00:00 after one of my books appeared and the
00:01 student came in he said professor I just
00:04 read your new book he said it's very
00:08 contains a lot more than you know that's
00:17 so I'm going in Free Willy I'm going to
00:21 pick and choose from some of the things
00:23 I said yesterday perhaps the most
00:25 insulting part and to use today my
00:30 remarks have two foundations two ideas
00:34 out of which they spring so let me deal
00:36 with those first first is the concept of
00:39 systems and what systems thinking
00:42 implies a system as a whole that
00:46 contains two or more parts each of which
00:50 can affect the properties or behavior of
00:52 the whole for example you are a system
00:55 and biological system called an organism
00:57 and you have parts like our heart
00:59 stomach lungs pancreas and so on each of
01:02 which can affect your properties and
01:03 your behavior the second requirement of
01:08 the parts of a system is that none of
01:10 them has an independent effect on the
01:12 whole how any part affects the whole
01:16 depends on what other parts are doing so
01:20 the way your heart affects you depends
01:22 on the behavior of the lungs the brain
01:23 and so on the parts are all
01:25 interconnected between any two parts of
01:28 a system there's a director an indirect
01:30 path and finally if you group the parts
01:33 of a system in the subgroups no matter
01:36 how you subgroup them each subgroup will
01:38 have an effect on the properties and the
01:40 behavior of the whole and none will have
01:43 an independent effect and therefore you
01:46 can summarize those three
01:48 characteristics in the system into a
01:50 simple statement a system as a whole
01:53 that cannot be divided into independent
01:55 parts now this has a number of
01:58 consequences which are not apparent but
02:00 are incredibly important the first is
02:03 the essential properties of any system
02:05 derived out of how its parts interact
02:11 taken separately and therefore the
02:15 defining properties of any system our
02:18 properties of the whole which none of
02:20 its parts have for example an automobile
02:24 is mechanical system and it's essential
02:26 property is its ability to carry you
02:29 from one place to another but no part of
02:32 it can do that there's no part of an
02:35 automobile it's motor its body and seats
02:37 that can carry you from one place to
02:39 another so many of the automobile taken
02:41 as a whole your essential property is
02:44 life there's no part of you which
02:48 separately lives life is a property of
02:51 the whole and therefore when the whole
02:55 is disassembled it loses its essential
02:59 properties and so do all of its parts if
03:04 we were to bring an automobile into this
03:05 room and disassemble it but retain every
03:09 part in the room we would not have an
03:12 automobile what you have is a collection
03:13 of the parts because the automobile is
03:16 the product of the interaction of its
03:18 parts not the sum of the parts they can
03:20 separately and this has an incredibly
03:23 important implication the management
03:25 which the Western world has not yet
03:27 learned and is responsible for the
03:30 well-documented decline of the West in
03:33 any system when one improves the
03:38 performance of the parts taken
03:39 separately the performance of the whole
03:42 does not necessarily improve and
03:45 frequently gets worse the basic
03:49 principle of management used in the
03:51 Western world is divide and conquer it's
03:54 a corporation you divide the production
03:56 marketing finance personnel and so on if
03:59 it's a university to break up in the
04:00 departments curriculum and programs and
04:03 then try to manage each one as well as
04:06 possible on the assumption that when
04:08 this is done the whole be run as well as
04:10 possible and that's absolutely false
04:14 because when a system is operating as
04:17 well as possible none of its parts may
04:19 be now this can be proven rigorously in
04:23 Sciences but I'll spare you that proof
04:26 for one thing I don't remember it but
04:30 there's a simple example that will show
04:32 you that it's true and why according to
04:35 New York Times they're four hundred and
04:37 fifty seven different automobiles
04:38 available in the United States so
04:41 imagine with me that we buy one of each
04:43 and bring them into a huge garage and
04:46 then get 200 of the best automotive
04:48 engineers in the world to come in and we
04:51 give them the problem finding which car
04:52 has the best motor suppose they come out
04:55 and tell us the rolls-royce has the best
04:57 engine and we make a note of it then say
05:00 please find out which one has the best
05:02 transmission tell us the Mercedes has
05:05 the best transmission well which one has
05:07 the best fuel injector well perhaps this
05:10 Volkswagen and one by one we take every
05:13 part required for an automobile and find
05:15 out which is the best one available when
05:18 that list is complete we return it to
05:20 the engineers and instruct them to
05:21 remove those parts from those cars and
05:23 put them together into the best possible
05:26 automobile because now we will have a
05:28 known reveal consisting of all the best
05:29 available parts do we get the best
05:33 possible automobile of course not you
05:37 don't even get an automobile why not the
05:42 parts don't fit it's the way the parts
05:46 fit together to determine the
05:47 performance of a system not on how they
05:50 perform taken separately but we conduct
05:54 systems like the University and
05:56 corporations and hospitals as though the
06:00 improvement of the parts they can
06:01 separately will improve the whole now
06:04 that's one foundation concept I'm going
06:06 to use in talking about education the
06:09 other one derives from a failure of our
06:12 educational system to distinguish
06:15 between the various forms of content of
06:17 the mind the simplest form of content of
06:21 the mind consists of data now there's an
06:26 old aphorism that you may not have heard
06:28 since it's not widely circulated among
06:31 goes as follows an ounce of information
06:35 is worth a pound of data an ounce of
06:39 knowledge is worth a pound of
06:41 information an ounce of understanding is
06:44 worth a pound of knowledge and an ounce
06:47 of wisdom is worth a pound of
06:49 understanding so we have a hierarchy of
06:52 the content of mind
06:53 data information knowledge understanding
06:55 and wisdom of increasing importance as
06:58 you approach wisdom but the allocation
07:01 of time in the educational system is
07:03 inversely related to the importance of
07:05 these contents most of the time is
07:08 devoted the transmission of information
07:10 and some to knowledge nothing to
07:12 understanding and of course none the
07:14 wisdom at all some have claimed that
07:17 this is due to the fact you can transmit
07:19 what you don't have data consists of
07:25 symbols which represent the properties
07:27 of objects and events so if I asked each
07:31 of you what your address is or how old
07:35 you are how many children you have all
07:38 of this would constitute data data are
07:41 like iron ore I can't do anything with
07:44 them until they've been processed
07:45 converted into iron information is iron
07:49 its data which had been processed to be
07:51 useful and useful information is what is
07:55 contained in descriptions description is
07:58 the mode of transmission of information
08:00 it's contained in the answer to
08:03 questions begin with such words as whom
08:05 where when what and how many so somebody
08:10 were to enter the campus and say where
08:12 is a convocation occurring today and
08:13 tell them in the auditorium that's
08:15 descriptive that's information if they
08:18 say how do I get there they will receive
08:22 instruction and the content of
08:24 instruction is knowledge is product is
08:26 skill knowledge is contained in how two
08:32 understanding is contained in
08:33 explanations answers the questions to
08:36 begin with the word why why in the world
08:39 you want to go to the comic
08:40 an answer to that explains the desire to
08:44 get here now wisdom is a qualitative
08:48 change from the previous for data
08:51 information knowledge and understanding
