How to monopolize education

Free is sure way to build a monopoly whether intentionally or not. There is plenty of evidence on the internet. So what happens when a leading university like MIT starts giving away education for free?

At a seminar I attended a while ago the keynote speaker Ruud Veltenaar was talking about the vision of the prestigious MIT university to make all of their courses available to everyone in the world for free. It almost sounds too good to be true and you could hardly oppose the idea of giving everyone free education, especially if it comes from a renowned institute such as MIT. And of course there is nothing wrong with the idea itself. But once he mentioned the democratization of education something started nagging. The claim hat internet democratizes has been made too often but it never worked that way. Just look at the democratization of the music industry, as it stands the opposite has happened.

History repeating?

"Providing services for free is a very effective way to create a monopoly"

Google once started as the leanest search engine on the planet, free, no ads and with a very good search algorithm. A few others tried as well but their search results were clouded with banners, commercial messages and to be honest a not quite so good algorithm. It didn't took long for Google to become the biggest search engine and finally the monopolist of search. If you now use Google your search results are full of ads, commercial deep links to web shops and reference information from Google selected resources. A long way from where they started and a long way from what I like my search engine to be. But alas there are no real alternatives left.

Spotify has become the leading music channel. It started giving away free music (with some ads) as well as selling really cheap subscriptions. By now they are leading music channel and there is no way for an artist to bypass Spotify. The ones who tried all failed and are now also available on Spotify.

Providing free services attracts the largest audience simply because everybody likes free. Considerations about quality or impact of using free services come a far second. The competition who is not providing free services soon looses their customers and is forced to give services away for free as well. In the end this is not sustainable and the one with the deepest pockets and the smartest marketeers wins. Most of the competition will be gone and the monopoly is there. Once the monopoly is in place you can start scrutinizing your suppliers or you can start annoying your customers with more ads or price increases.

The end of diversity

In the creative industry there is little money left for those who are not at the absolute top of the list. On top of that the total revenues have dropped enormously because of the free business model. A million hits on Spotify earns an artist only $900. Once 20% of the artists was getting 80% of the revenues in the music industry and there used to be a long tail of smaller bands still making a living. By now only 1% of artists is taking the 80% (if not more) and the long tail is almost gone. Goodbye diversity, goodbye alternative music, goodbye independent labels.

A single company controlling the vast majority of the sales of any product kills diversity. If your product is not in the front window of these websites, your products won't be sold. And without competition there is no other option left. Slowly but steadily diversity disappears.

In the short run this might not seem a problem, but as the Apple advertisement once said "think differently", it is those who are thinking and acting and creating outside the box who can make a difference. Without diversity progress will be slow down and a lack of diversity makes us all more vulnerable. That's certainly true for the evolution of species, but it applies to everything else just as well.

Back to MIT - how to do it differently

In the case of MIT it might not be intentional to eliminate hundreds of smaller universities, but in reality that is the inevitable result when an influential university as MIT starts providing free services. Other universities will see the number of students and available money decreasing. They will be unable to compete and providing their education for free will only make things worse. Sooner or later they will be history.

And with the elimination of all these universities around the world diversity will be gone. Research, education, graduate programs and ultimately education itself will be one flavor, that of MIT. It is something that any professor should strongly oppose, because it's diversity in education that has brought us many of the great advancements in history.

"Education should never become a monopoly. Diversity is one of the main drivers of our evolution."

So if MIT is really serious about democratizing education they should use their considerable influence and means to empower diversity and create more MIT like universities around the world. They should encourage other universities to challenge MIT itself. They could create competition between their different branches, they should embrace diversity, they could even support their strongest opponents. Because in the end diversity is what we need.

And to make this type of education available for everyone governments and universities should sponsor those who cannot afford it. Giving away education for free is not the way to do it.

Disclaimer: This is not a conspiracy theory. I hate conspiracy theories. Whether or not the outcome of MIT's vision is intentionally or not is irrelevant. What matters is the inevitability of it.

What do you think?

Disabled people are not what they are by choice.They live and show greater willingness to embrace the reality and move ahead with accepting the truth. This attitude towards life teaches us a lot more than what we claim to know. At very first instance when we see a person disabled on wheelchair we are inclined emotionally and sympathize more than we empathize. They do not need sympathy at all, People like Maysoon Zaiyid surely do not. The encouragement and constant support of her parents and always say “I can” attitude helped her indeed and she not only guided herself to keep moving by thinking positively but also taught people to think rationally and not just judge or tag anyone due to his/her physical condition, as she narrates an incident where she was not being given a part in a film (watch the video). Disability is no more what you or I think it is.May be its just our perception , these people are far more equipped with coping strategies than we are  are for ourselves.



I so much liked this video for the inspiration and positive energy it gave to me that I thought to share it with you all .Also I realized and wondered that mainstreaming the disabled children in schools too is certainly not a bad idea, provided that proper accommodations and psychological support system is existing in the school. In India, many schools are surely working great in this direction but efforts are yet to reach the success route. Stigma still prevails and a lot has to be done in order to spread awareness and implement proper action plan. This is what I think, however, please share your views in comments.

The 21st Century Parenting

How many of you as parents worry about your child's safety on internet? or your daughter's school night-out ? or about your child's correct way of painting or drawing, while he/she is working at it?  We are living in 21st century and its high time now that we understood the value of  making subconscious efforts to programming our minds to view things differently.We as humans are capable of doing that anytime.As I read  a remarkable quote by Dr.Wayne.W.Dyer-"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." It just takes a shift in perception and a lot then seems to be newer than before.Today is a world of globalization, digital revolution seems to have made its place into our lives.The way our parents did parenting is much different from what we implement as parenting .But yet with many parents its not so.They tend to somehow carry the traditional parenting styles in someway  and implement it on their children even today in ever-changing competitive and  technology oriented environment.


