The End of the World as We Know It

or

We're doomed, I say.  Doomed!

Society is regressing.  For a long time, I was blissfully unaware of this, believing the propaganda that we were becoming more enlightened and advanced.  The light bulb moment, for me, came with the EU decision to ban traditional light bulbs  and switch to more energy efficient energy saver bulbs.  This may seem like a good idea, but we are going from a society where you could have instant light, bright enough for reading, sewing, whatever you’re having yourself, at the flick on a switch.  I tried these new-fangled bulbs.  Once evening came I had to turn them all to ensure I had sufficient light when I needed it.  This is not progress, this is regression.

Once I realised this I started thinking about ancient civilisations which once ruled the world and why they collapsed.  At first, they advance and became capable of great technical feats.  Then there is a greater disparity between the haves and have not, people in power get greedy and complacent, things are taken for granted and the general state of affairs starts to decline.

Of course, warfare is a major factor and certainly the reason for the fall of the Aztecs in 1519 during the Spanish conquest but it was a different story for the other great civilisation of MesoAmerica – the Mayans.   Maya civilization declined gradually over a period of 150 years between 800 and 1000 AD.  There are a number of suggested causes, peasant revolts, soil exhaustion, epidemic diseases, earthquakes, ideological fatigue, drought, over-population, loss of confidence in rulers.  The reasons were complex, but the result was the disintegration of the Maya.  Likewise it has been suggested that classical Greece and Rome fell because they over-reached themselves, a greater disparity between the wealthy and the common people emerged and it started to fall apart from within.

Apart from the lightbulb situation, another sign that society is collapsing is the so-called “obesity epidemic” in Western society.  It has been proposed that for the first time, children’s life expectancy is less than their parents.  It’s true that there is still a lot of poverty and malnutrition in the world.  Think of Haiti, just one country where conditions are to me, a typical Westerner, both intolerable and unimaginable.  But, at the same time, according to Jess Greenwood , speaking at Wired 2012, “This is the first year in history that more people will die of obesity than malnutrition”.  Society is getting fat and lazy, and also, I would argue, dumber.

Grade inflation  has been a problem in Ireland for at least the last 10, if not 15, years.  Of course, I won’t go any further back than that because I earned my BSc in 1994 and naturally the decline in educational standards started after that.

I’ve been suspicious about this for a long time, starting with the change from the Intermediate Certificate to the Junior Certificate (for 15 year olds) in Irish education in 1992.  Hailed as the future, a more practical and student-centred examination, to me it seemed simpler.  There is a mistaken belief, extremely prevalent in education (and not just in Ireland, it is also present in British and US education.  I cannot comment on any other countries), that children need to be praised and encouraged to succeed.  Bullshit, I say and Baumeister et al, writing in Scientific American Magazine in 2005 support my instincts in their (pdf) article “Exploding theSelf-Esteem Myth”  a must-read for every parent and educator.

In a misguided attempt to ensure young people feel good about themselves, creative ways are sought to ensure no-one fails.  Modern policies, instead of raising the bar for everyone, lowers acceptable levels to the lowest common denominator.  Again my first brush with this was when the powers that be ‘improved’ honours Leaving Certificate Mathematics, by shortening the course and removing the unpredictable questions which challenged people. 

Now we’re about to dumb down second level education again.  The Junior Certificate is to be amended yet again with a proportion of it being examined in-house, thus significantly reducing it objectivity and rendering it worthless.  Then, there’s the people who go on about multiple intelligence and learning styles.  These theories, while still in vogue, have been comprehensively debunked (to read arguments against multiple intelligence, have a read of Lynn Waterhouse  or Daniel Willingham’s articles, for learning styles, read Psychological Science  or Joe Bondra ’s articles).  A quick search on the internet will uncover more examples.  Despite this, these theories are still bandied around as facts in learning environments with teachers adjusting and designing their lesson plans accordingly.

So, despite all the ‘improvements’ in teaching methods over the years, and the move to a more child centred approach with smaller class sizes and more teaching assistants (compared to the 1980s when I was in school), people are leaving school with lower educational attainment.  This is quite a strong statement and admittedly I only have anecdotal evidence to back it up, but I’ll stick with my story. 

Apart from grade inflation which is an acknowledged phenomenon in the US , in the UK , in Ireland  and other countries around the world , as a teacher is a college of further education, I can see the educational standards slipping.  School leavers do not know their maths tables and find it very hard to cope without a calculator.  Some would argue that it today’s world, with instant access to information and technology, that there is no need to learn things off and that more emphasis should be placed on other things; active learning and critical thinking being very fashionable these days. 

However, these students cannot tell when their answers are wrong.  They blindly trust technology.  Students will use a calculator to add 2 + 3 and will not blink an eyelid if they get the answer 6 due to unwittingly hitting the multiplication button instead of the plus sign.  I think that the world would be a better place if they had to learn things by heart and if they were not allowed to use calculators until they got to 5th year (like it was in my day, bah humbug!)

I’ve also noticed that students can’t transcribe anymore.  Today, you don’t mark students down for bad spelling or grammar.  To do so can be seen as being overly fussy and mean.  This results in students not understanding the importance of accuracy which manifests itself in my web authoring classes where leaving out a > sign can have an alarming effect on their work.  Yet still they’re sloppy.

