Study science with soul

The pendulum has swung.  First there was the hand-wringing that we didn't have enough graduates with 'hard' degrees - science, engineering, technology and math - now, recent news from  a Harvard study is about the 50% drop in the number of students in the humanities.  And the phenomenal rise in online learning shows vastly greater interest in computer science or business courses than in philosophy or anthropology.

Though my own major was in math, I was always attracted to the liberal arts, auditing classes when I could, and strongly believe that not only are the liberal arts fascinating, they are necessary for individuals, as well as society as a whole, to be complete.

Why?  Because:

1. The 'hard' subjects are all about the 'how' - humanities help us with the 'why'.
2. Calculus and compilers don't teach you about different cultures.
3. The past formed our present which informs our future (why history matters).
4. We need a moral compass to guide us through the unprecedented changes caused by medical and technological advances, from clones to drones.  Philosophy helps.
5. Art expands the mind (think different).

The United States holds the innovative edge largely due to its ability (so far) to pay serious attention to the arts and humanities, as well as the sciences - a fact that other countries are recognizing and working hard to emulate.  We're at a time when we can discuss the science of the soul as well as the soul of science.  We should embrace this kind of 'blended learning' and keep it going, don't you think?

Images courtesy of renjith krishnan & Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

The business of writing well

Writing is communication, so it should not come as a surprise that good communication skills (writing) are absolutely necessary in just about any career, especially the ones where you need to influence the thinking or behavior of others.  Even those who can write reasonably well, still want/need to work with someone who can do it better - providing jobs for the oodles of marketing/messaging pros out there.  Coincidentally that's what I've been doing the last week, enjoying the focus on the wording of the message instead of the features of the product, for a change.

One of the top education stories this week is the recently released report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, assessing writing competency for 8th and 10th graders.  The results themselves are not encouraging, only a quarter performed at the 'proficient' level or higher, but the way the test was done was definitely cheer-worthy.  It not only made the test computer-based, but it paid attention to whether students used the tools available to them through computers - even basics like spell-check.  Many of us have seen (among family, friends, coworkers) that the top students are often accomplished at writing, as well as math and science, and, unsurprisingly, they have ready access to tech resources (unfortunately the digital gap still persists, feeding the achievement gap). Though the fundamentals of good writing (and critical thinking) are timeless and technology-independent, the way we write has definitely changed and the person who knows how to access and use the myriad tools and services available has a clear advantage.  Kids need to learn to write well, using digital tools, if they're to flourish in the jobs of the future - and it's a challenge that we can definitely meet.

By the way, the example of the 'Lost Island' test (listen to nature sounds and snippets from a diary and write about your imagined experiences on that island) appears skewed to the more imaginative among us.  I personally would have loved it as an 8th grader, but I know many super-smart and successful people who would have not welcomed it that much.  They'd enjoy reading Harry Potter (or Robinson Crusoe - extending the island theme), and obsessively watch episodes of 'Lost', but would get lost themselves trying to imagine something like it.  Here's a report on the NAEP writing test if you want to know more details.  What level of creative writing is necessary for every student?  And should creative writing really be bounded ('stifled') by rules or should it flow unfettered?  (You might want to check out my older post on why entrepreneurs should write too!)

A social entrepreneur starts early

Last Friday, as I was driving back from a meeting, I heard just a couple of sentences on the radio before I turned it off to think (I still do that sometimes), but what I heard was something that stuck in my mind.  (If you're interested in the whole thing, I tracked it down to this talk on Forum, here it is: Silicon Valley Culture).  The part that stuck was that Valley entrepreneurs prioritize 'entrepreneurship, family, philanthropy', in that order.

It is definitely one of those statements that evokes a 'hmm...', a statement that would not resonate with everyone, but certainly reflects what we've seen with a lot of entrepreneurs, Gates being a notable example.  But what made me think about this was a meeting with someone who appears to be embodying the exact opposite in terms of focus.

