Education on Nick Wang

EDiversity Systems Thinking Coaching by Adler Yang and YES Network

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 15:42:00 +0000

Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things, regarded as systems, influence one another within a whole. In organizations, systems consist of people, structures, and processes that work together to make an organization “healthy” or “unhealthy”.

At my first meeting with EDiversity co-founders Cam and Doreen on August 13th, I learned about some cool alternative education projects that people have been doing, like the Floating Classroom, Bring Me A Book, and Holistic Education Foundation… etc. I was very inspired and motivated, thinking all night about the possibilities of collaborations in the future.

I also gathered that these different groups of people have only just gotten together, and we need to better understand our positions in the bigger picture, so that after the event, we can collaborate most effectively and create the biggest impact possible! For that, I told my good friend Thousand Lim at YES Network and see if he could help.

It just so happens that Adler Yang is also back in town for the screening of his documentary film - “If There is a Reason to Study 學習的理由”. After speaking with Adler, we decided to let him be the facilitator for EDiversity’s first Systems Thinking session.

The meeting took place last Thursday in the department of Sociology at Chinese University. We first started with writing down what are our expectations for the day. Then we move on to peer interviews to find out the problems in each other’s point of view. Next, with the help of the facilitators, we arranged all of our knowledge (in the form of post-it notes) into a system diagram. We then spend a long time discussing about where the “Root Causes” lie. After much discussions, we each wrote in black our choices of “Intervention Points” in the system.

Finally, due to a lack of time, we could only quickly go through the “Initial calling, Vision, Mission, BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)”. There isn’t time left for “Team Building” and “Scheduling”. Everyone was physically tired but mentally filled with new understandings and connections.

Thank you Adler and YES Network for this very useful training session!

Teaching Empathy Interviews - Patrick Newell

Sun, 17 Aug 2014 00:26:00 +0000

After the recent events that caused me to focus my research on “Can we teach children to become empathetic leaders”, I started to interview empathetic leaders in my network. I want to find out how they grew up to become the person they are today. Last Friday, I interviewed Patrick Newell. Patrick lives in Tokyo and he started Tokyo International School 13 years ago because he couldn’t find any school that “taught 21st century skills to 21st century children”. I met Patrick in 2010 when I volunteered at TEDxTokyo, he and another good friend of mine, Todd Porter, were the founders of a pilot program originated from the TED conference, which later became TEDx! Patrick also founded Living Dreams, an NPO that enriches the lives of over 2000 orphans in Japan, and co-founded Impact Japan, a lighthouse for entrepreneurship and innovation in Japan.

Nick: “So, let’s start with your childhood. How did you grow up?”

Patrick: “Yeah, I think that’s the key question. When you ask this question, I’m pretty sure you’ve seen a pattern already. People who are empathetic, I think they have something in their childhood that was challenging and difficult, that caused them to look at other people in a kinder way. For me, in a nutshell, I had a pretty difficult childhood, my mom and dad divorced when I was 5, my mom moved to Northern California when I was 9, with no money at all. We had to struggle, all my life actually. I used to get into a lot of fights, mainly I got into fights with bullies who were bullying other kids, I was empathetic toward other kids who were being picked on, or may be that was the way I got rid of my frustration because I was frustrated with having a difficult childhood. For me, having gone through all of that, when I see people who are in a difficult childhood situation, I can align with their feelings. I have an NGO called Living Dreams and we work with a couple thousand of orphans here in Japan. I see these kids, they were called stupid, that they won’t be able to do anything with their lives, that they have no financial resources… I can empathize with them because I’ve been in a similar position. That really drives me to want to make a difference. So I’m involved in education, I just think I don’t want children to have to go through some of the things I did. Discover ways so we can educate them so that they would excel, and treat other people kindly and with respect.”

Nick: “So in a nutshell, you’ve been through a lot of hardship and that made you empathetic toward others in similar situation. Do you think empathy is something you can teach to someone if they have never endured any kind of hardship?”

Patrick: “I think you can. A lot of it is neural wiring. If you look at situations that develop empathy, you could actually put the children through simulations, make them aware of the others’ difficulties, put them in other people’s shoes and have them imagine, experience and problem solve. Another way is by helping others, exposing them to real life people in need, raising their awareness of the other people’s difficulties.”

