The Big It & the Big Beacon

D. E. Goldberg, Mark Somerville & K. Lewis Big Beacon Coalition Needham, MA 02492USA deg@threejoy.com & kelly@wecanbounce.com www.bigbeacon.org

The World is Flat & All That

•  World is flat & returns to creativity increasing: –  Tom Friedman, The World is Flat. –  Richard Florida, Rise of the Creative Class. –  Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind.

•  Yet we have education adapted to another era.

•  Good models exist for education & change (Olin, iFoundry, Bounce Coalition, etc.).

•  Some reformers expend e!ort, miss essence. •  Others complacent: Change not urgent, nice to

have, inessential. •  Question: What vision-process combination

can really move the needle?

©  2011  David  E.  Goldberg  

Roadmap

•  Olin, iFoundry, Bounce and all that. •  What can move the needle? What worked? What

blocks change? •  Approach: Impossibility framing, systems solution,

broad brush strokes, and first little bets. •  The Big It: What are we shooting for? •  The Big Beacon: What will illuminate/enable the

path? •  First little bets.

Olin Created as Beacon to Others

•  Olin Foundation creates Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in 1997.

•  New program from ground up.

•  First class in 2002.

•  6th class graduated 2011.

•  Michael Moody invokes “beacon” in initial talks of OIP in 2008.

iFoundry Mission: Teach Elephant to Dance

•  Programmatic incubator. •  Key bargain: Allow pilot

innovation & respect faculty governance.

•  E!ectual thinking, not planning.

•  Unleashed powerful student engagement.

•  Scales to full freshmen class in third year plus targeted transformation in key areas.

•  UIUC is emotionally di!erent place & curriculum is in motion.

Pike County & Bounce: Change K-12

•  Bounce Collective in Richmond, VA: – Works with Richmond schools

to e!ect real student-centered change.

– Engage companies, schools & community using principles from leadership coaching

–  From 30 to 1000. •  Pike Country HS, Petersburg, IN:

– Olin e!ect in 9-12 HS program. – Coal country in rural Indiana.

Common Beliefs Olin, iFoundry, Pike & Bounce

•  Students are creative, resourceful & whole. •  Learning takes a community. •  Creativity fostered best with intrinsic

motivation. •  Serving and creating are natural

motivators of discovery and understanding.

•  Noticing, being, and practicing in world is as important as (more important than?) cognitive understanding.

•  Disciplines and their integration important. •  Faculty and sta! are servant leaders, not

sages, not victims. Robert K. Greenleaf (1904-1990)

How to Change Things When Change is Hard

•  Resistance is not futile: –  Olin resisted as boutique e!ort and

anomaly. –  iFoundry criticized as not being large

enough or impactful enough. –  Bounce & Pike as one o!, not scalable.

•  Many want –  Appearance of change –  w/o significant reorg or culture shift –  At no or low cost –  With no reduction in control or authority.

•  Yet, e!ective change can happen quickly: –  E!ective changes. –  E!ective change processes.

What Has Worked?

•  Olin HAS been a beacon. Existence proof that something di!erent can be e!ective.

•  iFoundry HAS taught elephant to dance. Existence proof that large R1 universities can have e!ective experience for undergraduates and still be research universities.

•  Bounce & Pike HAVE moved public schools. Existence proof that existing school in urban setting with bureaucracy and unions can become e!ective

•  Unleashed students ARE underutilized force. Intrinsic motivation and community can bring this force to bear practically.

What Blocks the Path?

•  Existence proofs not enough. Better mousetraps do not cause beaten paths to inventors’ doors.

•  Change is important and insu!ciently urgent. Change is “nice to have” not “need to have,”

•  Usual bright, shiny objects mislead change e"orts. Usual emphasis on pedagogy, content, and curriculum misses other keys to change.

•  Victims &/or big egos do not make good servants. Universities cater to big egos and status seeking. Unions cater to victim narrative and recognition/appreciation seeking. New way needs creators & servant leaders, not victims and/or big egos.

Four-Part Approach

•  Impossibility framing: Think as big as possible & consider big, impossible goal.

•  Systems solution: Consider big decomposition of systems solution, both postcard & process.

•  Broad brush strokes: Paint picture of solution elements broadly. Details TBD by players as they join.

•  First little bets: Consider sequence of little bets to start.

What Impossible “It” Changes World?

•  Impossibility framing of a challenge. Make “it” as big as possible, and then ask what would make the impossible, possible.

