TED Blog

Q&A with Sophal Ear: From refugee stories to international policies

2009-07-09T21:48:04Z

In yesterday's TEDTalk, development economist and political scientist Sophal Ear shared the deeply personal story of his family's escape from the Khmer Rouge. In today's interview with the TED Blog, he continues that story and gives us details on his current path in international aid policy.

Your mother cleverly pretended to be Vietnamese to escape the Khmer Rouge, but how did your family continue to survive after reaching Vietnam?

Yes, you see, just getting to Vietnam we weren’t off the hook. The Vietnamese required that people who had returned from Cambodia be picked up by their relatives, or they would be sent to “kinh tế mới” (New Economic Life) -- which was essentially hard-labor, working in agriculture.

My aunt, my mother’s sister, was married to a Vietnamese man and living in Vietnam. Somehow, my mother got to the market and managed to meet a friend who then got word to her sister that we had arrived in Vietnam. It was a completely random occurrence. Her sister’s husband managed -- I think he must have bribed his way through -- to get us in the middle of the night from where we were detained. Then we went to Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, where we spent one and a half years before we got out.

There was no way to get to the US, where my mother had another sister living in California. We redeclared ourselves as Cambodian, and as we were not Vietnamese there was suddenly no problem with letting us leave. They wanted us out! My mother had a nephew in France who was a university student. He was really poor, just a starving student. And, he had to somehow figure out a way to get us all there. My aunt in the US sent him some money. Then, he happened to meet a French gentleman who, for some unknown reason, decided that he wanted to help. This gentleman went to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to find out what could be done. He then found a lady whose last name was the same as my mother’s, and convinced her to sign paperwork claiming familial ties.

Now, keep in my mind that through all of this my mother has five kids with her, and two of them she hadn’t given birth to. One was my half-sibling and another is an adopted daughter. When this opportunity came about, people offered her money left and right to switch their children with hers. She could have compromised her principles, she needed the money. But, she didn’t.

We all managed to make it to France by ’78. We were only supposed to be staying there temporarily. But, for some reason, my mother just decides that she’s had enough and we’re going to stay put indefinitely. It ended up being seven years before we moved to the US, to California. That’s when I started seventh grade as an American kid.

My mother struggled so much, sacrificed so much, and by doing so she allowed all the kids to pursue their dreams. And our story, it’s about the kindness of strangers, about people taking critical actions at critical points. It’s not Schindler’s List, but just five siblings who were able to succeed despite difficult circumstances.

Can you speak a little more to the value of civil complaints like the one you filed about your father?

I feel that the tribunal as it’s currently set up at least allows for civil complaints, which I think is important, but I’ve been a skeptic. It’s deeply troubled. I’m not trying to be an advocate for the tribunal itself. I don’t want to lend credibility to a process by sanctifying the tribunal in some way. I have to accept that it’s deeply troubled -- with corruption and such. In 2002, I wrote to The New York Times and praised the UN for pulling out of discussions with the authorities, as the UN was clearly being manipulated.

For me, the complaint is really about justice for the past accountability for the future. If you have a situation where nearly two million people die and no-one is held to account, then it can happen again. Impunity is a problem in Cambodia. If you’ve got power and money, then nothing can happen to you. As a victim -- and I hate to call myself that -- but, this could be a step towards holding those who are responsible to account.

Also, although some in the international community consider the state of affairs in Cambodia to be disagreeable, they don’t see what’s happening now as unacceptable because if you’re better than the Khmer Rouge, then you’re OK. Many current political leaders are, let’s face it, former Khmer Rouge lower-ranking cadres. Obviously, there are issues of reconciliation and governance when some of your own people caused this.

But, at least, I can put it on record that my father passed away and that it was as a result of the conditions he was subjected to.

Today you work on post-conflict reconstruction and development. How much of what you do today has been influenced by the events of your childhood and your experiences? Did you always want to do this?

I grew up as a refugee. My experience has been very different from that of people who haven’t. I’ve traveled and lived around the world. It’s shaped my view of my responsibility to others. I feel like I have a responsibility to help other people in conflict situations.

