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19 July 2010

Joseph K. Hart, too contrary for Vandebilt

I came across an index card last week. It must have fallen out one of the books we’ve been carrting around for years and have begun to weed out. It was a reference to a “Hart, J. K.” and a book, Light from the north with the notation, “1926. folk high schools in Denmark” and some Dewey Decimal System markings. It was from a time at West Virginia University when I first became acquainted with a literature on folk schools. We had been to some during our sojourn in western North Carolina. Markey, in fact, participated in a calf birthing while visiting the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown. And we knew some folks from Berea College and John Ramsey’s work on folk schools. Then working at Mars Hill College, Markey and I took students to Highlander, which had reopened in New market, Tennessee and we got acquainted Myles Horton and those “activists.” But it wasn’t until browsing the library at WVU that I stumbled upon these works on the folk school movement in the US, popular particularly in the Scandinavian tinged Midwest.

I thought this guy, J. K. Hart, was just a writer… maybe an educator… writing on folk schools. But when I Googled him, I found a whole worth of material. Joseph Kinmont Hart studied with George Herbert Meade at the University of Chicago and a proponent of John Dewey and what has come to be called the progressive reform movement in education. He was also outspoken advocate of reform and a favorite of students wherever he taught. That is if the students were willing to think or go “against the grain.” He taught at the University of Washington wherte he got involved with local issues of equality, inclusiveness and labor rights. He quickly became known for leading radical crusades. This in the second decade of the 20th Century. He was dismissed in 1916. He then went to Reed College and was dismissed in 1920. In the interims between university teaching, Hart wrote books and edited magazines.

This background on Hart comes from a paper by Deron Boyles entitled, “Joseph Kinmont Hart and Vanderbilt University: The Rise and Fall of a Department of Education, 1930-1934.” The link is here [Boyles, Deron R., "Joseph Kinmont Hart and Vanderbilt University: The Rise and Fall of a Department of Education, 1930-1934" (2003). Faculty Publications. Paper 10.
http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/eps_facpub/10]

In his short stay at Vanderbilt one of his students was Myles Horton. He made a pilgrimage to Denmark as well and visited its folk highschools. He came back, of course, and started Highlander with two friends. The rest history.

TheBoyles paper is an interesting read and is a case of academic freedom. I found it interesting, also, that even as early as the 1920s Vanderbilt had designs on acquiring Peabody.

Posted 19 July 2010 † Jack § Books § Education § Individuals and Community ‡ Comments (0) °
02 July 2010

Uncertainty & complexity, the twin bugaboos of organizations

Uncertainty appears to the chief bugaboo of organizations. Max Miller, the Hamburg sociologist in his 2002 paper, Some theoretical aspects of systemic learning, abstracting organizational theorists (such as Simon and Weick), wrote, “If there is anything that defines the central problem of an organization, it is the inescapable and enduring struggle of coping with uncertainty. (Italics in the original.)

This is particularly potent when the organization is a church, a Christian church. Uncertainty is the modus operandi of God. Think of Abram. God told him to leave his home and people and take off “To the land which I will show you.” God told Moses to return to Pharaoh “so you may bring my people out of Egypt.” Other heroes are given similar commands. God doesn’t always give us blueprints. Instead He has given us the Holy Spirit to lead, guide and direct our steps.

You can imagine the conflicts this gives leaders of churches. They combat uncertainty, yet must remain open to intuiting the spontaneous movements of the Holy Spirit.

Posted 02 July 2010 † Jack § Decision making § Management ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: ,
21 June 2010

The forgotten rewards of reading a physical, hardcopy of a newspaper

I’ve been meaning to comment on this for a while since we started our home delivery subscription to The New York Times at the beginning of the month. In reading the paper in its original ink and newsprint version, I’ve come across articles and read that I never would have with the on-line version. The on-line version is more suitable if you know what you are after and then go directly to it. Or if you are are a sports fan, like me, you go to the sport index and browse the headlines and pix. But it is not the same with the newsprint version. The full articles are there in plain view and attracts the eye and mind. You don’t have to read them all, but you have more text and treatment available on which to judge whether to continue reading. Also I find the longer articles far easier to read in the paper version than on-line. I find them tedious, and somewhat imposing to tackle on-line. Anyone reading articles in the Times magazine knows what I mean.

Today’s edition is a case in point. The front page has an article on the analysis of what went wrong with the blowout prevention on the Deepwater Horizon. It’s a two-column story above the fold and is continued on two full pages and a half of another inside. I mean it is an in-depth, long story with colored graphics of the five-story blowout preventer and graphics and diagrams of the mechanisms designed to trigger the blind shear ram. I would find it near impossible to get the same comprehension of this story if I read it only on-line. And as I thumbed through the rest of the front page section I came across a story of the Cap d’Or, a 110 year-old tavern in Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria a city built by Alexander the Great and with a multinational citizenry… once.

What is our citizenry going to look like, I wonder, if all we read are short simplistic articles and are isolated… cocooned… from the unfamiliar?

