Self Education

Monday 5 December 2022, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Any replies to the organizer - thormay@yahoo.com

Venue: Cafe Brunelli, 187 Rundle St, Adelaide CBD, South Australia

Talking Points

1. What skill, or knowledge or even attitude makes you "an educated person"?
Background: When I was a young undergraduate in 1960s NZ, an English literature tutor confronted me in anger. "So do you think you are an educated man?" she demanded. I had been rude enough to challenge some idea she had about Bunyon's "The Pilgrim's Progress" [published in 1678 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress ]. Later I wished that I'd asked her if she could tune the carburettor on my old Triumph motorbike.

2. Since you left school, what skills and interests have you developed, formally or informally? How much of this new knowledge has been based on structured courses? Have you consciously attempted to widen or deepen your knowledge base?

3. Is it useful, or even possible to be a polymath in 2022 AD? A polymath is someone who knows about and is good at almost everything. Leonardo da Vinci was a famous polymath.

4. How wide or narrow should be aim to develop our interests and expertise?

5. What can 'further education' for adults contribute to them personally, and to the economy as a whole? In Australia TAFE stands for Technical And Further Education. The 'further education' part of this has almost been ignored for most of my adult lifetime - the political fashions of the period didn't fit it.

6. What can you conclude from the following statistics? When I left high school at the end of 1961, a bit over 1% of the Australian population had a university degree. In 1989 7.9% of Australians had a degree. In 2010 when I was awarded a PhD (after walking away from two others in the 1980s & 1990s) 23% of Australians had some kind of degree . In 2020 30.1% of Australians had a degree and a little over 1% had a PhD. In 2021 50.2% of Australians had a degree (an astonishing 30% jump from the year before).

7. To what extent can education (formal or informal) free individuals from learned helplessness?
In psychology, there is a concept called "learned helplessness". This is when an individual concludes that they are simply not able to do anything about their personal situation (or the situation of the country) and become resigned to whatever is imposed on them.

8. What cure can you propose for credentialism, as opposed to genuine knowledge seeking? When education is seen purely as a path to getting a job or promotion, then interest in actual knowledge & skills becomes minimal. As an educator (Thor) I have found this mere diploma hunting to be widespread, both among students and administrators (as opposed to teachers and lecturers).

9. Why do educational institutions still exist? What proportion of people have the skill. self-discipline and drive to master the knowledge typically marketed in a university degree or TAFE course? The Internet now contains more information and guidance, much of it free, than any course or institution.

10. Is the knowledge and experience of employees really an asset or a cost? How can the legal metrics of organizations better reflect the value of knowledge worker productivity? The accounting procedures of most companies typically count the employment of workers as a cost rather than as an asset like capital equipment and land. Similarly institutions like hospitals, universities and colleges count their employees as an accounting cost. Yet in most institutions and companies, if it were not for the knowledge and experience of employees, these legal structures would be no more than a shell (e.g. witness the self-destruction by Elon Musk of his $40 billion acquisition of Twitter).

Extra Reading

Reuven Brenner (March 29, 2022) "When universities and media go down the drain - It all happened before, and was presaged by Andersen’s fairytales". Asia Times @ https://asiatimes.com/2022/03/when-universities-and-media-go-down-the-drain/

Statista (2022) "Share of population who hold a bachelor level degree or above in Australia from 1989 to 2021" at https://www.statista.com/statistics/612854/australia-population-with-university-degree/

Christopher Hughes (Sep 17, 2021) "Higher education in Australia - statistics & facts". Statista @ https://www.statista.com/topics/6790/higher-education-in-australia/#topicHeader__wrapper

Malcolm Abbott and Chris Doucouliago (2007) “The changing structure of higher education in
Australia, 1949-2003”. Deakin University @ https://www.deakin.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/402594/swp2003_07.pdf

Thor May (2012) "Hidden Boundaries – A Joint-Venture Education Program in China". The Passionate Skeptic Website @ http://thormay.net/lxesl/HIddenBoundaries.html

Thor May (2010) "Language Tangle - Predicting and facilitating outcomes in language education - PhD dissertation". University of Newcastle, NSW @ https://ogma.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:6593 [statistics as at 22 November 2022: Hits: 1239 Visitors: 5259 Downloads: 1254]

