Do It Yourself government - what I wish I learn in school about democracy (part 1/3)

 I vaguely remember what I learned in primary school about democracy. I do remember the phrase: "the government of the people, by the people, for the people.." That sounds good, but a little too abstract! how do we actually execute it? I also remember something about election and freedom of speech... as "tools" for us, the people, to bring in a good government  and keep it under control.

Too bad, these are the only two tools I (and possibly many other people) got to learn about.

Today, we end up interact with our government only by casting ballots and protesting on the street.

I'm an engineer by training. Whenever I build something for myself, I would like to have a lot of control on the construction process to make sure that I get what I want. After the construction is done and the product is in use,  I would still like to have all these tuning knobs so I can keep tweaking and tuning it to function properly. There may be a few bugs to handle manually.. there may be some changes in usage context to adapt to. If we think of democratic government as something "engineered" by the people, we would hope for such level of controls.

......Unfortunately, that's not what we have.

Right now, we just pick from "a few choices of government" handed to us by someone else during election. Those choices are mostly terrible so we just pick the most bearable one.  Then, once the government in power does not work properly, we don't know what else to do except for expressing our frustration on FB or streets. Rallying political movement takes time, money and charisma which most of us don't have enough. Thus, we join those few "movement leaders" who have more time/money/charisma available. Unfortunately, most of them also have their own political agenda. 

We risk becoming pawns of someone else's political games. We probably know that...but again we have no option.. we just pick the most bearable one.

We have been talking about educating people about democracy..but what should actually be taught?

I think the useful lessons should be less about "how the government work"..and more about "how do we get the government to do what we want" The former is like physic.. the latter is like engineering. 

Sure, it is important know the laws of physic to understand the constraints.. but in the end, it is even more fun to be able to build a gadget that works!

Cynics might say that politicians are way too corrupted beyond repair and there is no way to get them working for our interests. I would argue that, yes, lots of terrible politicians and mafia are out there. Still there are a lot that can be done. We engineers have built an oil platform in the middle of the ocean, a castle on the cliff and space station up the sky. We didn't remove the ocean, flatten the cliff or bring the sky down the ground. That's too difficult. What we did we was to work around the constraints: 1) making good blueprint, 2) studying the landscape carefully, 3) developing tools for specific landscape challenges, 4) experimenting on small scale and gradually building things up. Perhaps, seemingly terrible politics is merely a challenging landscape. With well articulated goals, good understanding of power structures, right political tools and thoughtful experiment, we might be able to get any government to do what we want.

(to be continue)

Teaching tips

After attending ALA session last Saturday, I recalled these two teaching tips I learned over the past years, mostly through mentoring experience at my research lab and STEP. These two tips could be applicable to almost any teaching/mentoring subjects besides leadership and career development.These two tips may be commonsenses for most people but I found very few seriously try to execute them when it comes to teaching.

Tip#1: Between you and your students, begin at the end in mind --and say that out loud. Ask "what's the best case scenario at the end of this?"
      When I decided to join the lab, my adviser and I took a long walk. His first question to me was: what do you wanna get from working with me over the next 5 years? What's the best case scenario at the moment your leave? I found that simple exercise very helpful. I had a tendency of jumping into work and keep working hard without having clear mental model of the end product. It is true that our goals definitely change more or less over time. Nonetheless, I think we need to start from some goals..and at least keeping some goal in mind through out the project.When it comes to "teaching/mentoring", whether the subject is molecular engineering or tennis or leadership, I think it is really important have students say or write down what they wanna get out of this educational session.  Then, you will have to check with them throughout the program and in the end if the students get what they want, if their goals change and how you can help them to get their.
       For  my summer research students and rotation students, we had a 1-1 meeting at the beginning of the the program and maybe every couple weeks when we tried not to discuss low-level technical stuffs (like hey what do you think about that research paper? or how do you get this bacteria growing on that media?) but focus on checking high level goals (how is the lab? are you stilled excited about what you are working on? did you get to learn what you wanna learn? Let's suppose you have to leave next week, what will be the one thing you wanna get done?). For my STEP students, especially last year, I asked them to prepare and present "the final presentation" on the second day of their three week program. I asked on the first day "let's supposed the program will end tomorrow night, what will be the story you wanna tell at the final presentation?" Then, we iterated that process once a week and I'm amazed to see how much they improved by the time they are at their real final presentation. In the past, students had problem focusing..there are so many interesting things..so many possibilities along with associated challenges. Somehow this simple trick helped them focus.

Tip#2. Give short homework often.
     When you teach someone skills, you would hope that the person can eventually use that skill by himself, in the absence of you. That's why homework is important. Homework differs from in-class exercise in that it should be done in the absence of the instructor, TA or other class room setting where the students first learn the the skill.Whether you teach your students about how to fry egg or about how to be an active listener, ask them to try that at home and then report back to you on the next day. Good homework should be short to make it is more likely to be completed. Having someone complete a small task (that he couldn't do before) in the absence of you, the instructor, is a great way to build his confidence. When students report back to you, ask them about what they found difficult about that homework..and then craft the next homework to address that point.