A couple of days ago I had the opportunity to meet Joel Mwale, a young man with a strong entrepreneurial drive.  He's visiting here from South Africa (where he's attending the African Leadership Academy), his visit sponsored by his mentors Terry and Carolyn Gannon (retired, Silicon Valley entrepreneur/execs super-active in various social causes).  The Gannons believe that Joel would get a lot by meeting the many entrepreneurs and academic stars in the Valley and he's definitely making the most of his visit.  When we met, I heard about his journey from poverty in a small village in Kenya through school, where he was well on track to be under, or even 'un', educated, until a chance study tip from a classmate lit a fire in him and catapulted him to the top 10% of students in the country.  And Joel is fired up to be an entrepreneur.

Joel is not thinking of just getting rich himself and helping his family though.  Joel dreams of doing something to improve the education situation in Africa (though he's from Kenya, his scope is for the whole continent).  He's not thinking 'philanthropy' (after entrepreneurship and family, as in the Valley), he's thinking 'social enterprise' - and how he can use his drive, his smarts, his life, to make a difference. 


Joel has started working on his next venture and, as as a fellow edupreneur, had a deep conversation about the learning community platform provided by my startup.  He is one of the 10 winners of the Google Zeitgeist 2012 award for Young Minds for young people showcasing how they are making a positive impact on the world.  Amazingly, Joel's award was for an enterprise that he started a couple of years ago to bring safe, clean water to his village and is now employing over 30 people.  


Joel is not waiting to do well before he does good.  For him entrepreneurship is fully integrated with helping solve some of the basic problems impacting people's survival and growth.  And just to put it in all perspective, Joel hasn't celebrated his nineteenth birthday yet.

Domain expertise

Conventional wisdom has it that you should only work on what you know.  As in what you studied in college and/or gained experience in through your jobs. This is especially true for entrepreneurs - 'domain expertise' is expected in founders.

But entrepreneurs are also advised (pushed)  to 'follow their passion'.  And the reality is that not everyone recognizes their passion early on.  Or if they do, they are not able to indulge it and they settle instead for jobs they're good at - maybe to pay off the monster college debts they racked up studying 'marketable' subjects that they were not so passionate about.

So what's an entrepreneur to do when she discovers the passion for an area that she has no direct experience in?  In a previous post, I'd written about how it is important to get to know the area well if you are going to build a company around it and suggested various steps that you could take.  And a few days ago I met an entrepreneur who exemplifies the commitment to doing what it takes to make that shift successful.

CK12 has been getting a lot of attention in education and tech circles for making the promise of online textbooks a reality, and, most importantly, an affordable reality.  But what is less known is how the founder Neeru Khosla went about starting CK12.   Her background was in biology, not education.  Neeru was involved in leadership roles in various non-profit efforts until she decided to jump into the digital textbook revolution and make online textbooks readily accessible.  But before she did that, Neeru joined a Master's program in education at Stanford University.  I had the opportunity to chat with Neeru at an event last week and I asked about her experience.  It was 'very hard' she said, understandably.  It is no cake-walk to get back into college when you've been out of it for a couple of decades or so, especially for a demanding program.  'So why did you do it?' I asked.  Her answer: it got her involved with people in education. 


The organization is well established now and there are millions of views of the textbooks on CK12.  It got there because Neeru was willing to do the hard stuff and didn't let age or lack of domain knowledge stand in her way.  And that's one of the defining characteristics of entrepreneurs - they do not shrink from tackling the difficult, challenging, out-of-the-ordinary things that are needed to make their ideas reality.  Living your passion takes commitment!

Social entrepreneurship at work

In a long ago post, I'd quoted one definition of an entrepreneur as 'one who sees an opportunity and organizes resources to take advantage of it'.  Modifying that slightly, I'd say a social entrepreneur is 'one who sees an opportunity for social good and organizes resources to deliver it'. 

I've recently been working with the Silicon Valley Education Foundation as part of their Step Up to Algebra program, a middle-school math outreach effort.

