This puppy doesn’t think it’s possible to have too many vegetables. Photo: snugglepup via Flickr

In these times of economic crisis, rising poverty, and diet-related health problems, you'd think local governments would have bigger priorities than counting the number of squash and broccoli plants on people's lawns. Unfortunately that's not the case for Georgia resident Steve Miller, a landscaper by profession and organic farmer by heart, who's been caught tomato-red-handed growing a downright offensive number of vegetable plants on his property outside of Atlanta. (The exact number of criminal plants unknown.)

Dubbed "Cabbage-Gate" by friends and neighbors of Miller, officials in Dekalb County, Georgia, are suing him for $5,000 in fines for not having his land properly zoned to grow such an apparently ridiculous number of vegetables -- even after he stopped growing them and got rezoned.

If the county is suing this long-time hobby farmer for growing too many vegetables, how many are "acceptable" anyway? Twenty? Eleven? As many as you want as long as that doesn't include cabbage?

Just when I thought life could not get more silly - this!

This weekend I will be talking more about our disconnect with food and the natural world.

My context - Jane Jacobs said that Dark Ages arrive when people forget. When they forget because of a cultural bias how to do important things.

Such as today - how to raise a child - what an education is - how to grow and cook food. All of these things are of course connected in one meta thing that we have forgotten - that we are part of nature and how nature herself works.

We have disconnected from nature and so we have got completely lost.

This weekend I will offer up a few stories of how others are finding their way home - stories that any of us can emulate. For the way home is available - we can remember.

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Then there's income. Real income for bachelor's degree holders peaked in 2000 and is declining. Data here comes from the Census Bureau:

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When I combine the two figures to calculate a simple Real Net Worth value, the situation looks worse still.

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This is admittedly an over-simplified calculation that ignores other non-student loan type debt. But the impact would likely be magnified, with other types of debt being higher today than in previous time periods. This also fails to take into account declining principal (or rising principal, depending on the situation) over time. But again, the point is to identify trends, not calculate exact figures.

At the end of the day, this simple net-worth stat is really what matters. It depicts the purchasing power that Millennials have. It describes our real quality-of-life. So if you really want to know what's up with Millennials, the first step in that process is to look at how our average net-worth is changing, and it's not for the better.

From Extraordinary Conversations - There is going to be a bust up here soon I think - don't you? Looks like Wile Coyote as he runs over the edge of the cliff - he can keep running for a moment but the valley floor awaits.

Universities are going to have to think this through - hoping that they can continue to work as they do is a guarantee for failure. But I have little confidence that many will be able to see what this means. Most like Newspapers will die rather than change.

So who and what will make it?

It’s back to school. One of the worst things about being a student are text books.  They cost a bomb. They are “New” every year but like many new cars new only in a minor way. They are Mandatory. They are often out of date – always boring and often wrong.

In the emerging web world – will Text Boks as we know them last?

Arguably the most expensive reference book – the English Oxford Dictionary – 21 years in the making for the next edition will never be printed! Why? Because it does not make any sense to print it. Web search is so much better than manual and the costs of a print edition are too high. (Telegraph) HT Johnnie Moore. Today most access the OED via subscription online – 2 million hits a month from subscribers who pay $500 a year. Web search and printing costs have killed the print side.

Academic Journals are also coming under attack for being too expensive.

The Text Book has its replacement in use already.

My favorite alternative is the Khan Academy. A free online site that has a math and science focus. My son like the MIT site.

So why pay $200 for a text book that is not as good as this?

Bigger question – does not this cause you to question how schools are set up now? Why if math is so poorly taught do most kids have to endure Miss Jones plodding her way along when they could use Khan?What might this do to schools?

Might this see a return to a university where the core structure was a network of teachers as they were in Padua and Oxford in the 14th century? And what about K-12? Could a one room school that had a small staff of coaches and access to the best teaching in the world knock the pants off a regular school?

Here is more on Khan

But what relation obesity and diabetes have to the mental functioning of the developing brains of children and adolescents has been uncharted territory -- exactly where a scientist like Dr. Convit and his research team would want to go.

They began their work studying obese adolescents with type 2 diabetes. They wondered if serious weight gain and diabetes reduced intellectual performance in youth. To answer this critical question, they would test the brain's functioning by measuring intelligence, reading, spelling, vocabulary, reasoning, memory, attention, concentration and mental efficiency. They would also do imaging of the brain by MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a scanning technique where the brain can be safely studied) to see if there were reductions in its size or capacity to function, of course factoring in age, that might be related to lower levels of mental performance.

Their results show that the adolescents with type 2 diabetes did more poorly across the board on mental performance tests. In addition, these same youth showed smaller brain volume for the entire brain and the frontal lobes, where much of our reasoning occurs. The frontal lobes are the last part of the brain to mature, making it is highly sensitive to change during adolescence. The abnormal findings Dr. Convit found occur more in obese diabetic youth than in (matched) youth who also were obese but did not have diabetes (or pre-diabetes -- in which the body has developed insulin resistance).

