“Three, two, one … Go ahead. O.K.” My name is Eva Schloss. Would you like to ask me some questions about my life? “Why don’t you ask me a question about Auschwitz?” Why don’t you ask me a question about Auschwitz? Everybody said, Never again, Auschwitz. We have learned our lesson.” But it looked bad again in the world. The hatred, discrimination. So I thought it really necessary to teach and to speak about it. “My name is Pinchas Gutter. I will answer any questions you might have for me.” “How old were you when the war ended?” “I was between the ages of 13 and 14 when the war ended in 1945.” But he doesn’t move much, really. And that’s his choice. But it’s very Jewish to talk with your hands. Yes, it is. And you should feel comfortable to do. And you can. Exactly. Yeah. It’s going to be somewhat normal in a hundred years’ time to have a person sitting in this position. And it won’t seem as unnatural. When you start to get into the questions and you start to get into the dialog, you kind of lose sight of the fact that the person’s not actually there. Gosh. My goodness. This is Andrew. Yes. Hi, Andrew. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Lisa. This is Lisa, her granddaughter. Right now, there’s about a hundred cameras on the stage. So we’re recording everything in all directions. The idea behind the green is that we can then take out the green and replace it with any other environment that you’re going to be talking in the future. So this could be a classroom. It could be a museum. We could put those backdrops behind you. In the beginning, I didn’t know really how to speak. You know, I’m saying you have to learn. Eventually, I found my own voice. O.K., here we go. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? I’m feeling very well A little nervous. O.K. When did you first start telling your story? Since 1986, I started to speak for the first time. And I haven’t really stopped since. “Today is October the 9th, 1996. The survivor being interviewed is Eva Schloss. Maiden name Geiringer.” I realized suddenly that people are interested and people do want to know about it. And this was really, a big turning point in my life. This is a repeat after me. “My name is Eva Schloss, and I’m a Holocaust survivor.” My name is Eva Schloss. I’m a Holocaust survivor. “I’m actually a recording, so I can’t answer that question.” I’m actually a recording. I can’t answer that question. “I don’t remember.” I don’t remember. “Maybe you should try to reboot.” Maybe you should try to — Reboot. Rebook? Reboot. Reboo— O.K., never mind. Too technical for me. I don’t quite imagine how people will feel about that, to pretend it is somebody really speaking to them who lived in that time 30 or 50 years ago. How did it feel to wear the yellow star, Eva? I was quite a stubborn child, and I didn’t want to wear the yellow star. I didn’t see why that was necessary. And I had a big fight with my mother. I didn’t want to, but my mother explained to me very, very carefully and thoroughly why it was dangerous not to wear it. Can I just tell you, these answers are great. They’re just the right length with the right amount of details. Wonderful. Thank you. What happened when you arrived at Auschwitz? Men and women were separated. So people clinged to each other, cried. And really, really horrible. And they guards came and beat us apart. And my father took me by the hand and said, Eva, dear, God will protect you. I often think of actors who do every day the same story. I vary it because if I would do the same thing all the time, then I might get fed up with it. Have you come up with a name for the contraption that you’re in yet? Cage. The cage? O.K. Big cage. So describe to us as the most emotional situation that you had to face while you were in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I think the biggest shock I experienced was when I saw my naked mother walking out of this barrack, knowing that she was going to be gassed. I think that was the hardest moment I experienced. And was she? She was saved, and we were reunited. And she lived for a long, long time till 93 years old. I’d always seen it in front of my eyes. So I lived with it, really. You know? I saw the inside of the cattle truck where we were moved. I saw the arrival in Auschwitz. I saw everything. At night especially, when I was not busy. You know, all those images came back till I started to speak about it. Then, I could let go. O.K., this is over here. Right here. These are the gas chambers over here in this area. And these are the forests around here. Yeah. The pond where you would have gone to get water is all around this area here. How does it make you feel