Education should be reformed to create

creative capital and not mere human capital

Rolf Dobelli

Monday, 31 July 2017

The objective of education should be to create relevant and applicable

wisdom among students
The continued economic prosperity of a nation depends on its having a critical
pool of wisdom. Those with wisdom learn from the past with impassion, live in
the present, map out the future avoiding a repeat of past mistakes and
strengthen past achievements. When a society is equipped with a majority of
such people, it becomes a critical pool.

To create this pool, it should put in place an appropriate system of education,

provide citizens with facilities for continued training, encourage researchers to
come up with new inventions and help entrepreneurs commercialise such
inventions, a process known as innovation.

It is therefore crucial that a nation should attune these four elements to wisdom
building rather than to mere knowledge building. For this purpose, education at
all levels at school, university and technical college should be reformed.

It is the duty of schools to produce students known in education as throughputs

with a mindset conducive for undertaking studies at higher levels at universities
and technical colleges. Then, it is the duty of universities and tech colleges to
equip them with relevant and applicable wisdom. Hence, making education
relevant is a matter for all educational authorities including universities.

Thus, the relevant education should lead to the development of creative capital
and not mere human capital viewed from an orthodox point. That creative capital
will accomplish two tasks: invent new things and innovate them commercially.
The responsibility for creating an environment conducive for both inventors and
innovators to operate side by side devolves on respective governments.
Inventions and innovations should go hand-in-hand

Thus, in todays context, both inventions

and innovations, the outcome of creative capital, should go hand in hand. What it
means is that without innovations, inventions become fruitless; without
inventions, innovations could not take root. This is evident from a number of
inventions made by scientific minds.

The first Apple Macintosh desktop was invented by a creative engineer called
Stephan Wozniak. It would have remained just a prototype invention, unless an
innovator by the name of Steve Jobs had assembled resources necessary for
bringing it out as a commercially viable product.

Later in 2004 when the first iPhone was produced by Apple Incorporated, the
scratch-free unbreakable gorilla glass for the screen came from Corning
Incorporation which had invented it in 1960 for the US Air force but remained
unutilised until Steve Jobs chose to use it for the new iPhone.
Inventions are created by creative scientific minds that are produced by
education, training and research activities. Innovations are produced by
entrepreneurs who are also trained by the educational system supported by a
culture conducive for entrepreneurship. Hence, education is at the core of both
invention and innovation.

Since wisdom is global and not confined to a given geographical territory, the
objective of education should be to develop a global citizen who will respect
knowledge coming from any part of the world with no pre-biases or prejudices.
The 4th century BCE Indian Guru Chankaya also known as Kautilya, too said so in
the Ethics of Chankaya when he said: No land is foreign for a scholar.
Wisdom of Rev. Weliwitiye Sri Soratha Maha Thero: University students should
be probing, critical and rebellious
The founding Vice Chancellor of the Vidyodaya University, the predecessor to the
current University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Rev Weliwitiye Sri Soratha Maha
Thero, is reported to have stressed this point when the university was opened in
1959.

The erudite thero had advised the university students that they should be
probing, critical and rebellious. Though all these three attributes stressed by
him are interconnected and cannot be separated from each other, for ease of
understanding, they could be analysed separately in their reverse order.

Being rebellious means that university students should be intellectually

rebellious by questioning the existing and accepted wisdom. For that, they should
be sceptical and should not accept anything as being presented to them. Being
critical requires them to evaluate both the good side and the bad side of an issue
that demand their attention before deciding on their own stand on it. What he
meant by probing was that university students should not accept anything
presented to them without seeking for evidence for or against it.

He, therefore, advised students to get into a culture of questioning, evaluating

and exploring if they wanted to be learned men and women. These three
attributes constitute the foundation of evidence-based decision making which
leads to the creation of a creative society.
It is the school system that should begin to develop critical minds
Such a culture cannot be developed merely at the university level in Sri Lanka
today. That is because, before entering the university, students spend nearly 12
years at schools and the culture at schools is not to question the existing
knowledge but to accept it blindly. The culture of questioning, or in the words of
Rev Soratha Maha Thero, the culture of being rebellious, should be developed in
the school system by teachers.

But what is observed in the school system in Sri Lanka is, instead of encouraging
students to question, they are trained to observe and uphold conformity. The
pressure of examinations too does not allow students to learn by questioning. All
they are required to do is to learn by rote the matters that would be questioned
at examination papers and get the highest marks possible so that they can ensure
a place at a local state university.

A student who does not get enough marks to enter a university is labelled as a
failure by the system, including his or her family members. Then, why should one
bother to learn by questioning when one can have a safe journey to a university
simply by following the opposite.
Paradoxical view of commerce students: Eliminate the middleman
This is obvious when students celebrate commerce days in schools. Though they
follow a stream that leads to a profession involving buying and selling or
functioning as middlemen, the short dramas they often perform on stage on
school commerce days have a paradoxical theme: That is, labelling the middlemen
as exploiters of both consumers and producers thereby suggesting that they
should be eliminated.

It is a paradox that they are suggesting that they themselves should be

eliminated. This is because students learn not by exploring, evaluating and
questioning but by simply accepting the societys views on traders. But if the
students explore by themselves, they would find that the middlemen serve both
the consumer and producer by reducing the inconvenience to them called
transaction costs in economics and facilitating the exchange of goods by buying
from producers and selling to consumers.

