Justifiable Assumptions and their Consequences
I'm still ploughing through the hefty tomes that constitute the Gnome's wise sayings from his apical position at the top of the Atlantean hierarchy from 1959 to at least 1984. He makes an awful lot of assumptions, and sometimes, you have to take into account his weaknesses as well as his colossal strengths.
For example, the Thunderer once said that the Gnome was a bad judge of character, able to spot talent but not able to sense the constitutional underpinnings of it within each individual. From various readings, you can probably guess that the Gnome assumed something like a 1 in 3000 success rate at finding world-class candidates for the Atlantean High Command. The Thunderer's pragmatic assessment would reduce that to perhaps 1 in 10,000.
The Atlantean education system currently contains a shade under 30,000 educators up to the high school level. Of these, about 800 are principalities or deputy principalities. This means that if we are to take the founding fathers of modern Atlantis seriously as to the level of available talent, there are not likely to be more than three world-class educators in the whole lot.
The commonly-held assumption is that the best talent is actually sucked into the Administrative Service, the priesthood which controls all the highest functions of Atlantean society. Approximately 300 officers occupy about 600 posts; a large number of these officers run the commercial arm of Atlantean government.
The current Atlantean population is about 5,000,000 souls. If 1 in 10,000 is a candidate for the high Command, then there are only 500 people who can run the show. 300 of them are in the Administrative Service; that leaves 200 for everyone else.
Of these 200, we assume that 3 are somewhere in the education service, swamped by about 29,000 other officers of variable but lesser abilities. Yet somehow, we have managed to cultivate a 'world-class education system'.
My conclusion at this point is that if this education system is 'world-class' (whatever that means), it's a triumph of systems engineering over human leadership. It must be a system that works regardless of the manpower available. In fact, as I've published elsewhere, it is a system which has extremely fluid manpower characteristics but extremely rigid structural characteristics.
It is like a system of concrete channels within which seawater and all kinds of marine life circulate. The channels are fixed, but what kind of 'catch of the day' you get depends a lot on luck — the quality of your fish is not guaranteed, except that it is the kind which will thrive in such a system.
If I were less charitable, or willfully cynical, I'd call it a goldfish bowl system. But there is one key difference: with a goldfish bowl, the fish see each other and the observer can see them all — but in this system, the fish do not all see each other, and the observer can't see them all either. It's concrete and steel, not glass and light.
I can't wait to get to my final conclusion.
For example, the Thunderer once said that the Gnome was a bad judge of character, able to spot talent but not able to sense the constitutional underpinnings of it within each individual. From various readings, you can probably guess that the Gnome assumed something like a 1 in 3000 success rate at finding world-class candidates for the Atlantean High Command. The Thunderer's pragmatic assessment would reduce that to perhaps 1 in 10,000.
The Atlantean education system currently contains a shade under 30,000 educators up to the high school level. Of these, about 800 are principalities or deputy principalities. This means that if we are to take the founding fathers of modern Atlantis seriously as to the level of available talent, there are not likely to be more than three world-class educators in the whole lot.
The commonly-held assumption is that the best talent is actually sucked into the Administrative Service, the priesthood which controls all the highest functions of Atlantean society. Approximately 300 officers occupy about 600 posts; a large number of these officers run the commercial arm of Atlantean government.
The current Atlantean population is about 5,000,000 souls. If 1 in 10,000 is a candidate for the high Command, then there are only 500 people who can run the show. 300 of them are in the Administrative Service; that leaves 200 for everyone else.
Of these 200, we assume that 3 are somewhere in the education service, swamped by about 29,000 other officers of variable but lesser abilities. Yet somehow, we have managed to cultivate a 'world-class education system'.
My conclusion at this point is that if this education system is 'world-class' (whatever that means), it's a triumph of systems engineering over human leadership. It must be a system that works regardless of the manpower available. In fact, as I've published elsewhere, it is a system which has extremely fluid manpower characteristics but extremely rigid structural characteristics.
It is like a system of concrete channels within which seawater and all kinds of marine life circulate. The channels are fixed, but what kind of 'catch of the day' you get depends a lot on luck — the quality of your fish is not guaranteed, except that it is the kind which will thrive in such a system.
If I were less charitable, or willfully cynical, I'd call it a goldfish bowl system. But there is one key difference: with a goldfish bowl, the fish see each other and the observer can see them all — but in this system, the fish do not all see each other, and the observer can't see them all either. It's concrete and steel, not glass and light.
I can't wait to get to my final conclusion.
Labels: Education, Statistics, Systems
etched with acid at 11:47:00 am
9 Comments:
Hang on. Has Atlantis ever been challenged on the basis by which they claim their education-system to be world-class? Against which other states is Atlantis comparing their education system against?
Apart from the fact that the significance of the term 'world-class' is disputable and debatable, there is indeed some sort of basis for comparison. This is in the form of UN-sponsored studies, studies by various independent organizations, the OECD, World Bank etc.
Since Atlantis is often in the top 10 for various categories, it calls itself world-class. It is entitled to, of course. After all, we often look at performance without looking at the basis for that performance — process after product. Not that the process is particularly heinous or undeserving, of course.
If these categories aren't particularly significant, surely the claim can be challenged? Also, you mentioned that we often overlook the basis for that performance. But couldn't one argue that given the historical/cultural/some other context of Atlantis, the drawbacks from having its particular kind of "world-class" education system are inevitable?
It all comes back down to the reification of intelligence. How do you know whether education has been of use or not?
Answer: you see whether you are scoring more points according to whatever game is in town.
Are drawbacks inevitable? It's called resource scarcity. How can anything not have drawbacks in a finite universe?
Assuming that the system has already been optimised, surely there is nothing that can be done now then?
What an assumption to make! Why would you assume optimality could exist in an open system?
To determine the size of the drawbacks, before then determining the costs of implementing actual optimisations and seeing whether the returns from such optimisations are justifiable perhaps?
Besides, it seems that a few within the system do, or did, make the assumption. Consider a statement made by the Commandeur-in-Chief, to a student querying him about the system putting pressure on pupils, during the Seminar for Undergraduate Nominees in 2001...
"The system is flawless... the only reason why the students are under so much pressure is because the parents are the ones subjecting them to it"
We have no idea how to evaluate 'flawless', but we can evaluate a system in Popperian fashion. If there is at least one flaw, it isn't flawless.
Now, if someone says the system is flawless and then does not include the system inputs (i.e. the students) or the sources and main conditioners of those inputs (i.e. the parents), then that someone is blathering — you can't say it's flawless unless you can state under what conditions and with what inputs.
LR: you are asking many questions, but the point perhaps should be that you should just go over to http://www.moe.gov.sg and find out for yourself — I think they've archived all their public stuff from about 1997.
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