• The need?  Large numbers of students in Silicon Valley were entering high school with little or no skills in algebra.  And as SVEF CEO Muhammed Chaudhry points out "students who study math at least through Algebra II in high school are more than twice as likely as those who do not to earn a four-year degree, and the level of math a student reaches is the most accurate predictor of whether that student will earn a Bachelor’s degree" (Adelman, 1999 & 2006).  
• The resources?  SVEF started the program a few years ago by providing summer workshops for students in local middle schools, using mentors from the community (usually local corporations) to provide the one-on-one support needed to help these students (typically under-resourced) get comfortable with algebra.  And of course, they do secure the all-important resource of funding to enable the program.

The program has been running for a few years now and they have delivered.  But entrepreneurs stay on top of changing market needs and refine offerings to fit them.  It apparent that there are more students needing help in algebra, and it also like a good idea to provide them that help throughout the year, not just for a few weeks over the summer, so they can gain increased competence in the subject. 

As always, the challenge is matching resources to goals.  Expanding the program makes logistics and volunteer sourcing difficult, so SVEF turned to technology to help make that happen.  In a sort of 'blended learning' approach, with bi-monthly in-person sessions, bolstered by the excellent Khan Academy content, and online mentoring on the Meemli platform, SVEF is able to deliver more help to more students, more often.  (Disclosure: I'm Meemli's founder, and I'm writing this to share my first-hand experience with SVEF's exciting approach.)

Working closely with SVEF, I get to see all the challenges non-profits face, especially in public education: working with cash-strapped schools, over-worked teachers and varying environments in each district.  I also see how hard it is to be innovative, take risks, work with outside resources you don't control and do it all with limited staff and funding constraints.  It takes patience and a willingness to go with the flow while still reaching for the goal - things that you don't see much of in tech startups, by the way.  As an entrepreneur myself, I'm impressed that SVEF is, on their own, putting together a delivery system for their program incorporating new technology instead of sticking to the proven, mainstream/late-adopter options.  Not many are willing to take this kind of a leap, even in Silicon Valley - innovative risks are easier dreamed of than embraced.  Kudos to SVEF for being true entrepreneurs for social good!

Upside of Failure

The Sunday New York Times magazine had a thought-provoking article on whether schools should focus on building 'character' and not just academic competence.  I generally applaud the sentiment, though I also believe that kids get much of their character guidance from parents and the community, with the school supporting and emphasizing it.

The article is titled 'What if the Secret to Success is Failure?' and goes on to cover all the character-building benefits of failing at something which then leads to future success.  Again, yes, I do support the concept as I believe it builds resilience, which is a big factor in successfully navigating this fast-changing world.  (I also believe students should be taught compassion, but that's a different story.)  What made this article particularly appealing to me is how much of this approach resonates with successful entrepreneurship.

"True: learning is fun, exhilarating and gratifying.... — but it is also often daunting, exhausting and sometimes discouraging."  Just like entrepreneurship!  "People who accomplished great things.... often combined a passion for a single mission with an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission, whatever the obstacles and however long it might take."  That is the defining characteristic of an entrepreneur.  The concern about children from affluent families having so much done for them that they're unable to deal with setbacks is somewhat like an over-funded startup failing because it never had the pressure of limited resources making it focus on what was really important.  And of course, the idea that failed experiments and uncertainty contribute to the development of grit and ultimate success is one of the reasons that, in Silicon Valley at least, a two-time entrepreneur is respected, even if the first time was a bust.

There is more, for example, 'social intelligence' and 'optimism' are super helpful for entrepreneurs too.  Read the article here - it'll make you wonder if teaching entrepreneurship will do more than just help build the economy.

From here to there and back

I just read a post (originally published over a month ago) about a non-profit started by a young woman a few years ago.  It 'identifies, trains and mentors' smart, promising girl students from highly disadvantaged backgrounds to complete their education and prepare for careers.  The training sounds a bit like finishing school for business (and entrepreneurship) and the result is a bunch of highly motivated girls dreaming of building the next Google - in India.