08:53 are all concerned with increasing
08:56 efficiency with which we pursue our ends
08:59 but they don't tell us anything about
09:01 the ends that are being pursued there in
09:04 a sense value free wisdom makes a
09:09 transition between efficiency and
09:11 effectiveness because it evaluates the
09:15 the pursuit the end which were pursuing
09:18 efficiently it's contained the
09:21 distinction is contained in a wonderful
09:23 statement by Peter Drucker who once said
09:25 there's a big difference between doing
09:27 things right and doing the right thing
09:31 you see we are very largely devoted to
09:34 doing the wrong thing right that's very
09:37 unfortunate because the writer you do
09:39 the wrong thing the owner you become
09:44 when we do the right thing wrong we make
09:48 a mistake which when detected allows us
09:50 to improve so the distinction is
09:54 absolutely critical and we are a society
09:57 which are simply drowning in the pursuit
10:01 of the efficiency concerned with the
10:04 pursuit of the wrong gains one simple
10:08 and obvious example is our current
10:10 concern with the health care system it
10:13 isn't a health care system a moment's
10:16 reflection will make it apparent that it
10:18 is in a health care system what do the
10:21 server's of the health care system get
10:23 paid for they get paid for taking care
10:26 of you when you're sick or disabled it's
10:29 a sickness and disability care system
10:31 not a health care system now if the
10:34 income of the server's derives out of
10:37 taking care of you when you're sick and
10:39 disabled you can be damn sure they're
10:41 going to keep you sick and disabled
10:43 they're not going to keep you healthy if
10:45 they did they'd be out of business now
10:48 what they say and what they declare is
10:51 they will do even if unconsciously
10:53 because the system is so constructed to
10:57 focus on the maintenance of sickness and
10:59 disability the same thing is true of
11:02 most organizations corporations are not
11:07 about maximization of profit all one has
11:10 to do is look at the executive offices
11:12 and the way they move around and where
11:14 they stay when they move around and see
11:15 that it's not about maximizing profit
11:18 it's about maximizing the comfort of the
11:20 senior executives and the university
11:24 it's not about the education of students
11:26 that's a myth which we perpetrate in
11:29 order to get public support the
11:32 principal purpose of a university is the
11:34 perm when you try to explain its
11:36 behavior is to provide us faculty with
11:39 the quality of work life they want
11:42 teaching is the price they have to pay
11:46 and like any price we try to minimize it
11:52 just look at the universities of the
11:55 United States and the colleges and rank
11:57 them from the best to the worst you can
11:59 start wherever you went to Harvard
12:01 Stanford and so on work your way down at
12:03 the peak of State Teachers College and
12:05 then plot the number of hours of
12:08 teaching per academic year the average
12:11 hours of the faculty what do you find an
12:14 incredibly strong correlation at Harvard
12:18 they teach at most five hours a year but
12:23 in some universities is fifteen hours a
12:25 semester or a quarter the implication is
12:30 clear but we don't pay any attention to
12:31 it the implication is the better the
12:34 school is the less teaching there is you
12:38 see the ideal school is one in which
12:40 there is no teaching but a lot of
12:44 learning and that's the first
12:47 fundamental myth about the educational
12:50 system the myth is that a good way to
12:53 learn something is to have it taught to
12:55 you and that's absolutely false being
13:00 taught is a major obstruction to
13:03 now again any reflection will make this
13:06 clear how did you learn your first
13:09 language nobody taught it to you you
13:12 learned it you learn to walk without
13:15 having a talk to you how to ride a
13:16 bicycle how to talk all the essential
13:19 things of life you learn without having
13:21 them talk they talk to you how many of
13:24 you ever learn the second language in
13:25 school as well as you know your first
13:28 language of course not you want to learn
13:30 a second language you go live in the
13:32 country that speaks it you don't have it
13:34 talk to you Berlitz never succeeded as
13:37 well as living in the foreign country
13:38 did teaching is an obstruction to
13:42 learning but there's a very important
13:45 characteristic of teaching how many of
13:49 you have ever taught a class and the
13:51 subject you never had as a student I
13:54 suspect most of you have who learn most
13:59 in the classroom although being taught
14:05 is an obstruction to learning teaching
14:09 is a marvelous way to learn what we are
14:13 professional learners not teachers a
14:17 student once asked me what's the last
14:19 time you taught a course and the subject
14:21 that existed when you were a student
14:25 I had to think about it was 1951 1951
14:33 it's more than 40 years ago everything
14:35 I've thought since then didn't exist
14:37 when I was a student still looked at me
14:40 said my god you've had to learn a lot he
14:43 said I wish you could teach as well as
14:45 you can learn that's what we ought to be
14:50 about the facilitation of learning not
14:52 teaching the University and the college
14:55 is upside down the students ought to be
14:57 teaching because that's a good way to
14:59 learn and we ought to be continuously
15:02 learning so that we can enable them to
15:04 learn more effectively the principal
15:07 purpose of an institution of higher
15:09 learning or to have two prongs to it
15:12 first to enable students to learn how to
15:18 learn and secondly to motivate them to
15:21 want to do so you see 50% of what you
15:25 learn and the university is irrelevant
15:27 to what you're going to do later I'm
15:30 going to remember how to take a square
15:31 root the other 50% will be obsolete
15:35 within a couple years your success in
15:39 life after leaving a university depends
15:41 on your ability to learn in your job or
15:44 in your activity what you need to know
15:46 to do the job well your future depends
15:50 on your capacity to learn and your
15:52 motivation to do so motivation is
15:55 absolutely critical we ignore it we
15:58 almost deliberately design classes that
16:01 demotivate students so that they don't
16:03 want to learn we make a chore out of it
16:05 I told the story yesterday with an
16:09 experience I had that was really
16:11 illuminating to me my group at the
16:15 University did a lot of collaborative
16:17 work with a neighboring so-called black
16:20 ghetto an area called Mantua consisting
16:23 of 80 city blocks with 22,000 people in
16:26 it all black it was referred to in the
16:29 city in the 60s when we started working
16:31 with them as the bottom it has since
16:34 received 17 national
16:36 words for self-development effort it's
16:38 been the subject of seven major national
16:40 television programs and this leadership
16:43 has received all kinds of recognition
16:46 one day its leaders came into my office
16:49 and said we got a problem maybe you can
16:51 help us with it we have too much
16:54 illiteracy coming out of our schools
16:56 about 80 percent of the students even
16:59 coming out of high school they said are
17:01 functionally illiterate what can we do
17:04 about it be suitable we said why don't
17:07 you get ahold of the Board of Education
17:08 they have a special group working on a
17:10 literacy problem they said we've already
17:12 done that they came in they didn't do us
17:14 any good we said well we don't know
17:17 anything about something there's some
17:18 this product problem and they said well
17:22 that's an advantage because the people
17:23 who do can't help us so why don't you
17:27 try well we didn't know one thing about
17:31 the community which turned out to be
17:32 essential those kids were not stupid
17:35 they were smart as a devil they weren't
17:38 educated but boy were they smart and
17:41 therefore if they weren't learning how
17:43 to read it's because they didn't want to
17:45 so we conducted research to find out why
17:48 did they not want to learn how to read
17:51 well the results were incredible 65% of