looking at that? Very confused because when you were inside, you had no idea — Of how big it was around it, yeah. And where, and what, and how things were connected to it. Yeah, exactly. And even when I was there now, I was completely disoriented. There’s not a day goes by when I am not thinking about them in one way or another. I wasn’t coping at all after the war. And it was Otto Frank who came very often to our house who saw how I was suffering, and he really helped me a lot. I don’t think I ever replaced Anna for him. I personally had the feeling very often, but that he never, ever made me really, really think that. But I just felt, that when he looked at me, I always thought, is he thinking, why did this child survive and why not my own daughter? Do you remember how you felt about Anne after you read the diary? I must say, I wasn’t particularly interested in it at first. Why not? I was much too busy to cope with my own grief. Anna frank says in her diary when she dies, she would like to live on. Meaning she wants to become immortal. And she has succeeded.” How did your daughters cope with having two parents who both experienced trauma? As soon as they were teenagers and older, and started to know more about our history, I think they had difficulties to cope with it. To accept it. She told us anecdotes and stories, but it was almost like it was someone else’s experiences, not her own. There was a certain time where she didn’t want to talk about it and was protecting us. Our whole generation has been uprooted. And as a result of the experiences through which all of us have gone, we have some psychological problems. All of us, of one kind or another. And our anchor to the future is our children and grandchildren, which hopefully we’ll find back into normality. Great day. Great day. You’re going to miss us, though. Say I miss it?” Yeah, you’re going to miss it. I’m not so sure. That’s a wrap. [applause] Woo! Bravo! Bravo! [interposing voices] So, back to normality. Normality. Although, you still picked to wear gray silver. Yeah. I can’t go right into a color after all this. Yeah. You need to ease yourself back to color? See you. Say goodbye to the studio. You didn’t say goodbye to the cage. No. Here we go. Usually, twice a week, I go out speaking. I said to my daughters, who think I don’t have to do all this, I need it for my sanity. Too hot? Uh-uh. I got over it, the suffering. The only thing what I still don’t get over really, and I don’t think I ever will, is the loss. This project will almost immortalize her, so that she can go on telling the story once she’s no longer with us. But it is still a story, really. It’s what it is. Unless you live through it, you can’t fully identify. I hope you don’t forget what you’ve heard here today. Goodbye.
Annotated by the Author: ‘The Cultural Canon Is Better Than Ever’
It also forced people to discover — or rediscover — Julie Dash’s film “Daughters of the Dust,” just in time for its 25th anniversary. A sweeping, nonlinear meditation on the Great Migration as seen through three generations of Gullah women, “Daughters” became the first feature film directed by a black woman to have a wide theatrical release in the United States. Many were quick to observe the striking visual similarities between Beyoncé’s opus and its critically acclaimed predecessor, and Ms. Dash herself would go on to describe being “enthralled” the first time she viewed “Lemonade.”
Part of my research in preparation for writing this piece involved reacquainting myself intimately with many of the tenets and critiques of artistic canons by the old guard, which I hadn’t really done since I was in undergrad. I came across the filmmaker Paul Schrader’s own musings on the film canon in a 2006 Film Comment essay, in which he builds on the thoughts of T.S. Eliot and Harold Bloom and declares, “The greatness of a film or filmmaker must be judged not only on its own terms but by its place in the evolution of film.” (I use this quote directly later in the piece.) This leapt out to me, and helped explain part of what makes “Lemonade” so great: It’s inspiration from “Daughters of the Dust.”
Yet unlike “Lemonade,” Ms. Dash’s film was not widely seen at the time of its release. For years it was difficult to track down, available only on DVD in an out-of-print edition. Almost 30 years later, “Daughters of the Dust” remains Ms. Dash’s only narrative feature to date, thanks to an industry that has long overlooked black women.
Which of these works deserves to be considered part of the “canon,” that divisive, elusive — and, traditionally, elitist — list of ostensibly foundational, exemplary art works? Well, both of them.