The hour long interview was enlightening and meaningful. We continued to delve deeper into developing empathy, and then moved on to his journey starting Tokyo International School, and finally to one of his latest initiatives: 21 Foundation - 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Learners

Thank you again, Patrick!

Can We Teach Children to Become Empathetic Leaders?

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 01:47:00 +0000

Ever since reading about Pauline Hawkin’s Animal Farm Lessons, I’ve had one of the outcomes stuck in my head:

“Every once and a while, I will have a student who stands up and leads, not as a dictator, but as a leader of the people. He will accept every suggestion and value everyone’s input, even if some of the suggestions are ridiculous. I’ve had only a few students who have actually led that way over the years, but I always hope that those few students find their way into politics.”

I had written about why I started 100 Village, later on, I realized that I wanted children to grow up with these qualities because I hoped they can become future change makers - do the right things and make the world a better place. Last week however, something very personal about my son’s behaviors really shook my world and gave me a sharpened focus!

Basically, Allison and Mabo at Mulberry Tree Unschool had identified that my son had passed the toddler, experimental stage of hitting and started to hit and to do things to hurt other people or make other people feel sad / angry / unhappy on purpose. After a sleepless night of reflection, I told them that I think the reason for such behavior was because I didn’t properly give him unconditional love. Last weekend, Luc locked me and his little sister out on the roof and proceeded to laugh about it. When I got back inside, I was angry and I brought him to the roof, locked him out and asked him if he was feeling happy or not? Then I held him in my arms and I said: “I’m always doing things that help other people and make people happy… but I see you doing things that make other people sad… I’m worried about you. I love you so much and I wish you can also do things that help other people and make people happy.” I was crying as I said those words. I can’t help but get very emotional when I think about how my lovely little boy is “turning to the dark side”, in Mabo’s words.

This brings me back to the Animal Farm Lessons. If I want children to grow up to become change makers, then more than just the qualities listed on why I started 100 Village, they need to have a “good heart” - to be considerate and empathic. This became my newfound focus for 100 Village -

Can We Teach Children to Become Empathetic Leaders?

Expert Interview - An Afternoon with Adler Yang

Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

“I had just turned 14. At school, I overheard one of my childhood friends talking with his teacher. “My top high school choices?! I don’t even know if I can score high enough to get in. Ah well, worst come to worst I’ll just join the gangs.” I had grown apart from this friend since we entered middle school but we used to be really close. I started to feel bad, “why hadn’t I pay more attention and remained close to him?!” I didn’t know what to say, so I just pretended I didn’t hear him. Inside my head, my mind was racing - “What went wrong? Was it family problems? A failure in education? Or is it just fate?”…

We’re shaped by our life experiences. For Adler Yang, this was one of the events that gave him a mission and put him on a course he hadn’t thought he’d travel. Adler started filming a documentary, “The Soul”, which examines how an overwhelmingly high-stake testing and tracking system deteriorates the students’ motivation in learning, and the sense of direction to pursuing life. This film was one of ten chosen documentary projects funded by the Taiwan Public Television Service(PTS) and Taiwan National Arts and Cultural Foundation in the year 2010.

Our meeting last week had been fulfilling, we talked about how the education systems have changed over the years in Taiwan and in Hong Kong, the purpose of public education (indoctrination and subordination) Vs. the ideals of an education (learning to learn, finding own direction in life), the history of education reforms in Taiwan, the problems with over-saturation of college degrees, and the really heavy issues of outdated models and policies that are governing our societies.

There were simply too much “meat” in our afternoon of conversations to extract just a few take-aways for a blog post, but if I must give a summary, it would be this: Any parent would be proud to have a child like Adler, so capable of thinking for himself, being aware of the problems in the bigger picture and choosing to act upon it to create positive change in the world.

I’m sure we’ll have lots of chances to work together to change our societies for the better in the next 10, 20 years!