I went back to Cambodia in 1996. I was riding around in a cyclo, which is essentially a rickshaw, and being led by this young boy who was about my age at the time. I couldn’t help thinking, “If I had stayed here, if my family hadn’t been able to escape, I would have been him.” I’ve been very lucky.

And, because I was a refugee in France, I speak fluent French. People think that I’ve had a privileged childhood because of my languages and my traveling. But, no, I haven’t. And as a result of all this, I was able to work for The World Bank as my first job coming out of Princeton. There, because of my French, I ended-up working on Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

You’ve spoken to your family’s achievements, but you’ve achieved quite a lot in your own right. Could you tell us about your personal journey as a young man?

I think I was very lucky. Just as we talked about those refugee stories and how random those things can be, that’s how my life continued. As a kid, I was going to school in the Bay Area and so I knew, of the universities around, I needed to go to Berkeley. Now, when I came to the US, I was placed in seventh grade at 10, so that I was at Berkeley at 16. And the opportunities were all very rich.

I got to Princeton because I saw a flyer on the Berkeley campus for a public policy program at Princeton. I decided to apply because, naively, I wanted to see New York. I had this idea that Princeton was much nearer the city than it is! Anyway, I was accepted and I went.

Then, I ended up at Princeton doing my Masters, and while I was there I remember being asked what I wanted to do. I said that I wanted to be a governor at the World Bank, and I didn’t realize then that I would first have to be the Finance Minister of a country in order to be a governor. And then, my first day out of Princeton, I did a phone interview for a job with the World Bank and I became a consultant for something called social protection -- I didn’t even know what that was at the time. I do now!

On July 1, 1997, I was in DC and started work at the World Bank. Social protection turned out to be, essentially, international welfare policy. I had grown up on welfare, so now to be working on these policies was simply amazing.

But then, what do I do next? I was 25, I had all this experience, but I really looked like I was still a kid. I decided to do a PhD. I ended up working on a dissertation that explored aid dependence and governance. You see, I discovered at the World Bank that things were not working quite the way they were supposed to. It was at the point where religious organizations were promoting debt forgiveness because countries simply could not repay their debts.

I’ve really been lucky. It’s been a series of random occurrences. I could not have imagined all that has happened to me. To work at the World Bank, to get to work on Cambodia, to think that my country of origin could benefit from what I’m doing is amazing. Now, I feel that I’ve had some impact on the issues around Cambodian development. I’m glad that at a critical point I could make a difference.

You've worked on projects in a few different countries, including Algeria, and West Bank and Gaza, etc. Can you give highlights of the most important to you or the most interesting?

I think, speaking of Algeria, that was where I began to realize the power of The World Bank, as an institution, in making countries do completely insane things. In this situation, The World Bank’s economists had concluded -- probably through some sort of back-of-the-envelope calculations -- that a certain amount of human labor should be used in a labor intensive public works project in the country. And so, the poor Algerians had to achieve this number, even though it was impossible, even though it would have meant that people would have broken rocks with rocks. But that number was what a previous World Banker had decided on. So, the Algerians faked all those numbers in their database so that they would reflect the dictated figures.

This happens all the time. We used to say that if you couldn’t find the statistic in half an hour, you make it up. That experience opened my eyes to the vulnerability of countries. The World Bank doesn’t even follow its own fiscal advice, with a headquarters building that went $100 million overbudget. I really doubt that if The World Bank was a real country it would be sustainable.

When we look at the world today, what’s an issue that we should be paying attention to right now?

I think that because of the great recession the focus on foreign aid has been moved to the back burner. Perhaps this is a time when we should be thinking more carefully about how to reform the aid system. We’ve got an opportunity to change the way the aid system works.

Oftentimes, countries that receive a lot of aid have very poor tax revenues. As a country, a lack of taxes means that there’s less incentive to do things. In order to promote accountability, you have to reform the aid-tax relationship that’s expected in developing countries. No taxation means no representation.

So, an advantage of this recession might be that national ownership for development would increase. We need countries to have more national ownership, instead of saying, “Let’s do this because of the World Bank and their crazy papers or the visiting missions of aid agencies.” Developing countries have got to govern better by taking ownership of their own development.

You mentioned that you're working on two different books at the moment. Would you like to talk about one or both of those?

