Will Comet ISON or Nibiru or Wormwood or all three destroy the world?

Well, no, That is just paranoid nonsense. Comet ISON is too small and won't hit the earth this time. Nibiru doesn't exist or has not been proven. Wormwood is just a world from the Bible. If these things are not going to destroy the world, are they going to provide the excuse for some nefarious action by the United States government - FEMA camps, martial law, gun confiscation, et cetera?

You can probably guess what my opinion is, just by reading between the lines of that first paragraph. This post focuses on some sociological thoughts on the nature of these sorts of apocalyptic conspiracies. The types of people who both promote these ideas and take them seriously could tell us something about the nature of the modern world. That's a wild guess, but I will flesh things out presently.

Now, if you have surfed around on YouTube or just Googled "Comet ISON" you might have come up with some type of conspiracy. The basis of the conspiracy seems to be that "they" are hiding the truth. Those sinister pronouns! Always hiding things from people! Actually, the conspiracy refers to the United States government, or just NASA, or perhaps to multiple agencies.

What sort of person takes this conspiracy talk seriously? I don't mean to suggest the believers are insane or stupid. I want to know what social and economic characteristics do believers share that sets the group apart from the general public. And I want to know if my hypothesis is correct.

My proposed account of what's going on works like this: People are marginalized, not getting by in wider society. These people may not be well educated or have much of a social network to relate to. The believers feel bad about their place in the world. Latching onto a conspiracy like the Comet ISON story gives them a sense of being in on something special. And, unlike you, they are wise enough to see through the cover up and official denials.

Why do some folks insist on peddling these conspiracies? Money, power, and true confusion over reality might be all that is called for.

The same process or mechanism works with other conspiracies too. I'll try to explain in more detail in future posts, unless the NSA comes for me.

Who cares about carbon pollution?

Is carbon pollution really a form of pollution? President Obama's remarks about the Keystone Pipeline and carbon pollution touched off some thoughts about climate change, politics, and environmental activism. The constant references to carbon pollution annoy me. This post explains why, and why you as an activist should care.

Carbon Pollution is not Pollution

First of all, there is a major factual error here - Carbon is not a pollutant unless it is introduced into the air in truly extraordinary amounts. Forest fires and volcanic eruptions dump lots of carbon-rich soot and ash into the air over a short period of time. We all know that sort of event is bad news indeed. But the carbon atoms themselves don't do anything in everyday life.

A pollution problem develops when carbon, in the form of methane or carbon dioxide starts to build up in the air. These greenhouse gases are what is really being talked about when President Obama and others talk about carbon pollution. Why do they oversimplify? I know what Obama's opponents will say - Obama voters are too stupid to understand what greenhouse gases are.

Simplification is a reasonable way to go sometimes. An oversimplification that introduces an actual error into your thinking is not reasonable. It is an error to think or say that carbon pollution is a major contributor to global warming.

Is carbon pollution just a shorthand way of expressing the idea that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change?  Yes it really is. That's hard to argue with. What I don't like is the introduction of scientific inaccuracy to discussions of the subject.

The Correct Use of Shorthand

The shorthand might be misunderstood or even taken as a statement of fact over time: "Carbon is dust you know. You can't even see carbon coming out of tailpipes and stuff. How can carbon pollution be causing so much trouble. Environmentalists are full of it. Must be."

Shorthand leads to misunderstanding in other ways. If your message contains shorthand for some health concern, social impact, or environmental risk I, being new to the subject, might not understand. Now, your pithy headline contains what I see as a logical or factual error. Do you think I am going to study your message closely after that?

"Gun control is people control." - No. What does "people control" even mean? Do you mean that regulations on the ownership of firearms represent a form of oppression? That just sounds loopy and irrational.
"Carbon Pollution Threatens Us All" - No. Greenhouse gas emissions are a threat. Carbon is a non-metallic element, one of the most common elements in the universe.
"Abortion - Hitler Would Have Loved It" - Just absurd. Is this invocation of Hitler supposed to make me hate abortion because "Hitler" is a shorthand for horrible, hateful social policies that no sane person would support? If so, then this slogan fails. To a sensible person, that Hitler liked abortion, or dogs, or German beer is completely irrelevant.
"Hitler was a vegetarian. Do you want to be like Hitler?" Now I'm just fooling around.

