Valuing Social Capital

I've been having an interesting conversation on Google+ with Patricia Kokinos of Change the Schools about the significance of the Occupy movement in the US.

Obviously, this is not a unique phenomenon - similar public uprisings against the injustice and inequality of "the establishment" have occurred in a number of countries around the world in the past year.  And, with the world in the grip of what is rapidly proving to be the biggest "global financial crisis" since the 1930's it is hardly surprising that the same kind of grass-roots demonstrations are showing up.


In that conversation, I posted:

Seems to me this genuinely may signal "the end of the world as we know it" - i.e. the collapse of the communist-capitalist industrial revolution social economies. The interesting question (apart from what else can we expect before the end of the Mayan Great Age in 2012?) is - what will [we] replace it with?

One of the critical factors for me that has eventually contributed to the downfall of both these post-classical social/economic models is the failure to find a way of accounting for - and therefore valuing - social capital, for example the value to society of parents being able to afford to spend time focusing on parenting their children well instead of being forced out into paid employment.

On what planet is spending 40 hours at a desk, or on a production line of more value to society than spending those 40 hours providing emotional and physical security for your children? And yet we have structured our society so that staying home to concentrate on providing those things for your children has no "value" because no money changes hands. Ironically, if somebody else cares for your children, that does have "value" because their motivation is financial.

So how do we - especially those of us involved in education and other social profit activities - change this?

Finding an answer is crucial. And urgent.

As I have been thinking about that some more, I've found myself wondering: if part of the issue is indeed "the failure to find a way of accounting for - and therefore valuing - social capital" appropriately in the economic fabric of our societies, (over-valued in the communist regimes, under-valued in the capitalist ones) then might the answer come from the "triple bottom line" concept?

 We have already got the beginnings of an Emissions Trading Scheme, where we assign a  value to the costs or benefits of various activities in terms of their contribution to carbon emissions. The idea of "green dollars"is not new either. So what about a system of transferrrable Social Capital Credits that recognise the social costs and benefits (as opposed to the private costs and benefits)  that activities have?

So for example, a teacher, nurse or counsellor might accrue SCCs as part of their salary package, as these activities have a social benefit as well as the private benefit to clients. Those credits could be traded off later to finance parental leave or vacation time.

Students would accrue Social Capital Credits as they progress through the education system,  since a more educated workforce has social benefits as well as private benefits for the individuals concerned.


People who are not in paid employment, but who work as caregivers in the home, or who do volunteer work in the community, would accrue Social Capital Credits to reflect the value of that work - which could be traded in to provide an income stream.  So parents could afford to stay home and take care of their own children, rather than being forced into menial "work" while someone else gets paid to do it.


The value of social profit (I don't like the term non-profit, and they're not all 100% unpaid /voluntary) organisations would become transparent, and could be accounted for in the national accounts. 


Presumably, activities deemed anti-social would attract Social Capital fines as well as or instead of simply financial penalties or  imprisonment.


It's a simple concept. Not necessarily an easy one to implement, but perhaps an idea whose time has come?

Ubiquitous learning

A colleague has pointed me in the direction of Ubiquitous Learning a couple of times now. It seems to have developed in parallel with the idea of feral learning, from a similar starting point, and spread much more quickly. And, as the name suggests, it seems to have a considerable amount of overlap.

My first impression was that the focus of the Ubiquitous Learning discussion is more firmly on the  technologies of virtual and distributed learning environments (see for example the UbiLearn conference website, but reading Leigh Blackall's critique suggests to me that perhaps there is more overlap than I originally thought.

But, even so it seems to me that there is a fundamental difference in that the material I've found so far on Ubiquitous Leaning is still beginning from the perspective of the educator, and trying to extend it out, where Feral Learning - in my conception of it at least - begins with the individual, and perceives schooling or other forms of education, training, or instruction (when they work) as subsets of the learning and growing that we all do. I may be being precious about this - reality checks are welcome here - but I believe that is a substantive difference. We may all be headed for the same middle ground, but I think we are heading for it from somewhat different worldviews.

The stuff I've read about Ubiquitous Learning seems to start from the idea of ubiquitous technology, and extend that into the area of education and from there to informal learning. Feral learning starts with the human being's need to grow and develop. Learning is an intrinsic part of growing up, growing wise, and growing old.Technologies like the internet and mobile phones can be great enablers, but actually they're not necessary - people learn stuff wherever they are and whatever they do. It's part of the human condition.  In other words, feral learning is a rather more anarchic and radical proposition than what I've read of Ubiquitous Learning suggests.

But, that said, it seems like it's a step in the right direction.

What do you think?

"How am I supposed to be inspired by that?"

A few days ago, Jan Visser of the Learning Development Institute (LDI) posted this on LDI 's Facebook page

Attached is a link to Paul Lockhart's "A Mathematician’s Lament." A brilliant plea, in my view, to refocus education on such things as beauty and to acquire one's knowledge of disciplines like math and science within the context of relevant current issues that can be seen, also, within a historical perspective. Not an entirely new viewpoint, of course, but it's very well formulated. Enjoy! JV

Jan's right, it's a great paper on why our teaching of mathematics puts kids off instead of showing them what's fascinating and beautiful about it. Although it's several years old now (first published in 2002) it remains relevant - unfortunately. Here are a couple of tasters...

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.

Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school.

As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules: “Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key." ... educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifths. ...

In the higher grades the pressure is really on. ...Students must take courses in Scales and Modes, Meter, Harmony, and Counterpoint. “It’s a lot for them to learn, but later in college when they finally get to hear all this stuff, they’ll really appreciate all the work they did in high school.” Of course, not many students actually go on to concentrate in music, so only a few will ever get to hear the sounds that the black dots represent. ... “To tell you the truth, most students just aren’t very good at music. They are bored in class, their skills are terrible, and their homework is barely legible. ... I guess there are just music people and non-music people. I had this one kid, though, man was she sensational! Her sheets were impeccable— every note in the right place, perfect calligraphy, sharps, flats, just beautiful. She’s going to make one hell of a musician someday.”

...Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul- crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

... By removing the process and leaving only the results of that process, you virtually guarantee that no one will have any real engagement with the subject. It's like saying that Michaelangelo created a beautiful sculpture without letting me see it. How am I supposed to be inspired by that?

Check out the full paper on the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) website.

BTW - the BEST mathematics book I have ever read is The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.