The non-profit, Roshni Academy, was founded by Salma Hasan, while she was a junior at college and has significant funding from Silicon Valley philanthropists.  There are a couple of cool aspects to this social enterprise:

• Like other Stanford students, Salma started a venture and got funding while still at school, except this was for a social cause
• The Academy focuses on teaching/building intangibles - confidence, public speaking, conflict resolution (!) - not just academic skills

But what I find most impressive is that Salma wants to bring the same techniques here to the US where there many under-resourced girls with a lot of potential who don't even know the kind of futures they could have.  A model pioneered in India being brought to the under-served communities in the US is fascinating at many levels - including the fact that the idea was hatched by a student in the US to help solve a problem in India and is being brought back to address the same problem here.  It would be interesting to see how well it works in the US and how much tweaking, if any, needs to happen to fit this culture.

Mentoring (along with training) is key to getting students to dream - and achieve - big, especially if they are not exposed to a high-achieving environment in their families or communities.  Fortunately, there seems to be a renewed interest in mentoring in the US, maybe due to the combined pressures of the economy and an under-performing public education system.  The Roshni Academy may be a timely solution.  You can read Vivek Wadhwa's entire post here and watch the video and end the week feeling good about social entrepreneurs who dream and achieve.

Entrepreneurial diplomacy

I believe that one can bring an entrepreneurial approach to just about anything, not just to start a business.  As I've mentioned in an earlier post, my favorite definition of an entrepreneur is 'one who recognizes opportunities and organizes resources to take advantage of the opportunity'.  And here's an exciting example of entrepreneurship in a small social venture with lasting impact - from a diplomat, no less.

I heard about this over dinner a little while ago with J. Ravikumar, the High Commissioner of India to Cameroon (full disclosure, he's a 'cousin' in the Indian sense, which defies ordinal numeric categorization).  Cameroon is a small nation, but while it is a typical African country in some ways, in others it has a lot going for it - a literacy rate of 76% for example.  What Ravikumar noticed was that the rural areas in particular were limited in their access to power and that caused a variety of attendant problems, the most critical, from the villagers perspective, was the fact that they had to trek a long way and pay exorbitant amounts to charge up their cell phones.

So Ravikumar worked with others to put together a disarmingly simple but highly sustainable solution.  He arranged for women from the village to go to India and get trained on installing and maintaining solar panels - middle-aged women because they would be more likely to stay in the villages and provide support vs. youngsters who would head for the bright lights in the big city.  They came back and successfully got solar power to the first village - and along with solar power, the inhabitants will get three critical items: a light (so kids could read at night), a stove (so they could stop chopping wood) and a fan to keep the mosquitoes away.  Best of all, they can charge their cell phones right in their village!  With success at this site, the model can be repeated in other areas.

To be sure, there are other goals being met through this project - not least of which is the furthering of Indo-African ties (read about that aspect here).  The fact that Ravikumar has a business background probably had a lot to do with his seeing an opportunity and pulling together various resources (local and Indian governments, United Nations Development Programme etc.) to fill it.  Still, is is extremely encouraging to see how an entrepreneurial mindset can make 'foreign relations' more relevant and productive, and to deliver so much potential for future entrepreneurship for the women who're now trained solar panel installers, as well as all the people in the village who are now em'powered' - couldn't resist the pun ;) 
Kudos to Ravikumar and the multi-national team for their innovative approach!

There's more to it

About three years or so ago everyone was getting excited about the new solution to closing the educational gap - OLPC, the One Laptop Per Child, initiative with a low-cost, sustainable, easy-to-use laptop that any child could use.  The idea was so compelling that there were for-profit competitors to the non-profit OLPC and there were plans to blanket the entire world with these devices.

It didn't quite turn out that way.  While these devices are still being made and still being distributed, there came the next big thing - netbooks - and the buzz was all about how these low-cost laptops would change the world.  After all, their retail price was just a couple of hundred dollars more than the OLPC unit and they could do so much more.

