itu menjadikan informasi tersebut bermakna. Ibarat main Puzzle Jigsaw keping yang sedang dipegang itu sedang direka-reka mau diletakkan di posisi mana. Kalau tidak ketemu-ketemu dan sudah putus asa, maka keping jigsaw (keping informasi) itu menjadi tidak ada maknanya dan ditaruh sembarangan, dan cepat dilupakan oleh otak karena tidak ada relasi dengan pengetahuan yang sudah ada di dalam otak. Gunakan Peta Konsep untuk menyusun keping-keping informasi itu di dalam otak anda. Peletakan satu keping informasi di salah satu cabang itu seperti bermain jigsaw. Bila belum menemukan tempat yang pas, sementara bisa diletakkan di cabang yang baru. Sehingga suatu saat kelak akan terlihat bahwa posisi keping itu lebih cocok di lokasi yang lain. Atau ketika berdiskusi dengan orang lain, maka orang lain itu bisa memberikan petunjuk bahwa peletakan keping itu seharusnya ada di mana.).

Inilah yang tidak bisa dilakukan oleh komputer. Selain itu, keindahan, empati, dan keceriaan juga merupakan ciri- ciri manusiawi yang tak dimiliki komputer; kualitas-kualitas yang memungkinkan manusia melakukan berbagai inovasi dan menghindarkannya dari komoditisasi menjadi saingan mesin-mesin.

Kualitas-kualitas itu pula yang memungkinkan orang mampu membuat konsep, representasi benda-benda di pikiran manusia; baik benda konkret maupun abstrak, benda nyata maupun imajiner. Manusia mampu membuat representasi kognitif dari berbagai hal yang belum ada dalam kenyataan, mampu membayangkan masa depan.

Ini mengingatkan saya kepada Ernst Cassirer (1944) dalam An Essay on Man. Manusia adalah makhluk simbolik, kemampuannya mencipta dan mengolah lambang menjadikannya unggul dari organisme lain, menjadikannya makhluk beradab dan berbudaya. Kemampuan simbolik itu yang memungkinkan manusia mampu membuat konsep, menghubungkan satu konsep dengan konsep lain (Sur: Ini yang disebut Peta Konsep), menyusunnya menjadi cerita; rangkaian peristiwa yang dimaknai berdasarkan urutan kejadiannya.

Sekarang, kata Pink, adalah zaman konseptual. Kemampuan membuat konsep merupakan kelebihan manusia yang tak tergantikan oleh apa pun. Komputer mampu melakukan empat miliar perhitungan setiap detik tanpa merasa lelah atau jenuh. Bagaimana kita menyainginya? Perlukah kita bersaing dengan komputer?

Jawaban Pink: tidak perlu! Biarkan komputer menyelesaikan masalah-masalah teknis dan klerikal serta pekerjaan rutin lainnya. Urusan manusia adalah membuat konsep; memaknai berbagai hal yang ada di sekelilingnya; membuat makna-makna baru; membuat dunia lebih indah, hangat dan ceria. Menjadikan
dunia sebagai tempat yang manusiawi.

Belahan (hemisphere) kanan otak manusia (Sur: baca Explore Your Brain: Right Brain vs Left Brain thinking) diduga merupakan sumber dari kualitas-kualitas manusiawi itu. Tentu saja belahan ini berfungsi secara integratif dengan bagian-bagian lain sistem syaraf manusia. Fungsi kreatif dan relasional be-'ranah' di belahan otak ini. Kreativitas memberi daya untuk menemukan hal-hal baru yang dapat meningkatkan kualitas hidupnya.

Fungsi relasional menghasilkan kemampuan membina hubungan interpersonal, membentuk kebersamaan intersubyektif yang meleluasakan kehidupan bersama bagi subyek-subyek anggotanya. Kreativitas didasari oleh kemampuan membayangkan sesuatu yang belum ada atau dengan kata lain membuat konsep-konsep baru, serta membayangkan sesuatu yang lebih baik, lebih indah, daripada yang ada sekarang.

Kemampuan membuat konsep yang didasari oleh kemampuan memberi dan mencipta makna, juga kemampuan menikmati keindahan, empati, serta memandang dunia seisinya sebagai hal yang menyenangkan, tampil jelas dalam penceritaan (storytelling). Kemampuan manusia membuat cerita, lalu menyampaikannya, juga mengambil pelajaran dari sana, merupakan implikasi dari kemampuan manusia
membuat konsep, menghayati keindahan, empati, dan keceriaan.

