Systems Thinking

The other day I had the opportunity to hear a brief presentation by Systems Thinking experts Dr. Daniel Kim and his wife Diane Cory. They were actually in Hawai'i on vacation but took some time out to stop by Punahou to speak with administrators and teachers about how we can apply systems thinking to our sustainability practices.
They emphasized that Hawai'i in particular is a place that must incorporate holistic, systems thinking simply due to its geographical limits— very small space, finite resources. Similar to a place such as Singapore, Hawai'i is at risk systemically. Where they have succeeded is in utilizing government and market forces to achieve a desired outcome; in this case that would mean a more systemic approach to how they manage their scarce resources. This type of thinking can also be applied to other areas such as public education. My concern is that the culture of the United States, as witnessed by the rise of the Tea Party movement, shows how Americans get very nervous when the balance between government and market forces starts to shift too much in the government's direction. That's why we see such a reaction to the stimulus plan, carbon markets, and even "sin taxes" in trying to curb people's behavior in less harmful directions so that we consider the collective rather than just the individual's needs.
Dr. Kim then discussed the concept of "stocks and flows" and illustrated his point by using the metaphor of a shower head and a bathtub. When we shower we don't see how water accumulates so we are unaware of how much we are using— that would be flow. In a bathtub we see the accumulation so we are much more aware of the system— that would be stock. Essentially, when we make accumulation invisible we lose sight of the system. This concept also makes me think of landfills and solid waste.
In systems thinking, stocks determine the state of the variable. Where does it flow and where does it accumulate? To understand a system you have see where the stocks occur and then 'swim upstream' to see how the system flows prior to accumulation. Where do we then intervene in the system? Systems thinking allows policy makers to become more effective at problem solving (proactive versus reactive) by managing stocks and flows.
We then examined how "The Tragedy of the Commons" is the opposite of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand." Individuals acting to their own benefit with regard to a resource that is essentially free (fish stocks, ocean/river dumping, the air we breathe, etc.) end up hurting the whole of society by their behavior, especially when such behavior is wide-spread. The concept of the invisible hand works if resources are unlimited, such as during the westward expansion seen in manifest destiny, but not so much when resources are limited.
In relating this concept to Punahou's sustainability initiatives, Dr. Kim asked us to consider the purpose of teaching sustainability to our students. He then encouraged us to be living examples of what we're teaching so that our behavior, along with our programs, are in line with the purpose. Carri Morgan pointed out that the school has tangible sustainability goals (50% less solid waste, energy and water use, cars on campus, and more food production by 2016) but no real way to measure that accurately. Dr. Kim advised on the difference between measuring and quantification. We can use other indicators as surrogate measures in place of quantifiable targets.
Some other resources they mentioned in the course of their presentation:
The Creative Learning Exchange, which seeks to develop "Systems Citizens" in K-12 education
Pegasus Communications which publishes a newsletter, The Systems Thinker, and holds frequent conferences and webinars on systems thinking in the workplace and classroom.
Karl Henrik Robert, founder of the Natural Step, an organization dedicated to ecological sustainability
Jay Forrester, Systems Thinking guru— System Dynamics and K-12 Teaching

Crazy Talk/Heath Care

Frank Rich had another great article this week digging deeper into the health care vote aftermath. (At the risk of appearing too liberal, Paul Krugman did as well.) Rich argues that the extreme reaction to Obama and minority members of Congress is not really about health care at all but a resistance to the idea of minorities and women (namely, Nancy Pelosi and Sonia Sotomayor with probably a little Hillary Clinton thrown in) breaking out of their subordinate roles, at least as how the Tea Partiers see it. The consequences could potentially be disastrous.
I see examples of this type of black and white reactionary thinking all over the place. In the last year or so as I drive home between 3 and 4 in the afternoon I've taken to listening to AM 990 rather than the Canadian Broadcasting Company's "As It Happens" (no offense to Canada but there are only so many stories about seals and politics in Ottawa that I can handle). There I get to hear Michael Savage, Rusty Humphries, and occasionally Glenn Beck. It is always interesting and informative to get the other side of the debate, but it's also alarming and disconcerting to hear the logical leaps and warping of information. Most of my listening at that time is to Michael Savage who I have made some mental notes about his most egregious rantings.
1) Citing the Internet as his source that the Air France flight that crashed on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris was taken down by terrorists. "Why isn't the mainstream media reporting this?" Actually, why are you trying to drum up fear when there is no credible evidence to back up your point.
2) Bringing on a questionable "scientist" to say that cap and trade won't work because it failed in trying to curb sulfur dioxide emissions from industry in the mid-west that casued acid rain. Last I checked, we haven't heard much about acid rain in the Northeast as that was one of the most successful and least invasive solutions to combining market forces (trading the right to pollute) with an environmental ethic.
3) My personal favorite (so far): during the initial swine flu outbreak in May 2009, Savage referred to Obama as Chairman Obama because of his fiscal stimulus package and not a minute later called for him to follow China's lead and close down the border with Mexico (China had banned all flights from Mexico). Stopping 150,000+ cars from crossing that border would have been devastating to the American economy. Swine flu did not turn out to be as bad as feared so it looks like Obama made the right non-vall on that one.
To counteract this idiocy I used to watch a lot of Comedy Central. I don't get to watch the Daily Show or Steven Colbert as much as I would like to (or even at all these days) but every now and then the buzz about a particular episode or sketch inspires me to look it up. This one is absolutely brilliant.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Conservative Libertarian
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

