Nine Shift

How to Save Newspapers: Part I

Here's our three part series on how to save print newspapers.  It's easy. It's fun!  It's profitable.

Willie, our now 23 year old guide to the 21st century, says that some people will still want to read newspapers in the print version in the coming decades.  So we decided to discover how to save newspapers. Here's how.

Newspapers form a general News Service to do 'home' delivery of customized newspapers. People then subscribe to the News Service, not to a specific newspaper.

Subscribers decide what news topics or subjects they want, from what newspapers or sources.  Overnight newspapers and other media sources send the stories to the News Service, which then individually constructs a customized newspaper for each subscriber. This is all done electronically of course.

The News Service then has large copiers located locally in neighborhoods and towns all over the country. The large copiers are able to print single issues of newspapers in either newspaper or magazine format.

Delivery persons then deliver your customized paper to your door every morning, just like they do now.

BONUS BENEFIT: If you are going to be travelling, you simply go online and input your new temporary (even if for only one day) address and dates,and then you get your customized newspaper wherever you happen to be. What do you think?

Parenting Tip For Twenties-Something Children

Here’s a parenting tip we use as a strategy for getting more time with our Twenties-Something child who has left home. 

 The ideal seems to be to have your son or daughter communicate with you once a week.  The ideal visiting frequency seems to be once every three months.  Unfortunately, neither of those goals have worked out for me and my wife.

So here’s what we do.  We pick out a vacation spot that we think our son will really want to visit, and then we invite him to join us.  Two years ago we picked Lisbon, and we had a wonderful week with him there.  Last year our planned trip to Bangalore got cancelled due to the recession. But last month we spent a week in Puerto Rico and he loved it.   Sounds expensive, but it’s cheaper than out of state tuition!  Photo: Willie on the beach in Puerto Rico.

Tips:  1.Don’t let her or him bring a friend. They won’t spend anytime with you.  2.Never, never, never ask (bug) them about school, work, money or dating.  3. Never use the time to try to educate, discipline, or “help” them.  4.Give them their own room.  5.Let them stay out late and make their own rules.  6.Ask them to decide what you should do for some or much of the time.

(This concludes "Our Week with Willie" posts)

 

Will the kids leave the U.S.?

Will the kids leave the U.S. for better jobs and/or life in another country?

 Over the last century, some of the smartest and most educated people left England, China and other countries to work and live in the United States.  With America on the decline, failing to offer top rate Internet connections, health care, high speed trains and safe communities, will some (1% to 5% of our best and brightest) of America’s youth leave the U.S. for Japan, Europe, Canada, U.K., Australia and other post-Industrial countries that are beating the U.S. in this century?

 I asked Willie how many of his friends had thought about living in another country.  He surprised me by responding “most.”  Then he told me about one friend who married a foreigner so he could move to her country.  Another of his friends is currently working in Australia.  His fellow band mate just returned from Germany.  And his AFS “brother” Kentaro just moved back to Japan this month. 

 What do you think?  Will the U.S., desperate for college educated knowledge workers, lose some of our best to other countries? 
   Photo: Willie and Julie picking up sea shells on the beach in Puerto Rico over the holidays.  Note: Puerto Rico is part of the United States.

 (This week: Willie, our 23 year old son who has taught us about the 21^st century, comes home for winter holidays. Highlights from our talks with him.)

Girls still behind the boys in the 21st century

Girls have yet to catch up with the boys in exploring, embracing and creating the 21st century. That’s our conclusion after talking with Willie about the boys and girls in his generation.

Boys are introspective, he said. They are unstructured. And they are concerned and focused about their relationship vis a vis the external world.  It’s a me versus world relationship.

 Girls, Willie said, are still concerned and focused about fitting into the existing external environment. Girls are also structured. 

 To illustrate, Willie said he was sitting on a plane next to a female friend of his.  She was telling him how she was forming a “Students United” group at her college.  Willie asked “united” about what?  She said, “Well, like united against fascism.”   That struck Willie as absurd.  Fascism has not been a problem for over fifty years, he told me.  It is one of the least important priorities for anyone today. 

 Our conclusion:  the girls, like the adults, have yet to separate from the last century and help the boys create the new post-industrial society of this century.  They are still focused on fitting in with the existing environment rather than creating the new one.   That will change.  Sometime in this decade the girls will switch centuries and join the boys in the new century.  But for now, don’t expect the girls (in general) to be creating too many 21^st century innovations. Photo: Willie with his grandmother, Mrs. Wm. A. Draves III, learning about family history from a Christmas photo album of ancestors.

(This week: Willie, our 23 year old son who has taught us about the 21^st century, comes home for winter holidays. Highlights from our talks with him.)

Is America in decline?

Is America in decline?

Willie says:  “It’s not a qualitative judgment. It’s just a fact. It’s irrelevant.”  Wow. Tough.   