•  Impossible challenge: Transform K-21 education system globally so that every eligible student in the world receives a whole mind & body, intrinsically-motivated, student-centered education in which understanding is secondary to making & serving from love, without victimhood or ego, at reasonable sustainable, scalable cost.

Elements of the Big It

•  Eight elements of Big It education: – Every child everywhere – K-21 (whole system) – Whole brain & body balanced –  Intrinsically motivated – Understanding as secondary to making & serving –  Student centered –  From love without victimhood or ego –  Sustainable, scalable cost

•  Consider elements separately.

Every Child Everywhere & K-21

•  World is globally interconnected. •  Local education increasingly inadequate and

pressure exists to introduce children to other cultures sooner.

•  Cultural interaction will be increasingly interactive. •  Complexity of the world suggests that more will

need primary+secondary+higher education. •  Bottom line: Initiative focuses on whole system of

education and all children globally.

Whole Mind-Body Balance

•  Education today is biased toward cognition alone. •  Broader education would recognize broader sense of human

existence. •  Left-brain, right-brain, pre-frontal brain, emotion, and body.

Truly Balanced Education

Now: Left-brain only

•  Language & analysis only.

Big It: Balanced •  Left brain: language &

analysis. •  Right brain: Visual and

creative. •  Executive brain: Awareness

& noticing. •  Empathetic brain: Mirroring

and feeling felt. •  Emotional brain: Emotions

and moods. •  Body: Movement and

presence.

Intrinsically Motivated

•  Large body of research points to importance of IM in creative tasks.

•  Education of industrial revolution assumed extrinsic carrots & sticks.

•  Need fundamental rethinking of ed process.

•  Human motivations to create and serve as key drivers.

What Blocks Intrinsic Motivation in Ed?

•  Education is abstract and cognitive: understanding dominated.

•  Young people not motivated to learn abstract subjects without knowing why these subjects useful.

•  Why is education so abstract and unbalanced? •  3 takes on the history of education.

Take 1: Athens & the Understanding Revolution

•  5th century BC in Athens special point in time & space.

•  Point to Socrates, Plato & Aristotle as starting revolution in human thought.

•  An understanding revolution. •  Systematic inquiry through

dialectic, categorization & other tools royal road to gains in useful knowledge.

Plato

Reminder: Greek Society Based on Slavery

•  Greek society was built on slavery.

•  Free men had time on their hands, in part, because of their ownership of others.

•  Slaves made stu! & served others.

•  Making and serving were occupations of the lowest in society.

•  Education in private schools reserved for elite free men.

•  The good news and bad news of this culture.

Good News of Greece

•  Free time intellectual speculation systematic cognitive approach to gaining understanding.

•  iFoundry reforms as going back to the Future.

•  The Missing Basics of Engineering: –  Asking questions (Socrates 101) –  Labeling patterns in data

(Aristotle 101) –  Modeling conceptually (Hume

101) –  Decomposing (Descartes 101) –  Experimenting (Locke 101) –  Visualizing/ideating (Da Vinci

101) –  Communicating (Newman 101)

Socrates  

Bad News I: Abstract Thought as Privileged

•  Upper class could a!ord to speculate abstract knowledge becomes privileged over other ways of knowing.

•  Emotion, practice, being, making & serving become second rate.

•  This favoring of reason & pure thought was not itself wholly rational.

•  In part, driven by power & position of those who could a!ord to speculate and understand.

•  It was driven, in part, by status in Ancient Greece.

Bad News II: Understanding vs. Serving-Making

•  Slaveholding society valued knowledge speculations of free men over making, serving, and other practical roles of slaves and women.

•  Understandable in that context, perhaps. •  A luxury we can’t a!ord with 7 billion people on the

planet. •  Making and serving is everybody’s business to

support life in sustainable way. •  Making of new understanding is another form of

making. Not better or superior. Another kind. •  Supports serving and making.

Take 2: The Rise of Universal Education

•  Education in the Lyceum, the Academy and other schools of Greece of Greece was for the privileged.

•  Apprenticeship dominated learning of trades. •  Private grammar school was for the learning of Latin

(and Greek) grammar. •  “Classical” education refers back to Greece & Rome. •  Early schools were private. •  1800s saw rise of universal and compulsory education

in Europe and US. •  Key takeaway: Literacy and understanding in Greek

sense dominated early educational system design.