5 Things You Mustn't Do If You Don't Want To Ruin Your Child's Life (and 7 Things You Must Do For Your Child To Live Life To The Fullest)

Sat, 18 Jan 2014 16:00:00 +0000

5 Things You Mustn’t Do If You Don’t Want To Ruin Your Child’s Life

External Command (dictating your child’s life with reward and punishment, especially when using the withdrawal of parental care and concern as a threat.)
Intensive Input (book studies, piano lessons, violin lessons, swimming, mandarin, phonics, Kumon math… all scheduled by you.)
School-admission oriented (learning for the sake of school interviews and entrance exams.)
“Certificate-sization” of everything.
Virtual Learning (no real life experience, learned everything through books and computers.)

7 Things You Must Do For Your Child To Live Life To The Fullest

Field Learning (hands on, get their hands dirty, learning through mistakes, accidents and uncertainties.)
Explorative (give your child time to get bored… don’t schedule things for him every waking minute.)
Nature (full of surprises, learn to deal with surprise situations. Develop healthy body.)
Labor Intensive (Learning is hard. It takes commitment to overcome hardship in order to learn something good. No pain, no gain.)
Individual Long-term Involvement (Many kids today just follow their parents’ herd mentality. Let them follow their own interests to learn something by herself, form her own personal opinion.)
Stable Relationship Environment (an emotional story at Make a Difference.)
Encouragement from Significant Persons (a mentor who’s not one of the parents.)

Dr. Chan gave a humorous lecture today at Chinese University, the long blog post with a parent’s summary is here.

Experts Interview: Sarah Vincent

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 08:44:00 +0000

Last Friday, we met up with my good friend and mentor in Early Childhood Education, Sarah Vincent, to interview her about her experience with Hong Kong parents.

Sarah has been teaching for 12 years, 8 of those being in international kindergartens in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach during her second year in shanghai, she began to adopt the philosophy of social constructivism, gradually learned to let children take the lead. More recently, the RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers) Approach has profoundly influenced her relationships in the classroom. She is set to receive more training from the RIE Foundations in Auckland New Zealand in March.

In our expert interviews, we’ve identified 3 objectives to learn about:

Parents’ knowledge of Early Childhood Education
Parents’ decision making process
Parents’ source of information

There were multiple questions within each of these objectives. Sarah’s answers to these questions brought us new perspectives through a foreigner teacher’s glasses. She was very good at jumping ahead and giving us the answer to a better question that we should be asking. (This is one of the reasons why we chose to interview experts first, their in depth knowledge can help us horn in on the real issues and the real questions!)

So what have we learned? One thing that I thought was very important was transparencies. Parents have no rights over their children in the schools. We have no access behind closed doors. Schools hold all the power in this relationship, they can do whatever they want and the parents just have to take it. This is not a healthy relationship. Parents and schools should be a 2-way dialog. (We stepped above and beyond understanding parents and talked about schools and systemic issues. It’s certainly a big issue to tackle.)

What is the Reggio Emilia Approach?

Thu, 17 May 2012 04:16:00 +0000

Hailed as the best pre-schools in the world by Newsweek magazine in 1991, the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education has attracted the worldwide attention of educators, researchers and just about anyone interested in early childhood education best practices.

Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) founded the ‘Reggio Emilia’ approach at a city in northern Italy called Reggio Emilia. The ‘Reggio’ approach was developed for municipal child-care and education programs serving children below six. The approach requires children to be seen as competent, resourceful, curious, imaginative, inventive and possess a desire to interact and communicate with others.

The Reggio Emilia philosophy is based upon the following set of principles:

Children must have some control over the direction of their learning;
Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and hearing;
Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore and
Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.

But enough official mumble jumble, what does Reggio Emilia mean to me?

To me, first and foremost, Reggio Emilia is a culture that values children, and that culture is created by parents. The parents of Reggio Emilia (the city) built the first school themselves after the war! It’s a community effort! At the time, a lot of the families had both parents working, but because they truly value their children, they created this system to raise their children together, literally “takes a whole village to raise a child”! Nowadays, most parents are too busy with work and with their own lives, they simply send their kids to school and expect the school make them learn. I think that’s the wrong way to do it. I actually imagine a new way of work / life adjustment for the whole society, scaling back work to 4 days a week, then 5 ~ 6 families together can take turns taking care of each others’ kids!