17:56 the households in that area did not
17:58 contain a book the kids coming to school
18:01 had never seen an adult read their model
18:05 adults we're not reading people but
18:08 talking people their culture was oral
18:10 not literary and then they come to
18:14 school where a blonde white woman tells
18:16 them that reading is the most important
18:17 thing in the world and they answer in
18:27 secondly we learned that when a young
18:29 man reaches the age of 12 joining a gang
18:32 was compulsory it was the only way he
18:35 could survive physically by moving
18:37 around the neighborhood with friends
18:39 that would help protect him if on the
18:43 other hand he was ever seen carrying a
18:45 book he would be physically attacked
18:47 even by members of his own gang because
18:50 a book was referred to as Whitey's thing
18:53 it was capitulation to a dominating
18:56 culture and so he didn't carry books
18:59 around and he didn't read books at home
19:02 and he didn't see people reading books
19:03 at home and now we're trying to make
19:05 them learn how to read rap was not an
19:08 invention of the whites of the blacks
19:09 it's an oral culture well what can we do
19:13 about it when we had an idea and we
19:16 fortunately had somebody was willing to
19:18 finance an effort to try it out Julius
19:22 Rosenwald was the son of the founder of
19:25 Sears lives in Philadelphia as an old
19:29 friend so we approached him and he
19:30 agreed to finance a very peculiar effort
19:33 the border completes that of Charlie
19:36 Chaplin silent films put them in the
19:39 auditorium of the schools in this
19:41 neighborhood and played them during the
19:44 entire school day and any child was
19:48 allowed to come and sit in the
19:49 auditorium and watch Charlie Chaplin
19:51 without an excuse from their teacher by
19:54 the end of that semester every kid in
19:56 the school could read why they wanted to
20:01 read the subtitles they couldn't
20:04 understand what was going on and they
20:06 wanted to and so they learned and it
20:09 wasn't talked to them they got motivated
20:13 education has to focus on motivation
20:15 what excites people well the great
20:19 Spanish philosopher Oh tige Ortega y
20:22 Gasset has a marvelous book called the
20:25 mission of the university in which he
20:27 traces the evolution of rebel
20:30 and he concludes that every major
20:33 revolution in the world's history was
20:37 created by what he calls a mobilizing
20:40 idea ideas that excite people into
20:44 action holy grails of thought how much
20:49 effort do we put into the production and
20:52 dissemination of mobilizing ideas ideas
20:57 that diverge from the normal see
21:01 universities and colleges and the public
21:03 schools are largely devoted to
21:06 maintaining the status quo not to
21:10 producing change there's a very
21:14 remarkable man floating around this
21:16 country in England by name of Edward de
21:18 Bono evert de Bono is responsible for
21:22 the research that was initiated about
21:24 two decades ago into the subject of
21:26 creativity he got into it the very
21:29 interesting way he had married and they
21:33 had their first child and the Bono was
21:35 fascinated by the development of his
21:37 child and so beyond the log everything
21:39 now if the child said ooh he recorded
21:41 January the fourth the child said who
21:43 when January the fifth is set off and he
21:46 put all this down and pretty soon he
21:48 observed that the child demonstrated
21:50 remarkable creativity he began to look
21:54 at other children and discovered they
21:56 were equally creative the creativity was
21:59 not a sparse competence it was widely
22:01 spread among children and then he looked
22:04 at adults and said oh my god what
22:06 happened to them some were along the
22:10 line people who are born with the
22:13 creative capability losing he said why
22:17 well he never answered the question but
22:22 to others did what he did is go on to
22:25 create create procedures for
22:28 revitalizing the remnants of creativity
22:31 and adults they're called creativity
22:32 enhancing procedures and he wrote a
22:35 famous book called straight and lateral
22:37 thinking in which he demonstrates the
22:39 those principles but Jules Henry an
22:42 American anthropologist wrote an
22:43 incredible book called culture against
22:45 Ben and Ronald Lange a prominent British
22:49 psychiatrist who recently died wrote a
22:52 book called the politics of experience
22:54 and they dealt with the why question and
22:57 they both came out with the same answer
23:01 we do it in school we kill creativity
23:06 when you are given an examination in
23:09 school and you read the question what's
23:12 the first thing that goes through the
23:14 students mind they learn very quickly
23:16 the thing to do when you're given the
23:19 question is to ask yourself a question
23:22 what's the question you ask yourself
23:24 what answer do they expect examinations
23:31 are about trying to anticipate the
23:33 answers expected by the teacher expected
23:39 answers cannot be creative because
23:40 they're already known if we use
23:44 examinations at all they ought to be
23:46 about encouraging students to give us
23:47 the unexpected answer because that's
23:51 what creativity is about it's about
23:53 surprise deviation from expectations and
23:57 furthermore is Jules Henry pointed out
23:59 we don't even allow the students ask the
24:01 critical questions on their mind what's
24:04 so good about monogamy what's so bad
24:07 about premarital sex what's so hot about
24:11 our economic system what's so good about
24:16 democracy questions of this sort are not
24:21 discussed with the kids they're put
24:23 aside and they learn very quickly not to
24:25 ask important questions and not to
24:27 provide important answers and we wonder
24:30 where creativity goes it goes down the
24:34 drain with conformity to expectations of
24:38 the faculty which simply reflect the
24:41 expectations of society
24:43 Jules Henry asked what would happen if
24:46 we encourage kids that ask the so-called
24:51 question and provide improper answers he
24:55 said we would be confronted with more
24:57 creativity than society has learned how
24:59 to handle and that's our fear too much
25:03 creativity as a result we have too
25:06 little of it I once got very tired of
25:10 reading the handwriting of graduate
25:12 students like many of you have I'm sure
25:15 even with undergraduates so I came into
25:18 a class the beginning of a session one
25:20 year and said you're going to do a term
25:23 paper and out of that paper I have to
25:28 extract the content I can't do it with
25:31 your handwriting you're going to have to
25:34 type your paper double-spaced typing on
25:36 8 and a half by 11 white sheets with at
25:40 least 1 inch margins and I want the
25:43 pages numbered in the upper right hand
25:44 corner is that absolutely clear and they
25:48 all nodded and said yes the end of that
25:52 semester I received every paper
25:53 typewriters I had directed and they were
25:58 legible but there was one that I got
26:01 that was typed this way
26:05 at the end of the paper there was a
26:09 little remark it said oh ha I got you
26:12 didn't I my initial reaction was that
26:18 damn kid knew what I wanted and
26:20 deliberately wouldn't give it to me
26:21 I was going to reject this paper and
26:25 then I stopped and reflected and said my
26:27 look what he did he spent time trying to
26:31 figure out how to fool me how to
26:33 surprise me he was creative so I give
26:38 him an a-plus and I added a note don't
26:42 ever try it again because it won't be
26:43 creative the next time I have sat for
26:53 years through faculty meetings there are
26:55 two things I've learned about one as a
27:00 member of the Faculty of the Wharton
27:02 School at the University of Pennsylvania
27:03 I was selected one year to be the
27:06 Wharton representative when the Faculty
27:09 of the College of Engineering at Town
27:10 School in sort of two years I had to sit
27:14 in town school meetings of the faculty
27:17 they were even more boring than the
27:19 Wharton School meetings and so having
27:22 nothing else to do I try to record the
27:25 subject matters discussed and the
27:27 principle concepts used in the
