Geek Heresy (46 page)

28
.
  
Bhatt (2003).

29
.
  
Saxenian (2006).

30
.
  
These quotations are taken from Florida (2002), pp. 77–80.

31
.
  
Florida (2002), p. xiii.

32
.
  
Ibid., pp. xiv, 74.

33
.
  
Ibid., p. 101.

34
.
  
Ibid., p. 88, quoting open-source advocate Eric Raymond in Taylor (1999).

35
.
  
Ibid., p. 92.

36
.
  
Inglehart and Welzel (2005), p. 159. See also Inglehart and Welzel (2010).

37
.
  
This debate was articulated as early as the 1960s (see, e.g., Weiner 1966). In contrast to Inglehart, Guido Tabellini (2008) argues that more open institutions lead to more open values. For example, the attitudes of third-generation Americans are linked to the degree of autocracy present in their grandparents’ home countries. It seems clear that the causality can go in both directions, with factors mutually reinforcing one another. One thing both Inglehart and Tabellini agree about is that individual attitudes matter. Tabellini (2008) writes, “To explain some political outcomes or the functioning of bureaucratic organizations, we may have to go beyond pure economic incentives and also think about other factors motivating individual behavior.”

38
.
  
Jones (2006); National Center for Charitable Statistics (2010).

39
.
  
Blackwood et al. (2012); Corporation for National and Community Service (2006).

40
.
  
That’s an inflation-adjusted 157 percent increase over the $130 billion in 1973 giving (Giving USA 2014). A nice overview by Perry (2013) reports, however, that giving as a percentage of GDP has remained stubbornly at around 2 percent since the 1970s. It peaked in 2001 at 2.3 percent.

41
.
  
Higher Education Research Institute (2008); Eagan et al. (2013).

42
.
  
Luntz (2009).

43
.
  
The Higher Education Research Institute (2008) survey also shows that the median income of families of college students is 60 percent greater than that of all US families. This fact, together with the group’s inclinations toward “helping others,” suggests a correlation between family income and degree of Maslovian growth, as hypothesized. Also, as Maslow might have predicted, the global recession since 2007 appears to have caused an ebbing of interest in social causes, because external conditions pulled many back to security needs.

44
.
  
Bornstein (2004), p. 4.

45
.
  
Salamon et al. (2013).

46
.
  
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2010a).

47
.
  
Development Initiatives (2010).

48
.
  
Higher Education Research Institute (2008) shows that while “helping others” is relatively higher on the agenda now compared with the immediate past, it still trails “raising a family” and “being well-off financially,” which were stressed by 75.5 percent and 73.4 percent of the sampled students, respectively.

49
.
  
I know, because it takes one to know one.

50
.
  
Pinker’s (2011) book is pure genius. It brings together a compelling array of information about historical (and counterintuitive) declines in violence, prejudice, and bad manners and provides carefully reasoned explanations for them. Pinker’s four “better angels” align closely with the three elements of intrinsic growth – empathy and moral reason point toward good intention, reason is discernment, and self-control, obviously, is self-control. His five historical forces, liberally interpreted, are important elements of societal intrinsic growth.

Chapter 10: Nurturing Change

Mentorship as a Social-Cause Paradigm

1
.
  
The right balance of coercion and autonomy in child-rearing is a very complex issue. Similar issues repeatedly arise in mentorship, which is the subject of this chapter. Unfortunately, I have no easy prescriptions for arriving at the right balance, except to say that good discernment is needed.

2
.
  
Tricia Tunstall’s (2012) book
Changing Lives
is the basis for much of this section about El Sistema. Even if you know nothing about music, the book provides both inspiration and insight for how to create large-scale social change.

3
.
  
El Sistema (n.d.).

4
.
  
This is true however you wish to define social change, and whatever you believe the goals of social change are.

5
.
  
Pradan (2014). Pradan’s impact is difficult to capture concisely because, as will become clear in this chapter, it is so varied. But its success stories are numerous and widespread. Some of them are noted at
http://30.pradan.net/
.

6
.
  
Pradan doesn’t use the word “mentorship” to describe what it does, but its leaders agree with this chapter’s description of their work and their values.

7
.
  
Many social activists like to use words such as “partnership” and “cooperation” as a way to pretend that their bilateral engagements with others occur between equals. Presumably, the intention is to avoid any neocolonialist arrogance or claims of superiority, which could lead to abuse and exploitation. But abuse and exploitation are a real danger whenever there is a real disparity in power,
whether it is acknowledged or not
. The problem isn’t power, hierarchy, or status differentials; the problem is abuse. On the whole, it’s better to acknowledge such disparities and to be vigilant against abuse than to pretend that disparities don’t exist at all. The latter is dishonest, and it causes people to drop their guard against exploitation – as so often happens when policymakers conceive of business and trade as being inherently fair (because both sides “voluntarily” enter into the exchange), even though there is plenty of opportunity for exploitation.

Nevertheless, discernment is needed on a case-by-case basis: There are instances when insisting on making the disparity explicit can backfire, as in the case of stereotype threat, a la Steele and Aronson (1995). A strong case for accepting power, but not accepting the abuse of power, is made by Fuller (2004).

8
.
  
Pradan (2014).

9
.
  