Initially, the structure of the entire introduction was slightly different. The original version of these couple of paragraphs in particular was less succinct, and included this: “If there exists a pop culture canon, or canons, for the 2010s, “Lemonade” is in it. How do you talk about the ongoing evolution of the music video and the autobiographical album without holding up “Lemonade” as an exemplar of both forms?”
My editor rightly slimmed down and refocused the points I was trying to make here.
In the past 10 years, the canon has been democratized. We’ve been able to observe this happening in real time: More mass art and culture has been created than perhaps in any other period, and by a greater diversity of artists. The rise of YouTube made it relatively easy for anyone with a small budget and a vision to make their own shows. (This helped Issa Rae transform from “Awkward Black Girl” to “Insecure” on HBO.) Netflix caught the ball and ran with it, venturing into original programming, eventually at warp speed; now Amazon, Hulu and other streaming platforms have followed suit. SoundCloud birthed an entire generation of rap stars.
Simultaneously, a wider range of critics and consumers are contributing to the conversation around these works than ever before, particularly through social media and digital publications. No longer do we have to take the word of the gatekeepers as a given.
In my first draft, it took me a bit longer to get to this point, but my editor suggested it would make more sense to briefly lay out the reason for this shift in the canon — the forces at work.
For centuries, the cultivating and maintenance of artistic canons — in literature, fine arts, even pop music — has been the province almost exclusively of white men. There was the 16th-century artist Giorgio Vasari and his collection of Italian biographies, “The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects.” The English writer Joseph Addison, who in 1694 published “An Account of the Greatest English Poets.” The editors of the respected French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, who began putting out an annual best-of list in 1951. And Harold Bloom, the Yale professor and literary critic who died in October, who became one of the most prominent modern-day defenders of a Western canon that at its most permissive was allowed to include the likes of Emily Dickinson.
The cultural canon has typically included people and works that can be summed up as the usual suspects: Molière, Shakespeare, the “Mona Lisa,” the Beatles, “Citizen Kane.” It has also been rightly challenged by the likes of Toni Morrison and Barbara Herrnstein Smith for its Western, white and male biases and for dismissing the voices of women and people of color.
The framing of this section came as a suggestion from my editor, who wrote to me via email that I should follow the following arc (note that TK, in journalism-speak, means “to come”): “Here’s what the canon has historically been — a pantheon of white men from Beethoven to Roman Polanski. [Then work in some of the more definitional stuff here.] It’s been rightly critiqued for being conservative, because who wants to be told by gatekeepers that they have to appreciate TK TK in order to make art.”
Calls for a more inclusive canon were not well received by Mr. Bloom and others. In 1994, the literary scholar Peter Shaw tore apart the idea in his article “The Assault on the Canon”: When you remove a Shakespeare play from a class syllabus to make room for, say, Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” he wrote, it presents “the specific issue of which of two works is superior.”
“Canon assaulters are reluctant to engage in such a confrontation for obvious reasons,” he added. Yet in the same essay, Mr. Shaw acknowledged that the canon is “regarded as imperfect at any particular point in time” and “in need of constant reform” and “revision.”
It was kind of wild, if unsurprising, to see how perfectly Mr. Shaw’s essay maps onto the many critiques that have been made against “woke” politics in the present, including of #OscarsSoWhite. He opens it with the rather dismissive sentence, “The debate over whether the classics of Western literature deserve their canonical status is a political rather than intellectual phenomenon.”
“Lemonade” and “Daughters of the Dust” were affirmed and reaffirmed as required viewing. Beyoncé’s film made its way onto college syllabuses, and “Daughters of the Dust” was restored, given a theatrical rerelease and finally became widely accessible to audiences once it landed on Netflix in 2017.
It’s hard to prove concretely, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that the arrival of “Daughters of the Dust” on Netflix is very much linked to the renewed interest brought on by “Lemonade.”