So, in conclusion, exercise extreme care in using shorthand to get your point across. A related tip would be to check the conclusions that might be drawn from using shorthand in headlines, taglines, subheadings, slogans or the body of an article. Take a second look at the above examples and see what you get out of them, and I hope you will that writing about "carbon pollution" should be done with caution.

Thinking About Guns Like a Sociologist

Yes, that might be my dumbest title ever, but it does reflect my change in focus. The place I was blogging for, Film Annex, decided to take a break from blogging for a time, so no more posts about education and social change in Afghanistan. For now. On to gun control.

The next few posts will introduce some tools that activists can use to make their efforts to persuade and inform a bit more effective. In my blog Building Better Nonprofits, I sometimes describe brainstorming tools.

Gun control is still in the news. There are dedicated activists on both sides of the issue, with the Brady Center and the National Rifle Association (NRA) being the big players. Well, the mainstream media outlets tend to come down on the anti-gun side of the debate, if you believe the more paranoid opponents of gun control. Whether there is something to that claim is a matter for sociological investigation - Are media stories systematically biased for or against gun control and how would you know?

Statistics on gun control get bandied about quite a bit. This post will not repeat any of those statistics, but future posts will. This post just offers a few general observations about how to use sociological thinking when confronted with statistics on gun violence, gun control, and related matters.

States with concealed carry laws tend to have lower violent crime rates than states that do not require concealed carry. Is this true? The statistics I promised not to use will not reveal the answer really. Here is why? We are only looking at an association between two things - whether you are legally allowed to carry a concealed firearm in the state and the rate of violent crime. Other factors need to be considered before any real conclusions can be drawn. Do you know what I'm thinking of? Consider the possibilities for a moment before reading on.

So, here are some other factors that could affect the "relationship" I noted above:

1. There is not much you can really learn from a snapshot of the data. Was crime going down or up over a number of years, and in what states? When did THOSE states pass laws allowing concealed carry.

2. What is the poverty rate? Poverty is often associated with crime and other socially undesirable behaviors.

3. What percentage of the population is between, oh, 16 and 35, and male? I think that is the most crime-prone segment of the population.

4. Has the 16-34 male population been increasing or decreasing?

5. And this should be obvious - How many people are actually carrying? The rate, say 1 per 148 people, is even more important but I know most people don't jump right to thinking of rates and percentages.

6. What is the overall rate of gun ownership? Has it been going up or down? Those two questions probably crossed your mind as well.

Just as an aside, gun ownership is growing and violent crime in the United States has plummeted over the past 20 years. Is there a connection there? After reading this post I hope you aren't too quick to offer an answer.

Gun-related statistics can be used to say just about anything. Right? More on that topic next time...complete with numbers this time!

Adult Education in Afghanistan: A Social Change Opportunity

This is probably going to be my last entry on education in Afghanistan that targets adults in general. My next few posts will focus on education initiatives focused on women. Last time I described the thousands of adult education centers and some of the specific adult education programs that serve Afghans. This post is about the practical benefits for citizens, local businesses, and foreign businesses.

Education for adults should yield many practical benefits over the next few years. Higher education is a special case of that of course. If the university graduates don’t find enough jobs available, there better be resources available for them to create their own businesses or nonprofits. Otherwise, there is a huge waste of human resources going on.

(It would be interesting to read evaluation reports that describe the impacts of those adult education programs. I don't know of any publicly available evaluations.)

What about adults who are not university students? How can programs for them contribute to faster development in Afghanistan? Consider these benefits:

1. Better business management/decision making – Being able to read market reports and similar information helps. Business math helps you understand how much you are spending relative to how much you are making. It helps identify whether investments make sense based on the potential future returns.

2. New job opportunities – Many jobs are going to be closed to illiterate people. Many jobs are going to be closed to people who lack some fundamental business and tech skills.

3. Improvement in government – Literacy and numeracy contribute to understanding the issues and the arguments put forth by candidates. Adults are able to better digest information for themselves. I fear that lots of information gets filtered through mullahs, imams, and village elders who may be either hopelessly biased or just not too reliable.

Maybe social media and the Internet can help advertisers, both businesses and nonprofits, communicate more effectively to a literate population. Promoting behavior changes, or simply presenting an advertising message are two things that work online. Even if there is no Internet communication involved, literate people are going to be easier to reach and persuade with a marketing message.