PUEO— capstone

I had the pleasure of meeting with Carl Ackerman, Director of PUEO, and Colleen Murakami, Educational Specialist— Service Learning/Critical Thinking for the Department of Education to discuss the possibility of creating a capstone experience for the PUEO students during the summer of 2011. One area we examined was trying to align the capstone experience with the Senior Project that will be required of all public school graduates starting in the 2010-11 school year. The areas the Senior Project can address are research, service-learning, and performance. Another exciting initiative Colleen mentioned is the Running Start program which would allow DOE students to gain college credit at community colleges. It will be exciting to explore how that program could also align with the capstone/Senior Project experience. I know there is a lot we at Punahou and CapSEEDS in particular can gain from seeing how the DOE lays out its requirements for the Senior Project. I look forward to many more enlightening conversations in the future.

House Bill 2003

The Committee on Judiciary and Government Operation (JGO) heard a number of bills on ranging from fireworks importation to procurement of meats and vegetables. The bill of interest for me was HB2003— Relating to Campaign Financing. The stated intent of the bill is "to ensure the integrity and transparency of the campaign finance process" in order to "promote the public's confidence in government." The bill goes into great detail about:
— the specific definitions of what constitutes the various types of campaigning ("advertisements", "contributions", "expenditures", "fundraiser", etc.),
— the duties and obligations of the Campaign Spending Commission,
— registration of candidate committees and non-candidate committees
— reporting and filing with the committee
— Contributions, prohibitions, and limits
— loans to candidate committees
— partial public financing

The first testimony came from Barbara Wong of the Campaign Spending Commission strongly in favor of the bill but with a few definition clarification suggestions. Next up was Jim Haley from Ola Hawai'i 2020 (I believe; I couldn't find their site anywhere). The last testimony came from Nikki Love from Common Cause. She pointed out that this bill is the only campaign finance bill still alive in this session of the Legislature.
Ms. Love had six main suggestions for the bill:
1) limit corporate donations to candidates to an aggregate per-election total of $1,000
2) ensure transparency for any corporate donations by making them go through a non-candidate committee (or PAC)
— that requirement is currently missing from the legislation
— Ms. Love also pointed out that all three candidates for the 1st District House of Representatives seat (Charles Djou, Ed Case, and Colleen Hanabusa) supported the idea of more transparency in campaign financing.
3) keep the Pay-to-Play Law Intact (prohibiting government contractors from donating to campaigns)
4) keep the provision that articulates that any ambiguity in the law should be construed in favor of transparency
5) keep mainland contributions to a 20% limit rather than the 30% proposed in HB2003 HD3
6) prevent candidates from donating additional campaign funds to schools and libraries which would give incumbents an unfair advantage over electoral challengers; such donations should be handled through sound public policy and/or philanthropy

Sen. Sam Slom had some follow-up questions for Ms. Love about why unions' contributions weren't included in her testimony. Ms. Love clarified that they should be but since corporations tend to donate far more to political campaigns than unions, corporate participation seemed to be the bigger threat at this time. Sen. Slom disagreed and argued that unions can and do contribute as much, but he didn't offer any evidence of that. That just might be something we will want to look into a bit further.

The JGO committee voted to table the bill until Tuesday, March 30.