What Students Are Saying About the Coronavirus
I am not concerned about the coronavirus for myself, but rather for those who live in developing nations. The United States has enough medical facilities and resources to deal with a crisis like this, but a country in sub-Saharan Africa, where there have been cases reported, could be dealt a death blow if a large infection begins. Just like in Wuhan, where they were woefully unprepared for an outbreak of such a scale, many third world countries could face serious peril if the disease gets a foothold.
— Cooper Hyldahl, Wilmington, NC
Facing stigma
For me, I am not really concerned with the coronavirus. This is because my family believes that the spread of the virus is under control. There haven’t been any new cases of the virus in Vietnam. Since I’m Chinese when I go outside to play with my friends. I do feel a bit judged by strangers. People would say that it was our fault as Chinese that the coronavirus has spread. People would also expect an apology from us. I feel like people are definitely getting false information about coronavirus, thus making them think the way they do as to the coronavirus.
— Dan, Saigon South Int. School, HCMC, Vietnam
We don’t know enough yet.
We won’t know the real death rate of this virus until we get real data. The infection rate is likely much much higher then is currently being reported. For most infected people it’s probably such a mild cold that it doesn’t even raise any red flags. My biggest fear about this virus is that the panic and reaction to it are being WAY overblown. What if we find it’s less deadly then the seasonal flu? What if we find that it’s no more dangerous then any other respiratory virus that circulates every season? It sure seems to be heading in that direction — and here we are impacting the Global economy, talking about closing schools, altering travel plans, dealing with quarantines and for what?? Something that turns out to be no more deadly then the common cold? We really need to calm down, take a breath and look at this realistically.
I am definitely worried about the outbreak of the coronavirus. News recently broke of a third case in Illinois, in a town just around 30 minutes from where I live. I think people definitely need to have concerns for the disease, but I also think people need to educate themselves on how it spreads and the effects after contracting the disease. I am traveling next week, and seeing that the corona has such a rapid spread — especially in places such as airports — I have already comprehended the precautions I need to be taking in order to stay healthy. I think that because of social media more people are hearing about the virus, and people are taking what they hear and spreading false accusations, without really learning about what it can do to a person. I am at fault, I know that I need to educate myself more, and try to make sense of what is going on around the world.
— Zoe Margaret, Glenbard West, Glen Ellyn IL
I personally feel like I have not gathered enough information to identify how concerned I should be about the Coronavirus. Sadly, I have to admit that the majority of the information I knew first came from other people and not the news. Only one of my teachers has directly addressed the virus briefly, but plenty of my fellow classmates have extensively discussed it. We’ve debated the implications of a potential outbreak in our area, whether the sudden outbreak is being “overdramatized” for various purposes, the effects on the global economy, and various facts about the nature of the virus. I have heard a wide range of supposed “facts” about the Coronavirus that sometimes completely contradict each other coming from my peers.
— Olivia (4B), Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC
My school provided students with a virtual school within a day of the announcement. Virtual school is our school’s way of minimizing the learning gaps, and it is going great so far. Other schools that did not provide virtual schools opted for another solution like making students go to school during the summer break as compensation for the classes students missed. Matters got so terrible that my parents even stated that even if the government allows students to go back to school again, they wouldn’t allow me to go to school because of the virus.
These are all because we are not correctly informed about the virus. We received a mix between the truth and lies from exaggerated sources. For example, one source stated that the virus can kill someone within 2 weeks. This is true however this only really applies to old and infants who have inadequate immune systems. Hopefully, Vietnamese people would receive the information that there is nothing to worry and things should get back to normal.
— Phuoc, Saigon South Int. School, HCMC, Vietnam
I think that social media has blown it out of proportion in the United States. However, in other countries, social media is the way to get out information about how to protect yourself from it, especially in higher-level countries that have the virus. I do agree that much of the attention it has on social media are memes and jokes. It should be informational and accurate because if it is not then it only causes more hysteria. There needs to be accurate information being put out, so that everyone can be educated and well-prepared with the necessary precautions.
