Notes on the Front

Fidel Castro once said that in the classless society there would be no need for universities because all society would be a learning experience.  I don't think he was being literal, just posing the possibility of an educationally and democratically enriched society.  It certainly makes a sharp contrast with the debate over education currently raging.  First we get tuition fees back, then the Bishops wade in demanding control over what, in any other country, would be a democratically accountable public service – primary schools.  Now Master Batt O'Keefe is turning the screws again – suggesting that industry and the private sector could sponsor university courses.  That's just peachy: McDonalds sponsoring courses in the English Lit department ('Shakespeare and the Quarter Pounder with Cheese: New Dietary Paradigms in King Lear').  Or Google sponsoring a course on the sociology of Asian cyber-censorship.  It gets that weird.

But Comrade Fidel wasn't on some flight of fancy, judging by analysis that is emerging on the role of innovation in the economy.  Innovation is the new buzz word, the latest in a long line that can open up a magic box of wealth -  R&D, value-added, productivity, competitiveness, knowledge-economy.  Politicians, in particular those who haven't a bull's notion of what they're talking about, repeat these words as if they have some strange shamanic power. 

Innovation conjures up men and women running about in lab suits, talking into dictaphones, writing 20-line equations on the chalkboard. So, to get our innovation mojo happening the Government is spending tons of dosh on fourth level education and science institutes and brain centres.  All well and good in it's context, but in a recent Sunday Business Post article Charles Larkin and Dr Jacco Thijssen of TCD have sharply criticised what they call 'our blind pursuit of innovation':

'Innovation, as (currently) defined . . . is measured by the number of institutions involved, number of patents filed, number of academic papers published, number of postdoctoral and postgraduate students employed and resources consumed. Innovation in Ireland is not about achievement but about activity, all wrapped in a film made up of strategy documents and accountability reports.'

Michael Hennigan of Finfacts quotes studies from Navi Radjou and Booz Allen Hamilton (that's right, Booz) to suggest that politicians and companies have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to investing in innovation, because in too many cases they confuse it with invention. And, again, Mr. Hennigan returns to this subject to discuss a recent UCD study showing that:

'Ireland's policy to promote innovation through interaction between businesses and third-level institutes is having a disappointingly limited effect.'

Finally, Paul Tansey writes cogently on the subject of innovation. He quotes from Joseph Schumpeter as stating that innovation is 'getting new things done. . which may, but need not, embody anything scientifically new.'  Innovation is about knowing the world around us, and giving it a new twist.  It's about taking existing products or services and improving them.  Mr. Tansey writes:

'Better-educated workers and managers at all levels of an enterprise is the most likely route to enhanced innovatory capacity.'

In other words, innovation is a democratic rather than an elitist activity.  And this brings us full circle back to Comrade Fidel's thinking.  For both Charles Larkin and Dr Jacco Thijssen, as well as Mr. Tansey, put special emphasis on extended education, at the primary and secondary levels.  In short, we need educated people going about their daily work and play.  We need massive investment in early stages of education, adult education, lifelong learning – as well as third level and, yes, fourth level.  But the former especially.

We need a society that, itself, is a learning experience – in all walks of life; and that daily learning experience comes from a society that is participatory, inclusive and egalitarian.  That is the road to innovation – not tuition fees, church control, McDonalds' classes or prefab classrooms.

So c'mon, Master O'Keefe – innovate.