Week 19: Dave Snowden – the demise of the generalist #change11

The ideal higher education system should produce a candidate with “a mixture of practical wisdom, a heavy theoretical wisdom and a willingness to engage conceptually and intellectually with real world problems.” - Dave Snowden,  Week 19 Change11 MOOC

Dave Snowden in the 80s worked with Artificial Intelligence and Systems that would replace human intelligence only to find it futile (See: what went wrong? “We then got into semantic technologies….”). He then progressed to what he calls “a synthesis of human and machine technology” with an interest in narrative based knowledge and narrative based research.

In week 19, Dave Snowden talks about the loss of the generalist in education, with the current focus on specialisations. He also laments the sad lack of apprentice models in use, and the focus on outcome-based learning (all learning is predetermined with no room for originality). In the current knowledge economy, it is dangerous to impede innovation and originality in our educational systems. In a nutshell it is important to have a more holistic approach to learning. The way forward according to Snowden, is trying to incorporate different subjects into higher education like “working in the humanities as well as the sciences”

Something we’ve been trying to do during this MOOC is getting different perspectives each week, on “Change, Technology and Education”, and how to use these tools differently to achieve innovative thought and learning. On networked learning and decision-making this week, it was interesting to note that Snowden mentioned the wisdom of the crowd. He considers this wisdom to work only when collaborating as separate individual entities, so as to avoid group think. It is only in this way that we can bring individual perspectives that add value to the collective task of decision making, or in our case learning.

According to Snowden, in the 21^stcentury University we should be looking at more originality in undergraduate courses, as opposed to just teaching information. We should consider bringing back the old apprenticeship models in learning, and having all round knowledge. What we see today is a broad based structured learning system which produces candidates without any experience (in dealing with complexity and the real world) and whose decisions have very different outcomes, as they are made solely on theoretical knowledge. Snowden advocates a practical knowledge approach, to an academic knowledge base. Using his metaphor, the 21^st century university should be creating chefs that can work with whatever they have at hand to create a good meal, instead of training recipe book users who will fail if they don’t get the right ingredients.

Ultimately Snowden’s presentation and this post: the demise of the generalist, reminded me of the essay by Lori Borgman: the death of common sense.