Thor May (2008) "Corruption and Other Distortions as Variables in Language Education". TESOL Law Journal, Vol.2 March 2008. Copy on thormay.net @ http://thormay.net/lxesl/corruptioninlxed.html

Thor May (1996) "Technical & Further Education in Australia: Is there a star to steer by?" Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/politics/politic2.html [Abstract: A review of the mission of Australian TAFES, and risks to their skill base. Published in Campus Review (a weekly newspaper for academics with Australian nationwide circulation) April 16-22 1997, p.13 (2000 words); also tabled in the Australian Federal Parliament, December 1996 as part of the Senate committee hearings on The Status of Teachers]

Thor May (17 February 1993) "Learning to be Australian" [This was written as a letter to The Australian newspaper - which declined to publish it]. Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/lxesl/teach3a.html

Thor May (2017) "Re-spinning Intellectuals into the Social Order". Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/Intellectuals.htm [Quote: "What is an intellectual anyway ? I think it has something to do with looking past the end of your nose. It is figuring your own way to put the small things of life into the big context of past, present and future by asking WHY. Now the world is full of clever, narrow people with lousy judgment. They are not intellectuals. An intellectual is not necessarily a person of great intelligence, but one who has developed the habit of handling ideas in an explicit way of exploring and questioning the territory of the mind".]

Thor May (2014) "So we had a few failures. Was that the end of university?" The Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/Access&FailureAtUniversity.htm [Quote: "The source of this short document is intensely personal. It is the story of early university misadventure by one individual, myself. At first glance it might seem of little interest to anyone but the protagonist. I am publishing it because in fact pieces of this story fit the lives of so many students who simply disappear from the statistics and into oblivion. Educational administrators may make assumptions about them, perhaps based on personal prejudice and hearsay, while political decisions about which kinds of students to fund tend to be founded in ideology rather than the real life stories of actual individuals and their development".]

Thor May (2014) "The Purpose of Education - a hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy?" The Passionate Skeptic website @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/EducationPurpose_Hitchhiker.htm [[Quote: "Any Internet search will reveal a myriad of articles and blogs on this topic. The variety of comment is not surprising since formal education of some kind affects every family and every individual in almost every country. Informal education has probably effected just about everyone since humans evolved. What the online material does show is that while the process is universal, the objectives are diverse and often in conflict".]

Anthony Galloway (September 3, 2022) "Tens of thousands of international graduates to work in Australia longer". Brisbane Times @ https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/tens-of-thousands-of-international-graduates-to-work-in-australia-longer-20220902-p5betx.html [Quote: "Foreigners wanting to study nursing, engineering and IT will be the focus of the federal government’s plan to lure more overseas students to Australia... Select bachelor’s degree holders will be able to work for four years after graduating, up from two years .. All masters students will be able to work for five years, up from three years, and PhD graduates will be able to work for six years, up from four years. ... Just 16 per cent of international students stay on to work after their studies in Australia, compared to 27 per cent in Canada". ]

Rhys Blakely (October 1, 2022) "British journals forced to retract fake Chinese science papers - A recent report suggested one in 50 papers submitted to journals come from shadowy operations that produce falsified research." The Australian @ https://amp.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/british-journals-forced-to-retract-fake-chinese-science-papers/news-story/7266f45086a34228fdbc4bdc4f285d86 [Quote: ""Hundreds of fake scientific papers from Chinese researchers have been published in British journals, prompting warnings of “industrialised cheating”. The publishing arm of the Institute of Physics, a society founded in London in 1874, has been forced to retract nearly 900 papers so far this year. At least 497 of them were claimed to have been written by Chinese researchers, on topics ranging from chemical engineering to artificial intelligence. Others were meant to be from scientists in India and Iran. In reality, the papers had been churned out by “paper mills”, shadowy operations that produce falsified research to order and arrange to have it published in western journals. To be named as an author of a paper costs from $US500 (about $780) to $US5000, depending on the calibre of the journal and how prominently your name is to appear, experts say. The services were being advertised yesterday (Friday) on Facebook. Springer Nature, a German-British academic publisher, is another victim. It said it had retracted 749 studies in the past nine months which it now believed came from paper mills."]

