A panel of historians has found an “appalling” number of factual errors in a new fourth-grade history textbook used in many Virginia school districts, one of the experts said…The historical inaccuracies “are appalling in number,”…the book needs more than 140 corrections.

I hope they don’t throw them away.  This seems like a great opportunity to teach students in Virginia and beyond some important lessons about education (things I wish I’d been more cognizant of in the early days of my education):

1. It’s possible for so-called authoritative texts to contain blatant, significant errors and personal biases.  Just because something is in print doesn’t mean it’s correct.
2. It matters who peer reviews a publication.  If they’re not trained to look for all of the different kinds of errors that can occur, or if they’re just not looking at all, you might as well not have a peer review process.
3. The education system does not always work in favor of actual education, and sometimes it works against it.

I know they’re just 4th graders, but it would be so interesting to use the flawed books to teach a unit on how textbooks are produced, and the effect of factual and conceptual errors in widely circulated publications.

1. Most high profile community leaders and organizations aren’t modeling awareness of sustainability issues, sometimes even at a basic level.
2. Almost all development and expansion efforts continue to incorporate a car-centric model of transportation and community zoning/planning.
3. Most of the focus on environmental education is targeted at individuals instead of at businesses, factories, and government organizations, the latter groupings being the ones that tend to use the most resources.
4. The notion of conducting “green business for green living” has been widely adopted as a goal, but also significantly watered down in its impact, often to the point of minimal actual benefit.
5. Sustainability-oriented efforts and organizations are fragmented and overlapping, despite valiant efforts of a number of projects to bring them all together at the same table.
6. The status of and appropriate use of natural resources has been made into an emotionally charged political or religious debate, which often leads to an avoidance of the topic for fear of offending.
7. There are basic educational challenges in the community about the question of how food is produced and where it comes from.  For many people, food is effectively created at the grocery store.
8. Some people seem to feel that solely by financially supporting one environmental organization or another, they’ve “done their part” for sustainability efforts in the community.
9. Our ability to transform the community mindset about sustainability issues doesn’t seem to be keeping up with the realities of peak oil, climate change and economic despair.

(These are some locally specific issues on top of some other challenges I’ve already identified, e.g. our personal fears around sustainable living.)

So, what are some paths forward that might address some of these challenges?

1. More organizational collaboration and communication.  It might be hard, it might be messy, but it has to happen.
2. More effectively mobilizing community members who care about these issues and who can have an impact on decision-makers
3. Asking corporations / factories / governments to participate as much or more than individuals in making Richmond and Wayne County more self-reliant.
4. Clearly defining sustainability and environmental concepts and terms, to avoid watering down or misapplying them.
5. Creating strong advocacy efforts, or better fund the existing ones
6. Bringing in speakers from other communities with success stories, real life experiences, practical suggestions that we can begin implementing today.
7. Work to untangle the science of sustainability issues from the emotional, religious, and political connotations.
8. Continue education about issues of peak oil, climate change and economic trouble, and how they impact our community.

That’s one set of challenges and possible solutions that I see.  What are the challenges and solutions you see in your community?

1. Capitalism vs. The Environment: A small business perspective on doing well AND doing good. This coming Thursday September 24th at 4 PM at Indiana University East in Whitewater Hall Room 132 the Community Room, free and open to the public, no registration required.  I’ll be talking about our experiences at Summersault as we’ve tried to do the “right thing” when it comes to the environment and nurturing sustainable lifestyles, and examine whether it’s even possible to pursue a for-profit technology venture and not be in a harmful relationship with the land and life around us.
2. Get Techie, Get Social! A workshop to help non-technical people learn more about technical topics, especially social media like Facebook and Twitter.  Monday September 28th from 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM at Morrisson-Reeves Library, free and open to the public, no registration required.  If you’re at all intimidated by some of those “newfangled Internet trends” or the Internet in general, I hope you’ll bring your questions and frustrations so we can work them out together.  There’s a PDF flyer for the event.
3. TCP/IP topics in Introduction to Computers and Computing.  I’ll be speaking at this IU East class on Monday October 12th about things like DNS/Bind, network topologies and routing, e-mail technologies, and web technologies.  This particular class isn’t open to the public, but if you have folks interested in discussing these topics in technical detail, let me know and I’d love to speak with your group.
4. Communicating Through Technology. Friday October 23rd at 9 AM at a conference for women hosted by the Wayne County Foundation.  I’ll be speaking along with co-worker Jane Holman about social media and general technology topics.  You can view the conference brochure in PDF, and registration is required.

I hope you can join me for one of these events!