Cerita, sesuatu yang kita akrabi sejak kecil, mengandung konsep-konsep yang terangkai sedemikian rupa menjadi jalinan makna yang menggugah dan menyenangkan. Cerita yang menarik memanfaatkan kualitas-kualitas manusiawi itu.

*Zaman konseptual*

Menamakan zaman kini sebagai zaman konseptual berarti memahaminya sebagai zaman penceritaan. Ini tidak berlebihan jika kita cermati apa yang ditunjukkan oleh Deirdre McCloskey dan Arjo Klamer (1995) dalam esei mereka "One Quarter of GDP is Persuasion (in Rhetoric and Economic Behavior)" yang
dimuat dalam American Economic Review. Di sana dinyatakan, 28 persen dari GNP di Amerika Serikat diperoleh dari persuasi yang kebanyakan isinya adalah penyampaian cerita. Lewat penceritaan, orang-orang di sana melakukan aktivitas senilai 1,8 triliun dollar AS, jumlah yang sama sekali tidak sedikit.

Laurence Prusak dalam buku Storytelling in Organizations (ditulis bersama oleh Brown, Denning, Groh, & Prusak, 2005) menjelaskan apa yang membuat para CEO dibayar mahal: mereka bercerita. Dikutipnya Jack Welch, mantan CEO perusahaan multinasional General Electric yang semasa mahasiswa nilainya rata-rata C+. Welch menjadi CEO asal Irlandia yang sukses dan ternama karena kemampuannya bercerita. Prusak menunjukkan kebenaran ucapan itu. Dengan kemampuan bercerita yang kuat, orang bisa menyampaikan cerita ke Wall Street, bursa efek terbesar di dunia. Di sana, penceritaan itu akan menghasilkan implikasi ekonomi dan finansial yang hebat, punya implikasi praktis yang besar. Intinya, menurut Prusak, cerita punya peran yang besar dalam pengembangan budaya, organisasi, bisnis, ekonomi, dan masyarakat.

Sejalan dengan semua yang saya sebut tadi, Jerome Bruner, ahli psikologi kognitif yang belakangan menjadi tokoh penting dalam psikologi pendidikan dan psikologi budaya, menyatakan bahwa cerita merupakan unsur utama yang membentuk pikiran. Dasar dari pembuatan dan penyampaian cerita adalah fungsi naratif, pemahaman berdasarkan urutan waktu, berorientasi kepada tindakan dan pikiran yang mengarah kepada pengenalan terhadap detail. Dengan mode naratif, pikiran mengambil bentuk cerita dan drama yang menggugah.

Lebih jauh lagi, Bruner (1991) menjelaskan bahwa cerita dan penceritaan sebagai produk budaya merupakan media yang paling berperan dalam pengembangan kebudayaan dan peradaban manusia. Dalam risalahnya, "The Narrative Construction of Reality", Bruner berargumen bahwa struktur pikiran mendapatkan pemahaman realitas melalui perantaraan produk-produk kultural seperti bahasa dan sistem simbolik lainnya. Produk- produk itu tersusun dari naratif yang merupakan produk kultural, sekaligus juga pembentuk kebudayaan.

Kebudayaan terbentuk dan tampil bersama dalam hubungan dialogis-mutualistik di antara individu yang menjadi warganya. Peristiwa-peristiwa yang dialami oleh individu diberi makna sedemikian rupa dan dirangkai menjadi cerita yang membentuk kebudayaan dari orang-orang yang mengalaminya.

*Zaman penceritaan*

Paralel dengan kemampuan membuat konsep, kemampuan membuat dan menyampaikan cerita serta mengambil pelajaran dari cerita pun merupakan keunggulan manusia yang tak dimiliki oleh makhluk lain. Jika abad ke-21 disebut sebagai zaman konseptual, maka itu sekaligus juga sebagai zaman penceritaan.
Penggunaan cerita dalam berbagai bidang kehidupan, baik yang ilmiah maupun nonilmiah, menjadi metode dan media penting dalam proses perolehan pengetahuan, lebih jauh lagi dalam peningkatan kesejahteraan hidup manusia. (Sur berkomentar: dengan Peta Konsep maka kita bisa melakukan penceritaan suatu materi secara random (tidak linear), dengan memberikan gambaran besar seluruh cabang terlihat, kemudian kita bilang: mari kita fokus atau dekati masalah tersebut dari sudut sini sambil menunjuk salah satu cabangnya. Setelah itu maka sisa cabang yang lain menguncup dan fokus pada cabang yang satu itu beserta seluruh anak-anak cabangnya, tanpa menghilangkan hubungan posisi cabang itu kepada Centrum/ Topik utama yang ditengah, sehingga pemirsa tetap bisa melihat ada hubungan antara Topik-dengan cabang yang sedang dibicarakan (Ujung-Pangkalnya)).