Celina Ribeiro (27 November 2022) "The push and pull of cheating at university: ‘No one knows what cheating is any more’". The Guardian @ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/27/the-push-and-pull-of-cheating-at-university-no-one-knows-what-cheating-is-any-more [Quote: "When a student roams a university campus, they might see stickers on the back of bathroom stall doors. Pamphlets dropped at eating areas. Postcards floating around common spaces and posters wrapped around telegraph poles. All selling what might look to be homework help or tutoring. They’re on Facebook, Instagram, in direct messages. If they manage to get your email address, there’ll be spam there too. Only some of these services do more than help. They do the work itself. In other words, it’s contract cheating... “This is a massive industry. It’s a highly sophisticated industry. It’s a very mature industry. It functions a lot like big industries,” says Ellis. “What that should be telling us loud and clear is that it’s servicing a very, very big market .. for some contract cheating companies, the revenue from extortion is greater than the revenue from doing the work. In a survey by Curtin University in 2020, nearly 70% of students so feared being found out by their university that they said it would be preferable to be blackmailed. ... there is no university in the world detecting cheating at the rate surveys suggest is going on, says Ellis. Curtis estimates 95% of cheating students are not caught".]

Wikipedia (2022) "Autodidacticism". @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism [Quote: "Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education (also self-learning and self-teaching) is education without the guidance of masters (such as teachers and professors) or institutions (such as schools). Generally, autodidacts are individuals who choose the subject they will study, their studying material, and the studying rhythm and time. Autodidacts may or may not have formal education, and their study may be either a complement or an alternative to formal education ... Secular and modern societies have given foundations for new systems of education and new kinds of autodidacts. As Internet access has become more widespread, websites such as YouTube, Udemy, Udacity and Khan Academy have developed as learning centers for many people to actively and freely learn together. Organizations like The Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE) have been formed to publicize and provide guidance for self-directed education."].

Ellie Batchiyska (Dec 19, 2018) "Success is for the Self-Taught". Addicted2Success blog @ https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/success-is-for-the-self-taught/ [Quote: "Truman Capote, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Jobs, Nikola Tesla. Those are four names you never thought you’d see in a sentence together. As it happens, these four individuals have more in common than their success, ingenuity, and fame. They were all autodidacts. In other words, they were self-taught learners. The talents and innovations that skyrocketed them to fame were the products of their own teachings. Make no mistake, this doesn’t mean a formal education is a waste of time. However, it goes to show that success is crafted solely by commitment and focus. While college and traineeships can prepare us for the groundwork of what we pursue, it’s ultimately up to us as individuals to teach ourselves how to refine our knowledge for success".]

Evelyn Lewin (December 3, 2022) "How embracing a beginner’s mindset leads to personal growth". The Age @ https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/how-embracing-a-beginner-s-mindset-leads-to-personal-growth-20221130-p5c2g7.html [Quote: "As adults, it’s easy to stay in our comfort zones, and trying something new can feel more than a tad challenging. But there are many benefits to adopting a beginner’s mindset, says psychologist Lana Hall, author of The Slow Life Project. First, she says, when we’re about to embark on a new experience, we tend to shed our usual judgments about ourselves. “We don’t expect to do well at something when we’re a beginner, so it can help us feel more of a sense of self-compassion and a sense of being taken care of; a kindness towards ourselves.”]

Eddie Woo (27 Jun 2015) "Introduction to Calculus (1 of 2: Seeing the big picture)". Youtube @https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2DGYOi3hc [12 minutes][Main site: http://www.misterwootube.com ]

Wikipedia (2022) "Learned Helplessness". @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Xinrou Shu (4 December, 2022) "Buying ‘guaranteed acceptance’ to elite US universities: the risks and rewards for Chinese students - Chinese students are paying education ‘consultants’ to get them into top US universities by falsifying grades, academic transcripts and personal statements". South China Morning Post @ https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3201835/buying-guaranteed-acceptance-elite-us-universities-risks-and-rewards-chinese-students

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