Creative, competitive, ingenious innovation

A process of education should equip young people with the values, knowledge and skills required to lead a fulfilling and productive life. Additionally, a good grounding in the fundamentals of math, science and the English language is essential.

Nations have to move away from the unquestioning mode of rote learning under a guru, which is the model still prevalent in many Asian countries and migrate toward providing capacity to curious and questioning minds which are given the space for independent research and presentation.

Teaching should not be geared merely at preparing students for examinations, teaching students to do well at tests. A process of education should teach you to think, to search out answers, to react to curiosity by searching out solutions to problems which confront you. To do this faster, more effectively than others while at the same time adhering to basic core values which are ingrained into you through the process of education is the challenge. Innovation, creativity, ingenuity and competitiveness are key issues.

Innovation is the introduction of new things or new ways of doing things. Ingenuity is the skill of invention or contriving, the facility in combining ideas. Creativity is the involvement of the use of skill and the imagination to produce something new. To be competitive is to try to be more successful or better than somebody else who is trying to do the same thing as you are doing.

American system

This, as described very lucidly by Fareed Zakaria in his best seller ‘The Post American World’ is where the American system of education scores. Other nation’s process of educating their young teaches them to take tests and do well at those tests, but the American system teaches students to think. It is this special quality in the American system that explains why America produces so many entrepreneurs, inventors and risk takers.

Training a young mind to respond to stereotype questions at tests and achieve a high mark naturally makes the student risk averse. The ‘correct’ answer, the ‘correct’ response, the solution the examiner anticipates, for which the student will be rewarded, has been drilled into the students head so intensively at schools, tutories and crammers, that students are conditioned to be risk averse. The students in their pursuit for high marks do not supply the answers that they think and intelligently work out, but respond the way they have been coached.

India’s Narayana Murthy of Infosys recently expressed the view that the entrance examination for India’s prestigious IIT’s are designed for risk-averse crammers, who are coached to provide predetermined answers and this produces IIT graduated who are not innovative. Independent thinking, analysis and presentation are discouraged in such cultures.

Since its inception in 1955, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) have become a standard for comparing educational programs across countries. The results of 2007, places America in the middle of the list of most successful performers. American students lagged behind countries such as Holland, Japan and Singapore.

After the 2003 study was released, which indicated a similar result, the Wall Street Journal headlined ‘Economic time bomb: US teens are among the worst at math’! However, if one analyses the number of Nobel Laureates, the vast majority are Americans or those who attended American universities.

Singapore’s system

Singapore’s Tharmaratnam Shanmugaratnam, until recently, Singapore’s Minister of Education, currently Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, explains the difference between the Singaporean system and the American system: “We both have meritocracies. Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. We know how to train people to take exams. You know how to train people’s talents to the fullest. Both are important, but there are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well – like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are areas where Singapore must learn from America.”

Singaporean education officials regularly visit the USA and study its best schools to learn how to create a system that nurtures and rewards ingenuity, quick thinking and problem solving. Some time back, the Washington Post reported, that some Singaporean teachers from the Hwa Chong Institute visited the Academy of Science, a public magnet school, in Virginia, to examine US teaching methods.

As the American students studied tiny, genetically altered plants, sketching the leaves and making notes in their log books, the Singaporeans noted how long the American teachers waited for students to answer questions, how often the teenage students spoke up and how strongly they held on to and debated in support of their views.

A Singaporean teacher, Har Hui Peng said, she was impressed: “Just by watching you can see that students are more engaged, instead of being spoon fed all day, in Singapore the laboratories are fully stocked, but stark, the students are bright but reluctant to volunteer answers.”

Back in Singapore, in order to encourage spontaneity, the Hwa Chong Institution now bases 10% of each student’s grade on oral participation. The American system which is referred to as the Socratic method of independent research, presentation before peers and discussion and debate, which it is said was the method of instruction favoured by the philosopher Socrates, is being adopted by Asian countries which have hitherto excelled at giving students test taking skills, in order to figure out how to get their students to think out of the box.

In top Singaporean high schools independent research is being emphasised, science competitions are promoted and entrepreneur clubs are being set up. Another Singaporean visitor said of the American system: “I like the way your children are able to communicate. Maybe we need to cultivate that more – a conversation between students and teachers.”

It should be noted that American culture celebrates and reinforces problem solving, questioning authority and thinking heretically. It allows people to fail and them a second chance and a third chance. It rewards self starters and oddballs. These are all bottom up features of American culture, it is difficult to replicate these by top down government orders and directives in an educational culture which is steeped in the test and reward culture.

Reforms

These reforms are doable and essential if we are to reform our society and economy. Teachers must be trained to be leaders to promote independent research, presentation and debate by their students, away from top down rote learning.

A long time ago, I remember a Scandinavian education specialist telling me that Sri Lanka has a very unique species. I thought he was referring to our bio diversity and agreed with him whole heartedly, saying that in no other island of our size would you be able to see the world’s biggest land and sea mammals within the space of a few hours, the elephant and the blue whale.

The expert got very impatient and said: “No, no I mean your so-called ‘untrained teachers’ – you don’t find them anywhere else in the world. Do you have untrained surgeons and untrained lawyers too in Sri Lanka? Teachers are the people who nurture tomorrow’s leaders, how can they be untrained in pedagogic skills and yet unleashed on young minds?”

So we have to get serious on the ‘untrained’ teachers we let loose on our children. Also we have to encourage full participation in what is referred to as co-curricular or extra curricula activities, sports, scouting, cadetting, theatre and drama, music and the other performing arts which are the crucibles of creativity.