I’m trying to do something I’ve never done. I’ve published several journal articles, but never a book. Currently, I’m working on a book about Western academic supporters of the Khmer Rouge. I was surprised, during my undergrad, to read of academics that supported the Khmer Rouge. So I wrote a historical study of what academics had written during that time and exposed some relatively unknown documents.

For example, Noam Chomsky questioned reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities and was skeptical of refugees. His evidence included a book that republished Khmer Rouge propaganda pictures of immaculate hospital rooms and wonderful facilities, which were not the conditions that my father experienced. He argued that as refugees were running away they had an incentive to misrepresent the situation. Chomsky argued that an objective observer was needed, but obviously that was impossible as no-one was allowed in, so nothing definitive could be said about what was happening in Cambodia. It sounds like an academic debate, but it infuriates fans of Chomsky that anyone would dare to question him. Unfortunately, he did write these things in 1978. And he’s never done a mea culpa.

The other book is on the pernicious effects of foreign aid. I examined a dataset of 200 countries and looked for patterns of how the more aid they received, the worse they were governed. Rule of Law in particular worsened, and laws can certainly be twisted by elites with the help of unwitting development consultants. I also looked particularly at Cambodia to see if there were effects of aid that were unexpected or unintended. The lack of donor coordination and the hundreds of donor missions to Cambodia per year detract from the value of foreign aid. In Cambodia, one NGO found that aid spent by donors on 700 international consultants was estimated to total between $50-70 million, approximately equal to the wage bill for the country’s entire 160,000 civil servants in 2002. Even the government acknowledged in 2004 that 12 percent of aid has gone to pay 450 consultants while six percent of aid is given to more than 6,000 local staff. We need to do better.

UK/Eire readers: Win a pass to TEDGlobal 2009 from Wired UK

2009-07-09T20:00:00Z

How are technology, entertainment and design creating a smarter planet?

Answer this question in no more than 100 words, and you could win a pass to TEDGlobal, happening July 21-24 in Oxford, UK. TEDGlobal 2009 sponsor IBM is offering the pass to one lucky Wired UK reader. From the offer:

For inspiration, visit www.ibm.com/think/uk, then mail your entry, along with your name, address and phone number to wiredcompetitions@gmail.com, with the word TED in the subject line. The competition closes at 9am BST on July 15, 2009.

Get full details >>

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Please note: this competition is only open to residents of the UK and Eire. Terms and conditions >>

A next-gen cure for killer infection: Kary Mullis on TED.com

2009-07-09T14:54:09Z

Drug-resistant bacteria kills, even in top hospitals. But now tough infections like staph and anthrax may be in for a surprise. Nobel-winning chemist Kary Mullis, who watched a friend die when powerful antibiotics failed, unveils a radical new cure that shows extraordinary promise. (Recorded at TED 2009, February 2009 in Long Beach, California. Duration: 4:35)

Short URL: http://on.ted.com/1S

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Escaping the Khmer Rouge: Sophal Ear on TED.com

2009-07-08T15:26:19Z

TED Fellow Sophal Ear shares the compelling story of his family's escape from Cambodia under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. He recounts his mother's cunning and determination to save her children. (Recorded at TED U 2009, February 2009 in Long Beach, California. Duration: 5:58)

Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/1R

Watch Sophal Ear's 2009 talk on TED.com where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 475+ TEDTalks.

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3 ways the brain creates meaning: Tom Wujec on TED.com

2009-07-07T15:30:00Z

Information designer Tom Wujec talks through three areas of the brain that help us understand words, images, feelings, connections. In this short talk from TEDU, he asks: How can we best engage our brains to help us better understand big ideas? (Recorded at TED U 2009, February 2009 in Long Beach, California. Duration: 6:26)

Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/1P

Watch Tom Wujec's 2009 talk on TED.com where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 475+ TEDTalks.

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The design genius of Charles + Ray Eames: Eames Demetrios on TED.com

2009-07-06T15:45:10Z

The legendary design team Charles and Ray Eames made films, houses and classic midcentury modern furniture. Eames Demetrios, their grandson, shows rarely seen films and archival footage in a lively, loving tribute to their creative process. Demetrios also talks about how his own work has been influenced by his grandparents' legacy. (Recorded at TED2007, February 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 15:09)

Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/1O

Watch Eames Demetrios' 2007 talk on TED.com where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 475+ TEDTalks.

