For decades, Alan Greenspan was seen as a great economic genius. Even though most of us couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, really smart people said that he was a genius and that we must follow his pronouncements or face ruin. His basic message was a simple one: “free” markets will sort everything out. Get government and regulations out of the way, and a rising tide will lift all boats.
Oops. Instead of the tide rising, it is going out, and we face the gravest economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. Much of the damage has been attributed to Mr. Greenspan’s previously brilliant ideas. What is striking is not that Greenspan’s concepts produced disaster. That was, in some ways, predictable.
And, contrary to the notion that nobody saw this coming, any number of people predicted exactly the outcome that we are now living through. No, what is extraordinary — and rare — is that Greenspan admitted to the world in a public forum that he was wrong.
We are all good at pointing out other people’s wrongs. Cable television news is driven by attacks on the wrongness of others. But how many people are willing to admit that all of the evidence says that they were wrong about something of real importance. Not many. As a matter of fact, aside from Alan Greenspan’s recent admission, it is hard to name anyone. In fact, Americans have become the masters of the non-apology apology.
Most of us go through each day doing pretty much the same thing that we did yesterday. We don’t think much about whether it may be totally wrong or useless. What got me thinking about this subject is an amazing book. It is titled "Brain Rules," and it is by John Medina. Its subtitle is “12 Principles for Surviving at Work, Home and School.”
After reading it the first time, I made a list of all of the things that I was doing wrong in my work. These things run counter to the principles and rules about how our brains work. I now had some answers to the question I often ask myself: why don’t these people (clients) absorb my brilliant advice and start doing the right things? So last week when a senior executive told me that I had 10 minutes to “train” the Board of Directors in a certain area, my reaction was, “that’s exactly the right amount of time.” In the past, I would have said, “you’re joking. It can’t be done.”
"Brain Rules" is relevant to any kind of organization of any size. It explains how we absorb information, why pictures and images are far more important than words, and a lot more. It explains why rest and exercise are critical to the brain functioning at its best and how ongoing stress is bad for the brain. It explains why “multi-tasking” doesn’t work and is actually destructive. There is also a DVD that is as good as the book.
Understanding is the first step. I was turned on to "Brain Rules" by an extraordinary and thoughtful elementary school principal. He put his finger on a major truth, which led me to this column. He said that when you understand how the brain works, especially the developing brain of a child, much of what we do in schools is just wrong. For example, to strengthen “academics," recess and play time in many schools has been reduced, or even eliminated. Medina’s first chapter is devoted to the need for exercise and physical activity for the development of the brain. Long class segments are beyond the capacity of the brain to absorb or remember. And on and on.
This brings us back to Alan Greenspan and his wrongness. It now appears that the indefensible system championed (and now rejected) by Greenspan and his disciples will survive pretty much intact, and that the plutocracy that has emerged in the United States will continue to dominate American society.
How is this possible when it produced such bad outcomes? Why won’t people change when the results of what has happened in the past are so clearly bad? Let’s go back to the school example. Virgin Islands public schools perform badly by almost any standard. This is not a blaming statement, but an objective fact. If, as in the case of the school principal, there were specific things that the schools were doing wrong that could be changed, (and that wouldn’t cost more money to change), what do we think would happen?
I would put my money on things not changing in any real way. And here is why. There are many reasons why things don’t change. But the reasons they don’t change when the status quo is indefensible are a little different, and they vary from situation to situation. For example, Wall Street and the big banks may have produced the collapse of the global economy, but that bump in the road hasn’t reduced the greed, arrogance and sense of entitlement that we have come to know so well. Add the power of enormous amounts of money and political leverage that it buys, and you have a recipe for more of the same.
But Virgin Islands schools aren’t Wall Street. If everything that Medina says about children’s brains is true, and I think it is, why won’t this knowledge translate into change? I think there are several reasons:
First, very few people read books, so the knowledge in them gets lost. (If you have read this far, this excuse no longer applies to you.) In the age of the Internet, this reason loses some power, but it is replaced by information overload. At any rate, the starting point is a critical mass of people in possession of the critical knowledge. It often isn’t there.
Second, our systems are rigid and change resistant. This is the reason that the public school principal was so discouraged. There are legal requirements, standards, contracts and longstanding “informal” patterns that all but eliminate the “wiggle room’ needed to make important changes.
Third, there are two problems of physics: we often don’t have enough space and almost never have enough time. Upon close examination, these more often seem to be problems of rigidity, resistance and lack of will. School days and school years are seen as being sacrosanct. They are not. For example, there is no overwhelming reason that the school day couldn’t be lengthened by one hour and that hour used for recess and physical activity.
Finally, there is the problem of indifference. This is a different kind of brain problem. Those who care the most about a thing often have an entrenched interest in the status quo. They are willing to accept any positive change, as long as someone else pays the bill and they are not inconvenienced in an way. The poet Shelley once said, “The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.” Indifference eats away at the imagination and produces an unhealthy acceptance of what is.
A current cliché is the “game changer.” I think "Brain Rules" is a game changer because it forces us to compare what we do with what we now know as a result of reading it. And what we now know is that we should be doing a lot things differently.