The aberration of the system occurs when the middlemen holds monopoly power
over information which he uses to his advantage. Thus, instead of identifying the
problem, students cry like parrots that middlemen should be eliminated from the
system.
Vicious circle of ignorance within the countrys school system
The pressure of the present examination system has forced students not to
devote time for wholesome learning or engage in extracurricular activities that
help them to become wholesome personalities. Hence, they do not read, discuss,
debate or interact on matters other than what is needed for them to pass
examinations.

Thus, the general knowledge, world outlook and aptitude of students become
very narrow. When students do not question teachers, teachers too do not have
incentive to learn anything other than what is needed for preparing students for
examinations.

Hence, the education system in the country has got into a vicious circle of
ignorance: teachers do not encourage students to question; students do not want
to follow a path involving learning by questioning, evaluating and probing; since
students do not question, teachers do not gain the capacity to answer the
possible questions; since teachers are unable to answer the questions, they do
not encourage students ask questions. Thus, the school education system in Sri
Lanka moves around this vicious circle of ignorance.
Universities practically becoming a continuation of Advanced Level classes
When these students enter the university, they expect the university lecturers too
to function as school teachers who would do nothing but prepare them for
examination papers. The prescribed readings for students are rarely read by them
before lectures.

With modern technology, most of the lectures are presented in the form of
PowerPoint Presentations. Hence, students have given up even the habit of taking
down notes of lectures. If a question is asked from the previous lecture, not many
can answer it because they do not even practice the reflection of what was taught
previously before the next lecture. All they do at the university is not going
through a continuous learning system but collecting lecture printouts and other
materials till the announcement of the examination and start learning by rote. But
by that time, it is too late for them to have a critical knowledge of the subject
being taught to them.
Max Planck story: A Nobel Laureate being impersonated by his chauffeur
The Swiss writer Rolf Dobelli, in his 2013 book The Art of Thinking Clearly, has
distinguished between two types of knowledge, the chauffeur knowledge and the
Planck knowledge by referring to a story attributable to the 1918 Physics Nobel
laureate Max Planck.

In this story, Planck, after being awarded the Nobel Prize, had gone on a lecture
tour across Germany where he had delivered the same lecture to every new
audience he had met. After some time, it had become pretty boring for him to do
so. But his chauffeur who had been with him throughout had learned the lecture
by heart and had proposed to his master that they could exchange positions in
the next lecture just to kill the boredom: Chauffeur impersonating Planck and
delivering the lecture while Planck enjoying it in the audience dressed in
chauffeurs uniform.

Everything had gone on well until the question time when one academic in the
audience had asked a question. The chauffeur had been taken completely
unawares but instead of revealing his true identity had played the smart card. He
had ridiculed the questioner saying that it was such a simple question that even
his chauffeur could answer it. So did the chauffeur who was in the audience.
Distinction between chauffeur knowledge and real knowledge
Based on this story, Dobelli makes a distinction between the chauffeur knowledge
and Planck knowledge. Planck knowledge is the real knowledge acquired in the
hard way learning all facts and depths of a subject. Chauffeur knowledge is, on
the other hand, learning simply to put on a show by imitating someone or just
presenting what someone has said.

Though it is difficult to distinguish between the two, Dobelli gives a clue to do so.
Those who have the real knowledge know the limit of their competence and if a
question is asked beyond it, they would simply apologetically respond that they
do not know it. Chauffeur knowledge holders, on the other hand, would continue
to play the game by pretending that there is no limit to what they know.
Rolf Dobelli: Be sceptic of even views given by authorities
In another chapter, Dobelli has advised those intending to think clearly to be
sceptic of everything they see as patterns or revelations because it may be due to
an illusion in the brain. For instance, he advises that if someone sees Jesus Christ
in a pancake, he should immediately ask the question why Jesus wanted to reveal
himself in that manner. This scepticism he says should be extended to every
authority on issues because authorities are not correct always. His advice has
been simple: when one encounters an authority, challenge him.

What Dobelli has said here is simply an echoing of what the Buddha said in the
Kalama Sutra some 2,600 years ago. He told those from the Kalama clan: Dont
go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by
inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or
by the thought, This contemplative is our teacher.
Dont produce people with chauffeur knowledge but those with real knowledge
Sri Lankan education system, both at school level and at the university level,
produces people with chauffeur knowledge and not those with real or Planck
knowledge. Accordingly, students go through the education machinery but come
out not as really learned men and women but those who are unable to think
clearly.

This has to be changed if the country wants to align its education system to create
the innovation economy, a must for attaining sustainable economic growth. Until
and unless this target is met, spending money on education is a waste of
resources. That is why it is necessary that Sri Lanka should provide relevant
education to its students enabling them to think clearly and creatively. It will build
up a creative capital and not just a human capital.

Israel, a leading innovation economy in the modern world, built its creative capital
by allowing students to be sceptic all throughout and thinking out of the box
when it comes to providing solutions to issues they have faced, according to Dan
Senor and Saul Singer who documented the story of Israels economic miracle in
their 2009 book Start-up Nation.
Go for creative capital instead of human capital

The purpose of education should be to develop creative capital and not mere
human capital as has been traditionally emphasised. Such creative capital should
be global in outlook rather than national or territorial. People with creative capital
are known today as global citizens. The foundation for creating such global
citizens should be laid from the very beginning of a student starting his education
at the school level and continued through his tertiary education at universities.
Any reform of education should have this as its prime target.

(W.A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka,
can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com).
Posted by Thavam