Live Webinar: Strengthen Literacy Skills With Picture Prompts
Register for the live webinar on April 1, 2020 at 4 p.m. Eastern time.
Think The New York Times is only for readers at a high-school reading level? Think again.
Besides written articles, The Times also offers a rich collection of visuals — photos, illustrations, graphics, GIFs and short videos — that are accessible to learners of all levels. Since 2016, we’ve been featuring these images in our daily Picture Prompts: short, image-driven posts that invite a variety of kinds of student writing.
Teachers tell us they use these prompts in all kinds of ways. Some use them to encourage students to develop a daily writing habit. Others as an exercise to practice inferences, spark discussion or support reading. One elementary school music teacher told us how her class used the visuals as inspiration for writing short stories accompanied by music.
In this webinar, we’ll discuss a variety of ways to use our Picture Prompts to:
Register now to join our LIVE webinar on April 1 at 4 p.m. Eastern time or to receive a link to stream the recorded webinar on-demand.
Word + Quiz: bivouac
bivouac ˈbi-və-ˌwak , ˈbiv-ˌwak noun and verb
noun: temporary living quarters built by the army for soldiers
noun: a site where people can pitch a tent
verb: live in or as if in a tent
_________
The word bivouac has appeared in six articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on April 11 in “A Dog Named Cactus Is Dominating a Race Through the Desert” by Jeré Longman:
A dog nicknamed Cactus suddenly appeared on Monday during the Marathon des Sables, a 140.7-mile stage race made harder by the heat, wind, sand dunes, rocks, stony plateaus and dry valleys of the Sahara in southern Morocco, the rough equivalent of running 23.5 miles a day for six days.
…. A standard marathon-length stage of 26.2 miles is scheduled for Friday, followed by a concluding 3.8-mile stage for charity on Saturday. On Thursday, a race spokesman said that Hadfield planned to retrieve Cactus on Saturday at the finish line.
Until then, if he remains in the race, Cactus will sleep wherever he wants at the roving bivouac where runners, organizers, support crews and journalists camp nightly in tents. He is being given water at checkpoints on the course and food by runners and officials at various places, including the campsite. The medical crew said he appeared generally healthy.
_________
Do You Think Online Conspiracy Theories Can Be Dangerous?
Find all our Student Opinion questions here.
Do you believe in any conspiracy theories? Have you seen conspiracy theories featured in videos, memes, podcasts or talk shows? How do you know when to quickly dismiss a theory as unfounded or absurd — and when to consider if there’s any truth behind it?
Jack Nicas writes about one place on the internet where conspiracy theories have racked up millions of views: YouTube. Perhaps you’ve seen some of these videos. In “Can YouTube Quiet Its Conspiracy Theorists?” Mr. Nicas reports on YouTube’s efforts to minimize the spread of conspiracy theories on its site:
For years it has been a highly effective megaphone for conspiracy theorists, and YouTube, owned and run by Google, has admitted as much. In January 2019, YouTube said it would limit the spread of videos “that could misinform users in harmful ways.”
One year later, YouTube recommends conspiracy theories far less than before. But its progress has been uneven and it continues to advance certain types of fabrications, according to a new study from researchers at University of California, Berkeley.
YouTube’s efforts to curb conspiracy theories pose a major test of Silicon Valley’s ability to combat misinformation, particularly ahead of this year’s elections. The study, which examined eight million recommendations over 15 months, provides one of the clearest pictures yet of that fight, and the mixed findings show how challenging the issue remains for tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter.
The researchers found that YouTube has nearly eradicated some conspiracy theories from its recommendations, including claims that the earth is flat and that the U.S. government carried out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, two falsehoods the company identified as targets last year. In June, YouTube said the amount of time people spent watching such videos from its recommendations had dropped by 50 percent.