Take 3: Cold War Curriculum in Internet World?

•  In final days of the Vannevar Bush era.

•  Report, The Endless Frontier, set stage for worldwide state funding of scientific research.

•  STEM, STEM, STEM: More SM than TE & little humanities, arts or other stu!. No making or serving.

•  3 missed revolutions: quality, entrepreneurial, and information revolution leave us in very di!erent world.

©  2011  David  E.  Goldberg  

Vannevar  Bush  (1890-­‐1974)  

Understanding with a Vengeance

•  The modern research university as “producer” of understanding.

•  Total emphasis on abstract knowledge with math-law-based science as the ideal form.

•  Even practical fields dominated by abstract learning as primary: law, medicine, and engineering.

•  Schools produce cadre of elites who believe understanding dominates making-serving.

What is Primary Value of Education

•  Want understanding, making, serving, doing, being, and other things to be co-equal.

•  So what is the primary value of education in the Big It?

•  What do all human beings long for.

Celtic Wisdom: Expression

Thoughts are the forms of the soul’s inner swiftness. In a certain sense, there is nothing in the world as swift as a thought. It can fly anywhere and be with anyone. Our feelings too can move swiftly; yet even though they are precious to our own identity, thoughts and feelings still remain largely invisible. In order to feel real, we need to bring that inner invisible world to expression. Every life needs the possibility of expression. When we perform an action, the invisible within us finds a form and comes to expression. Therefore, our work should be the place where the soul can enjoy becoming visible and present. The rich unknown, reserved and precious within us, can emerge into visible form. Our nature longs deeply for the possibility of expression in what we call work.

O'Donohue,  John  (2009-­‐03-­‐17).  Anam  Cara:  A  Book  of  Cel/c  Wisdom  (pp.  133-­‐134).  Harper  Collins,  Inc..  Kindle  EdiLon.    

John O’Donahue (1956-2008)

Unleashing-Expressing as Primary

•  Everyone wants to express themselves. •  Need two things: unleashing, then expressing •  Results in motivationally correct education. •  2 ways to educate:

– Currently: Spinach, spinach, spinach, chocolate.

– Big It: Chocolate, then spinach to make better chocolate.

To Sir With Love: No Ego, No Victims

•  Student-centered education from love without victimhood or ego.

•  Education tries to move from sage on stage to guide on side: Subject of phrases is still the teacher.

•  Student-centered education treats students as resourceful, creative & whole.

•  It trusts them, unleashes them, and supports them.

•  The teacher creates structured spaciousness and acts in capacity of servant leader.

At Reasonable, Scalable Cost

•  Reform is usually incremental.

•  Costs born by faculty. •  Reform resisted. •  Discontinuous

transformation through IM permits student-centered ed at comparable cost.

Why traditional e!orts at education reform fail: Costs piled on top of existing system.

Goldberg-Laffer Curve of Educational Transformation

Big It Articulates the Postcard

•  Consistent with many reform manifestoes.

•  Generalized to all education.

•  Goes beneath surface desires and gets to key di!erentiators, root motivations & psychological stumbling blocks.

•  How to get there?

How to do the impossible, the Big It?

Big It Meet the Big Beacon

•  Key idea: Create a system to organize the willing and compete with the unwilling until they become willing.

•  Six steps: Take systems approach to change in the large, (1) embrace & network like-minded collaborators in- and outside education, (2) create large network of exemplars, (3) that di!use back to mother institutions, and (4) compete with unwilling members of entrenched system, (5) then provide OS & (6) cultural conversion services to those who would rather switch than fight.

Big Beacon Pieces & Functions

•  Organize the willing: Form Big Beacon coalition of the willing.

•  Network exemplars: Establish global network of Little Red School Houses.

•  Di"use practices: Establish iFoundry-like incubators to di!use Red School House innovations back to mother ships.

•  Compete with the status quo: Overall system challenges status quo to change and then embraces the converted when they are ready.

•  Franchise to the ready: Build Android OS for a new education to promote spread of practices.

•  Encapsulate & disseminate culture: Form See-Be-Do-Share Tank or a Presence Tank (as opposed to a think tank) to capture and pass on practices.

Big  Beacon  

BB  CoaliLon  

LiNle  Red  School  House  Network  

Incubators  

Android  OS  for  New  Ed  

See-­‐Be-­‐Do  Share  Tank  

Compete  then  

Cooperate  

Big Beacon Coalition of the Willing

•  Establish a network of willing collaborators with the right stu!.