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How to watch TEDGlobal 2009 live from home with friends or family

2009-07-02T19:30:00Z

Later this month, you can watch the TEDGlobal 2009 conference live from the UK through an Associate membership -- offering a virtual front-row seat at the conference via a private, live web stream of the main-stage events.

TEDGlobal Associate membership costs $995 and includes a password-protected, single-computer, live web stream of TEDGlobal 2009 as it unfolds in Oxford, and the right to watch with up to 10 other people. Most talks from TEDGlobal 2009 will eventually become TEDTalks, available free on TED.com. But Associate members will be able to watch the full main-stage sessions live as they happen, including introductions, short talks, musical performances, video interstitials and audience interactions that are not shown on the website. Associate membership groups who watched the last TED conference live from Long Beach gave us enthusiastic feedback, persuading us to repeat this service. We learned that people who carve out the time and gather with friends for a multi-day virtual TED experience can gain as much inspiration as those attending live.

TEDGlobal 2009 will explore "The Substance of Things Not Seen." Speakers this year include world-renowned philosophers, scientists, religious leaders, entertainers, artists, musicians and technologists -- see the lineup here. The event will take place July 21-24 in Oxford, UK.

TEDGlobal Associate members will be issued a noncommercial license that allows them to share their webcast with up to 10 viewers in the same room. Also included with each Associates membership: a full year of the legendary TED Media Club, with 5 shipments of books, DVDs and other media throughout the year; enhanced social networking on TED.com; and an exclusive welcome kit that's not available to any other TEDsters, with a viewing diary, postcards and other keepsakes.

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Happy anniversary, T.G.I.M.B.O.E.J.

2009-07-02T15:47:42Z

T.G.I.M.B.O.E.J. stands for The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronic Junk, and it's celebrating its first anniversary this week. Do think of it as partly a social experiment, but more so a free-range parcel service-based electronics grab bag that circulates among hardware hackers who are eager to discover useful, cool, old, or even rare treasures from the world of circuits old and new. According to their own description:

[It] is a progressive lending library of electronic components. An internet meme in physical form halfway between P2P zip-archive sharing and a flea market. It arrives full of wonderful (and possibly useless) components, but you will surely find some treasures to keep. You will be inspired look through your own piles, such as they are, and find more mysterious components that clearly need to be donated to the box before it is passed on again.

If you're a tinkerer, a smart hardware geek, a fab-lab fan or aspiring aeronaut who wants to put that dusty old pile of circuit boards, switches, magnets, transistors, transformers, LCDs, CRTs and LEDs to a greater use (and perhaps find some interesting or useful new treasures to fiddle with), T.G.I.M.B.O.E.J. has a useful wiki that will tell you how you can get started.

Atheist summer camp, funded by Richard Dawkins' foundation

2009-07-01T18:29:08Z

Via Boing Boing via The First Post, we learn that Richard Dawkins' foundation is funding a summer camp to teach children reason, skepticism and science. From the article:

Alongside the more traditional activities of tug-of-war, swimming and canoeing, children at the five-day camp in Somerset will learn about rational scepticism, moral philosophy, ethics and evolution.

Camp-goers aged eight to 17 will also be taught how to disprove phenomena such as crop circles and telepathy. In the Invisible Unicorn Challenge, any child who can prove that unicorns do not exist will win a £10 note -- which features an image of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory -- signed by Dawkins, Britain's most prominent atheist.

Or visit the TED.com theme Is There a God?

17 words of architectural inspiration: Daniel Libeskind on TED.com

2009-07-01T15:15:00Z

Daniel Libeskind builds on very big ideas. Here, he shares 17 words that underlie his vision for architecture -- raw, risky, emotional, radical -- and that offer inspiration for any bold creative pursuit. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009 in Long Beach, California. Duration: 18:37)

Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/1M

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TED's Facebook fans asked Gever Tulley absolutely anything -- and he answered

2009-06-30T22:15:46Z

Today, Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School and the man behind today's TEDTalk, agreed to answer any question that our TED Facebook fans proposed. Here are his answers, accompanied by a personal note:

I thank you all for your excellent and thought-provoking questions. Since Tinkering School is itself being tinkered with, it is always interesting to share ideas and see what people think. I tried to answer as if you were sitting at the kitchen table with me now, except that I am able to ramble on unchecked.