Yet the Berkeley researchers found that just after YouTube announced that success, its recommendations of conspiracy theories jumped back up and then fluctuated over the next several months.
The data also showed that other falsehoods continued to flourish in YouTube’s recommendations, like claims that aliens created the pyramids, that the government is hiding secret technologies and that climate change is a lie.
The researchers argue those findings suggest that YouTube has decided which types of misinformation it wants to root out and which types it is willing to allow. “It is a technological problem, but it is really at the end of the day also a policy problem,” said Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of the study.
The article continues:
Farshad Shadloo, a YouTube spokesman, said the company’s recommendations aimed to steer people toward authoritative videos that leave them satisfied. He said the company was continually improving the algorithm that generates the recommendations. “Over the past year alone, we’ve launched over 30 different changes to reduce recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation, including climate change misinformation and other types of conspiracy videos,” he said. “Thanks to this change, watchtime this type of content gets from recommendations has dropped by over 70 percent in the U.S.”
YouTube’s powerful recommendation algorithm, which pushes its two billion monthly users to videos it thinks they will watch, has fueled the platform’s ascent to become the new TV for many across the world. The company has said its recommendations drive over 70 percent of the more than one billion hours people spend watching videos each day, making the software that picks the recommendations among the world’s most influential algorithms.
YouTube’s success has come with a dark side. Research has shown that the site’s recommendations have systematically amplified divisive, sensationalist and clearly false videos. Other algorithms meant to capture people’s attention in order to show them more ads, like Facebook’s newsfeed, have had the same problem.
The stakes are high. YouTube faces an onslaught of misinformation and unsavory content uploaded daily. The F.B.I. recently identified the spread of fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terror threat.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
Do you watch a lot of YouTube videos? Have you ever watched videos that discuss conspiracy theories? Do you believe any of these videos? How do you know if something on YouTube, or another social media platform, is rooted in fact or is simply fabricated?
How concerned are you about people believing conspiracy theories? Is it something that you, your family or friends take seriously? Do you think conspiracy theories are just fun and interesting, or do you think they can present serious consequences? Are they ever dangerous?
Why do you think conspiracy theories have become so popular on sites like YouTube?
The article states, “The company has said its recommendations drive over 70 percent of the more than one billion hours people spend watching videos each day, making the software that picks the recommendations among the world’s most influential algorithms.” Have you ever watched a video recommended by YouTube? In your experience, how important are these recommendations in driving traffic to videos? What responsibility does YouTube have, if any, to make sure these recommended videos meet a standard for truth? Or, is it only the responsibility of viewers to verify the accuracy of claims?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
Lesson of the Day: ‘After 18 Years, Is This Afghan Peace, or Just a Way Out?’
Find all our Lessons of the Day here.
Lesson Overview
Featured Article: “After 18 Years, Is This Afghan Peace, or Just a Way Out?” by David E. Sanger
After more than a year of talks, Taliban and American negotiators struck a deal on Feb. 29 to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, laying out the beginning of the end of the United States’ longest war.
In this lesson, you’ll learn how Afghanistan has gone from being considered the “good war” to a longstanding burden that the Trump administration now seeks to unload. Then you’ll view New York Times photos and read firsthand accounts from Afghan civilians to better understand the effects this decision could have.
If you need a refresher on the war in Afghanistan, you might read this short explainer or check out our related lesson plan before starting this lesson.
Warm Up
A recent Times article reports on details of the accord between the Taliban and the United States:
The agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, which followed more than a year of stop-and-start negotiations and conspicuously excluded the American-backed Afghanistan government, is not a final peace deal, is filled with ambiguity, and could still unravel.
But it is seen as a step toward negotiating a more sweeping agreement that some hope could eventually end the insurgency of the Taliban, the militant movement that once ruled Afghanistan under a severe Islamic code.
