Social Engineering - Can Schools Adapt?

I was doing some genetic engineering on my dandelions today, selecting for short and fast bloomers.  I had been doing it for the past dozen years, and it had gotten to the point so I could guarantee a fat crop of yellow blossoms that were too short for my lawnmower.  

It only takes a few years to genetically select for shorter dandelions….perhaps ten dandelion lifetimes.  Selecting for humans with shorter attention spans….that can’t be done genetically. Luckily, the brain can adapt quickly, and if you are clever, you can direct that adaptation through social engineering.  With the right stimulus, you can train brains to switch their attention to you.

Anyone with a clever mind can convert thousands to their cause….

Democratic society is having trouble adapting to the social engineering that occurs through Twitter and Facebook.  Tribalism, facts and conspiracies, measuring your own truth by the number of sycophants, and defining expert, government, or science as the “other” who is out to get you used to be the province of a few nut jobs….now, anyone with access to the internet and a clever mind can convert thousands to their cause.  

That’s OK.  We’re all adults...we can make up our own minds and accept the consequences.  But what about the children? They are being subjected to social engineering on a grand scale, despite legislation to prevent it.  Well-meaning parents provide cell phones….do the parents understand the impact? Schools take them away, or have kids stash them during school, but schools only have the attention of students for about 875 hours a year….10% if you don’t sleep.

Do parents understand the impact?

And social engineering IS having an effect on kids….if you want to find out more on the effect of social learning on the young just start with these recent references.  The techniques that drive a kid to check their phone are the same that drive adults….hearing a sound, looking at an article that agrees (90%) or violently disagrees (10%) with you….seeing influencers as tweets and images of glamour, compared to real life (booooring!!!).

It is having an impact on schools, from attention and behavioral issues to actual physical violence perpetrated by students who see classmates as “others”.  This is a challenge to democracy….public schools used to be the foundation of our democratic society ….free and equal education available to all was something you could not get in England in 1776.  Now more and more of our children are getting an unauthorized education through social media. Can schools adapt quickly enough to address the learning that needs to happen, so children can grow up being immune, or at least having a better understanding of what the social engineering is trying to do to them?

Do you react like Pavlov’s dog when your phone dings?

Do your schools have a serious program to ensure that young (elementary) students can learn when they are being manipulated by social media?  They are taught to respond to bells, whistles, and other auditory sounds….what if they were taught that the “ding” means someone is trying to sell them something?  With all the other things they are doing, is this a priority for schools? Can your school make a difference before its too late?

It might be easier to just convince my wife that dandelions are beautiful…...Ding!