Books in brief
By Simon Young & Vincent Heeringa,
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
By Clayton M Christensen, Curtis W Johnson and Michael B Horn (McGraw-Hill, 2008). $66
Fight the power
If you haven’t noticed what’s wrong with the way we do school, you’re probably one of the lucky ones—the ones whose natural intelligence matches the way curricula are taught.
But Clayton M Christensen, Curtis W Johnson and Michael B Horn, the authors of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns show that the one-size-fits-most, industrial approach to education is unsustainable, and change will need to come. The answer is customised learning, but how can that be introduced into the existing system?
Disrupting Class applies the theory of disruptive innovation to the US public school system—a system that, unlike business, has no competition and is wired for incremental, not disruptive, innovation. It’s essential reading for anyone in education, or any industry with an entrenched order.
In case you haven’t read Christensen’s earlier The Innovator’s Dilemma Buy@Fishpond, this book gives you an overview of disruptive innovation theory and a blueprint of just how it will transform education: not by tackling the existing system head-on, but by meeting unmet needs.
For all those who have banged their heads against bureaucracy, this book will be manna in the desert. It shows an understanding of the huge organisational issues involved in introducing change, and paints a very plausible picture of how that change could be introduced.
Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why the World Needs a Green Revolution—and How We Can Renew Our Global Future
By Thomas Friedman (Allen Lane, 2008). $55
Khaki green
There are deep greens (think bicycles) and light greens (think Prius). Now there are also bright greens (think hydrogen). But here comes yet another shade of eco: khaki.
In Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why the World Needs a Green Revolution—and How We Can Renew Our Global Future, Thomas Friedman, fresh from his last best-selling business title The World is Flat Buy@Fishpond, takes a new twist on the whole green schtick: green as America’s passport to energy independence, technical superiority, economic dominance and military strength. It’s green as the new red, white and blue.
“This is not your grandfather’s green movement anymore,” Friedman thunders. “It’s about national power. Everything America can do to go green will make it stronger … what could be more patriotic, capitalistic and geostrategic than that?”
The book is captivating, with tons of personal stories and factoids. And he has lovely ideas: no one talks about Africa’s energy poverty, yet this leads directly to poor nutrition, medicine and economic growth.
Traditional greens will hate this book for reinforcing the old ‘military-industrial complex’. But when America fixes itself, it will go a long way to fixing the world.
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