We as kids did not have many options or choices to make. For example, if we wanted a chocolate we would go to store and have few options like dairy milk bar, gems,or maybe few orange candies,even with that available few choices we were not so free to choose unless our parents were happy with us having made the decision freely.They cared for us in their own ways .Today if you take a child to a store you can hardly speak and interfere with their choices.They want what they want or else they do not want it at all.so what do you do? you let them have their own way.That is what generally happens eventually.Children these days have their own opinions about every other topic and they feel free to speak up and express themselves.This is not an era when it would be feasible to teach kids what freedom is not .You have to let them know, feel and understand what freedom is and learn the value of it.You have to create an environment which allows them to develop positive attributes while enjoying the freedom and at the same time reflect on the  understanding of what is going on and why.Be your own Mentor.Never stop educating yourself!


While there are number of things to consider but here I Would like to focus on 2 major points out of few, which I think creates an impact on personality development of the child and which i think every parent should continue learning about it, as there is always more to it, till lifetime.


Technology:
The first hand-held cell phone was demonstrated in 1973, and in 1983, the first mobile was available commercially . From 1983 to 2014, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from zero to over 7 billion.(source:Wikipedia)Thanks to the recent generation kids for this growth! ;)
 I remember in earlier times of my schooling the phone was just used to make calls that too when required, the  leisure time was spent by drawing, or playing with dolls, or reading, etc,. Today when i observe my niece who is in grade 1 another in grade 5 , and many other kids in school in different grades, generally as i see, they spend almost entire day into mobile phones playing games not 1 or 2 but many and also they know how to download different apps for different things, kids are so smart these days hence i have to learn how to play from them.Its amazing to see how these tiny-tots can explain the digital games in no time. Internet has moreover convinced them that the world is too small.So what  you know about technology and the relevant concerns , these points do matter! if you do not know more than enough about it or even know it vaguely, it will be a factor which can immensely impact on your parenting efforts and may not give you the right window into looking at your kids progress or where they are heading to.Keeping yourself updated with the techno -world is essential.Today the generation gap is much larger than what we had as the same, then. Tip: In your free time try to learn about educational apps and various educational gadgets in the market and their purpose ,While you can not always be there to guard them from dangers but you can prepare them to be responsible for their actions by teaching them about digital footprints and otherwise as letting them realize that they are answerable to someone for their actions at one time or another ,  which can be enough as a guard to protect them from taking wrong steps ahead.


Parenting perception:
You all must have already read somewhere about different styles of parenting.Not dwelling into specific styles I would say in a broader sense,  much to what parenting depends on is your perception about the same.Our perception of parenting can be linked back to how we were taken care of by our parents.Not that traditional parenting which we experienced then was bad or negative but its like you no longer will be using the old phone with no memory chip or big screen which lets you know more details about missed calls and  would save your time, rather you will indeed  prefer a mobile phone with advanced features not only because its cool but because its even necessary considering the fast paced life.A shift in perception is the requirement to not only survive but to live.In today's era, just knowing things doesn't matter enough, you have internet for that, Kids are exposed to pool of information on net, hence kids need to be encouraged to do more of creativity, problem-solving tasks, must be working on their communication skills and emotions management.The focus of parenting should be not on what are you teaching but how are you teaching.For this it is very essential to make sure that the child is not just a learner for school grades but for life.Frequent collaboration between school and parents may help in this.


Every child is different , how many times have we heard this but barely paid attention to it. It actually  means that the parenting style too must differ from one another, be planned,according to every child with every parents in order to see the success as a result, more or less equally across the world.This can happen only if every parent understands it and learns about it like they do before joining their company, by learning about their company's history and how it works, to work effectively in future and have the job going on for themselves.


Parents are the first point of contact for children in this world. so their perception of self depends on how you react to them .So it is very important to take care of how you are reacting by saying what.That will impact a child's self perception and will stay for a long time in future as self image.So if for example you think any task finished is not good if its not perfect then your child might well be not satisfied with himself/herself until they reach up to perfection .Eventually in this process of reaching up to the mark they will end up ignoring their true potential and achieving the confidence level that they need in order to be successful in life.


Likewise, Parents of teenagers need to learn about the brain and behavior of a teenager.The often changing behavior patterns you see in your teen kid is not what they do  to intentionally irritate you but because its the way their brain is progressing towards development.Remember, it is in its developing stage and not developed completely enough.Tip: To get the idea of what your parenting style should be, try to invest some more time in observing your child and stick to positive affirmations rather than picking up their negative points to improve.This will only waste most of your parenting time .You can rather point over their positive traits and praise them for it. This will give them enthusiasm to do more better in future.Read about  and try implementing, punishment and reinforcement principles, behavior modification.(Psychology)


In a nutshell:
While I can talk about this for hours but my purpose of this post is to give you a window into reflecting over your parenting tactics, and for grabbing up the main idea of today's parenting that is.... bringing up the change in our perception will only help us to lessen the generation gap in 21st century  and help in  enjoying the journey of  development by being  with them in the form of their thinking and their responsible actions and not by standing beside them always to unknowingly hide what they are capable of and become lesser anxious parents to enjoy parenting as blessing!

Quick reminders:

1. Learn about different stages of development(child psychology) .This will help you in knowing the reason why your child behaves the way he/she does.Therefore, leading you to some clues to form your parenting plan effectively.what works for "X "family need not necessarily work for" Y "family. Hence continue educating yourself.

2. Stay updated with technology for kids according to the age group, so that you know what your child is doing and what  he/she is up to.

While parenting can be the toughest job but in anyway do not let the work stress or any stress be transferred to your child in any form.Be very careful with your reactions.This can impact on a child in various ways negatively.