Obesity in youth has tripled in the past 30 years, with one in three three high school students now overweight or obese in the United States. Minority groups show even more disturbing trends with one in two Hispanic and four in 10 black youths affected. Obesity is the road to insulin resistance and diabetes, with their well known adverse effects on blood vessels and the heart -- which shorten life and erode its quality along the way. What is new, however, is that obese, diabetic youth also have their brains impacted and appear to have difficulty learning and succeeding in school.

Education is not only about school. Health is not only about medicine. Our minds our bodies and our perspectives are all set by the experiences that we have when we are young.

It makes perfect sense to me to make healthy eating part of school. This is not juts a pipe dream. My daughter works for a very successful organization called Real Food for Real Kids in Toronto that does just that. It offers real food to kids in Daycare and Kindergarten.

In so doing it creates new habits for the kids and for their families. In so doing it is becoming a critically important driver for a new better local food system in Toronto.

There is no better investment in our future than in making the link between local food and schools.

This goes beyond providing better food and stimulating local food production. Giving kids the chance to grow food themselves is part of this. Re-introducing them to the reality and the miracle of food.

Even this has a model - the Edible School Yard.

What could be better?

I used to think that technology could help education. I've probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I've had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What's wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent.

It's a political problem. The problems are sociopolitical. The problems are unions. You plot the growth of the NEA [National Education Association] and the dropping of SAT scores, and they're inversely proportional. The problems are unions in the schools. The problem is bureaucracy. I'm one of these people who believes the best thing we could ever do is go to the full voucher system.

I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I've seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers - so it's not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year.

If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, "Let's start a school." You could have a track at Stanford within the MBA program on how to be the businessperson of a school. And that MBA would get together with somebody else, and they'd start schools. And you'd have these young, idealistic people starting schools, working for pennies.

They'd do it because they'd be able to set the curriculum. When you have kids you think, What exactly do I want them to learn? Most of the stuff they study in school is completely useless. But some incredibly valuable things you don't learn until you're older - yet you could learn them when you're younger. And you start to think, What would I do if I set a curriculum for a school?

God, how exciting that could be! But you can't do it today. You'd be crazy to work in a school today. You don't get to do what you want. You don't get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one narrow specialization. Who would ever want to do that?

These are the solutions to our problems in education. Unfortunately, technology isn't it. You're not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school - none of this is bad. It's bad only if it lulls us into thinking we're doing something to solve the problem with education.

Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology.

It's not as simple as you think when you're in your 20s - that technology's going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won't.

One of the aspects of the current plan for Pre School Excellence is that it is based on making the school bureaucracy the kingpin of the new system.

We know that this is wrong but no other possibility is allowed right now.

Mandatory retirement by age 65 has been an integral part of the University of Prince Edward Island’s terms of employment since 1995. Since that time, mandatory retirement has benefitted the overall University community by facilitating workforce renewal, and providing an effective tool for human resources and financial planning.

Following official complaints by three UPEI employees, the PEI Human Rights Commission conducted seven days of hearings in October 2009. The Commission released a ruling in February 2010 that our mandatory retirement policy is discriminatory. As anticipated, the Commission has now issued an Order to the University on the issues of remedies, damages, and costs. This Order was received by UPEI on June 4, 2010. See details on the Order here.

UPEI intends to fully comply with the Order. The three employees will be reinstated immediately and will be compensated for lost income, as outlined in the Order.

The total cost to the University to implement the Order will be in excess of
$1 million. For comparison purposes, this is double the increase to our government operating grant for Main Campus in 2010-11. In addition, the University will incur an estimated $325,000 a year in ongoing salary and benefit costs associated with reinstatement. These costs are substantial, and will need to be accommodated in this year’s budget.

The UPEI Senior Management Group will be meeting early this week to consider the measures that will be necessary to address this financial challenge. Restrictions on hiring and on discretionary expenditures are anticipated.

An ongoing issue raised by the University throughout the mandatory retirement debate has been the need for a more robust system of performance review for all faculty and staff. In light of the Order, it is imperative that this issue be addressed.

As the full implications of this new reality become clearer, we will keep the campus community informed through this website. This will include periodic updates on the judicial review that was requested by the University following the PEI Human Rights Commission’s February ruling.

As I read this, I can see the subtext too - can't you? The natural flow of employment has been dammed. There is a now a logjam at the top.

Who gains and who loses? What does this mean?

A few professors will gain.

But what about the students? There are some older people, like the great late Peter Drucker, who spent their entire and long lives at the cutting edge. Are any of these profs the leaders in their field? Are the students breaking down the doors to be in their class? Are the profs over 65 at UPEI exceptional? What will it be like for the students to have these profs taking up the limited teaching space at UPEI?

