Address to the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Ottawa, Ontario, Monday, June 1, 2015
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Thank you for your warm welcome.
I’m delighted to be here to talk about innovation in learning and in the humanities and social sciences.
Many of you will know that one of the great privileges I have as governor general comes in recognizing the extraordinary achievements of Canadians.
I regularly confer honours and awards for excellence in the arts and sciences, for bravery and volunteerism and military service, for journalism and public service and policing—to name just a few.
A few months ago, I presented one award in particular that I want to talk about today.
It was the John C. Polanyi Award, which is given to an individual or team whose research has advanced any field that is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
“Now wait a minute,” I can hear you thinking to yourselves. “Why is the governor general talking to a bunch of humanists and social scientists about a science and engineering award named after one of Canada’s greatest chemists?”
Well, I’ll tell you why!
Because this year, that award was presented to a philosopher named Chris Eliasmith.
Now, let me pause for a moment, because what I just said isn’t entirely accurate.
Dr. Eliasmith is indeed a philosopher, but he’s not only that.
He’s also a systems design engineer, a computer scientist and a neuroscientist.
He has a joint appointment in Philosophy and Systems Design Engineering and a cross-appointment to Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.
And he’s the Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Neuroscience.
He’s all of these things at once, which only makes sense, given his subject matter:
The human brain and what makes it tick.
Dr. Eliasmith received the John C. Polanyi Award for the work he and his team have done building a computer model of the human brain.
Its name is Spaun—that’s spelled S-P-A-U-N—and it makes human-like mistakes, has human-like accuracy, and takes human-like lengths of time to process information.
It’s not hard to imagine how a background in philosophy—which literally means “love of wisdom”—would be useful in simulating something as complex and, well, human, as the human brain.
But I share this anecdote not primarily to emphasize the enduring value of the social sciences and humanities—a value which all of you well know.
Rather, I share Dr. Eliasmith’s story because his is a wonderful example of innovation in learning. It demonstrates how doing things differently is sometimes the only way to unlock new knowledge and understanding.
In his acceptance speech at Rideau Hall, Dr. Eliasmith made reference to the fact that he was probably the first philosopher to win the John C. Polanyi Award, and he paid tribute to a long list of collaborators from various disciplines with whom he has worked.
He said: “With something as complex as the brain you have to throw everything you’ve got at it.”
And in a recent blog post, he wrote about how important it is to be able to do cross‑disciplinary research when studying the brain.
“Brain function is tackled by many disciplines, and there is no good reason to think that only one discipline has all the answers,” he wrote. “In this era of big, complex research problems, it seems that multidisciplinary research should be encouraged, if not become the norm.”
That is truly said, and the point applies to so many of the frontiers of knowledge we are exploring today.
This imperative of working together across disciplines—and territorial borders, I would add—is something I call the diplomacy of knowledge.
Practising this kind of knowledge diplomacy is a must when it comes to the most pressing, complex challenges facing our world. We have to “throw everything we’ve got” at the problems and opportunities we encounter, and that means not only sharing and deepening our knowledge, but also improving how we learn.
Indeed, nowadays the two go hand in hand.
Why is it so important that we innovate in learning? Let me try to explain by highlighting three major, interrelated developments.
They are:
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A profoundly globalized world;
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The communications revolution and rapid technological change;
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A vastly increased understanding of the human brain and of how we learn.
Let me start by highlighting our global context, which as you are all well aware is characterized by a reshaping of our economies, our societies, our politics, our demographics and our expectations.
During my mandate, I’ve had the privilege of leading 43 international visits to different countries—a few like the U.S. several times. And I’ve visited dozens of universities and learning institutions. Many of these schools are of very high quality, and they are highly ambitious in their drive to compete for students, faculty and resources.
In such a context, Canada can’t afford to be complacent in its approach to learning. This is especially true given the competition we face in sectors like manufacturing, where we’re up against low-wage competitors in emerging markets.
When it comes to learning, however, Canada has an advantage. Our educational system is known for excellence and for equality of opportunity, and our future well-being will be determined by our ability to renew that advantage for the 21st century. It is one that we must renew, given our highly competitive global context.
What does that renewal look like?
Well, that’s a question we have to answer together, and that’s where Canada needs your help.
Let me share an example from Dr. Chad Gaffield, one of Canada’s leading thinkers on learning, and a historian.
In his view, a focus on “learning” is the way to move beyond the 20th century dichotomy of teaching-research. He asks, “Why should we continue calling learning by students ‘teaching’ and learning by scholars ‘research’?”
In the digital age, even undergraduate courses are starting to embrace learning research-like competencies. And professors are recognizing that some of the best ideas emerge from students before they’re told all the reasons why a given research frontier is where it is.
Digital technologies are enabling new ways of thinking in “unimaginable ways,” Dr. Gaffield says, and the key is a renewed and reimagined focus on learning.
I’d also like you to ponder these three ideas for innovation in learning:
Organizing our learning by challenge, rather than only by discipline.
Gauging our success by measuring learning outcomes, and not primarily inputs.
Ensuring that every Canadian has the chance to study or work abroad, or in another province or territory, or both!
Innovation in learning will require a great deal of creativity and imagination.
And we need your help.
I want to talk now about the communications revolution and the rapid pace of change, because this, too, is closely related to our innovation in learning challenge.