I hope that you will all follow along on the blog as we update nightly during Tinkering School starting on July 12th.

As a father myself, I find that parents are overly cautious with their children. How do you respond to critics who claim that children can't handle power tools which will in turn lead to death/dismemberment/lawsuits? -- Nick Wilson

Firstly, I try never to think of the person asking this question as a "critic". I recognize that I am more comfortable with the notion of children being capable than most modern parents, but there is a valid concern at the heart of the emotionally charged issue of putting potentially life-threatening tools in kids hands. I put it in the context of all of the dangerous activities we participate in as toddlers -- like toddling (or is that toddlering?). There is no question that a child can seriously injure themselves by falling flat on their face, but we learn, through a series of very minor bumps and knocks (some worthy of yelling about, some we don't even notice), to put our hands out and catch ourselves before our noses meet the floor.

In their wonderful book The Body Has a Mind of It's Own Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee describe some of the amazing science behind how, when we pick up a stick or a tool, our minds extend our sense of “self” out to the end of that stick. We can "touch" things with the stick and get a very accurate "feel" for the object we are "touching". So, it stands to reason that a power tool is just a very dangerous stick and we can learn feel through it as well -- we just need the safe context in which to learn how to mitigate the risks the power tool presents. These risks are both real and imagined in many cases and part of the learning process includes dispelling the imaginary risks by developing skill through practice.

It is often easier to teach the child to use the tool safely than it is to have a rational discussion about risk with a nervous parent or fear-mongering critic. There is an industry of child-safety specialists serve the market of nervous parents by playing on those fears. In these situations I point out that we're not just letting the kids loose in a room full of chainsaws and hoping for the best -- we never move children beyond their skill and comfort level, we often pair Tinkering School alumni with first-timers when introducing a new tool, and we start with simple tools and work up to the more complicated ones over time. A few scrapes and nicks are actually expected and are part of the learning process. These are the experiences that help the kids treat the larger tools with respect -- without us having to say things like, "You must respect the chop-saw, it can cut off your finger!" which never seems to work the way you want it to.

This Tinkering School reminds me a LOT of homeschooling, and the freedom to try new ideas. Would you work with homeschoolers, too? Have you worked with homeschoolers before? -- Brooke Turner

Brooke, I would work with homeschoolers on a train, I would work with them on a train, in a home, or in a dome. I like green eggs and ham! Tinkering School is exploring two ideas that I think are interesting in this area. We recently started experimenting with kit-based learning and we are working on funding a project we call TinkerMobile.

Kit-based learning is interesting because it is often seen as the opposite the kinds of un-scripted, hands-on building experience that we create at Tinkering School. It is hard to create projects that you can put in a box and ship to someone in another state or country, and have them lose themselves in a semi-guided immersive self-directed experience that has no well-defined conclusion, and in fact leaves them with an appetite for more -- and teaches them something about "friction" or "chemistry". I reject some of the goals of the current commercially available homeschooling kits, and their attempts to recreate a "school-like" experience in the home. So, we started conceiving of a sort of "Cat-in-the-Hat"-like experience where opening the box would unleash the imagination. If parents had a certain amount of trepidation about ordering a kit from us because their children might, in a curiosity-induced frenzy of self-directed learning, cut a new window in their bedroom wall (because they need room for the telescope or smell-o-scope or time-portal) -- then we'd know we were on to something. Let me know if you'd like to beta-test our kits.

The TinkerMobile is an attempt to create a traveling school that stops in communities and unfolds, somewhat circus-like, and brings the Tinkering School experience with it. The idea is that rural communities (here and in other countries) request a visit and some fancy algorithm from Google Maps would create monthly or yearly itineraries that would bring the tinkering to you. Parents could take evening sessions and get more comfortable with tools and learn some of the techniques that we use when we are working with children (our pedagogical methods, so to speak), and children could come during the day and do projects that incorporated the kinds of scrap and native materials available locally.

In support of both of those ideas, we are working with a homeschooling (both unschooling, and curriculum-based) group in Santa Rosa, California who are allowing us to experiment with their children (cue cartoon-ominous laugh).