What does this mean for the teaching staff at UPEI? It means that UPEI cannot bring in much new blood. At a time when all is up in the air, it means that UPEU's faculty will get fossilized. It was fossilized until the late 1990's when UPEI had a mass buyout of older profs. UPEI's rise took place since that moment. So this means that just as we need to rethink our world, there will be no room for UPEI to bring in new thinking.

What about the regular staff of UPEI? With no exit at 65, what happens to staffing and hiring? It means that all full time staff at UPEI have an unlimited job subject only to a performance review. So if you are the admin at UPEI what does this mean? It means that you fill as few permanent positions as possible.

That means that the generation who has eaten the dregs of the boomers their whole lives continue in limbo. It means that the boomers have shut them off.

So, on balance most lose. Not a bit but a lot. And for what?

I think that there is a moral issue here.

There has been a contract both legal and moral for a long time. No one could say that they woke up one morning and were surprised by having to retire at 65. All could have arranged their lives with years to prepare. Some have said that they wished to continue their research. What has UPEI got to do with that? My own research has never depended on a university. It's not as if anyone of them was using the accelerator at Cern!

These people have used the system.

I say "use" because it is the moral issue that concerns me the most. When they took action, they knew what this would mean to the life of the university. To the future of the students - to the future of the next generation of staff. But they chose their own personal interests over all these others.

Finally "The Commission" Why this narrow range of thinking? We have age limits on countless things. Driving, voting, sex and drinking. Each age limit may be contentious - should it be one year or the other - but the principle behind them is socially sound. At what age are we competent?

How can a body like this overlook the broader interests and the impact of what they decide?

I am 60 in a few weeks. I am not the same person I was when I was 50. Nor should I be. People my age and older have a lot to offer younger people. But not in a transactional and busy way. It's the difference between parenting and being a grand father.

What can we best offer at over 60? Is it not our role and duty as oldies to influence our little world to be a better place for our kids? Is it not our role to be generative? To work to ensure that those younger than us can have a better or a good life?

Ageism! Get a life. When you are old you are different. Time to invent your self as an elder. Time to grow up and see the consequences of your actions.

Unusually Happy Children

There was something about the children pictured in the photo attached to this CBC story about Kindergarten registration that made me think “those don’t look like real Prince Edward Island children.”

I’m not sure what it was – were they too happy? sitting too attentively? equipped with unusual musical instruments? – but it turns out I was right: the children are generic Preschool Children in a Music Class from iStockphoto:

The cover of the report is not of Island Kids but is a stock photo. No big thing really but symptomatic of the approach I think.

What I did find that made me think more was that the much touted "consultation" with parents and the public of 800 was in fact only 40. The rest was the online survey.

No real debate - no real conversation before hand is what is making the roll out so hard. Few of the really pragmatic and testing questions have even been asked until now.

Suggests that the result was agreed on before the work began.

Key is that all involved missed the fact that creating a new human system is a complex not a simple of complicated thing. That with a complex thing the outcome cannot be predicted - it has to emerge as the result of conversation and trial and error.

You need time to do this. But they have offered no time.

In the book More Space, Johnnie Moore defines the complicated and complex as follows:

"The wiring on an aircraft is complicated. To figure out where everything goes would take a long time. But if you studied it for long enough, you could know with (near) certainty what each electrical circuit does and how to control it. The system is ultimately knowable. If understanding it is important, the effort to study it and make a detailed diagram of it would be worthwhile.

So complicated = not simple, but ultimately knowable.

Now, put a crew and passengers in that aircraft and try to figure out what will happen on the flight. Suddenly we go from complicated to complex. You could study the lives of all these people for years, but you could never know all there is to know about how they will interact. You could make some guesses, but you can never know for sure. And the effort to study all the elements in more and more detail will never give you that certainty.

So complex = not simple and never fully knowable. Just too many variables interact.

Managing humans will never be complicated. It will always be complex. So no book or diagram or expert is ever going to reveal the truth about managing people.

But don’t panic. We can manage people if..."

You can't control complex systems. It's a mathematical impossibility. The Conant-Ashby Theorem: "Every good regulator of a system must have a model of that system." leads to the Law of Requisite Variety: "That the available control variety must be equal to or greater than the disturbance variety for control to be possible", which is to say, that the control mechanism of a thing must be more complex than the thing being controlled. 

The analogy to business is that managers often want to see new initiatives as complicated when they are in fact complex, and thus design complicated systems to manage the change. Which usually fail miserably in very short order when they encounter a circumstance outside of the control model.

The problem with designing control mechanisms for organizational change management is that the system being controlled consists of the entire contents of the minds of the effected group!  That is the epitome of a complex system.

This is why it all feels so bad. Only now are the questions that should have been raised in the consultation process coming to light.