Brainstorming

When I look at some of the other people in the Pacific Century Fellows program, some additional ideas spring to mind:

To combat homelessness, what if we could somehow get the bankers (Danny Kim and Kamani Kuala'au from Bank of Hawai'i; Jen-L Ann Lyman, First Hawaiian Bank) to consider micro-lending? Perhaps it could be modeled on Kiva where they solicit loans from people locally, serve as the field partners on the ground, and service the loans, or it could take on its own unique form. Could they work with DLNR (Matthew Ramsey) or private entities like A&B (Rick Volner, Jr.) to provide small plots of state land to set up small businesses or perhaps work in natural resource management? I'd like to think Bank of Hawai'i would have a slightly different bottom line than some other bigger banks that have been making in-roads into the microfinance. (from the New York Times: "Banks Making Big Profits from Tiny Loans")

To combat recidivism, what if the business people (Yvette Maskrey, Honeywell International; Daniel Sandomire, Armstrong Development; Michael Takayama, Kyo-ya Management; Stephanie Vaioleti, Kahuku Medical Center) provided job training to recently released inmates, a la Delancey Street Foundation.

More to come...

Pacific Century Fellows

I'm very honored to have been chosen to be a part of the Pacific Century Fellows program. I would like to thank the administration at Punahou School for their guidance throughout the application process and their material support going forward. My goal for this experience is that the knowledge and the relationships I will gain will not only benefit my teaching and my courses but the entire school community.

Looking over the list of other fellows it appears that I am the only person working directly in education, but I did get a chance to speak at length with several candidates during the interview day and many of them have tangential interests in that area.

One person in particular who could work well with the PUEO (Partnership in Unlimited Educational Opportunities) program is Jessica Horiuchi of the Alaka'ina Foundation. They work with rural public schools to provide leadership and S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)-based programs for the youth of Hawai'i. I look forward to working with Jessica to convey the message to the other fellows that there is an untapped resource in our state— our students in public and private schools— who could serve a valuable role in addressing many of our societal concerns that government and private entities cannot currently alleviate. Incorporating more service-learning into the respective curricula could transform how students view their education, how they view their roles as citizens from a very young age, and how adults view our young people (i.e. our state's future).

Legislature 101

Sponsored by Common Cause Hawai'i and Kanu Hawai'i
Nikki Love, James Koshiba, Olin Lagon

Any citizen can participate in the political process, and the Hawai'i Public Access Room has made it easier than ever to submit testimony on-line.

How to submit testimony:
1) Find a bill in the Legislature that relates to your issue by going to the legislature web page.
2) Use the Bill Status & Documents tab to find a bill by number or using the text search function.
3) Subscribe to hearing notices for the bill you want to follow.
4) When notified of a hearing for a particular bill, go back to the Bill Status and Documents page, click on Submit Testimony Online and follow the directions.

Advice on testimony:
Effective testimony = tell a real story.
or,
Show up in person.

Legislators in attendance:
• Maile Shimabukuro
• Les Ihara

According to these two representatives, for the most part they go into hearings on specific bills and the only people there to testify are lobbyists or other special interests. Both stressed that when they receive testimony from constituents or other citizens they definitely read it. Otherwise the only information they have to go on is what their staffs come up with, but there is no way they can research all facets of all the bills in front of the legislature, or what the lobbyists present. (Last year there were over 2,000 bills at the beginning of the session and only slightly over 300 passed, a 5% passage rate). Citizen-provided testimony at the very least provides a check on what is presented by the lobbyists so that legislators can see if the information jibes. If not, they have questions to ask; if so, they have corroboration that allows them to have more confidence in making a better decision for the people of Hawai'i.

Experts in Attendance:
• Kapua Sproat, Associate Professor, UH Law School
Engaged Citizenship is about the Power of Community vs. the Power of Lobbyists

Kapua Sproat's Top 10 Legislative Practices:
1. familiarize yourself with capitol website (capitol.hawaii.gov)
— bill numbers, companion bills, who is on the committees
2. learn legislative process (sometimes more effective than substance)
— what are referrals? timetables? when is cross-over?
3. do your homework = credibility
4. build on informed base of support (technology, network)
5. make it easy to help people support you
— headers, footers, bill #'s attached to e-mails
6. keep it pithy (concise, sweet— 1 page max. of testimony)
7. start early (start in the fall if possible)
8. keep your friends close and your enemies closer
9. make personal connections (meet your legislators, find how you can help them)
10. respect, give and receive respect

Jeff Mikulina, Blue Planet Foundation
— "policy matters"
— bottle bill
— solar panels on all new houses constructed after Jan. 1, 2010
— "lawmakers work for us", don't be intimidated
— they sometimes do things for their own reasons (values, motivations), not yours
— "if you're explaining, you're losing"
— short attention spans (nobody ever marched on Washington for a pie chart)
— "pursue the pursuadables"
— don't feel a need to respond to people who are set in their opinions
— avoid the extremes, go for the middle