Let me start by trying to illustrate just how fast the pace of change has become.
Consider the telephone, and how long it took to reach 50 million users: 75 years.
The radio reached 50 million people in 38 years.
Television?
It reached 50 million users 13 years after it was introduced.
The Internet?
Just 4 years.
Facebook?
3.5 years.
And Angry Birds?
35 days!
You see the trend here.
The extent and pace of change have profound implications for how we live and how we learn today. Philosopher, humanist and Companion of the Order of Canada Ursula Franklin once said, “Technology has built the house in which we all live,” and today we find ourselves living in a house that is in some ways being continually rebuilt around us at a dizzying pace.
What are the implications for our lives and societies? With the arrival of a truly revolutionary technology such as the Internet and digital communication, the questions that arise are as important as the possibilities. Simply put, things are possible today that weren’t possible a generation ago—both benevolent and harmful things. What are they, and how do we maximize the good while minimizing the bad?
Such questions and answers are critical to our learning.
Again, we need your help.
Now to my third and final theme, bringing my remarks back full circle to the subject of the human brain.
A startling fact: at least 80 per cent of what we know about the brain we have learned in the past 20 years. We understand how the brain functions better than ever, and if we can leverage that understanding to improve our learning, I believe it will go a long way toward renewing Canada’s education advantage.
Researchers in the social sciences and humanities can help us better understand the way we learn and how we can learn better in our contemporary context. Indeed, you already are.
Consider the work of yet another philosopher, Dr. Joseph Heath of the University of Toronto, whose book Enlightenment 2.0 devotes significant space to the human brain and how it, and our understanding of it, have evolved over time.
Dr. Heath is concerned with adapting Enlightenment values and rational thinking to the fast-paced context I have just described.
Our challenge, he suggests, is that for millions of years, humans evolved an “old mind” that was focused largely on hunting, gathering, survival and procreation. And it’s only in the last 250 000 years that we have started to evolve the rational mind that examines evidence, makes propositions and conclusions, seeks to avoid biases, and so on. The speed at which our technology enables and compels us to operate poses challenges to rational thinking, because reason requires hard work and deliberation and could be termed “inefficient.”
As he puts it, “Thinking straight is hard to do.”
Whether you ultimately agree with his proposals or not, Dr. Heath’s call for a new Enlightenment that reimagines our politics, society and the way we organize ourselves based on our understanding of the human brain is exactly the kind of bold thinking we require. It’s a matter of preserving what is best and adapting and improving where necessary.
There are so many other insights about the brain that we can apply. For example, applied educational research has demonstrated how active learning is more successful than passive, and that learning is more effective when ideas are reinforced and presented interactively. We’ve recently learned that the human brain is not fully mature until we are in our early twenties. We’ve also learned how important early childhood education and stimulus are to improved cognitive and general health outcomes.
All of this being the case, how might we innovate in our educational experience?
As people who care about learning, we cannot afford to ignore these and the many other findings on how the brain operates.
Learning today means being smarter and more innovative in our approach to learning and to teaching.
Now, I’m not here to be the “sage on the stage” and tell you how we do that. I know you all have read Stephen Toope’s magnificent essay—I Love You, Please Change—and I know that social sciences and humanities disciplines are under significant pressure, as are universities themselves.
There’s no shortage of well-intentioned people out there telling you what you should do.
That you’re wonderful, but that nevertheless, you must change.
I don’t want to repeat that refrain.
Instead, I want to call on you—the psychologists, the literary critics, the philosophers, the sociologists and so many others—to help us improve the way we learn.
There is growing research that indicates how important the human factor is to innovation. People are at the heart of every organization, every new technology and all significant change.
And as students and teachers of the humanities and social sciences, you spend every day trying to understand people in all of our glorious complexity. You study individuals, cultures, whole societies and civilizations.
We need you to help our universities and colleges innovate in learning in order to remain relevant with students and society in the years to come.
Sometimes the technologists get all the credit as visionaries, but I don’t need to remind you that Marshall McLuhan, who foresaw the coming information age long before the appearance of the Internet, was a humanist—an expert in Renaissance rhetoric who closely studied comic strips, the works of James Joyce, and 16th century Reformation writers.
As he said of this brave new world of “electronic interdependence”:
“I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”
OK, so let me bring my remarks to a close by asking, “What does all of this mean for you? What challenges am I leaving you with?”
I want to pose five interrelated challenges.
One, recognize the critical importance of integrating knowledge and working across disciplines. Or, as E. B. White said, “seeing things whole.”
Two, take advantage of new technologies and methods to talk to each other across our professional and national languages.
Three, find ways to bring people together around knowledge. It enhances people and societies, and reduces the likelihood of conflict. In my international forays, I call this the diplomacy of knowledge.
Four, take what works from other disciplines and apply it to your own. For example, the latest brain science, or ways to measure the results of your teaching and study.
And five, celebrate Canadian excellence, both within the country and globally. Let’s make Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize just the start.
I’ve been fortunate in my life and work to have seen what’s possible when such challenges are met, but I’ll save some of those stories for the discussion that follows.
In many ways, people working in the humanities and social sciences have the deepest sense of human potential and possible worlds, and that’s why I want you to help Canada become the truly great learning nation it can be.
Together, we have accomplished so much.
We have so much more to do.
Thank you.