The war cost $2 trillion and took the lives of more than 3,500 American and coalition troops and tens of thousands of Afghans since the U.S. invasion in aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, which were plotted by Al Qaeda leaders under the protection of the Taliban.
The withdrawal of American troops — about 12,000 are still in Afghanistan — is dependent on the Taliban’s fulfillment of major commitments that have been obstacles for years, including its severance of ties with international terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.
The agreement also hinges on more difficult negotiations to come between the Taliban and the Afghan government over the country’s future. Officials hope those talks will produce a power-sharing arrangement and lasting cease-fire, but both ideas have been anathema to the Taliban in the past.
Who was involved in negotiating this deal? Who was not? What are the terms of the agreement? What challenges lay ahead?
The Agony of Defeat
Des Linden, in the women’s division, and Leonard Korir, in the men’s, were favorites to make the U.S. Olympic team at the trials in Atlanta on Saturday. They finished fourth, which, a Times article explains, “can be the worst pain of all”:
Every four years, there are athletes who just miss out on a spot on the Olympic team. But there may be nothing crueler than just missing one of the six spots on the U.S. marathon team, which are decided in one make-or-break race.
The top three men and the top three women are in; everyone else is out. Few events require so much lonely, painful training; then the pain-filled, hit-or-miss qualifying competition leaves the entire field limping away and in need of weeks of recovery.
Have you ever experienced a devastating loss or disappointment in some aspect of school, sports, extracurriculars or another area of your life? What was it like? How did you bounce back from it, if at all? Did it change you profoundly, either for the better or the worse? What advice do you have for someone who falls short of a life-defining goal?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more about how these athletes are dealing with a high-stakes loss.
Find many more ways to use our Picture Prompt feature in this lesson plan. You can find all our Picture Prompts in this column.
IoC Conference 2020: Is tech finally taking its representation problems seriously?
Author: Dr Ryan Rushton, Senior Project Manager at FutureLearn
The statistics on diversity and inclusion across the technology industry are still very troubling. Women account for almost 50% of the UK workforce, yet only 19% of professionals in technical roles are female, and even fewer (4%) are from BAME backgrounds. But for two days, the consortium of university, industry and outreach partners that is the Institute of Coding (IoC), took a long, hard look at how the tech world is addressing the disparities in gender, race, age and economic background that still plague its educational and employment offerings.
There were some fantastic keynote speakers in Dr. Anne-Marie Imafidon and Timandra Harkness, with Dr. Imafidon in particular highlighting the challenges the world of digital skills and tech still needs to tackle if it is to attract and retain people from a truly diverse pool of talent.
One theme that she touched on, and that was covered in some of the panel sessions, was rethinking how we sell a career in tech to women in particular. Educational and employment offerings will often focus on motivations that research shows are more compelling to men, while minimising the importance of altruism, which is emerging as a key motivator to women in a potential career. In a collaborative research project between the IoC’s observatory and Deloitte, a key finding was that women were far more motivated to begin their career in tech if they understood that they’d have the chance to make a positive difference to peoples’ lives.
Here at FutureLearn, we have been really excited to be able to support IoC partners to deliver on their aims of more inclusive and accessible education. We are one of the course providers for the University of Durham’s groundbreaking TechUp Women project that has just celebrated its first graduation – taking 100 women from underrepresented backgrounds in tech and retraining them over an intensive year-long project that combines face-to-face and online learning, as well as mentoring from women at the forefront of the industry.
Educational and employment offerings will often focus on motivations that research shows are more compelling to men, while minimising the importance of altruism, which is emerging as a key motivator to women in a potential career.
