Third world Vietnam has better education than the USA
http://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/
Vietnam teaches children how to program computers in elementary school. This article points out many ways and reasons Vietnam provides much better education than the USA.
An important point is that learning to program computers is expected of everyone in Vietnam. In the USA there is a stigma against students who are “too smart” and athletes are praised and have lots of money spent on them. Vietnam and Asia in general views being smart as the highest status and athletics as a hobby at best. I suspect that also contributed to overall better health among Asians because athletics isn’t a hostile exclusionary clique. Its just something people do for fun.
My favorite part of the article is:
Due to a lack of funds, the school could not afford two CS teachers, so half the school was unable to take CS. I asked what a teacher’s salary was. $100 per month. So I went to an ATM and bought them a second teacher for the next year.
When you see fabulous results then people are glad to freely support it. Even more so when it costs less than a cup of premium coffee.
Charity, proof scarcity doesn't always increase prices.
Economic theory states that scarcity increases prices; but, exactly the opposite occurs. People share with their neighbors.
Widespread power outages is the definition of scarcity. The people people without electricity clearly have a need. Why didn’t it lead to massive profit taking? In a real free market there is another choice, it’s call charity.
The person sharing their electricity didn’t have a scarcity, they had an abundance, more than they needed. The value of helping people in need outweighed any monetary profit or the hassle involved in selling access to electricity. This situation shows that given the choice people gladly share. If there isn’t a significant cost involved sharing people will share.
Predictive Innovation at TED
One dimension used by Predictive Innovation is the 3 Scales of the Alternatives. Cesar Harada used the 3 scales to create a better boat to clean up oil spills.
When Cesar Harada attempted to make a boat to zig-zag back and forth to efficiently mop up an oil spill he found that a traditional boat with a rudder in the rear was difficult to control. So he applied Inversion to solve the problem. Instead of having the rudder in the rear he put the rudder in the front, that helped. Inversion is just one technique for applying the 5 Directions of the Predictive Innovation Alternatives Grid. It is a very powerful technique because it can fundamentally change the problem and provide an entirely new set of 15 Alternatives. In this case Cesar only used a simple change but that was enough to get the desired result.
After moving the rudder he then thought about having more than 1 rudder. He moved to multiple rudders. Then he finally moved to having a continuous rudder. That is the 3 Scales of the Predictive Innovation Alternatives grid:
- Single
- Multiple
- Continuous
The 3 Scales are how I predicted in 2004 that s service like Youtube would be the next disruptive innovation for video.
The 15 Alternatives is a key part of how Predictive Innovation gives you a structured approach to describing the complete idea space. It can help you find new and better solutions and show you the next big thing.
You can learn the entire 15 Alternatives through a new stand alone self-paced video tutorial. The 15 Alternatives apply to every dimension, it’s the essential tool for describing the entire idea space. This self paced online video tutorial will open your eyes to see the entire idea space in crystal clear detail.
Click here to register for Predictive Innovation Core Skill: Alternatives.
Predictive Innovation Training
Predictive Innovation: Core Skills Book
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