So this has developed into a bit of a diatribe against the current state of education, but the point I’m making is that, in my opinion, standards of education are slipping.  Students do not have the basic building blocks, the traditional reading, writing and arithmetic skills, to maintain society at current levels and improve it into the future.

Yet another sign that we are heading for an imminent collapse of the world as we know it is the alarming level of fraud which has recently come to light in both science and psychology .  As reported by Etchells and Gage in the Guardian , anaesthesiologist Yoshitoka Fujii holds the record for most fraudulent papers at 172.  As someone who has been quite ill for a significant proportion of this year, this is alarming.  172 papers on asaesthesiology by one person have been found to be fraudulent.  Have medical decisions been made as a result of these fraudulent papers?  Have people’s health or lives been put at risk because of this?

It is not a common suspicion, due in part to popular fiction, film and television, that the major pharmaceutical  companies are only out to make money, sponsor studies that confirm their findings etc. etc.  But now, we have confirmation that this is happening in the heart of academia!  Who can we trust now?  No wonder the religious fanatics are on the increase!  It also means that all the links I’ve made in this article to website which I’ve carefully selected to back up my points, while studiously ignoring any that might contradict me, are highly dubious.  How do I know if they can be trusted or not?  How can we separate the wheat from the chaff?

Recently, a number of computer generated papers have beenaccepted by apparently ‘peer-reviewed’ journals .  Here’s an example of one I co-wrote with Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace on BOB: Evaluation of Context-Free Grammar.  Hey, you can create your own papers here.

This increase in fraud has come about due to the fact that success in academia is measured by publication rate and by extension by the way it is funded.  It call to mind the novel Changing Places by David Lodge where two academics, one English, one American, swap places and University life in the two countries is compared.  At the time, one of the differences was that more emphasis was placed on publishing in America.  One really must question the purpose of a University.  Is it solely to further research in academic fields or is it to educate the next generation, in life as well as their chosen field, and leave them in a position where they can advance society culturally, technically, scientifically and economically?

I tend to subscribe to John Henry Newman’s opinion

  “The view taken of a University in these Discourses is the following. -- That it is a place of teaching universal knowledge.  This implies that its object is, on the one hand, intellectual, not moral; and, on the other, that it is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement.  If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students; if religious training, I do not see how it can be the seat of literature and science”

I am proud that Newman was, in 1854, the first rector of my alma mater, University College Dublin, and this connection was one of the factors influencing my choice to pursue my third level education there way back in 1990.

Unfortunately capitalism rules today’s society.  There is an assumption that free trade and money is the solution to our every want.  Have we forgotten the famine so easily?  Economics is the main driving force today.  The EU may have changed its name from the EEC (European Economic Community) but we must not forget that its origins and raison d’être was economic union. 

Also while the OECD are a key driving force in advancing policies in education, it should not be forgotten that OECD stands for the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development .  The danger with this approach is that it leaves little room for creativity and discovery.  As Bryan Jennings points out in his article The Role of Pure Research, the commercial value of a discovery is not always immediately apparent.

These kinds of policies (devised by economists and greedy, self-serving politicians) are the reason that there has been a world-wide recession for the past four years.  This capitalistic attitude to life is the reason for the rapid spread of infectious diseases  in recent years and possibly why I ended up in hospital for 18 days last February with atypical pneumonia.

This is why Ash Trees are currently under threat here  and in the UK .  This disease has killed most of Denmark’s Ash trees and could have been prevented, or at least slowed down, from spreading by banning imports , but no, this was not done, because it would impact free trade.  This is also why Ireland is now tackling crippling debt because you can’t burn the bondholders.  Thanks very much, the 1633 tulip market ofAmsterdam!  Usury has traditionally been viewed as a bad thing, you know!

Many people are struggling as a direct result of the recession.  Some blame the banks for lending money to anyone who asked for it.  Others say people need to take personal responsibility for living above their means.  This can be countered by people saying they had an expectation that their jobs were secure and their income levels would not drop.  And back and forth it goes.  Whatever the causes, people are finding it hard to get by.  There is a lot of anger and while in Ireland, it is still bubbling under the surface, it has been expressed in terms of riots in England, Greece, Spain, Italy and France.

So, let’s review the main points again. 

• reversion to a less advanced technology; as demonstrated by the light bulb situation. 
• the complacency and laziness of the ordinary person; as evidenced by increases in obesity
• grade inflation and dumbing down in schools
• overdependence on technology; people can’t recognise when a simple sum is wrong
• seemingly high levels of fraud in academia and sponsored research which publishes expected results only
• the economic driving force and the elevation of it importance over all else, including health
• violent protests

Additionally, we appear undeniably to be in a period of climate change.  The polar ice-caps are melting and we can expect more extreme weather conditions.  Think of the floods in New York last week, in Dublin last year and in Gloucestershire  five years ago, to cite a few examples.  Put all of these facts together and I believe we are about to witness the destruction of our current civilisation and enter a new dark age.  As Captain Boyle so eloquently puts it in O’Casey’s classic Juno and the Paycock   

“Th’ whole worl’s in a terrible state o’ chassis”