Penekanan pentingnya naratif dalam hidup manusia bukan sesuatu yang berlawanan dengan sains, melainkan pelengkapan proses perolehan pengetahuan. Sains dengan analisis yang menggunakan inteligensi menghasilkan kemajuan dan memberi kontribusi dalam kehidupan manusia jelas kita perlukan. Naratif dengan dasar pemahaman menyeluruh terhadap realitas menghasilkan kemampuan memahami dan memaknai secara lebih komprehensif, kreatif, dan simpatik, juga diperlukan.

Teori-teori yang didasari berbagai fakta yang ditemukan sains pada akhirnya perlu dirangkai jadi cerita yang dapat dipahami, dimaknai, dan dimanfaatkan dalam keseharian manusia. Untuk merangkainya diperlukan fungsi berpikir naratif. Sains perlu terus berkembang menjalankan perannya meningkatkan kesejahteraan manusia.

Hasil-hasil dari sains dan naratif dapat diterapkan dalam bentuk teknologi yang membantu meringankan beban hidup manusia. Teknologi bukan gantungan mutlak hidup manusia. Hidup manusia seharusnya diperkaya dan diperdalam oleh teknologi, bukan dikacaukan dan dilemahkan.

Komputer sebagai perwujudan teknologi pun demikian. Ia berfungsi untuk membantu menyelesaikan masalah-masalah teknis dan rutin, sehingga manusia punya waktu lebih banyak untuk memperkaya dan memperdalam hidupnya. Kembali kepada pesan Pink, biarkan komputer menyelesaikan masalah- masalah teknis dan rutin. Mari kita perkaya hidup dengan pemaknaan yang mendalam, kreatif, hangat, dan riang....

Daniel H. Pink is the author of a set of books on the changing world of work.

His recent book is The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, the first business book for a western audience in the Japanese comic format known as manga.

Also wrote A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, a long-running New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller that has been translated worldwide. His first book was Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working For Yourself, which Publishers Weekly says “has become a cornerstone of employee-management relations.”

Watch a trailer of the book!

[slideshare id=372443&doc=careeradvice-1209142144854362-8&w=425]

Trata-se do livro Johnny Bunko, apresentado em formato de mangá e que, confiram abaixo, possui até um trailer para sua divulgação.

Se o conteúdo seguir a linha de seu best-seller, A Revolução do Lado Direito do Cérebro (título em português), recomendo fortemente.

I think its time to explore in some more detail and with some more rigor exactly what it is I've meant by that.

There seems to be a growing consensus that as commodity jobs leave the US for more cost effective locations (cf, Friedman - more later on that) that our system of education and workforce will need to become more "right brain"-focused and attuned to differentiating with design, amongst other qualities (cf, Pink - more later on that). If that is so, somewhere in my stock X to Y answer is a strong sense of the applicability of design education to a broader array of situations.

By Daniel Pink (as appeared on WIRED, Issue 13.02 - Feb 2005 )

When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA.

Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment.

But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads.

Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.

Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.

Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.

Read the full story

By Daniel Pink (as appeared on WIRED, Issue 13.02 - Feb 2005 )

When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA.

Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment.

But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads.

Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.

Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.

Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.

Read the full story

Of course, I wanted to see if he was right (i.e. agreed with everything in The Lost Tools of Writing) and had anything to add. I'll let you decide by following this link.

One of the things The Lost Tools of Writing tries to teach students is the need for an orderly presentation that repeats the main point frequently. At first, it drives some students, especially the more "creative" (which often is a euphemism for "disorderly of mind and practice") ones, crazy to have to write like that.

The reason we require the repetition is because LTW prepares students for public speaking just as much as it prepares them for writing. When you speak in public, you need to repeat yourself frequently for two reasons: one, the audience does not know what you are talking about and two, they have no visual clues as to where they are in the speech.

So in LTW Level I, students are required to repeat the thesis five times in all: once in the thesis statement itself, once for each of the three main points (the first reason students must repeat themselves is that... The second reason students must repeat themselves is that... The third reason students must repeat themselves is that...) and once in the conclusion (Students must repeat themselves because...)

Of course, in reading, you don't need all those repetitions.

But in listening you do, if for no other reason than that you want some indication of when the speech will end. Listening requires pacing every bit as much as running does. The audience needs the speaker to provide this pacing or it won't know how to listen. Regrettably, these little things provide many of us with our petty-power-opps, on a level with not letting a car pass you on the highway.