27:29 discussion and in two years the word
27:33 student was mentioned only once only
27:36 once faculty meetings are about the
27:40 faculty they're properly called they
27:42 weren't about students they weren't
27:43 about educational learning they're about
27:45 benefits and academic freedom and all
27:48 this sort of stuff that effect the
27:49 faculty schedules but not about students
27:54 and I learned that the faculty operates
27:57 on the assumption that it knows what the
27:59 students need to know and that's
28:02 absolutely false you haven't the
28:04 foggiest idea what students need to know
28:06 I sat while engineers argued for hours
28:10 about what courses ought to be required
28:12 for a degree in engineering and they
28:15 ignored the fact long known that 65
28:18 percent of the Graduate engineers do not
28:21 practice engineering within five years
28:23 after graduation the 35% of the PhDs
28:28 never practice in the field in which
28:30 they receive their PhD a few years ago
28:35 the American Statistical Association one
28:38 of the largest professional societies
28:40 the United States had a 100th
28:41 anniversary and he did a very clever
28:44 thing they solicited the membership with
28:46 a ballot asking us to nominate the four
28:51 people we would like most to address
28:53 this at the hundredth anniversary
28:55 celebration to be held in New York now
28:59 they got a whole bunch of names they
29:01 took the names most frequently mentioned
29:03 made a second ballot and sent it out to
29:05 get selection from that and they
29:08 proceeded this is called the Delphi
29:10 technique until they got it down the
29:12 four speakers those four were invited to
29:15 address the under celebration that was
29:18 quite a to-do it turned out that not one
29:21 of the four who were selected by 15,000
29:24 members as the most important
29:27 contributors the development statistics
29:29 in the United States not one of them had
29:32 ever had a course in statistics proving
29:37 the obvious thing that changes in the
29:39 field are never produced by experts but
29:43 from outsiders looking at the field how
29:49 do we train people to look at things
29:52 creatively and encourage them to do so
29:55 rather than to act as a combination of a
29:59 computer a recording device and the
30:01 video camera and simply spill back to
30:04 them what we've given to them that's not
30:08 human this is exemplified in the
30:12 ultimate insult to human intelligence
30:13 called computer assisted instruction
30:16 what an insult I have a computer
30:20 the idea of having a computer teacher
30:23 person it's reversed at the Hawkins
30:32 School in Cleveland we did an experiment
30:33 where we took second-grade students and
30:36 this was a day when computers were
30:38 complicated UNIVAC - you had the program
30:41 in machine language we gave the second
30:45 grade the responsibility for teaching
30:48 the computer arithmetic and in one
30:52 semester they learned two years four
30:55 semesters of elementary school
30:57 arithmetic how do they learn it on their
31:01 own without they use a teacher as a
31:04 resource not as a teacher but if
31:07 somebody would help them learn Ellis
31:11 Johnson a professor at Johns Hopkins
31:13 University who moved the case Institute
31:15 in the 1960s got an experimental grant
31:19 from the National Science Foundation and
31:22 conducted a most unusual experiment he
31:25 took sixty of the accepted incoming
31:28 students the case Institute of
31:29 Technology undergraduates and offer them
31:32 a summer job prior to their entry to
31:35 school they all accept it because he
31:37 offered a generous salary they were put
31:40 together in teams of five and they were
31:42 given the real problem to work on and to
31:44 work for somebody in the public
31:47 institution or private who had the
31:49 problem to solve so this was a realistic
31:52 exercise for example one group was sent
31:55 to Mayfield Heights Ohio to improve the
31:58 water supply system because the pressure
32:00 was running low from overuse of the
32:02 existing system another one was sent to
32:05 another part of the Cleveland area to
32:08 develop an emergency service for the new
32:11 expressway that was built through the
32:12 area and so on I was in Alice's office
32:16 one day when one of these groups came in
32:18 working on the hydraulic problem it said
32:21 dr. Johnson we've developed an equation
32:24 to express the flow of water through
32:26 this system we like to show it to you
32:29 that's right and they wrote it up on the
32:31 board and he looked at he said no and he
32:32 said that's that's right he said now
32:35 here's our problem what we have to do is
32:38 manipulate these two variables so as to
32:40 maximize the output we don't know how to
32:43 is it possible to do it he said yeah I
32:46 said that's a problem in differential
32:47 calculus they said well can you teach it
32:50 to us he said no he said well how are we
32:53 going to do it he said you got to learn
32:54 it well how are we going to learn he
32:56 says well I'll tell you where the books
32:57 are you can go get the books and read it
32:59 now if you have any problems you can
33:01 come and ask me about them but I'm not
33:03 going to teach it to you well they did
33:05 that at the end of that summer 95% of
33:11 the students involved in that exercise
33:13 past the first two years of mathematics
33:16 a case Institute of Technology by
33:18 examination that's what I mean by
33:22 teaching is an obstruction to learning
33:24 when motivated to learn in mathematics
33:27 they learn an incredible speed many
33:30 years ago we did research on alcoholism
33:32 and came out with a theory which were
33:36 able to test and approve valid one of
33:40 our students a young man by the name of
33:41 Robert court got very excited about it
33:43 he came to see me one day he said that
33:46 stuff when alcoholism is really exciting
33:49 is that I wonder if it would work on
33:50 drug addiction they said well it might
33:53 in part but I think there are different
33:55 phenomena so there'd be some required
33:57 adjustment he said I'd like to look into
34:00 it can you support me for a couple
34:02 months while I try to find out something
34:03 about drug addicts we said how much time
34:06 you won he said three months when we dug
34:08 up the money and gave it to him he
34:10 disappeared three months later he
34:13 appeared to my office and said I've
34:14 written a proposal for research on drug
34:16 addiction I'd like you to tell me what
34:19 you think about he showed it to me and
34:21 it was incredible with minor
34:23 modification I submitted it the National
34:25 Institute of Health and got three
34:26 hundred and sixty thousand dollars for
34:28 research and drug addiction that's not
34:31 the point of the story the point of
34:33 story is the Bob Court the young man who
34:35 did all this was invited by the Medical
34:37 the hospital University of Pennsylvania
34:39 to come over and give a course on drug
34:41 addiction to the doctors he never had a
34:45 course in medicine never known anything
34:47 about drug addiction but he came to
34:49 campuses leading expert on the subject
34:52 how he learned it wasn't talked to him I
34:58 had a group of foreign students from
35:02 less developed countries come in to see
35:03 me one deck headed up by a young
35:05 Peruvian named Francisco sagusti and
35:09 seconded by a young lady called virginia
35:11 melo she was Brazilian
35:13 he was Peruvian they said a number of
35:16 the faculty here have done work on
35:18 planning for development of less
35:20 developed countries why don't we have a
35:22 course on planning for development for
35:26 less developed countries I said that was
35:29 a great idea he pointed out that we had
35:31 students in our student body from 13
35:33 less developed countries they'd make an
35:37 anxious group of students I said no that
35:39 wasn't acceptable they could teach such
35:43 a course he said well what do you mean
35:46 if we were to teach the course who would
35:47 be the students I said the five members
35:49 of the faculty that you've identified he
35:52 said you mean you would actually come as
35:54 students to the class I said yes he said
35:57 will you attend regularly we said yes if
36:00 you don't Boris we will behave just like