Netbooks are still around, but they stopped far short of world-changing.  Smart phones did that though, as they can handle much of the routine interpersonal and Internet requests and still slide easily into the pocket of your jeans.  Kudos to Apple for kicking off this revolution with the iPhone, and following it up with the iPad, for of course, now the new, new thing is the iPad and competing tablets.
 
Going back to the education issue, there continues to be great deal of talk on how digital solutions will fix every problem.  Just in the past day I read two articles, one in HuffPo titled 'The Future of Education is Mobile' and the other a news item about the eG8 Forum with Rupert Murdoch calling for education to move out of the "Victorian age" and go digital.  Interestingly, Murdoch's holdings were recently enhanced by the 90% acquisition of Wireless Generation which enables personalized web and mobile learning - for sure, the education tech industry is growing bigger every year.

I am all for it.  I believe that technology, and specifically access to the Internet, can make a huge difference to the education of all children who are old enough to use it - my belief is strong enough to make it my business.  (Caveat: I also believe that it is people who deliver the difference, technology is just a tool, albeit a future-shaping one.)  But it is not enough to access the Internet only at school as students, especially teenagers, do a lot of studying at home - it is greatly empowering for a student to have access as and when they need it.  For sure, they'll play and chat, but that is fine, they will also learn, and sometimes playing and chatting is how they learn.  So it is disappointing that even after so many years of talk, the students who need access the most still don't have it.  While there are novelty news stories of iPads in kindergartens, I'm finding many underserved high-schoolers without Internet access at home - in the heart of Silicon Valley.  It is kind of embarrassing to see this in an area where so many of us boast multiple Internet-enabled devices per person in the household.  Worse, the organizations working with these students have no idea where to go to fix the problem; understandably it is just not a priority when there are so many other pressing challenges to be handled.  According to a survey done last year, 40% of the homes in the US do not have broadband or high-speed Internet access and 30% have no Internet access whatsoever, which is about what I'm running into, in my own small samples.  You can expect that if they can't afford Internet access, they're unlikely to have smart phones with data plans either. 

Desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones - they would all make amazing educational tools, but if you cannot connect to the Internet they're little better than calculators and typewriters  (remember those?).  And unless every student can connect from home, the digital and education gaps will stay unbridged.  We have the technology - devices, software and network - we just need the collective will, and/or a driven social entrepreneur, to ensure that every student has affordable Internet access from home - sometime soon would be nice.

Entrepreneur Educator

The New York Times magazine this weekend had an education story that makes for some compelling reading. The spotlight was on Ramon Gonzales, the principal of a public middle school in the Bronx. He's taken a struggling school and made it successful, or at least relatively so, despite significant challenges.

Gonzales could be considered a shining example of the vision of Joel Klein, the previous chancellor of the New York City schools, who aimed to transform every principal "from an agent of bureaucracy to the CEO of his or her own school'. But Gonzales was not only following the 'chief executive' approach but was clearly displaying an 'entrepreneurial spirit', akin to a founder of a scrappy startup.

He finds creative ways to bring in money (boot-strapping). He personally invests time in building his faculty and guiding them (shaping team and culture) knowing that it is key to success. Gonzales realizes that perceptions matter and pays attention to seemingly small things like greeting students at the door (marketing) and he cares about the outcomes for individual students (customer focus). The most important quality of a startup founder/CEO is that he doesn't give up easily and so far, Gonzales appears to be digging his heels in and refusing to give up ground to charter schools.

It is easy to understand how our economy relies on entrepreneurship for growth but it takes a little imagination to see how that could extend to education too. Maybe our schools need entrepreneurial educators like Gonzales in order to thrive. You can read the whole story here. Makes one think - and dream!

Innovation matters

Innovation is must-have for entrepreneurs for sure, and entrepreneurs have been anointed the potential saviors of our sluggish economy so innovation's been rather news-worthy lately. There was a recent Newsweek article on how Americans and the rest of the world (the part that was polled that is) view the state of innovation and the American economy and this stuck with me:
On some issues there is widespread agreement: two thirds of respondents believe innovation will be more important than ever to the U.S. economy over the next 30 years. But the survey shows some striking contrasts as well. Eighty-one percent of Chinese believe the U.S. is staying ahead of China on innovation; only 41 percent of Americans agree. To find the next big breakthrough, Americans are focused on improving math and science education, while Chinese are more concerned about developing creative problem-solving and business skills.
(You can read the article here.)