Naturally, Afghanistan will benefit if there are more gainfully employed people and more small businesses generating taxable revenues. So, what are the best ways to pay for the educational efforts that will produce that taxable revenue in the future? Aside from grants and foreign (government) investment, there are several possibilities.

Perhaps adult education could be supported by selling information about the learners. Aside from the obvious demographic data like gender and age and occupation, it might be valuable to know about the person’s tastes or aspirations. The information on a given city or province could be aggregated to help businesses, nonprofits, and governments answer various questions: Is there a viable market for smart phones in Herat?

Collecting market information might not be viable as a way to fund a startup, but maybe after the education business gets started there would be enough useful information to sell. As a start-up, it would be necessary to have some revenue coming in at first, from channels that are known to work. That truth does suggest some creative questions:

• Could advertising be put on the PCs in the training center?
• Could a reputable area business sponsor printing of some learning materials, in exchange for being able to put a small advertisement in the back? This works in the West, so why not in Afghanistan?

Likewise, Internet-based adult education offers opportunities to learn more about people in Afghanistan. What are different types of business owners buying or talking about buying? What needs are currently unmet? This information can be gathered now, but might be highly biased by the few adults who have reliable access to the Internet, most likely through their university or a local Internet café.

To learn more about education and economic development in Afghanistan, check out my Web channel for other blog posts and videos.

Adult Education and Development in Afghanistan

(In case the following is a bit confusing...allow me to explain. The bulk of these posts on Afghanistan will deal with development and education in Afghanistan. Those are sociological subjects of study, of course, and education and development projects offer opportunities to promote social change.

Increasing educational opportunities for women in Afghanistan is one obvious example of promoting social change. Sociological work relevant to social movements, economic life, institutions, and the diffusion of innovations and just some basic thinking from a sociological perspective will be useful. More details in future posts

- End of sidebar)

Last time I wrote about adult education and opportunities in Afghanistan in a broad way. This time I want to say a few things about what’s being done today to educate Afghanistan’s adults, with some reference to women in particular. The point is to indicate where opportunities might exist for enterprising non-profits, and businesses of course.

There are a number of players in the adult literacy field in Afghanistan. The Afghan Ministry of Education is one of them. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) either has run or is running a number of adult literacy programs, including the following:

1. Business development services

2. Training and materials for women who want to work at home

3. Training for farmers on how to improve quality and productivity

4. Teacher training

5. Education in how to grow different crops

Adult literacy centers have been popping up all across the country. There are now centers in 20 provinces. The number of learning centers has grown from 1,100 a few years ago to over 6,800 today.  

Now, that list of USAID programs offers some ideas of where to look for opportunities. What areas are not well served by organization’s offering farmer training or business development services? Are there opportunities in those locations for Afghan entrepreneurs or even for foreign corporations? I think most of rural Afghanistan is still too dangerous for most foreign investors’ tastes. However, the provincial capitals should still offer legitimate opportunities.

The current state of adult education in Afghanistan raises some marketing questions. How many adults are not within 10 miles of one of those adult literacy centers? How many teachers, would-be teachers, and entrepreneurial farmers are waiting for training? How could that training be best delivered to them? Would a business or a small and nimble NGO be able to fill in one of those gaps in at least one location? Yes of course.

The means of delivering adult education as a business or as a social venture can be changed too. Having a physical classroom is obviously going to be required in many cases. The nation’s infrastructure simply will not support online learning nationwide. However, in areas with Internet connections and reliable electricity supplies, online learning options exist. Training for a teaching certificate could be done online. Information and lessons relevant to public health and entrepreneurship could be distributed online.

Mobile applications may have some educational value, though I don’t think there are many smart phones in Afghanistan yet. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe market penetration is enough in certain segments of the population for mobile apps to have some value anyway.

To learn more about education and economic development in Afghanistan, check out my Web channel for other blog posts and videos.

 

 

 

Education in Afghanistan

This is to be the first of a series of essays on education, economic development, and women's issues in Afghanistan.

Let's start by diving into some statistics on education and the economy in Afghanistan. These numbers will give some sense of how far the country needs to go to become prosperous.

The literacy rate in Afghanistan is about 28% (12% for women).

The unemployment rate was 35% in 2009 and the poverty rate was 36%, according to the World Factbook.