36:03 you do will you read the assignments
36:08 well if they're worth reading and so on
36:12 he said that's awfully difficult he said
36:15 we can't give such a course until we
36:17 know what you already know I said right
36:19 he said how are we going to learn what
36:23 I said that's your job that's what we
36:26 have to do when we teach we got to find
36:27 out what you already know so you do the
36:31 same for us he said well can we do it
36:33 next semester rather than this one he
36:36 said yeah and they did those 13 students
36:41 put on the best course I have ever taken
36:44 Francisco sigasi became the chief
36:46 strategic planner for the World Bank
36:49 is now the chief planner for the
36:50 government of Peru Virginia mellows the
36:53 chief planner for the government of
36:54 Brazil and every one of those 13 people
36:57 hold a major planning function and less
37:01 developed country they were so excited
37:03 by their experience of learning through
37:07 teaching we've got the University and
37:10 the college upside down we think we know
37:13 what they have to learn that's
37:14 unimportant what's important is that
37:16 they learn how to learn now a few other
37:21 characteristics of our educational
37:24 system have to be changed we make an
37:27 absolutely incredible assumption that
37:30 the world is organized the way a
37:32 university is what was that mean well we
37:37 say experience involves physical
37:41 problems chemical problems psychological
37:43 problems social problems economic
37:44 problems philosophical problems
37:46 religious problems and so on there are
37:50 different kinds of problems and so we
37:52 organize around these different kinds of
37:55 problems we take reality apart into
37:58 disciplines and we think a discipline
38:02 represents reality there is no such
38:07 thing as a physical problem a chemical
38:09 problem a social problem an economic
38:12 those are absolute illusions those
38:15 adjectives don't tell you a damn thing
38:17 about a problem they tell you something
38:19 but not about the problem but we treat
38:22 them as though they tell you something
38:23 about the problem we don't even tell
38:26 students what the origin of disciplines
38:28 is one of the most exciting things I
38:32 ever read is the first sentence of a
38:34 book called on human communication by
38:36 Colin cherry a British sovereign edition
38:40 and information theorist who spent 1976
38:43 on the sabbatical year at MIT and wrote
38:45 this book and the first sentence of the
38:49 book reads as follows the German
38:52 philosopher Leibniz was probably the
38:57 new everything what an exciting idea so
39:03 I went back to look into it he was
39:05 literally true liveness about 12
39:06 languages he made major contributions to
39:10 mathematics and science as we knew it
39:12 that day the entire domain of science
39:15 was capable of being contained in a
39:20 but after liveness I became increasingly
39:23 impossible as the domain of human
39:25 knowledge enlarged the first division
39:29 that occurred occurred at the time of
39:30 Newton Newton was not a professor of
39:33 physics physics didn't existed didn't
39:36 exist when Newton was there Newton was a
39:39 professor of natural philosophy because
39:43 the first division that occurred in the
39:45 domain of human knowledge was between
39:47 philosophy and natural philosophy now
39:51 they didn't have the guts to call the
39:52 other part unnatural philosophy which
39:54 was and then natural philosophy divided
40:00 in the physics and chemistry and as
40:02 recently as 1900 there are only six
40:05 sciences physics chemistry biology
40:10 psychology and sociology six sciences
40:14 currently on the register the National
40:17 Research Council are 450 disciplines see
40:21 disciplines are an effective nature they
40:24 represent a filing system for knowledge
40:26 they're exactly a filing system you
40:29 probably have a file in your office with
40:31 multiple drawers and one drawer reads a
40:33 to see in the next drawer d/deaf and so
40:36 on there are ways of retaining
40:40 information so you can get access to it
40:43 easily the fact that Armco steel and
40:46 Alcoholics Anonymous are in the same
40:48 file don't need a damn thing just a
40:50 convenient way of getting them if you
40:53 rearrange your file by date of receipt
40:55 rather than alphabetically you wouldn't
40:57 change the content one bit you just
41:00 change your way of access to it now all
41:03 the disciplines are our labels on
41:06 miles there are nothing about the
41:09 content of the files that's an absolute
41:11 illusion let me give you an example this
41:17 ghetto that are referred to earlier
41:19 so-called yellow in its development
41:25 process started to meet with the faculty
41:28 a select group of the faculty University
41:29 regularly every Monday morning and
41:32 during one of these Monday morning
41:34 meetings which occurring in my office a
41:36 young man from the community came in
41:39 with a piece of news and stopped the
41:40 meeting absolutely dead
41:42 we had to terminate because of the
41:46 sadness of the information there was an
41:49 83 year old woman who lived in the
41:53 neighborhood who had organized what we
41:55 called a geriatric set these are only
41:59 people who were retired most of them on
42:01 welfare or social security who would
42:04 organize things like infant care centers
42:06 they took care of children from several
42:08 weeks old up to the time when they were
42:10 old enough to go to a daycare center so
42:12 that their unwed teenage mothers could
42:14 either return the school or go to work
42:16 they cleared vacant lots that make them
42:19 usable its recreation and rest centers
42:21 they planted trees in the neighborhood
42:24 and flowers and things of this sort
42:25 they're a real boon to the neighborhood
42:28 we were able to do something for that
42:30 woman indirectly that neighborhood I had
42:33 absolutely no medical facilities
42:37 we got the University of Pennsylvania
42:39 Hospital to open the free clinic in the
42:41 neighborhood which was the first time
42:43 they had medical services available to
42:45 them this enabled this old woman to go
42:48 there once a month for a checkup which
42:49 he needed because she had a bad heart
42:52 she had gone to that clinic that morning
42:55 and had gone through the usual check had
42:58 passed it and they had released her to
43:01 go home home were two rooms at the top
43:06 of an old four-story house that had been
43:08 converted into a tenement and on the
43:11 third flight of stairs on her way to her
43:14 home she had had a heart
43:15 I can die that's the news that was
43:18 brought to us and so we sat around the
43:21 room silently and the first one to speak
43:24 was a professor of Community Medicine
43:26 who was in the room Sam Martin he said
43:29 damn and I told you we don't have enough
43:31 doctors in the clinic you see if we have
43:34 more doctors in the clinic we'd be able
43:35 to make house calls for patients that
43:37 shouldn't be coming to us we should be
43:40 going to them we've got to arrange you
43:42 get more doctors there was silence Gerry
43:47 Adams the economist spoke up next he
43:50 said Sam there are plenty of doctors in
43:51 Philadelphia that's not the problem
43:54 he said the problem is they're private
43:56 practitioners and she couldn't afford
43:58 the call what if her welfare payments
44:01 her health benefits were higher this
44:03 never would have happened she had been
44:05 able to call a doctor to her home to
44:07 give her the exam silence
44:10 professor of architecture said why don't
44:12 we make them put elevators in all those
44:14 buildings and then the only woman
44:18 president a professor of Social Work
44:20 shook her head and said my god what a
44:22 pity none of you know anything about
44:25 that woman don't you know she was
44:28 married and had a son she was deserted
44:30 by her husband shortly after the son was
44:32 born and by working as in housecleaning
44:35 she raised that son managed to get him
44:39 through school at the top of his class
44:41 he got a scholarship and came to Penn
44:43 got a degree in Arts and Sciences
44:46 graduated top of his class and got a
44:48 scholarship to the law school he went to