Secondly, REA means we as teachers don’t directly “teach” the kids. Loris Malaguzzi wrote “The Hundred Languages of Childhood” (http://www.reggiokids.com/about/hundred_languages.php)), a beautiful poem that reminds me everyday not to take 99 away from my kids, because as adults, we’re used to giving that “one definite answer”. In REA, we don’t teach kids “there’s only one correct answer”! Instead, we simply provide “seeds of ideas” for the children to construct their own knowledge with! We setup the environment, put them in conditions for discovery and learning, give them a hand or “scaffold” them when they are stuck and are about to get frustrated. Finally, we document! Documentation is one of the key things teachers do in REA.

So… “The Reggio Emilia approach to education is committed to the creation of conditions for learning that will enhance and facilitate children’s construction of ‘his or her own powers of thinking through the synthesis of all the expressive, communicative and cognitive language’” - Edwards and Forman, 1993.

Finally, REA is about culture and nature to me. It’s important to pass on your own cultural identity, your family’s culture, but also to be cross cultural, allowing the kids to grow up in a “world’s environment”, because we are all shackled by our language, a broader cultural upbringing means a broader mind. REA also emphasize outdoor play, which is something that is sorely missed in Hong Kong. I think it’s obvious that human’s removal from nature in the industrialized age is creating what may become the biggest disaster in human history! Our ways of life simply isn’t sustainable and we’re beginning to see the nature’s food chains collapsing in the eco-system. Our children are going face this unprecedented crisis, and I believe we need to put them back in nature’s environment and let their intuition teach them how to rise up to it when they grow up.

I first learned of the Reggio Emilia Approach from Sir Ken Robinson’s RSA talk on education reform, I highly encourage you to watch it as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Why I think the education system is harmful for our children

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:03:00 +0000

I cannot say it any better than Sir Ken Robinson, if you haven’t watched his TED talks, please watch them here:

The current system of education was conceived during the intellectual culture of the enlightenment, and in economic circumstances, the Industrial Revolution. It’s modeled on the interests of Industrialization, based on a social structure of “a few elites at the top of the pyramid and a majority of low class laborers at the bottom”. Hence schools are all about conformity and standardization, getting children ready to be a slave in the system.

This used to work, in my father’s generation, it used to be that if you did well in school, you would have a job, and if you went to college, you would become management! This model is now broken. Now, civil engineers are waiting tables, masters of psychology are also waiting tables! People who have jobs are disgruntled about their dead end jobs, and young people are completely disenfranchised! As a parent, we need to open our eyes and see that schools are doing our children a disservice by herding them into this linear, overloaded system.

Here’s one frightening example on “Divergent Thinking”.

“Divergent Thinking” is an essential capacity for creativity. It’s the ability to see lots of possible answers to a question, lots of ways to interpret a question, to think laterally and not just in linear or convergent ways.

In the book “Break Point & Beyond”, scientists did a longitudinal studies of divergent thinking. A test was given to 1500 kindergartners 3 - 5 years, 98% scored above “genius” level. They retested the same children 5 years later, at the age of 8 - 10, now it’s down to 32% at or above genius level. And again, 5 years later at the age of 13 - 15, only 10% scored above genius level. Finally they did a control test to 200,000 adults, 25 years or older, only 2% scored at genius level.

We all had this capacity to think divergently, but the education system systematically educates children out of their capacity of creativity and imagination. What I hope to accomplish is to build tools that will allow us parents to more easily take charge of our children’s education, so that we can ensure their young minds can remain inquisitive and they themselves filled with confidence to explore and solve the world’s problems!

Who am I?

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:45:00 +0000

My name is Nicholas Wang. I was born in Hong Kong and went through its dreadful education system until I was 15, when I moved to Washington State in the US of A. I attended high school in a small town called Issaquah, and then went on to study at the University of Washington. For 8 years, I worked at 2 of the largest internet companies in the world, MSN.com and Yahoo.com, until 2007 when I successfully outsourced my own position to India and I was laid off. This marked the end of my corporate life, working as a “gear” in the grinding machine.