Do you think this experience can be replicated by parents with their children? Or does this work better in a group environment with lots of kids and parents? How would someone go about making this happen in their own community? -- Will Duke

I think it entirely depends on the relationship that the parents have with their children. In my experience, some parents seem to have trouble letting their children make mistakes as part of the learning process. In these cases we have better success with the children when the parents are not around. On the other hand, I have met homeschooling parents who seem to have no difficulty with creating a very experiment-positive experience for their children.

One of the key ideas of Tinkering School is that we don't follow recipes for the projects. We start from doodles, and that means that we often run into problems (in fact we expect them). A small group of children can maintain a positive attitude and project-momentum when faced with a complicated problem, where a lone child can often become frustrated. The collective seems to express greater creativity than the road-blocked loner. That being said, we have had our share of really gifted loners, and everyone seems to need a little time to work something out on their own -- so we deliberately structure the projects to support that as well.

We are working with groups in Seattle and Baltimore to take the Tinkering School pattern (fully open-source) and implement it in their cities next year, and some interesting conversations are happening in with folks France, China, and Australia. But, making it happen every year is a little like putting on a big musical; there's details like insurance and materials to buy, tickets to sell, and no matter how well you plan things get crazy right before the kids show up. It just takes a little bit of self-confidence, some bravery, and a couple of friends to sign up their kids to get started. We invite you to (and if you are going to call yourself a "Tinkering School", you must) volunteer to come and work at our camp for a week with the kids. We're also developing some seminars to help explain how it works.

This school seems cool, but it also seems like a place reserved for the children of relatively well-to-do parents. Do you offer scholarships or otherwise make an attempt to bring in the children of parents who don't have the money to send their kids to special schools? Would you stress this as an important focus for other such schools, should they emerge? -- Sammy Packard

Approximately 30 percent of the kids are on full or partial scholarships -- the reason that it's not higher has mostly to do with our location and lack of anything other than Internet-based publicity. The money we charge goes mostly to materials, expenses, and tuition. I think it's really important that the cost never be barrier to participation. A TEDster has recently made a generous offer to help seed a scholarship fund, which is very exciting and I think will help us reduce that financial barrier even further.

As a school board trustee, I find that creativity, critical thinking, and social/emotional skills, which are not easily measured on a standardized test, have been undervalued in our current accountability system (NCLB nationally and TAKS here in Texas). Do you agree that these skills are essential to student success, and if so, how can we collectively move policy to focus more heavily on these areas? -- Mike Falick

Yes. I think it's quite likely that the ability to be comfortable in a rapidly changing problem space and come up with consistently creative solutions will have far more value than being able to score 95 percent on the next test. It is my supposition that we shouldn't even teach the testable topics until we have helped children develop good creative skills, the ability to focus, and to express themselves clearly.

If we are to change public policy around testing, we will have to show that not-testing works better. Tinkering School is an experiment in one aspect of that, but their are some courageous efforts out there like the Sudbury Valley schools that have been creating an unschooling-like experience in a school-like facility for more than 30 years -- and showing that it works. Almost 90 percent of kids from those schools go on to higher education after graduating -- and that's after never haven taken a test in their lives.

As an educator, mom and life long student, I LOVE what you do! Any chance you can get schools to add this great idea to their programs? And how about Tinkering School for us grownups? I want to tinker, too. -- Peggy Isham

I believe in Tinkering School for grownups, but largely as a way to create opportunities for more hands-on experiences for the children in their lives. I figure that you'd be a lot more comfortable letting your daughter operate a power-drill if you were more comfortable with it yourself. But it's not just about skills with the tools -- it's about becoming comfortable with making things. Can you imagine sitting at the breakfast table looking at your daughter's drawing of a wagon with wings and saying "Let's build this!"? I find that most parents don't want to open Pandora's box -- you start building, you need some tool or material, you have to go to the hardware store, and then the two of you realize that a real wing has internal braces and the cardboard you hoped was strong enough isn't ... where does it stop?

The answer is "It never stops!" and that is, in point of fact, the beauty of the whole idea. You keep tinkering with it, and you make it work, and then you improve it, and then it becomes something else, or you need the parts for another project -- it never stops. And years later, your child is faced with an insurmountable problem like climate crisis and she thinks, "I made a flying wagon when I was six, how hard can this climate crisis be?" and she starts tinkering ...