Among qualitative researchers, hope has long been identified as a key aspect of a community’s mental health, and anthropologists such as Oscar Lewis (1961) have frequently noted its absence as a trait of many poor communities. More recently, the economist Esther Duflo (2012) noted in her Tanner Lectures, delivered at Harvard University, that some groups of poor people will begin to invest in sustained effort for themselves if they are given a little hope in the form of, say, domesticated animals and carefully tailored support. It’s encouraging to see economists begin to take fuzzy ideas like “hope” seriously, and I hope the scholars who first identified these issues decades ago get the credit they’re due.

10
.
  
See, for example, Bell (2006) and Smyth et al. (2010).

11
.
  
As a side benefit, because mentors don’t set the agenda, mentors are relieved of much of the moral responsibility should bad outcomes arise. (Not that they shouldn’t try to advise against things that might bring them about.) There is a world of ethical difference between telling someone what to do and providing sincere advice when asked for it, particularly if things don’t go well.

12
.
  
We should also be wary of any payment that goes to mentors. Paid mentorship can be easily corrupted into high-cost consultancies of the kind that Washington, DC’s, “beltway bandits” are famous for. The higher the price, the more the “mentor” has a direct stake in something other than the intrinsic growth of the mentee. The more the “mentor” has a stake, the bigger the window for corruption. (Corruption of mission, incidentally, may be perfectly legal; but it’s still corruption.) The
most obvious form of corruption among high-priced “mentors” is to place job security over mentee growth. Exactly this dynamic was exposed in 2012 when US Agency for International Development chief administrator Rajiv Shah changed the organization’s policy to purchase more goods and services from local markets, and less from American ones. Groups representing beltway bandits promptly engaged a lobbying firm to fight the policy (Easterly and Freschi 2012). The best mentors offer their services free, at cost, or something very close to cost – certainly not at the maximum price that the market will bear.

13
.
  
Apostle (1984), p. 21.

14
.
  
An exception is former World Bank adviser David Ellerman (2005), who wrote a book called
Helping People Help Themselves
. His recommendations presage mine, although he doesn’t use the word “mentorship.” David Ellerman sent me an email while I was writing this book, and I visited him at his home in Riverside, California, soon thereafter. His book comes out of his unique experiences in development and at the World Bank, where he saw how a “church” culture of top-down edicts and unified messaging conflicted with allowing countries to determine their own course.

15
.
  
These practices are often good policies, but, strictly speaking, they aren’t mentorship. However, as I note later, it’s possible that within a broad framework of mentorship, incentives could be used as a way to help people come to a realization that something is of value to them. The primary difference between mentorship and manipulation as an approach is that, in mentorship, the ultimate goal is a positive change in the person, not just in the behavior.

16
.
  
In the business literature, there is a rich body of work that agrees on what it takes to mentor well, at least for one-to-one mentoring relationships. I have organized this chapter based on my own experience and observations, but the recommendations do not deviate significantly from practical guides such as Brounstein (2000), Johnson and Ridley (2008), Zachary (2012), or from the academic literature (see, for example, the
International Journal of Evidence-Based Coaching and Mentoring
, with a website at
http://ijebcm.brookes.ac.uk/
).

Another field in which mentorship is taken very seriously is youth development. See Rhodes (2008) for a good review of the impact of youth mentorship, and
The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring
(
http://chronicle.umbmentoring.org/
) for related articles. A survey of over 30,000 college graduates by Gallup and Purdue University (2014) found that good mentorship in college matters much more for engagement in the workplace and overall well-being than what college a person attends.

Pawson (2004) includes links to mentorship in the context of international development.

17
.
  
The International Coach Federation (n.d.), for example, defines coaches as those who help “individuals or groups [set and reach] their own objectives.”

18
.
  
For more on Farmer Field Schools (FFSs), see, for example, Davis et al. (2010), which reviews the literature on FFSs and reports on a study of FFS impact in East Africa.

19
.
  
Debates rage on about the overall impact of the Green Revolution. Critics suggest that it depleted aquifers, ruined the soil through mono-cropping, aggravated rural inequalities (amplification, yet again), and made developing-world agriculture dependent on developed-world corporations – all valid points. Here, though, I invoke the Green Revolution to discuss its efficiency with respect to its stated aim to improve yields, at which it succeeded. The Green Revolution is often described as a triumph of new technology – seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides – but it was actually a coordinated push on multiple fronts, including large investments in developing research capacity and broad-based agriculture extension. See, for example, Hazell (2009).

20
.
  
Hu et al. (2012). The Chinese extension force was 1 million members strong at its peak, but that number has since decreased. The quality of extension itself has had its ups and downs, but the government’s commitment to agriculture remains strong. The most common criticism of the Chinese system is that it’s top-down. Farmers are often commanded to change what they grow for the sake of national priorities.

21
.
  
Deo’s incredible life story is chronicled in Kidder (2009).

22
.
  
I-TECH (2013) hosts a video where Sethu tells his story, which hints at many elements of good mentorship and its effects. Sethu is also an example of how good mentorship propagates itself.

23
.
  
Tunstall (2012), pp. 71, xi. Abreu’s faith in El Sistema as social development is backed by some evidence of improved school attendance, decreased juvenile delinquency, a high rate of Sistema participants from poor backgrounds, and lower high-school dropout rates compared against non-Sistema Venezuelan teens (6.9 percent vs. 26 percent). All told, the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that every dollar invested in El Sistema was worth $1.68 in social returns, according to Lubow (2007).