How might we reimagine education and work that values and grows people to their fullest contribution? My #TEDx talk on this @TEDxSantaCruz just came out! (Twitter thread for those who prefer to read, with slight updates) ted.com/talks/david_le…
Part 1 of 8: The Relentless Machine
Have you ever felt amazed at the profoundly beautiful, endless curiosity of 2-year olds? Contrast that with a 2017 @Gallup poll in which 85% of workers reported being unengaged or actively disengaged at work. That’s 5 out of 6 people. Why is that?!
Partly, it's because our system is like a machine, relentlessly optimized for productivity. And in this machine, people are just parts. It's the feeling of being on a treadmill where you can’t slow down. If you do, you'll be discarded. There's no time to really learn or explore.
Part 2 of 8: Our Whitewater World 
That’s going to be a big problem in today’s world of rapid change and radical contingencies. @jseelybrown and @apjull describe this era as a whitewater world. If learning and working used to be like a steamship or a sailboat, today’s is like whitewater kayaking.
Our current system just won’t work in this world. Take education. It’s not just that courses are struggling to keep their content up-to-date, it’s that fundamentally new forms of learning are now needed — forms that are highly adaptive and highly integrated with work.
As @heathermcgowan puts it, "In the past, we learned in order to work. Now we must work so that we can continuously learn." But in our efficiency maximizing machine, where can people find those opportunities? It’s often a vicious cycle where you need experience to get experience.
Part 3 of 8: Twists and Turns in My Own Journey
I struggled with this in my own education, as a researcher, and as a mentor. I started off doing mostly mathematical work but realized that what I envisioned required extending beyond. And I spent several years pretty lost, wandering around exploring entrepreneurship and HCI.
One lightbulb moment came when @jeffraikes came to speak to students. He said that the private sector is great at serving needs that are monetizable. The public sector is great at serving needs that don’t require innovation. But there’s a gap in the middle.
I thought: "Academia could play that role!" That put me on a journey to figure out how an entrepreneurial approach to community-engaged social innovation could be aligned with academic research (by crossing disciplines so that generated knowledge can be published where valued).
It's been an adventure! And lots of tension between investing towards the long-term vision and optimizing for short-term productivity. (Shoutout to @ivyleehome, who always reminds me to place my worth in God and assures me that tenure and money aren't what we're living for ❤️)
Part 4 of 8: Towards Apprenticeship Learning at Scale
Based on conversations with refugee resettlement agencies, I started thinking about how to organize volunteers to build apps for non-profits. Long story short, I couldn’t get it to work until I realized that learning had to be a central part of the collaboration process.
That led me to the need for apprenticeship learning and my first HCI paper. We developed a platform for learning web development, but rather than organizing learning by topics, learning was organized into micro-roles tied to real projects. And it worked! (for a simple case)
Part 5 of 8: My Wonderful Students and Their Stories
This made me start to wonder: what would it take to offer real-world learning opportunities in my lab, to any undergrad who wanted one? We still have a ways to go, but we've definitely made progress. Last Spring we had 20 students and this quarter we have 50.
We don’t select for experience, so many start in their 1st or 2nd year. But they’re the ones turning this vision into a reality. I feel so grateful to work with them, hear their stories, and see them overcome personal challenges harder than any I have had to face.
I still remember a senior I squeezed in last minute one quarter. Later, I found out he had been looking for a project-based experience ever since freshman year and could never land one. He was so happy about finally being part of a team.
Another student struggled a lot in making her commitments. I later learned she was wrestling with bipolar. She dropped out from school for some time, but continued in my lab, and has since become one of our top designers and been awarded a selective fellowship at a top VC firm.
Part 6 of 8: Productivity First versus #HumanityFirst
What if we redesigned our economy to be less like a machine and more like a body? In a machine, parts are disposable. In a body, every organ is indispensable, and in our society, every person should be too.
The Lord of the Rings captures this theme so powerfully in the two wizards Saruman and Gandalf. Saruman is the leader. He spends time with the rulers, the strong, the wise, and on building machines. He believes in productivity and power to battle evil.
Gandalf… he does things that frustrate Saruman. He hangs out with and invites Hobbits to join his adventures — simple short halflings that nobody pays attention to. They’re the antithesis of productivity and power.
Saruman is all about building the machine. Gandalf is all about building up individuals. But in the end, Saruman loses hope in his efforts and becomes like the enemy. And the hobbits — they’re the ones that end up bending the arc of history in unexpected ways.
There are so many challenges facing our society today. And it will take productivity and efficiency and innovation to meet those needs. But if we only focus on those things, we’ll end up losing hope: because economic power is never the ultimate cure.
On the other hand, if we embrace the idea that every person plays an important role, and we seek to support them in growing into that role, that will make all the difference, and I think that productivity will also follow.
Part 7 of 8: Society as a One-Room Schoolhouse
There are 16 million college students in the U.S. alone, but only 10% will find an internship this year. Imagine if they all had access to real-world learning and could do it in the context of supporting social innovators working on challenges like climate change or homelessness.
These needs will never be served through our financial markets. But maybe that’s an opportunity. An opportunity to reimagine education as a community-engaged experience with society itself as a one-room schoolhouse for real-world learning.
It’s not just for building professional skills, it’s also civic skills. What if students could advance their career while also getting to learn about complex issues, build empathy and shared responsibility, and move towards what @margaretlevi calls an expanded community of fate?
Part 8 of 8: Embrace Authenticity, Attention, and Alignment for Yourself and Others
But we’re not there yet. What do we do in the meantime, while we’re still in the current system? These three A’s have been helpful for me in navigating a whitewater world: authenticity, attention, and alignment.
Authenticity. I don’t mean following your passion. I mean knowing your values and principles (see @Bill_George). In a whitewater world, you need to know your center so that you can adjust to the rapids.
Attention. Keep your eyes wide open. When authenticity leads you to something that isn’t your passion, stay engaged. People think you need to have a vision before you can engage. But @tseelig teaches us that it’s when you engage that you begin to envision.
Alignment. Then try to align every minute you can. Don’t hesitate to let your manager know what your goals are. And know that sometimes, alignment means choosing paths that are harder or riskier or costlier in the short-term.
But authenticity, attention and alignment aren’t just for yourself. Find opportunities to create alignment for others. Spark someone else’s attention and vision. Help another reach their full authentic contribution. I like how @praxislabs describes it at redemptive.is.
When you do, you’ll have already found your contribution. You’ll be shifting our society from the model of a machine to the model of a body. And slowly, you and those around you will start to experience a whitewater world that isn’t filled with fear, but with adventure and hope.
@threadreaderapp unroll