Posted 21 June 2010 † Jack § Commentary § Technology § The News Business ‡ Comments (0) °
14 June 2010

IRB procedures expand to include “community-engaged research”

I’ve had to— as they say in scoring large scale writing assessments— “recalibrate.” I’ve recalibrated my attitude toward IRBs and their need when it comes to evaluating interventions designed to better communities. I attended a session today at Light Hall on “IRB issues in community-engaged research” and sponsored by the Vanderbilt IRB. I had no idea that steps that have been taken to accommodate evaluation research in community settings and with community groups, not only by the Vandy IRB but nationwide. The session, part of the on-going education effort of the IRB folks at Vandy, was conducted by Drs Doug Perkins and David Schlundt. They explained that the IRB can adjust to the emerging nature of problem definitions and solution development by involving community groups and leaders. And how implementation and what’s involved are usually unknowns at the start as expected with complex adaptive systems. It’s an iterative process and can be recognized as such by IRBs.

Posted 14 June 2010 † Jack § Complex adaptive systems § Survey & Questionnaires ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,
28 May 2010

The Baffler returns

I bought a copy of the not-strictly literary magazine, The Baffler, last weekend at a Davis-Kidd sale. I had not seen a copy in a long time and apparently it has been on a sort of sabbatical. I am glad to see it back in the magazine racks.

As best i can describe it, The Baffler is contrarian with style, wit and aplomb with a certain artisan steeliness. Good writing; good writers; good editors; good art. It cost $12, though.

I grew to enjoy the magazine flying around the upper Midwest for PRC in the 90s. I looked forward to reading it on the plane particularly returning home to Indianapolis.

Take a look at one if you can. In this day and time of instant Internet and cable commentaries, you may appreciate something well-thought out, rational and printed. Here’s their somewhat whimsical pitch with tongue-in-check, as printed among the last pages of the current issue (Volume 2, Number 1, by the way).

Supremacy
It resides in the written word, printed in neat columns on the papery page. You can tweet all you want. Twenty years from now nobody will give a damn.

But the authorial majesty of this Baffler, like all other Bafflers, will still be intact then. Whatever we choose to splatter over the page today, will still be as true then as what’s written in the Federalist Papers, only a little more fun to read.

Yes, the medium is the message, my friend, and the message of this particular medium is SUPREMACY: ink+paper+careful typesetting=eternal rightness.

In fact, the only weak point is you. Will you actually subscribe to this magazine, feeding our delusions of grandeur in the style to which they are accustomed, or will you sit there before your computer screen, whining that you will only read what comes your way for free?

We think we know the answer: It has to do with something called SUPREMACY. So get off your ass, you file-sharing, bit-torrenting, freeloading liberal. Make with the personal check, enclosed in a physical envelope, dispatched (with postage stamp) to the address below.

The Baffler
P.O. Box 812090 Chicago IL 60681
312.240.9902 thebaffler.com

Posted 28 May 2010 † Jack § Reportage § The News Business § politics with low case "p" ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:
28 May 2010

Are our public school students treated as supermarket tomatoes?

This morning Joe Palca, the NPR science reporter, interviewed a U of Florida plant biologist about growing more tastier tomatoes. The biologist, Harvey Klee, noted that tomato growers were rewarded for size of their tomatoes and yield of their crops. “Flavor is irrelevant,” he said. You see size and yield are easily measured and counted, and you get more loot, as a producer. It is all about getting a lot of tomatoes to the supermarkets. All that matters are that they are round, red, and firm.

I thought “Isn’t that a metaphor for our schools, today?” Federal, state and local ed agencies are aiming their rewards and sanctions at schools and teachers who produce children with high test scores, yet what kids really know and can do is neglected. Who they are, their academic strengths and weaknesses, their “street smarts” are not measured or recorded or accumulated for county and state reports. They cannot be easily measured with standardized and multiple-choice test items easily machine scored and counted.

Posted 28 May 2010 † Jack § Education § Testing ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:
20 April 2010

Another vote against planning from the 37 Signals guys: Plans “aren’t worth the stress”

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hannson in their new Rework published by Crown Business advise going against most of what we’ve come to accept as sacred business truths. Having worked with federal funded programs from education to drug and alcohol prevention, I know their proclivity toward forcing recipients to use business ways. So I am hoping the feds begin to take notice that business thinkers recognize the straitjacket that long-term planning can become. I know also that churches are not exempt from adapting business methods and often do not recognize the peril of replacing the day-to-day guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit.

Here’s Fried and Hannson’s take on Planning is guessing (pp 19-20):

Unless you’re a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many factors that are out of your hands: market conditions, competitors, customers, the economy, etc. Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control.

Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses. Start referring to your business plans as guesses, and your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can stop worrying about them as much. They just aren’t worth the stress.

When you turn guesses into plans, you enter a danger zone. Plans let the past drive the future. They put blinders on you. “This is where we’re going because, we, that’s where we said we were going.” And that’s the problem: Plans are inconsistent with improvisation.

And you have to be able to improvise. You have to be able to pick up opportunities that come along. Sometimes you need to say, “We’re going in a new direction because that’s what makes sense today.”