Around the same time I noted a historical reference to a 1959 headline in the Earlhamite, “Southern religious leader visits Earlham.”  It was about a then only mildly well known Martin Luther King, Jr. visiting the College and speaking at the Meetinghouse there.  Being a religious leader from the South surely had different connotations then than it does now, but I was still struck by the headline’s focus on the origin and destination of the speaker, less on his message or credentials.

Ever since, I’ve been thinking about the role that travel plays in establishing credibility and expertise for someone when they come to speak or teach on a given topic.

Based at least on my observations, it seems that we’re generally willing to assign some extra credibility to someone when they’ve come over a distance to be present, and we tend to defer to them at least a little bit more because of it.

At first, this seemed a little strange to me.  In a highly connected world where almost anyone has some kind of access to the knowledge and expertise of people around the globe, let alone the artistic and cultural insights of the same, you wouldn’t think we’d still be so enlivened by encountering someone from afar.  “Why bother flying someone in when we can just watch their powerpoint slides online and listen to their podcast?”

But I think there’s still some innate human curiosity about those who are not from our own communities, who might represent a peek into a world we do not know.  Even in a largely culturally homogenized world, we still wonder what we might learn from encountering someone from another town, another country, another way of life.  “What will they be wearing?  How will they speak and present their information?  What experiences have they had access to that I never will?  How are my fellow humans getting along in other parts of the world?”   These are questions we might be able to answer academically through Wikipedia, but there’s no substitute for a face-to-face encounter that provides the experience of something a little new, a little different.

The actual act of traveling has some significance too.  I’ve noted that when I’m asked to speak to groups or organizations outside of Richmond, there’s much more of a sense of adventure and exhileration for me and for the group I’m speaking to.  We talk about the details of the travel experience in a way that we wouldn’t if I was coming from across town.  “Chris is here all the way from Richmond, and he drove or flew X hours, and let’s just soak that in for a few seconds.”  Maybe we just want to honor the effort and time that’s been exerted to get there, or maybe it’s again a desire to hear about an experience we don’t all have every day.  I can’t quantify it, but I sense a deeper sense of engagement and benefit of the doubt in those situations than I get from an audience who already knows me, or knows that I came from just a little further down their own street.

Of course, we have to be careful about assigning too much inherent value to someone’s words or thoughts just because they are not from around here.  (Certainly from one perspective, it might be worth being additionally skeptical of their insights if they’re not connected to the values and culture established in our own land.)  I cringe sometimes when I hear of local groups paying significant amounts of money to bring in an expert speaker on a given topic, where part of the primary appeal is that they are from another place with different perspectives, not that they will actually provide $10,000 worth of value in their visit.

Generally, though, I think it’s a good thing that we still find some exhileration in encountering “the other, unlike us” and that we look to those experiences for insight and perspective on our own lives.  In some ways, having traveled or been on other kinds of journeys does give us a wisdom and expertise that we can’t obtain otherwise, and it’s a great part of the human tradition to share in that with each other.

Here’s a list of 5 business values that I think I learned via Earlham College:

1. You can do good and still do well. While it hasn’t been as black and white as Mark and I may have thought it would be when we started Summersault, we have found that it is generally possible to make ethical decisions and still make money.  When you do make ethical decisions and still make money as a result, it tends to feel better than other approaches.
   
2. It’s okay to fail. Traditional business culture sometimes tells us that failure is to be avoided at all costs (see: AIG bailout).  I’ve learned that experiencing failure – even deep, gut-wrenching, not-sure-I-can-do-this-anymore failure – is an important part of learning how to succeed, and while it may be difficult and even embarrassing to fail, it doesn’t have to be shameful.
3. Honesty and integrity is always the best policy, and isn’t to be taken for granted. I know it’s a bit cliche, but we’re still surprised at how often we encounter forms of dishonesty in the business world – through outright lies, subtle omissions, or other tactics – and so I try not to take it for granted when we meet someone – a client, potential employee, or vendor – who is honest through and through.  By the same token, no matter how difficult or awkward a business situation is, I’ve found that being brutally honest and taking responsibility for my part is the only way to get through it with integrity and relationships intact.
4. You don’t have to detach yourself from the humanity of doing business. Businesses are just groups of people sharing in some common activity or mission.  Those people have emotions, flaws, difficulties, struggles, nuanced joys and irrational, complex driving forces in their lives.  You can’t run a business and expect to ignore or detach yourself from these considerations, and in fact you may have a much better experience if you embrace them.
5. The universe will have its way. Some people think that good business is all about controlling every last detail of every process involved.  Believe me, I’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work – the universe will throw things at you that you cannot control, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes you don’t know.  The alternative to trying to control everything that seems to work is to do really good planning, and then be ready to adapt and change (sometimes dramatically in a short period of time) and try not to take it personally.