44:51 the law school graduated at the top of
44:53 his class and is now after several years
44:55 of employment one of the Philadelphia
44:58 law firms a major principle in that firm
45:02 he is married and has two children he
45:05 lives in the suburbs on so-called
45:07 mainline in a beautiful home with two
45:10 children and a wife and happens to be a
45:12 bungalow and if she weren't alienated
45:16 from her son she'd be living with him
45:17 where she'd have all the money she needs
45:19 and no steps to climb now here's the
45:23 question what kind of a problem
45:24 mahsa is that a medical problem an
45:27 economic problem an architectural
45:29 problem or a Social Work problem it's
45:32 none of them it's a problem those
45:36 adjectives describe the point of view of
45:39 the person looking at the problem they
45:42 don't tell you anything about the
45:43 problem they tell you about the person
45:44 looking at it but that's not the way we
45:47 teach disciplines we give students the
45:50 wrong impression that they tell you
45:53 something about the problem now I've had
45:57 the remarkable opportunity to work in
46:01 over 400 different corporations in my
46:03 lifetime and more than 75 government
46:06 agencies in over 17 different countries
46:08 and I've never run across a problem that
46:11 couldn't better be solved somewhere
46:13 other than where it was recognized but
46:17 what happens in reality in a corporation
46:20 the marketing manager comes in one
46:22 morning and finds out the sales dropped
46:25 in New England all he says we got a
46:27 marketing problem he now takes
46:31 possession of that problem because it's
46:33 a marketing problem and tries to solve
46:36 it by the manipulation of marketing
46:37 variables but that problem may be much
46:41 better solved someplace else but that
46:44 never occurs to him because he was
46:46 taught there is such a thing as a
46:48 marketing problem this is what
46:51 interdisciplinarity is all about I told
46:53 the story yesterday which illustrates
46:55 this perhaps better than anything I can
46:58 say it's a story of an office building
47:01 in New York City which at the end of
47:04 World War two received increasing
47:05 complaints from its tenants about the
47:07 poor elevator service these complaints
47:11 kept mounting and management didn't know
47:13 what it could do about it
47:14 but eventually some of the major clients
47:17 in the building multi floor occupants
47:19 like accounting firms the law firms
47:22 threatened to break their lease and move
47:24 out because their employees were
47:27 complaining so much about long delays
47:29 for elevators so management finally took
47:32 the problem seriously did a little in
47:34 Korean found out there's a
47:36 elevator engineers or experts in the
47:38 area and they called them and asked them
47:40 explain the difficulty and the engineer
47:43 said we have to do a survey to find out
47:46 how serious the problem is and so they
47:49 were authorized to do so for a fee of
47:51 course and they came back several weeks
47:54 later say you've got a problem the
47:57 average waiting time for an elevator in
47:59 this building is about two minutes
48:01 they said the American standard is 20
48:04 seconds which means that you're keeping
48:06 waiting people waiting six times as long
48:09 as the desirable average you've got a
48:13 problem management said what can we do
48:16 about it the engineer said there are
48:18 only three things you can do about one
48:20 is you could add elevators that means
48:22 you have to take part of the building
48:24 that's occupied by other things now and
48:26 put elevators in it second thing you do
48:28 is use automated elevators which move
48:30 more quickly than the old elevators
48:32 which you've got the third thing you can
48:35 do is introduce computer controls to
48:37 your elevator system this would enable
48:40 an elevator when it reaches the 20th
48:42 floor and there's nobody waiting above
48:45 to go down to the first floor instead of
48:47 going up to the top before it comes down
48:49 this saves time and increases the
48:52 availability of elevators and management
48:55 said which one of these is the best he
48:57 said we don't know you have to research
48:58 to find out so they've got a great big
49:01 juicy contract they went off and did the
49:03 research came back after several months
49:05 and a couple million dollars later and
49:09 said you've got a problem what do you
49:12 mean said well in order to add a
49:15 sufficient number of elevators to solve
49:17 the problem you've got to reduce the
49:18 rentable space in this building by an
49:20 amount that you can't possibly justify
49:22 by the change in income it would be a
49:27 bad investment but what about automating
49:31 well that will only reduce the time to
49:32 about one minute which is still three
49:34 times too much what about computer
49:37 controls same thing they said what are
49:40 we going to do said management engineers
49:43 said you can't do anything it's an old
49:44 building and it's a
49:45 it's the cost of age and they left
49:49 complaints kept going on finally
49:52 management became absolutely desperate
49:54 and decided to do something would never
49:56 do under normal circumstances these were
49:58 absolutely unique conditions so they
50:01 called a meeting of their subordinates
50:04 the head of each department in the
50:06 building was called and everyone came a
50:10 large building like this employees
50:12 between two and four hundred people
50:14 except I had a personnel department he
50:17 was off on a trip and he sent his young
50:19 assistant who was a recent graduate in
50:21 personnel psychology from Penn State and
50:25 when they entered the room management
50:27 described the problem to them and the
50:29 result of the engineering study he said
50:32 what I want to do here today is
50:33 brainstorming he said no this is what
50:35 brainstorming is I'm going to ask you if
50:39 you have any ideas on how we can solve
50:40 the problem and somebody will make a
50:42 suggestion now nobody can say what's
50:45 wrong with the suggestion why it won't
50:46 work if you don't think it will work it
50:49 has to say what you would do to it to
50:51 make it workable so every contribution
50:54 has to be constructive working our way
50:56 toward a solution is that understood and
50:59 everybody nodded he said ok let's have a
51:02 suggestion somebody raised his hand and
51:04 made it and everybody immediately told
51:06 him what wouldn't work three or four of
51:10 these occurring in a row and pretty soon
51:12 people stopped making suggestions it was
51:15 a long silence in the room and the
51:17 manager got desperate up at the front of
51:19 the room and finally he looked at the
51:20 young man he said you haven't said a
51:23 word he said don't you have any ideas he
51:24 said sure he said I do have an idea and
51:26 I'm ashamed of presenting he said people
51:29 make fun of me he said we don't have the
51:32 luxury of making funny what's your idea
51:34 and a young boy told them two weeks
51:38 later at a course the $500 the problem
51:42 was dissolved now what had he done
51:46 see everybody had said the problem
51:49 consists of slow or not enough
51:53 we've got to add elevators or increase
51:56 their speed but that's not the way the
51:58 young man looked at it he said people
52:01 standing there for two minutes are bored
52:03 they've got nothing to do and they're
52:05 complaining about the boredom
52:07 therefore how do I entertain them so
52:11 they won't mind the wait it's a very
52:14 different problem the solution was
52:18 simply put mirrors up in the lobby so
52:20 they can spend their time looking at
52:22 each other that has become standard
52:26 practice you will find now on most
52:28 modern buildings elevator lobbies will
52:30 have mirrors all around because now the
52:33 men can look at the women without
52:34 appearing to do so and vice versa that's
52:40 what any of this minority is all about
52:42 it means exploring the different points
52:45 of view around the problem to find which
52:48 one or combination our points of view
52:50 will give you the best solution nobody
52:53 owns a problem every problem is
52:57 universal ok so the university is not
53:02 organized the way reality is or vice