We have also been very pleased to launch our Digital Skills for the Workplace collection of courses, a collaboration with the University of Leeds, which are all about helping people gain the digital and soft skills they need to flourish in the modern world of work. In particular, we were aiming to reach women and people from BAME backgrounds and so worked closely with UKBlackTech and TechMums to help us design these courses and represent what their learners were actually interested in and to ensure we were including course contributors who represented their experience. So far, this co-designed process seems to be working with 50% of surveyed learners identifying as female or non-binary. In March, we will be running hands-on sessions with these organisations and their learners to test how successful we have been in producing something that serves their needs and feels welcoming.
One of the main things I took away from the conference was that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to reaching those who have historically been excluded from the worlds of digital skills, technology and coding. For some it will be the kinds of large scale interventions we are making with our Digital Skills for the Workplace courses that sets them on their journey, while for others it will be the local hands-on hackathons, digital boot camps and summer schools that look to reach people on a 1-2-1 basis where the IoC will make a difference. What’s clear though is that disruption of traditional models, mixed with collaboration across higher education institutions, industry and outreach organisations needs to be at the very heart of finding new, innovative ways to solve these problems.
Universities Australia Conference 2020 – “Education Changing Lives”
Author: David Granzow, Director ANZ Partnerships at FutureLearn
The annual Universities Australia Conference was held in late February in Canberra at the National Convention Centre with attendees from the higher education and government sectors including senior representatives. The overarching 2020 theme of the conference was “Education Changes Lives” with a focus on how education is a transformative force across communities, nations and individuals.
The conference attracts circa 1,000 attendees annually with over 65 high profile speakers from the Minister for Education, The Hon Dan Tehan MP, through to international speakers giving their perspectives on how education is changing lives.
To kick of the conference this year, there was a fantastic keynote by Professor Justin Wolfers, an Australian born Economics and Public Policy professor from the University of Michigan.
In his keynote, he demonstrated examples of short-term and longer-term economic impacts and how that, even with the immediate issues that Australia is facing, there might be a silver lining in the longer-term economic outlook for education. Additionally, he reflected on where he saw gaps in policy and economics and how to enable better decision making in these areas by bringing more academics into politics.
As expected from the keynotes and the Minister for Education’s address to the industry based on the recent events in Australia, from bushfires through to the global outbreak of Coronavirus, there was a lot of focus on the impact of these events on the Australian education sector. Not only did these themes come through in the speeches and presentations, but during most interactions and conversations heard throughout the event.
The main short-term issue on everyone’s mind was how to address the more than 100,000 Chinese students impacted by the Coronavirus and the travel bans imposed by the Australian Government.
Most of the universities seemed to be scrambling to implement short-term strategies to provide Chinese students with study options whether deferral into semester two or online delivery options into China, to keep the students engaged until they could arrive on shore.
Regardless of the proposed solutions there seemed to be no consistency between institutions and in most cases the uptake by the impacted students were low between 10 – 25%. Overall, it demonstrated that there was no industry standard approach nor commitment from the government on funding initiatives that would support the industry impacted by these events in the short-term.
Beyond the main topics being raised, the conference covered sessions from “improving student experience” to “building partnerships post Brexit” focusing on how a free trade agreement between the UK and Australia could foster collaboration in research and innovation.
Of all the sessions, there were however a few standouts and in particular “University leadership in a changing world” with Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town delivered an inspiring address on her philosophy of leadership which received tremendous feedback. Also, the Chasers, Craig Reucassel keynote “On principle, pranks, passion and peer-review” where he posed questions such as “Can research be made relatable and visual?” for which he then demonstrated some comical examples of rubbish being measured in elephants.
If you would like to get a greater understanding of the Australian Higher Education industry, including its key challenges and opportunities, the Universities Australia conference is an annual event that you should attend. The conference delivers not only fantastic speakers and panel discussions but attracts the key decision makers in the industry.
Additionally, it also highlighted that there are long-term opportunities in the Australian higher education sector for those that can meet the demands of students in a global economy and be agile in response to crises as they arise. It was also a great opportunity to connect and discuss partnership opportunities across the region.
Looking forward to 2021!