What are your thoughts regarding structured learning and its role in a child's learning process? Does it have one? If so, how should it be balanced with free exploration? -- Rob Brown

Structured learning ... it could be trivialized as an oxymoron, but the notion deserves more respect. I haven't had a lot of personal experience with structured learning in public institutions, but I consider any time spent deliberately learning a topic via book or lecture to be structured. By way of answering, let me explain two interesting terms we are using at Tinkering School lately: Collaborator and Consultant. The Collaborator works at an almost peer-level with the kids, often just holding or tightening things that the kids lack strength or dexterity for. The Consultant is a domain specialist with specific knowledge that the project team needs or that one of the kids needs. In practice, the roles are often blended, but we treat the roles as separate. When the kids discover that they need to know the physics behind why something broke so that they can build it better, they engage a Consultant. The Consultant contextualizes formulas, books, websites, and whatever other elements they need to convey the knowledge and understanding. We emphasize understanding over “learning” because the former is a useful goal and the later seems more like an activity. But, the skill of learning is perhaps the most important skill we try to teach, and we mostly teach it by creating experiences that make the kids want to learn something.

So, I think I would say that structured learning supports, and is driven by, exploration, and in that way two are intertwined.

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All the best, and remember: pocket knives make excellent gifts,

- Gever

Teaching life lessons through tinkering: Gever Tulley on TED.com

2009-06-30T14:06:25Z

Gever Tulley uses engaging photos and footage to demonstrate the valuable lessons kids learn at his Tinkering School. When given tools, materials and guidance, these young imaginations run wild and creative problem-solving takes over to build unique boats, bridges and even a rollercoaster! (Recorded at TED University 2009, February 2009 in Long Beach, California. Duration: 4:05)

Short URL: http://on.ted.com/1K

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A formula for changing math education: Arthur Benjamin on TED.com

2009-06-29T14:57:54Z

Someone always asks the math teacher, "Am I going to use calculus in real life?" And for most of us, says Arthur Benjamin, the answer is no. He offers a bold proposal on how to make math education relevant in the digital age. (Recorded at TED@PalmSprings 2009, February 2009 in Palm Springs, California. Duration: 2:59)

Short URL: http://on.ted.com/1G

* Don't miss this short comment by Arthur Benjamin, given just after his talk on math and education at TED@PalmSprings.

Watch Arthur Benjamin's talk from TED@PalmSprings 2009 on TED.com where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 450+ TEDTalks.

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Nandan Nilekani joins Indian government

2009-06-29T14:00:00Z

TED2009 speaker Nandan Nilekani has stepped down from the company he co-founded, Infosys, to take a cabinet-level role in the Indian government. It's a rare step in Indian politics -- in fact, the Times of India calls Nilekani's move "the biggest movement from private sector to government in India in recallable memory." Nilekani will head up a three-year program to provide every Indian with a unique identity card. From the Times story:

Nilekani, who will quit his job as co-chairman of the Rs 22,000 crore Infosys to avoid any conflict of interest, has been given the rank and status of cabinet minister, a deadline of three years, a corpus of Rs 100 crore and -- perhaps most importantly -- the flexibility to draw in talent from the private sector to build his core team.

Video: Nilekani talks about his appointment for the Economic Times >>

Nilekani's recent book, Imagining India, takes a visionary look at his country -- its massive economy, and its even more massive potential. Watch his TEDTalk to find out more about his radical re-think of India's economic and social structure.

And find out more about TEDIndia -- taking place this November 1-4, on the Infosys campus near Mysore, India >>

Amazing illusion

2009-06-25T19:20:40Z

Via Discover magazine via Akiyoshi Kitaoka:

Incredibly, the blue and the green spirals are the same color. From the article:

The orange stripes go through the "green" spiral but not the "blue" one. So without us even knowing it, our brains compare that spiral to the orange stripes, forcing it to think the spiral is green. The magenta stripes make the other part of the spiral look blue, even though they are exactly the same color.

Two TEDTalks on our mis-wired brains: Dan Dennett and Al Seckel.