53:06 versa a great deal of our effort as
53:11 educators is to teach people how to
53:13 solve problems problem solving now the
53:16 fact is we very seldom give them a
53:18 problem what we usually do is give them
53:19 exercises or ask them questions well
53:23 what's the difference you say that's the
53:26 we treat problems exercises and
53:28 questions as though they're all the same
53:30 thing and they're very very different
53:33 for example I have a friend who's very
53:38 well known in mathematical circles is
53:40 the inventor of mathematical puzzles of
53:42 deep significance because their solution
53:46 always requires some major development
53:48 of mathematics his name is Merle fly
53:50 teams of professor mathematics the
53:52 university of michigan and recently
53:55 retired from the university of
53:56 california he and then it are very well
53:58 problem in mathematics called this
54:00 Traveling Salesman problem of all things
54:03 and he used to love to give me puzzles
54:06 whenever we met so I met him one day so
54:07 I got a new one for you he said we got a
54:10 bowl a glass ball it's full of balls all
54:13 the same size some of the balls are
54:15 white and some are black you reach into
54:18 the ball and come out with a handful of
54:20 n balls you put them down and look at
54:25 them em out of the end balls or blacks
54:28 and therefore n minus M balls are white
54:33 you said now you reach into the ball and
54:36 pull out one ball at random what's the
54:39 probability it will be black
54:40 I said that's easy what do you mean it's
54:45 easy it's an unsolved problem in
54:46 statistics I said it may be unsolved in
54:49 statistics but it's an easy problem he
54:52 said what do you mean how can it be easy
54:54 I said you just tell me how you know
54:56 that the bulk contains only black and
54:58 white balls and I'll tell you the answer
55:00 oh no he said I can't do that it'll
55:02 spoil a problem I said of course it will
55:06 it's no longer a problem what you've
55:07 given me is an exercise you are
55:10 depriving me of information which you
55:12 need to formulate the problem that's an
55:15 exercise that's what a case study is
55:19 it's not a problem it's an exercise but
55:21 it's because the person who writes the
55:23 case eliminates information which he
55:26 used and formulating the case in order
55:28 to convince it it's an exercise he said
55:32 well if that's what you mean by an
55:34 exercise is nothing wrong with it is
55:35 still teach out how to solve problems I
55:38 said if I taught you how to box with one
55:41 hand tied behind you does that teach you
55:43 how to box with two hands
55:44 said you get killed when you go into the
55:47 ring he said all right let me fix up
55:49 that problem he said you look in the
55:52 bowl now and all the balls are white you
55:55 reach in and pull out a handful of balls
55:57 and M of them have a black core in the
56:00 middle and n minus n have a white core
56:03 in the middle now you pull out one ball
56:06 which one what's the probability to have
56:07 a black core I said how do you know that
56:11 a black cord and some don't he said boy
56:14 says you insist on spoiling the problem
56:16 don't you he said all right let me give
56:19 you one more formulation he said you got
56:21 one of these pinball machines and you
56:25 have two exits for the balls one or two
56:27 right one on the left and you shoot in
56:28 balls and Emin them come out and the
56:31 right and then minus em come out on the
56:32 left now you got one pull of the spring
56:34 one ball goes up what's the probability
56:36 and come out on the left I said give me
56:39 a screwdriver so what for I said I want
56:42 to take the Machine apart and see how it
56:44 works says you can't do that they said
56:47 why not he said because it spoils the
56:50 problem see he was reducing problems
56:54 exercises and exercises are not an
56:58 exercise in problem-solving it's
57:00 learning how to box with one hand tied
57:01 behind your back and that's not what
57:04 reality is then we come along and we do
57:07 something to an exercise we remove the
57:10 reason for taking it seriously we remove
57:14 the context so we go ahead and ask a
57:18 student how much is two plus three now
57:22 we ask that with a full conviction that
57:24 there's only one possible answer and
57:26 that's absolutely false
57:28 you don't know the answer to the
57:30 question two plus three because you
57:32 don't know the context am I talking
57:35 about degrees Fahrenheit am I talking
57:38 about logarithms am i talking about
57:41 number systems the basics instead of
57:44 all of these affect the answer but we
57:50 teach students as though each question
57:52 has an absolute context and an absolute
57:55 answer and therefore two plus two has to
57:58 be 4 and 2 plus 3 has to be 5 and don't
58:02 make them aware of the fact that 2 plus
58:03 3 can be 2 and 1/2 as it is if their
58:07 degrees Fahrenheit and the two bodies
58:09 are the same volume and so on and on and
58:11 on the relativity of questions is
58:14 something we never ask so we don't make
58:18 the distinction between problems
58:19 exercises and questions and then there's
58:22 another distinction
58:23 we don't May the second of three there
58:27 are four different ways of treating a
58:28 problem one is apt solution that's the
58:34 way we treat most problems you ignore it
58:36 and hope it'll go away or solve itself
58:39 so parents come home and find kids
58:42 fighting and said let them alone they'll
58:44 that's absolving yourself to the problem
58:47 problem resolution is a way of treating
58:51 a problem where you dip into the past
58:53 and say what have we done in the past it
58:55 suggests something we can do in the
58:57 present that would be good enough this
59:00 is a clinical and experiential approach
59:02 the problems is basically qualitative
59:05 and commonsensical indecision
59:07 theoretical exciti slicing answer an
59:12 answer that is good enough the way the
59:14 clinician works problem solving looks
59:18 for the best thing to do in the current
59:20 circumstances it looks for an optimal
59:22 solution its quantitative versus
59:25 qualitative experimental versus
59:27 experiential is research-based and we
59:31 leave students with the impression the
59:33 best thing you can do with the problem
59:34 is solve it and that's absolutely false
59:37 because the number of reasons one is and
59:41 no problem ever stays solved but more
59:44 importantly every solution creates new
59:46 problems you see every problem in
59:48 science that was formulated by Galileo
59:50 has long since been solved but science
59:52 hasn't disappeared because every time we
59:55 solve a problem we create a new one a
59:57 new one is harder than the old one the
01:00:00 progress of science depends as much on
01:00:02 the generation of new problems it does
01:00:04 on the generation of all solutions we
01:00:07 don't teach people that but the
01:00:10 important thing is there's something you
01:00:11 do to a problem is better than solving
01:00:13 it and that's dissolved it how in world
01:00:18 you dissolve a problem by redesigning a
01:00:22 system that has it so that the problem
01:00:25 no longer exists there's a marvelous
01:00:28 story probably apocryphal but I like to
01:00:31 believe it's true of a young man who
01:00:32 went to the Ohio match company many
01:00:35 with a proposal some of you are old
01:00:39 enough to remember the paper books of
01:00:41 matches which used to be given out every
01:00:43 time you bought a package of cigarettes
01:00:44 and there was a problem with those
01:00:47 matches because if you left the cover
01:00:49 open and struck a match on the abrasive
01:00:53 on the front sometimes a spark would fly
01:00:56 from the match and ignite the matches in
01:00:59 the book and people would burn their
01:01:01 hands and the Harmon match company used
01:01:05 to receive at least a thousand suits a
01:01:07 year from people who had burnt their
01:01:10 hands well they got enough sense and
01:01:13 printed on the bottom of the matchbox a
01:01:15 little statement said please close the
01:01:18 cover before striking you may remember
01:01:20 that it turned out this didn't do two
01:01:24 things first it didn't reduce their