The timing of long-range plans is screwed up too. You have the most information when you’re doing something, not before you’ve done it. Yet when do you write a plan? Usually it’s before you’ve even begun. That’s the worst time to make a big decision.

Now this isn’t to say you shouldn’t think about the future or contemplate how you might attack upcoming obstacles. That’s a worthwhile exercise. Just don’t feel you need to write it down or obsess about it. If you write a big plan, you’ll most likely never look at it anyway. Plans more than a few pages long just wind up as fossils in your filing cabinet.

Give up on the guesswork. Decide what you’re going to do this week, not this year. Figure out the next most important thing and do that. Make decisions right before you do something, not far in advance.

It’s OK to wing it. Just get on the plane and go. You can pick up a nicer shirt, shaving cream, and a toothbrush once you get there.

Working without a plan may seem scary. But blindly following a plan that has no relationship with reality is even scarier.

Posted 20 April 2010 † Jack § Management § SPF-SIG work ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,
18 April 2010

Okay, okay. I’ll get rid of some books, Martha

venezia

This by David Dalla Venezia. One of his pictures is used as the cover for Ray Pawson book, Evidence-based Policy: A Realist Perspective (London: SAGE, 2006). I picked it up today to reread some passages. Pawson included some links to Venezia’s work and I saw this. It captures what others have described and what I’ve now come to see myself. I am slimming down my books and papers! Honest.
Venezia’s website is here.
A website for the book is here.

Posted 18 April 2010 † Jack § Books § Commentary § David Olney's Oh Yeah! § The artist ‡ Comments (0) °
11 April 2010

What’s the witness of your “domestic” life?

I’ve been dipping again into the Anabaptist record. A piece by Alan Kreider took me particularly hard. He wrote, “The church has nothing to offer to the world other than what it has learned to live in its own ‘domestic’ life.”

It isn’t information; it isn’t principles; it isn’t laws and regulations that’s going to make a difference, but how we live our lives before and with others. And this how we live is largely a product of our reflexes, Alan Kreider goes on to say.

Our reflexes, like our values and deep convictions, are shaped by the people with whom we share at the deepest level and with whom we have the deepest ties.

Who shapes you? Who trains your reflexes? Your church? Your family and friends? Or commercials on TV, films, soaps? If it is your church, does your church shape you to demonstrate— in your individual reflexes as in your common life— the teachings and way of Jesus to the world?

According to a note at the end of the article, Alan Kreider is director of the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. The whole article, “Is a Peace Church Possible?: The Church’s ‘Domestic’ Life,” is on the Anabaptist Network here.

Posted 11 April 2010 † Jack § Commentary § Decision making § Individuals and Community ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:
08 April 2010

Five rules to reinvent Best Practices from Nick Milton

Wednesday Nick Milton in his blog listed these five “rules.” They made a lot of sense to me and so I am reprinting them:

There is a lot of pushback in the KM world about the term “best practice”. In the discussion groups, we hear people saying “we don’t believe in best practice”. Respected KM gurus say that “best practice harms effectiveness”. David Snowden, in his complexity model, believes that best practice will apply only to simple repeatable non-complex problems.

Certainly I have seen the concept of best practice used negatively and destructively in organisations. I have seen people defend outmoded and inefficient ways of working by saying “we are following best practice”. However I feel that as a concept, best practice can still be very useful, with the following caveats

1. Best is temporary. There may be a current “best way” to do something, but like “world champion” or “world record”, it’s not going to stay the best for long.

2. Best is therefore a starting point. We are always looking to improve on best, but without knowing the temporary best, we don’t know what we have to beat. Like a world record, best is there to be beaten - its a minimum accepted threshold.

3. Best is contextual. There may be no universal “best way” to do something. The best way to deal with emergency decompression of a Jumbo Jet may not be the best way to deal with emergency decompression of a Harrier jump jet. However within that context, there is still a “best”.

4. In a new context, you cannot blindly apply “best” from another context. However you can learn from other “bests” - no context is ever totally alien, and there may be approaches and

5. Best practice does not have to be written down. It can live there in the community cloud of tacit knowledge. Usain Bolts “best way to run a sprint” is probably not even conscious - its in his muscle memory. However if it can be written down - in a wiki, or a document, or a manual - so much the better, so long as it is immediately updated every time its superseded and improved. The risk with documenting a best practice, is that it goes out of date, and there is no point in documenting without allowing for continual update. The risk with not documenting a best practice, is that people can’t find it, can’t refer to it, and so make up their own practice which is frequently far from best. The answer is to record and continually update, eg through a wiki, or through a constantly reviewed and updated reference (for example, army doctrine)

If you apply these 5 caveats, then there is little or no risk from the concept of best practice, and instead it can be part of the engine that drives continual improvement.

After all, the concept of best practice is simply the following thought process

“Here’s a problem. Has anyone seen anything like this before? What’s the best way they’ve found to deal with things like this? How can I build on/improve on that to tackle my problem? Hmm - that worked, I’d better let others know what I did”

Posted 08 April 2010 † Jack § Management ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,