Not all of these things were taught directly by Earlham (the panel today is in part to help convince students that it’s OK to make money – only at a small liberal arts college ), and maybe I’ve even figured some of them out in spite of my time there (I majored in Computer Science, not Management).  I’ll also note that I’m not by any means claiming to be perfect at living out these values all the time!  But I’m confident that had I not had that educational context and transformative four years, I would be a much different kind of businessperson today.

1) The Pal-Item reports on a meeting happening today about technology in schools:

The Richmond Community Schools Board of School Trustees has scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday to learn more about the school corporation’s technology needs…Technology coordinator Rob Tidrow has reported to the board that the school corporation is operating with outdated technology, and in some cases, technology that is obsolete…School officials have asked the board to consider paying for the upgrades with dollars available in a rainy day fund or the school corporation’s savings account.

I support our schools having current technology so that students can be engaged with and knowledgeable about how to get the most out of these tools. In the past that may have inevitably meant running the latest version of Microsoft Windows on the latest desktops from Dell (although there are plenty who would have said there were alternatives then too).

But in an age where many technology tools and services are online, and aren’t tied to a particular operating system or hardware vendor, it shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion that a school has to spend large amounts of money on proprietary software licenses and cutting edge hardware, when low-cost or free software and older but perfectly usable hardware can do the same job. In a time where school budgets are being cut, it’s worth looking at other options before reinvesting in more hardware and software that may also become obsolete as quickly as what they are replacing.

I pointed Mark to this issue, and in response he wrote up one particular technical approach that RCS could take. There are others, too.

2) Jason Truitt writes in his blog at the Pal-Item:

Expensive new technology requirements for 911 offices have brought six area counties together in a search for solutions. Fayette, Franklin, Randolph, Rush, Union and Wayne counties all use the same [911 emergency] system now, but it will be obsolete next year and no longer supported by Microsoft.

There may not be any off-the-shelf open source offerings that will meet this need, but for crying out loud, don’t just sign up for the next Microsoft contract only to find yourselves back in the same position a few years from now. While they’re teaming up, I hope they explore what other communities are doing to get more value out of their emergency systems, whether it’s creating systems themselves that use more open standards, finding new uses for old equipment, or even challenging the expensive requirements that might not be serving community interests as much as they are guaranteeing income for influential vendors.

These two particular cases may be decided as they always tend to be. I hope that in general, local decision-makers will realize that there are other ways to go that save money and make better use of existing resources.

This is just the first phase of what we hope to be a broader oral history project in the area.  You can read all about it on the new project website, WhatIsYourStory.org.  If you’re a podcast listener or producer, a fan of StoryCorps or oral history projects, want to be trained on interviewing and audio production, or just someone who wants to be involved in this effort, please contact us!  We’ll find a way to put your talents to work as we try to honor and appreciate those who live in our community, through listening.

• Rising Above the Noise: Online Strategies & Tools for Success: we’ll take on blogging, RSS, micro-blogging, social networking, widgets, photo sharing, and more, and talk about how these tools can help businesses and other organizations get their message out there further. See also the article in today’s Pal-Item. Thursday September 25th 8-9 AM at the Uptown Innovation Center in Richmond. Free, contact Main Street to register.
• The Internet as a Political Tool: this is a repeat of the presentation I did in May, but now with more flavor! I’ll talk about how the Internet is changing the world of politics, and what it means for local citizens (especially right before the November election). It’s a part of the Technology Series at Morrisson-Reeves Library (see the PDF brochure) that is bringing together local experts to talk about various technology issues. Thursday, October 9th 6:30-8 PM in the Bard Room at MRL in Richmond. Free, contact MRL for details or just show up.
• General Talk about the Technologies of the Internet: I’ll be speaking to a group of freelance artists, web developers and consultants in Cincinnati about how to best use the technologies of the Internet to serve their clients. Friday, October 24th. If you’re in the Cincinnati area and are interested in joining the group, contact Katie McGuire.

If you’re interested in having me speak to your business or organization, learn more about how to get in touch to make a request.

I had a moment of awakening about this a number of years ago when I was sitting in a local hair stylist’s chair having my hair cut. On my recent visits I had been observing the process more closely than prior haircuts in my life, and partly out of resentment for the $15 I was paying per 10-minute haircut, partly out of an engineer’s curiosity, I starting asking questions about where her equipment came from. Together we concluded that she was using a trimmer I could get at a local store for about $20, and therefore that the main value she brought to the process was the ability to see the whole of my head to trim it when I could not. Ah-ha.

So, I went out and bought my trimming set, and then went home to design a mirror rigging system that would allow me to see all of my hair at once, and a guide system that would prevent me from making my rear neck hairline too short or uneven. I started cutting my hair at home after that, and apart from a few special cases, haven’t paid for a haircut since. This has been a good thing, but for some reason, it was a difficult leap to decide that I could do it myself. After all, I’d always had my hair cut by someone else – why would it work any other way?