•  Schools, corporations, and other organizations that embed values of the Big It.

•  Ignore the unwilling until they become willing and then actively seek their membership & facilitate their conversion..

•  Goal. Collaborate creatively among actors who support BI/BB vision.

•  Initial action? Grow from OIP, Bounce & key ed friends & corporate partners.

Global Network of Little Red School Houses

•  Establish globally distributed network of micro-campuses in key locations.

•  Can be extant, new, or existing campus. •  Can be primarily education driven, organization

driven or collaborative e!ort. •  Students or cohorts can move around for global

experience. •  Corporations, governmental organizations, NGOs,

Non-profits a"liate (collocate?) with cohorts & thus get employer acceptance, quality & high-status branding (Google, Olin, Illinois?) of the network or individual microcampuses.

•  Profit and non-profit possibilities. •  Goal: Create large network of diverse

microCampuses with diverse practices to place best practices all over world, recruit new partners, and compete with the unwilling.

•  Initial steps? Network extant e!orts.

Di"use via Incubation

•  microCampuses need mechanism to di!use innovations back to extant educational institution.

•  Create iFoundry-like incubators that help adapt microCampus e!orts to Mother ship smoothly.

•  Goal. Ensure that e!orts don’t become silos. •  Initial steps. Package incubation structures so

others can adopt.

Android OS for a New School

•  What is an operating system? •  Open source infrastructure that

supports change of individuals and institutions. –  Institutional artifacts –  Servant training artifacts –  Sharing from “OS” users

•  Goal. Have ready source for all blueprints, content, plans. Once unwilling feel heat, share all to make conversion easy.

•  Spreading architecture and culture more powerful than spreading content alone.

•  Initial steps? Investigate existing open sources and seek willing partners and collaborators to piece together existing resources.

See-Be-Do-Share or Presence Tank

•  Create a locus for accumulating & disseminating best practices and ways of being.

•  A locus for presence. •  Not a think tank. Deemphasize mind; place

emphasis on awareness, being, and doing. •  Servant training centered here. •  Incubator training centered here. •  microCampus launches centered here. •  Cultural seeds for converting institutions. •  Study, model, and scale best practices. •  Goal. Understand and implant seeds of

successful culture for growth of BB and spread of conversion.

•  Initial steps? Examine i2E2 & see if there are others that are close. Start to capture RSSI & change artifacts of extant institutional forms.

Overall: Compete Then Cooperate

•  Overall e!ect of system. •  Compete with unwilling

until… •  Ready to join e!ort. •  Cooperate fully. •  To e!ect total

transformation. •  Until “We’d rather switch

than fight.”

7 Pillars of the Big Beacon

•  Servant leadership & coaching (cf. Greenleaf).

•  Intrinsic motivation & practice of student unleashing (cf. Drive).

•  E!ective change practices integrating the elephant, rider & path (cf. Switch).

•  E!ectual thinking (as opposed to planning, cf. Sarasvathy).

•  Maker (Design) thinking, service science, management & engineering (SSME), and values-sensitive design (IDEO, UW & TUDelft, IBM).

•  Open innovation (cf. Chesborough). •  Beat swords into plowshares: Reframe

competition as cooperation as much as possible.

Little Bets Toward Big It & Big Beacon

•  Hold airport meeting. •  Continue to pilot teacher as

servant leader and ed change agent training.

•  Create bigbeacon.org website.

•  Continue to revise and enhance “the story.”

•  Circulate beta stack to thought leaders.

•  Form Founders Circle. •  Write rollout business plan

for 1-3 year time frame.

Bottom Line

•  From Olin as Little Beacon Big It + Big Beacon. •  Big It: (1) Transform K-21 education system globally so that

(2) every eligible student in the world receives a (3) whole mind & body, (4)intrinsically-motivated, (5) student-centered education in which (6) understanding is secondary to making & serving from (7) love, without victimhood or ego, at (8) reasonable sustainable, scalable cost

•  Big Beacon: Take systems approach to change in the large, (1) embrace & network like-minded collaborators in- and outside education, (2) create large network of exemplars, (3) that di!use back to mother institutions, and (4) compete with unwilling members of entrenched system, (5) then provide OS & (6) cultural conversion services to those who would rather switch than fight..

•  Little bets toward practical implementation start from the network & work out.