In 2011, there were an estimated 8.2 million students in a country with a population of 26 million.

From 2005 to 2012 the attendance rate at primary school was about 66% for boys and 44% for girls. Secondary school attendance was an even lower 18% for boys and 6% for girls.

I guess the sociologist in me insisted that those statistics be put out there, to offer some context for discussions of what's being done to improve the economic prospects for Afghanistan's citizens. Those school attendance rates and literacy rates suggest just how big the challenge really is.

While school attendance has climbed, dramatically so for girls, literacy and general education in Afghanistan are still far behind where they need to be for the country to prosper. In particular, literacy and some basic skills like arithmetic and computer literacy are keys to individual prosperity and for economic progress. Computer skills, basic math skills, and literacy are no longer optional for anyone wishing to make his or her way in the world.

Those truths are quite clear to decision makers in the Afghan government in international NGOs, and in businesses like Film Annex. The private not-for-profit American University opened a campus in Kabul in 2009. UNICEF and USAID are actively building or rebuilding schools and community centers.

Businesses are using social media, advertising, and computers to set up schools and computer labs. More detail on how these programs are working will be coming in future posts. I'll also talk about Film Annex efforts to use business thinking to promote education and economic development in Afghanistan.

I've worked on anti-poverty activism before, so I will try to bring some of what I learned to this series of posts. My background in sociology will come through in the posts, though not in a pedantic way. I hope.

Adult Education and Economic Development in Afghanistan

Adult Education in Afghanistan:

Education in Afghanistan involves more than building schools and getting kids to go to them. There is also a need to educate the majority of adults who cannot read and write. Economic development requires that more adults learn to read and write, in addition to mastering some other basic skills like business math and critical thinking.

In the last post I mentioned that adult education offers opportunities for entrepreneurs in the country and businesses located outside the country too. As with any business enterprise you have to understand the social environment where you will be operating.

A little market research will reveal the scale of government and nonprofit efforts to provide adult literacy classes. The need for a business to fill in the gaps only becomes clear when you know where the gaps are.

Government agencies, nonprofits, and the United Nations have poured resources plenty of resources poured into the adult education over the past few years. Here are some examples of adult education efforts sponsored by governments or NGOs:

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) runs two programs that provide literacy classes and some basic skills training throughout Afghanistan. Literacy Initiative for Empowerment and the Programme for Enhancement of Literacy in Afghanistan in partnership with 30 other organizations, according to their Web site.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provides adult education as a means to help people find alternatives to growing opium poppies. An idea: Where else in Afghanistan does an adult education program need to be designed to help the locals prepare for alternative work?

UN Habitat operates an adult education program called Learning for Community Empowerment in 20 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

The nonprofit Helvetas Afghanistan operate adult literacy programs in 4 provinces.

Together those programs seem to cover most of the country, but not all needed services are available in all parts of the country.

Do poor adults in towns outside the most important provinces have access to classes on reading, writing, and basic math education?

How many of those adults also have access to training that can provide them with marketable skills.

Are there programs that can reach women in rural areas who may live beyond the reach of mobile phone services and roads? Is there a business model for reaching them?

Naturally, there should be opportunities to make money by offering adult education classes. Foreign investors could use data from computer labs to develop profiles of the local markets. The collection, analysis, and packaging of that information could be a legitimate business opportunity too.

Education and Development in Afghanistan

This post might, or might not, be the first of a series on economic development in Afghanistan seen as an education challenge and a source of opportunity for education entrepreneurs. There are opportunities to earn a living by providing training, information, and education to Afghans if one looks hard enough. I'll also say more about that in future posts.

Literacy rates in Afghanistan remain low in general, with women generally and men in rural areas having lower literacy rates.Yet, literacy is essential for a citizen of a modern state, and a high literacy rate is a necessity for prosperity. Workers need to be able to read and write for so many obvious reasons, that I won't bother to list them here. The school construction/reconstruction boom in Afghanistan is a promising development.

Education in Afghanistan is a barrier to economic development but is becoming less so. In 2012, there were 8.2 million students in Afghanistan, a country about a little over 26 million people, according to the country's Ministry of Education.

In 2012, there are 4000 schools under construction. School enrollment is lower for females and tends to be lower in rural areas. Still, about 40% of school children don't have classrooms.