Relevance of Steve Jobs

What is the relevance of the life and times of Steve Jobs to all of this? One of the most widely circulated messages doing the rounds of the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook on the internet on demise of Steve Jobs was ‘Three Apples have changed the world. One seduced Eve, a second awakened Newton, and the third one was in the hands of Steve Jobs!’

Jobs’ life and times epitomises creativity, invention, ingenuity and competition. Jobs saw the future and led the world to it. Apple Corporation’s Board in a statement said: “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovation that enrich and improve all our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.”

President Obama: “Jobs exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. Steve was among the greatest American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world and talented enough to do it.”

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, who succeeded Jobs, said: “Those of us who have been fortunate to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”

Bill Gates tweeted: “The world rarely sees someone who made such a profound impact.” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: “Jobs was one of the founders of our industry and a true visionary.”

Life of Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24th 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Joanne’s parents would not hear of her marrying a foreigner and Steve was given for adoption. Later Jandali became a US citizen and married Joanne and they had daughter Mona Simpson, who is a novelist.

Jobs in later life met up with his natural mother and his sister. He never met his father Jandali, who became naturalised American, a political science Professor and now lives in Las Vegas Nevada where he works in the casino business. Steve was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, California, later the second city to the computer capital of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, made so by Steve Jobs and other visionaries like Gates and Ballmer.

Steve’s adoptive parents were working class; they nurtured his early interest in electronics. Steve said that his adoptive father was a wizard with his hands, probably passed on some of this to Steve whose minimalist and functional designs for Apple are the stuff of history.

Jobs caught the computer bug early and was constantly experimenting. Once when building a computer, he was short of a part and cold called, Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard (HP) and got a whole bag of parts delivered and talked himself into a summer job at HP!

In 1972 Steve enrolled in Reed College Portland Oregon. He dropped out after one semester, but remained in Portland for another 18 months, attending classes he chose, including one in Calligraphy, which he later said resulted in the design of unique fonts for the Mackintosh computer.

Speaking to Stanford University commencement class in 2005, he described his lifestyle at that time in Portland: “I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friend’s rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five cent deposits to buy food with and I would walk seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good cooked meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.”

Jobs’ search for enlightenment

He went on a visit to India later in search of enlightenment, with a friend Dan Kottke. They followed guru Neem Kairolie Baba. He found the poverty in India hard to take. He became a Buddhist.

Michael Moritz, author of Jobs’ biography wrote: “The hot, uncomfortable summer, made Jobs question many of the illusions he had nursed about India.” Mortiz quotes Jobs as saying, “We weren’t going to find a place where we could go for a month to be enlightened. In his own biography – ‘The Little Kingdom — The Private Story of Apple’ Jobs says ‘it was one of the first times that I started to realise that may be Thomas Edison did lot more to improve the world than Karl Marx and Neem Kairolie Baba put together.’”

He returned to California a confirmed techie, thinner, thanks to a bout of dysentery, with closely cropped hair, dressed in Indian attire, who firmly believed that technological innovation was the path to enlightenment.

In 1974 while working for the video game maker Atari, Jobs attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of computer hobbyists, with high school friend Steve Wozniak. Wozniak’s homemade computer was a hit with Homebrew geeks but Jobs saw its true potential.

Apple is born

In 1976 Wozniak and Jobs started Apple Computer Inc. in Jobs parent’s garage. Job’s Volkswagen Combi was sold to raise capital. Wozniak recalls that Jobs suggested the name after visiting an apple orchard which was a commune. Their first creation was Apple I, essentially the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor.

Apple II, which came out in 1977, was the first machine for the mass market, it was a great hit and Jobs was worth $ 100 million by age 25. In 1983 Apple’s engineers brought out Lisa, a pricier computer named after Jobs’ daughter, it received a cool reception. In 1984 the less expensive Macintosh exploded onto the market. Marketed as the Mac, it was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referred to George Orwell’s 1984 and captured Apple’s iconoclastic style.

In the prime time TV commercial, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track suit bursts into the hall and throws a hammer at the screen, which explodes, stunning the drones, as a narrator announces the arrival of the Mac. It was classic Steve Jobs.

Realising that Apple needed a world class manager, Jobs lured the CEO of PepsiCo, John Sculley, to Apple by telling him: “If you stay longer at Pepsi, five years from now all you’ll have accomplished is selling a lot more sugar water to kids. If you come to Apple, you can change the world.” In 1989 he married a Stanford MBA student at a ceremony at Yosemite Park presided over by a Buddhist monk and settled in Palo Alto.

The Second Coming

Later Jobs fell out with Sculley and the Board at Apple and left. He described it as “the best thing that could have ever happened to me”. He co-founded a new firm called Pixar and another computer maker NeXT. Apple without Jobs lost its way and acquired NeXT and Jobs returned, he termed it the Second Coming and put NeXT software in the core of new Apple products. The iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad were instant hits. Apple became the world most valuable listed company.

Cancer emerges

In 2004 Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In 2005 at that now iconic Commencement Address to Stanford University undergraduates, he said: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others opinions drown out your inner voice. And most of all have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

Jobs famously said: “Technology alone is not enough. Its technology married with liberal arts, married with humanities that yields the results that make our hearts sing. Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

Jobs when young once said that he wanted to “put a ding in the universe”. The magician in chief at Apple did just that, in spades. While saluting the life and times of Steve Jobs, we would do well to reflect upon and emulate the systems and processes that created a mind of that quality, ingenuity, creativity and competitiveness and nurtured it into full flowering and bloom. That only will be a meaningful tribute to his brilliant mind.