While living and working in New York, I grew more and more discontent with the inequality placed upon us “commoners” by the super rich, top 1% of our society. I wanted to challenge the incumbents and help shift the power back into the hands of the people. When I was laid off in 2007, I decided I will no longer work for corporate America and began to create a web community that will allow people to collaboratively share information about evil businesses. By chance, I met the founder of CUUSOO, Mr. Kohei Nishiyama. He started CUUSOO.com back in 1997 to let people collaborate and submit their own product designs, and if enough people want to buy that product, then factories can make it for the people! It was a revolutionary idea! And I thought if I could help bring this system out of Japan, it has the potential to change the world! Flipping the “mass-manufactured in China” business model around and giving the power back to the independent designers and makers! I moved to Japan to led the creation of the awesome “LEGO models by everyone” site, so now if 10,000 people like your model, LEGO will make it into a real, official product!

While working at CUUSOO in Japan, I created an open source project called “Open Hippel”. My idea was that if we could provide the CUUSOO system free of charge for anyone to use, then people can use it for their own communities. Users can submit issues and ideas, the top ones will get voted up so that resources can be distributed more intelligently. Then, if one of those ideas is a product, it can be sourced back to CUUSOO to be manufactured. I contacted one of my friends in Hong Kong who is a products engineer, we started Makible.com with the idea that it’ll receive product designs sourced from CUUSOO. In 2011, Makible was launched as a startup business and I moved (back) to Hong Kong to join full time as co-founder.

Here’s a talk a gave at Pecha Kucha Tokyo about “Changing the World with User Innovations”:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTqlA3I86lQ?wmode=transparent]

We also used our own system to crowdfund the “MakiBox” 3D printer project (which gathered USD $150,000+ in funds!). Our idea with the 3D printer is that currently, all the 3D printers out there are hobbyists projects that are too expensive and too intimidating for the average consumer. There hasn’t been any groundbreaking objected made with a 3D printer because only hardcore engineers are using it. What we need is to make a 3D printer for the masses. Something that is cheap like a Nintendo or Playstation, and well designed so it doesn’t look like a scary pile of metal bars bolted together! By doing these, I believe we can get our 3D printer into the hands of the gamers, the kids, the dads, the average Joe who has lots of ideas! I believe we can jump start innovations once I put this tool in their hands!

I’ve also been helping my friends at Peer-2-Peer University early on, participating and leading courses, improving its overal community’s user experience.

As you can see, I’m passionate about the “collaborative economy”, enabling users to innovate and solve problems together. I’m now starting this weekend playgroup that emphasize on “child initiated, parents framed” learning, because I think this is one of the most important thing (if not THE most important thing) we can do to change the future! You can read more about my ways of learning in the Reggio Emilia Approach page.

A Child Initiated, Parents Organized Playgroup in Hong Kong

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:05:00 +0000

The world’s population surpassed 7 billion last year, with 50% of that living in cities. Across the world, people are losing their jobs and college graduates can’t even find jobs. The system we live in is breaking at its seams, it can no longer employ and sustain the rapid expansion of human population.

So, are you satisfied with just sending your children to school to get “educated”, and hope that they’ll do OK when they grow up?

How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies and ecologies of the 21st century, when millions of people have already been marginalized by the system right now?!

I share these same concerns with you because I’m a new dad of a 21 months old boy and a 2 months old girl. Even though I’m not an educator by profession, I’ve been learning a lot about Early Childhood Education methodologies like Montessori and the Reggio Emilia Approach, and using it in my own home! So much so that my wife and I have earned a Reggio Emilia educator certificate. (My wife and I are the only 2 in Hong Kong as far as we know!)

As a concerned parent who have been working at the forefront of online collaboration, creating systems that enable user innovations like the official LEGO crowdsource model creation site, and my own internet startup Makible that sells the most user friendly 3D printer in the world, (You can find out more about me and my experience in “User Collaborative Innovations” here.) I’m now starting a parents organized playgroup on the weekends. Besides wanting to provide the best for my own children, my goal is to create a simple system for parents around the world to collaborate and form their own parents led playgroups for children from 1 to 6.

This is an effort that requires parents to be highly involved, if you share the same values as I do, and have a child of similar age as my son (~2 yrs old, “trouble 2” beginning to emerge), then let’s do this together! We can meet at my apartment in Prince Edward, where I’ll provide an environment with “seeds” for exploration. Throughout the sessions, I’ll be taking pictures and documenting the children’s every discovery, trouble and growth. Parents will receive their kids’ documentations after each session.

If you’re interested in it please tell me a little bit about yourself on this form.

Looking forward to meeting other amazing parents and kids in Hong Kong!