The nation's low per capita income, and low GDP, can increase regardless of literacy rates, but clearly improvements in literacy will help the individuals and the country. Educated voters will tend to make better decisions. Literate voters will find it much easier to get reliable information on the nation's political and economic challenges, and it would be easier to learn about the candidates. That fully literate workers and entrepreneurs are better equipped for success is so obvious that no real explanation is needed. Educated citizens will be able to produce more and earn more.

Most discussion of education in Afghanistan focuses on children, or girls in particular. This might lead one to ignore the value of adult education in a country where most of the adult population is illiterate. Basic education in reading, writing, and math will equip adults to perform better on the job and to make better decisions when they can vote.

Should adult literacy education get more attention in Afghanistan's economic development planning? What is being done now? More on those two questions in the next couple of posts. My work schedule demands that I sign off at this point.

A Change of Direction

Well, I do have lots of work to do now. Sociology for social activism is not supposed to be a dry and academic topic. With that in mind I want to take the blog in a new, more practical direction. I recently started blogging for an organization called Film Annex. They are using social media to support economic development and education in Afghanistan. The model takes a bit of explaining, so I will just ask you to go and check their Web site for the details. I am blogging there on education and economic development in Afghanistan. The body of this post is my first blog entry for their site.

What do you think?

The nation of Afghanistan is coming out of a long period of conflict and oppression that began with the Taliban takeover of the country after the Soviet Union withdrew.  An ongoing insurgency just adds to the problems of promoting education and economic development.

The country’s efforts to build a stable economy and society continue, with much help from outside businesses, governments, nonprofits, and the United Nations of course. This post and several more focus on the use of business to promote economic development and education in Afghanistan.

First, I feel compelled to offer a few statistics that illustrate the state of the country today. These statistics will give a better sense of how far Afghanistan can go, and some of them will be referenced again and again in this blog.

Literacy Rate = 13% (among women; higher among men)

Unemployment Rate = 35% in 2009

Poverty Rate = 36% in 2009

Population = about 30,400,000 in 2012, give or take a few hundred thousand

Mobile Phones = 5.4 million in 2008

Trends are important to understand, so I will revisit these stats in future posts, to provide a sense of where the country is going, for better or worse.

The country does have many schools, including some colleges and universities. The American University of Afghanistan is the newest.  Building schools with modern facilities should be an ongoing priority. That’s probably a suggestion any development expert would agree with regarding development in any poor country.  The exact model to use for these schools might not be the same everywhere, but the same issue of funding these schools remains.

Advertising and marketing work in business by generating revenue that can pay the bills and fund future expansion. Various business tactics could be used to fund education in Afghanistan as well. Advertising presented to patrons of internet cafes, to people in university computer labs, or to mobile phone users could generate revenue to fund school construction, school reconstruction, and other economic development initiatives.

Economic development assistance and aid for education are coming from the United Nations and from some western NGOs. Businesses are trying various models to promote economic development and create education opportunities. The Film Annex is funding an Afghanistan Development Initiative that has a long-term goal of providing Web-connected classrooms for 160,000.

Future posts will have more information on that effort, and other projects aimed at using business and social media to provide the funds for schools, businesses, and innovation inside Afghanistan.

Knowing What Works

Most of the issues we face today have come up before, and maybe never went away. Gun violence is hardly a recent thing. Bullying and teen pregnancy are not new. Problems do seem to ebb and flow in seriousness and/or in the amount of media attention they get.

This post is a modest proposal that we figure out what works and doesn't work to address a specific problem. Want to do something about rising teen pregnancy? Find out what other communities have done? Want to know if a certain policy idea is a good idea? Look at what has been tried before.

This is where a good literature review of a subject has to be done. What programs have been tried in what situations, and what were the results? Once the range of effective options, if there's more than one, becomes apparent we can choose what to do with more knowledge. Values can come into play here. This program would work, but is it a good fit for our values? What you want to avoid doing at all costs is pushing an idea that will probably fail but is consistent with local values.

Is teen pregnancy a concern at the moment? Abstinence-only sex education is the answer. Teens are too young to have sex anyway. The Bible says that sex outside of marriage is a sin. This sort of thinking leads to implementing programs that will not work and cost money. Time and money that can be dedicated to something useful are wasted because of opinion (teens are too young to have sex) and ideology (Christian values drive policy decisions).