01:01:26 legal liability for burned hands and
01:01:28 secondly it didn't stop most people from
01:01:31 striking matches with the book open now
01:01:35 this young man came in he said suppose I
01:01:38 could tell you how to make a paper book
01:01:40 of matches in a way that people cannot
01:01:42 possibly burn their hands and of course
01:01:45 you know more to make that book of
01:01:46 matches and it does to make the current
01:01:48 one how much is it worth you said you
01:01:51 tell us what the answer is and we'll
01:01:52 tell you how much it's worth
01:01:53 he said I'll know you tell me how much
01:01:57 it's worth and I'll tell you the answer
01:01:58 well they went on the hiring lawyers who
01:02:02 negotiated the contract and when the
01:02:05 contract was finally negotiated involved
01:02:07 actually $42,000 according to the story
01:02:10 the contract was signed by both men he
01:02:13 turned to the young man said what are
01:02:14 you what's your proposal he said take
01:02:16 the abrasive and put it on the back of
01:02:18 matchbook cover and everyone
01:02:22 subsequently was done that way see he
01:02:25 didn't solve the problem he dissolved it
01:02:27 he redesigned the matchbook cover so the
01:02:29 problem no longer existed disillusion
01:02:33 involves design solution involves
01:02:37 research we don't recognize the sign as
01:02:40 a way of dealing with problems the
01:02:42 superior even through research and we
01:02:44 don't teach design because we don't know
01:02:47 understand it some of us like me was
01:02:50 lucky enough to be trained in
01:02:51 architecture where I learned it without
01:02:52 knowing what I was learning the
01:02:55 architect as a profession is the only
01:02:58 one I know of a really understands
01:03:00 assistant he's unconscious of his
01:03:03 understanding of maybe why he
01:03:05 understands if he doesn't know what he's
01:03:07 doing but he doesn't write see if family
01:03:11 comes in to see an architect and they
01:03:13 say we want to build a home and what we
01:03:16 want is a house with three bedrooms the
01:03:19 living room dining room and kitchen
01:03:20 connected to each other want a family
01:03:23 room where the kids can play when a
01:03:25 two-car garage I wanted all them on
01:03:27 floor we'd like it to be whatever it is
01:03:29 colonial or modern architecture we'd
01:03:32 like it to cost under whatever it is a
01:03:34 hundred thousand dollars Architects says
01:03:37 fine let me think about it make some
01:03:39 sketches you come back in a week and
01:03:41 we'll talk about know what is the
01:03:42 architect do as you make a list of the
01:03:45 rooms they want and then produce a
01:03:47 design of each room and then say how do
01:03:50 I put these together into a house is
01:03:52 that what he does of course not but he
01:03:55 does is produce a sketch of a house the
01:03:57 whole and now I begin to put rooms in it
01:04:00 he divides the space of the house up
01:04:02 into rooms then he looks at it he says
01:04:05 well these bedrooms are a little too
01:04:07 small and they're the wrong shape
01:04:09 they're a little too long for their
01:04:11 width so I ought to make them a little
01:04:14 wider but that means changing the house
01:04:16 should I change the house only if
01:04:20 changing the house to accommodate the
01:04:23 room makes the house better a part is
01:04:27 never modified unless it makes the hole
01:04:30 that's a systemic principle you don't
01:04:33 change the part because it makes the
01:04:36 part better without considering its
01:04:38 impact on the whole that's systemic
01:04:43 thinking you don't improve the
01:04:45 performance of a department of a
01:04:47 university or a college unless you can
01:04:50 demonstrate that doing so improves the
01:04:52 whole but I've never seen a university
01:04:56 or college which evaluates departments
01:04:58 in terms of their
01:04:59 contribution of the hall they're always
01:05:02 evaluated in terms of their own
01:05:03 performance because the university is
01:05:07 treating treated anti-systemic Lee as a
01:05:09 group of autonomous independent entities
01:05:12 called departments and so the
01:05:14 potentiality for learning an institution
01:05:17 of higher learning has never been
01:05:18 completely exhausted now the third thing
01:05:23 about problems they don't exist there is
01:05:27 no such thing as a problem that's an
01:05:29 illusion well it's a concept really not
01:05:33 an illusion a problem is to reality what
01:05:37 an atom is to a table what you
01:05:41 experience are tables not items you have
01:05:44 a theory of the concept what tells you
01:05:46 that if you reduce a table to its parts
01:05:48 you will ultimately reach an individual
01:05:50 part which used to be called an item now
01:05:52 it's a part Tundra cork doesn't make any
01:05:54 difference but what you experience is
01:05:57 the whole not the parts into which you
01:06:00 have reduced it by conceptual reduction
01:06:03 reality consists of a whole mess of
01:06:07 problems interacting in fact reality is
01:06:13 a system of problems a problem is an
01:06:19 abstraction extracted from reality by
01:06:23 analysis it's isolated from reality now
01:06:28 what happens when you take a system
01:06:30 apart it loses all of its essential
01:06:33 properties and therefore when you take a
01:06:36 situation and by analysis reduce it to
01:06:40 the problems of which it is composed
01:06:42 you have lost all the essential
01:06:44 properties of reality and the essential
01:06:48 properties of the parts the problem when
01:06:51 you take an automobile apart you got a
01:06:52 motor sitting on the floor here that
01:06:55 motor which is responsible for moving
01:06:58 the car can't even move itself it loses
01:07:02 its essential property when separated
01:07:04 from the system of which its apart
01:07:06 and therefore the problems that we teach
01:07:08 people to solve our illusions they're
01:07:11 not real they never have the
01:07:13 interactions involved and so it was in
01:07:17 1950s we had to recognize the need of
01:07:19 developing whole new ways of formulating
01:07:21 systems of problems which are now
01:07:24 referred to technically as messes how do
01:07:28 you formulate a mess and how do you
01:07:30 solve it and the answer is by design
01:07:34 because it's only through design that
01:07:36 you deal with the whole and move to the
01:07:39 parts you see we are engaged as
01:07:42 educators in what might be called the
01:07:44 Humpty Dumpty thala see you remember the
01:07:48 Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Humpty
01:07:50 Dumpty had a great fall all the king's
01:07:53 horses and all the king's men cannot put
01:07:55 Humpty Dumpty together again once the
01:07:58 egg breaks you can't reassembly that's
01:08:01 happen to learning we've broken it we've
01:08:04 got all these pieces and the question is
01:08:06 how to bring them together well they
01:08:08 can't be interdisciplinarity is nonsense
01:08:11 the moment you have disciplines you
01:08:14 can't bring them back together again
01:08:15 you've got a broken egg you're not going
01:08:17 to put the yolk and the white back
01:08:19 we've got to start over from scratch and
01:08:22 redesign the institution so that the
01:08:24 whole is dealt with before the parts are
01:08:29 created to fit the whole we do not
01:08:31 design the whole to fit the parts which
01:08:34 is what we're doing today the colleges
01:08:37 and assemblies of departments the
01:08:38 departments are not integral parts of
01:08:40 the whole we have an incredible
01:08:43 challenge facing us and now we're going
01:08:47 to stand up to it or are we going to try
01:08:49 to preserve the capital we've invested
01:08:51 in our own education and transmit the
01:08:54 complacency that most of us have because
01:08:58 we feel that we're reasonably being well
01:08:59 educated and the kids will be lucky if
01:09:03 they're as well educated as we are which
01:09:07 is a terrible crime because we ain't
01:09:09 educated all we're only beginning to
01:09:12 realize how little we know about the
01:09:16 reality thank you
![Welp, Here's what the Fed *Just* Said [Fed FOMC Minutes]](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fl8u23oq1E9E%2Fhqdefault.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