Remember, when the speaker forgets what it is like to sit in the seat, his audience will stew in the pew.

Speaking can be an amazingly egotistical act. If there is one overarching key to success, I would argue that it is humility and its correlary: respect. Humility respects the audience, remembers the subject, recalls the purpose, and reinvigorates the souls of speaker and audience. In fact, when we enter the domain of humility we have placed ourselves into the sphere of usefulness in the hands of God.

So we need to respect the audience enough to let them know what page we're on (metaphorically).

Dan Pink would, I think, be pleased. He indicates that

It’s not about you. That’s doubly true for speeches. It’s not about you. It’s about the audience. Think of it from their perspective. Again, at the risk of being too critical of all those who stride the stage or command the podium, too many speechmakers – either through nervousness or ego – seem to forget that what really matters is the audience’s experience, not their own.

Later, he reminds us that a speech is not a right, but a privilige.

When you deliver a speech, you’ve got 10 or 100 or 10,000 people who have decided that the most important thing they can be doing at that moment isn’t taking care of something at the office or being with their families – but sitting there listening to you. That’s an extraordinary — and humbling — gift.

So that's why in LTW we try to get the student's attention off himself and onto, first, the craft of writing and speechmaking, second, the message, and third, the audience.

I hope it is clear that when I say "First," I mean chronologically, not first in importance. The craft of writing derives its value from the value of the audience and the meaning of the message.

Self-absorption undercuts attention to both.

Lest I seem to have created confusion, let me clarify what I'm trying to say here, which is, first, that humility is the foundation of success in writing or speechmaking and consequently that repetition provides one concrete instance of the writer/speaker humbling himself before his audience, message, and craft. Therefore, when we teach The Lost Tools of Writing or give speeches, we should not be afraid of repetition. 

I don't think I would be presumptuous to presume that Daniel Pink agrees. He also adds two more elements. Tim Ferriss asks him:

"What are the necessary ingredients of a good speech?"

Pink replies:

I’ve said many times that the three essential ingredients in any good speech are brevity, levity, and repetition. (That bears repeating: brevity, levity, and repetition.)

On that note, I'd better let you go.

Real learning is not copying. Copying is taking somebody else's solutions. Learning is taking someone else's problems.

I'm often asked where my real learning comes from; how I know the things I do; and how the learning frameworks I subscribe to are shaped. It is pretty simple really; it is through the exchange of ideas with colleagues, peers and good literature.

For me, good theory is good practice. I find you cannot hope to absorb everything you need without something to stretch and challenge your existing mindsets and assumptions. That's why good literature is so vital to good educators.

I've recently been reading some excellent literature, which explores the challenges for educators. I highly recommend How People Learn by Bransford et al and the OECD's Think Scenarios, Rethink Education as a source of real learning.

And for anyone wanting to understand the social and economic impacts of a knowledge age, should read Daniel Pink's Whole New Mind. This is a sensational read that really gives a great lens with which to view today's world. It is challenging in the extreme!

Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Work Week (amazing book!) has done an interview with Dan Pink on great speech writing (Dan was the chief speech writer for Al Gore from 1995-1997). Here is Tim’s post:

What are the necessary ingredients in a good speech?

I’ve said many times that the three essential ingredients in any good speech are brevity, levity, and repetition. (That bears repeating: brevity, levity, and repetition.)

But at a broader level, the most important aspect of any speech, as Garr Reynolds reminds us in Presentation Zen, is being able to answer two questions:

A. What’s your point?
B. Why does it matter?

That’s the whole enchilada. If you have a single point and can explain to a particular audience why it matters to them, you’re ahead of 90 percent of the business and political speechgivers out there today.

Read more on Tim Ferriss’ blog.

"For most of the past century the world belonged to these knowledge workers - to people who could crunch numbers, think analytically and acquire and use theoretical knowledge.  But the future belongs to a different kind of person, with a different kind of mind - to artists, inventors, designers and storytellers.  We are moving away from an economy built on the logical, linear, analytical capabilities associated with the left hemisphere of the brain, to one that is based on inventive, empathetic 'right-brain' abilities."

"So what exactly are we all supposed to do in order to thrive in what I like to describ e as the conceptual age?  After spending the past several years looking into this questions, I've identified six key right-brain aptitudes that we need to master to complement our left-brain thinking - to help us become, in other words, whole-minded.  These "six senses" - design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning - are not new...but...we've lost the knack of telling stories, seeing the big picture or empathising with the people around us."

Daniel Pink will be leading a masterclass at this month's HRD 2008 conference, the CIPD's learning and development event.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has either read the book or who attends the above masterclass.