Good news: we believe that innovation is important. Bad news: many Americans believe we are not staying ahead of China in this. Worse news: more Americans focus on science and math education while more Chinese are thinking about 'creative problem-solving'.

Why is it bad if Americans think they're falling behind? True, you don't want to be smug or delusional, but perceptions should be based on reality and the reality may be not that the US is falling behind, but that the others are catching up faster. The downside of this belief is the rush to change the way we do things, even the ones we do well, particularly the good part of US education (yes, it's there!) that develops non-conformist creative thinkers.

Math and science are important, actually, critical - in fact they are the foundation for problem-solving and there's not only a knowledge deficiency in these subjects among US students, there's a marked lack of interest in these purportedly nerdy areas (something that is not the case in most of Asia). But the US didn't get to be an innovation leader sticking to a "just the facts ma'am" approach. Facts are within the box and need to be known, but it is the ability to look beyond the facts and think outside the box that drives new concepts and quantum jumps in innovation. Innovation is not a bunch of theorems and formulas - it is spotting opportunities and then knowing enough about theorems/formulas to build on them. So the US should not only focus on math/science skills, but also on creative thinking and make sure students have plenty of unstructured time when they can exercise their right brains and dream up new ideas.

But, it's not all bad news. One of the best stories of 2009 is this one about DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and it's forty red balloons challenge to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet (also a DARPA result). The balloons were tethered in 40 locations across the US and the first team (it was just not possible for an individual to do it) to identify all locations won a substantial cash prize. The goal? To learn how the power of crowds can be gathered quickly and productively - and possibly more things that are not even understood yet. You can read more about the red balloons and the MIT team that won it by checking the press release from here. What is amazing is the idea that the Department of Defense, which one would assume would be stodgy and secretive, created this wacky public challenge. It is so cool and I believe this is how the US can stay ahead - being innovative about driving innovation and making it fun.

Getting down to business

When I'd last written about the team of 10-graders that I'm mentoring on entrepreneurship through BUILD (read my posts here and here), they were re-visiting their business plan as their world-view and team had changed over the summer. They were frantically re-doing their presentation as they had to pitch to a VC (a real one!) in order to get the few hundred dollars of 'seed funds' they would need to get their idea off the ground.

There was a bunch of writing to do - presentations, business plan, even team bios, and these students were stressed as they had to do it all on top of their regular school work (remember, they are in this program because they need all the help they can get to stay in school). My co-mentor and I were dismayed by their lack of enthusiasm - it seemed that they were just going through the motions and had lost their excitement, and we were hoping it would come back.

It sure did! All it took was practicing their 'elevator pitch' while meeting and greeting at a 'mock-tail' party and pitching to a VC who showed real interest and asked relevant questions. The team was floating after the presentation - they were thrilled that they could field questions on pricing and market surveys entirely on their own. And yes, they got their seed funds - this is modeled after the real world, but is a much more sheltered one after all, propped by generous donations.

Now that they're getting down to business, not just creating PowerPoints, the excitement is palpable, and they're very much fired up as in my 'fire in the belly' post. They're nervous, they have tons of questions, but they don't think they can fail - in fact, they believe they have already won, which is the most empowering feeling a teenager could have.

As someone who's cares about education, I'm happy to see how starting a business brings so much to these under-resourced teens: they're motivated to stay in school, they experience supportive relationships with successful adults who care, and they build the confidence they need to aspire to college and get there. As an entrepreneur, I'm thrilled that they're learning the fundamentals of business now and know that they will not be scared to start one if they had a mind to do so in the future. And the fact that I get to participate in this, however minor my role, is the scrumptious icing on the proverbial cake.