I think we are pretty heavily conditioned to avoid such leaps. Our consumerist-driven world loves that we’ve outsourced so many basic functions of day-to-day life to its storefronts, and it doesn’t want us to go back to the “do it yourself” mentality that drove so much innovation and self-sufficiency in past versions of humanity. In fact, the modern world requires that things break frequently, and that we pick up the phone and the credit card at the first sign that they might be breaking. It requires that we know little to nothing about where our food comes from, and that we pay outrageous prices for produce that can be grown for significantly less on our own. This culture requires that we forget how to make or repair or even operate the basic tools we use every day, because then we are dependent on the people and power structures that do have control over that knowledge, and we pay them to make the world right again. It doesn’t mind reinforcing our fears, either: what if we try to do it ourselves and it doesn’t work? What if we get lost? What if we can’t defend ourselves or our family against a terrorist? Surely we’re not qualified? Surely we don’t have the right tools? What if we don’t have the right standard of living? What if…?

The haircut example is perhaps a pretty benign one. (For those patrons who required more than the uniform trimming, the stylist did provide a needed sense of style and, because that took longer than 10 minutes, a kind of relationship that is probably pretty far from exploitative.) But with that milestone of self-cutting independence under my belt, I was set on a course toward some other kinds of self-sufficiency that I perhaps hadn’t imagined possible before.

For a time shortly thereafter, I lived on a small organic farm and had a daily participation in planting, growing and harvesting much more of the food that I ate. I made contact with the land that helped to feed me, and listened to what it had to say, and tried to do what it asked. I learned to cook, and to cook with the harvest that was available, instead of just what was convenient or cheap. I learned to store food, to make it last. In time, I felt much less clueless about how to sustain myself, less dependent on a grocery store for this basic daily need of food.

Every time I’ve had to hire someone to do some repair work for me, I’ve watched closely, asked them about what they were doing, and then gone out to read about it and learn more. The result has been that I’m much more bold about taking on home improvement projects that I would have previously been too intimidated to even think about. I’ve now installed light fixtures, replaced kitchen faucets, repaired walls, hung shelves, painted entire rooms, installed a trailer hitch on my car, flown a small plane, wired up telephone and Internet networks, run coaxial cable, and so many other things that I wish I’d learned about a long time ago.

Of course, doing it yourself doesn’t always mean doing it alone. All of my above adventures were accelerated greatly (and sometimes enabled entirely) by the knowledge of others, not to mention by some social and economic privilege. None of us can be specialists or knowledgeable in every area needed for survival or comfort, so there are great benefits that come from living in community where we distribute those responsibilities, and from being able to learn from others. If Alice is the community metal-smith, then maybe she doesn’t have to worry about being a good cook because Jake has dinner taken care of (as long as Alice sharpens his good kitchen knife when it dulls).

Recently a friend began teaching me a bit about forging metal, and while it may not be a calling for me to be the community metal-smith, it was one of those experiences that showed me what was possible for the first time, and I went home and looked at my kitchen knives with a whole new sense of awe. Running coax cable is great to know, but it’s these more base skills that interest me now; forging tools, learning more about four-season gardening, finding out how not just to survive in the “elements,” but to thrive in them. These skills feel real, globally applicable, like they’ll be useful no matter what.

There are still plenty of things that I don’t take on myself. I don’t change the oil in my car. I don’t perform surgery on myself, even with my mirror rigging system. I don’t make soy milk (though I do have a tofu-maker raring to go in the basement). This week alone, I’ve paid a substantial amount of money to have someone else tell me how much I still owe the IRS for the Iraq war effort, and I’m about to pay an only slightly less substantial amount to someone who knows how to repair a refrigerator that’s got all sorts of problems. I hope it doesn’t sound too strange that I have zero interest in being able to do my taxes (made immensely complex by my ownership of businesses, “thanks!” says the global economy), but I was watching that appliance repairman like a hawk as he put on the bullet piercing valves so he could attach his pressure gauge, wondering where I could get one of those myself for next time.

What are the things you want to better learn to do for yourself? What are the things you can’t imagine doing yourself? What parts of your life depend on complexity that is beyond your reach? What parts of your life would benefit from a community that fills in the gaps?

But what I really meant to say was that I appreciate very much that Earlham puts this event on – I imagine that I would have found it incredibly useful and impressive during my last semester there, and part of the reason I participate year after year is to try to make up for that sense of lost time that I experienced learning some of these things (from how to eat properly at a nice restaurant to how to be a young leader in your post-grad destination community) on my own. And of course, I also carry out my super-secret secondary agenda of showing at least some of the students that there are scenarios in which one can graduate from Earlham, stay in Richmond, make a living here, and really love it.