 

Education Reform: Big Washington Meeting Heralds New Initiatives

A big meeting in Washington DC at the Brookings Institution, and sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, kicks off a decade of new initiatives to reform education.

LERN and Nine Shift had the honor of being invited to this meeting of just 20 major players in education.

Here's our post-meeting recommendations to the meeting's leaders.

1.Clarify your intended outcomes.
The meeting had three themes, and many sub-themes. The three themes were the need to:
A. Create new outcomes based standards for learning and education.
B. Boost achievement for low income children and youth.
C. Foster the expansion and value of certificates and certifications.

Every aspect in education needs to be addressed. Because our factory-model educational system of the last system needs to be entirely transformed, it's very hard to isolate one issue without intersecting with several others.  Nevertheless, one can't do everything at once. The first step for the effort is to clarify its intended outcomes. 

2. Understand that a four year degree and knowledge work is primary.
There was a submerged but clearly contested division of opinion whether the majority of our nation's youth can maintain a prosperous society and have a good standard of living with less than a four year college degree, the so-called "sub-baccalaureate" education. While the government pushes for this cheap fix, the U.K. is working towards getting 50% of its youth a four year degree, preparing them for knowledge work.  In the U.S. every child should have an equal shot at a four year degree, and 50% of our youth must have a four year degree.  The second step is for the group to make knowledge work and a four year degree the highest societal priority for 50% of our youth.

3. Involve Generation Y.
We have the biggest generation gap in history. No one in the meeting was under 40. We also only have measurements, standards and even language for the Industrial Age of the last century, not the Internet Age of this century. 

Here's an example. During a break I asked one participant: "What if we did a study and showed that certificates and certifications had no impact on one's career, would Generation Y stop getting them?"  He said yes. I say no. Gen Y knows certificates are valuable. They would not believe some study.  The third step is for the group to integrate user surveys of Gen Y in all their studies, surveys and analysis.

4. Raise the issue of gender, neurology and behavior in learning and education.
The interrelated issues of gender, neurology and behavior permeates every educational issue today, whether the issue is STEM, low income achievement levels, worker shortages, or degrees. Schools and colleges measure learning based on behavior, not on learning and knowledge.  Until this issue is raised and resolved, no educational reforms or positive outcomes are possible.

FutureShock hits even Generation Y

Got FutureShock from all the technological innovation being invented every few months?  Can’t keep up? Feel overwhelmed?  Apparently us adults aren’t alone.  According to Willie, even Gen Y (the generation creating all this technology change) is experiencing FutureShock. 

 

As a result, most all of his friends are adopting only selected technologies, not trying to keep up with all of them.  Some of them are not only being selective about technology, but balancing technology with the face-to-face traditional life (in-person classes, walks in the woods, bike riding, etc.)  And still others are rejecting the techno race and reverting to retro technologies like film cameras and even lead typesetting typography work.

(This week: Willie, our 23 year old son who has taught us about the 21^st century, comes home for winter holidays. Highlights from our talks with him.)

 

Marriage Crisis: Nine Shift Prediction Comes True

Hate to brag about bad news, but we predicted a marriage crisis over a year ago.

Now here's the New York Times story on it.   Schools and colleges continue to kick out smart boys, thus creating a shortage of college educated men. So young women are finding it hard to find a mate. 

Photo: Kids playing in the snow in the schoolyard in back of our house. We love the sound of the kids playing every morning. It is such a joy.

Why Bill Gates Went into Computer Science

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would do well to understand why its founder went into computer science.

The Gates Foundation is the major player in promoting educational reform right now, and it should be commended on some, but not all, of its efforts.   Some of its efforts are just a big waste of money because they don't understand education, like why its founder went into computer science.

Bill Gates went into computers and computer science because that is the only STEM field one can enter without a college degree.  Mr. Gates did not and could not become a biologist, chemist, physicist, engineer or doctor, because all the other STEM fields require a college degree.  Go ahead: name a chemist who is a college drop out.

Thank goodness we do not yet have laws about computer scientists needing a college degree or we never would have had Microsoft, Apple, iPod, Facebook, MP3 downloaded music, Blackberry, Twitter or ..... That's because the inventors of all those products are college drop outs.  Until schools and colleges stop discriminating against males in school we will never solve the STEM shortage.

Why Bill Gates is a College Drop Out

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would do well to understand why its founder is a college drop out.

We participated recently in a great high level meeting on education sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation is to be commended for its efforts on behalf of improving education.

But the foundation would do well to understand why its founder is a college drop out.

Bill Gates, while certainly smart if not brilliant, did not drop out of college because he was so smart he did not need a college degree, as academics now belatedly claim.

The real reason is the same reason that 2 million other smart boys are denied college access and degrees every year: schools grade based on behavior, not on learning and knowledge. All educational reform efforts will be futile until society eliminates gender bias against males and starts to grade based on learning and knowledge.  Then even Bill Gates could graduate from college.