Need a job, or want to find a better job? The economy may be recovering, but for too many people this question remains all too pertinent.
One of the most cited contemporary sociologists, Mark Granovetter, has found that people more often get jobs through personal contacts than through formal channels, like job ads, employment agencies, or interviews sponsored by professional associations.
Furthermore, as Granovetter explains in his book, Getting a Job (1995), contrary to what one might believe, among one’s personal contacts, “strong ties” of friends and family are often less helpful in getting a job than one’s “weak ties,” that is, people we know less well, like acquaintances from work or school, or friends of friends.
Information – about where the job openings are, how to apply, who to contact, how to distinguish oneself, etc. – matters greatly. However, our strong ties are less likely to know information we don’t know because they tend to be more like us (the adage “birds of a feather flock together” is far truer than “opposites attract”). Our weak ties, however, are more likely to know information we don’t know – information that could lead to a job – precisely because they are less like us.
Granovetter called this “the strength of weak ties” in the title of an earlier and now classic sociological article (Granovetter 1973).
There are two important connections here between Granovetter’s incisive findings and Learning Life’s approach to learning.
First, we share Granovetter’s – and many other scholars’ – conviction that information matters. Getting the right information can mean the difference between getting and losing a job, between success and failure, even life and death (example: safety and health information).
Second, printing big bits – small, useful pieces of information that can have big, beneficial consequences, like information about how to find work, fund a college education, or recognize the signs of a stroke – on the surfaces of everyday life where more people can see them turns public places into information environments that can be as or even more useful than weak ties, especially for those with fewer weak ties.
The future is not just about weak ties and social media. It’s also about big bits and information environments.
In this post, we want to thank Zee Loevner for her volunteer work with Learning Life recently, and tell you more about her.
Zee helped build a database of relevant local and national journalists and bloggers with whom we can share Learning Life’s activities and accomplishments. She also built a database of relevant local businesses we can contact as we move forward with several pilot projects in Alexandria, Virginia this year. Zee carried out both these database projects with admirable clarity and organization.
Professionally, Zee was co-founder and for seventeen years President of T-Med Behavioral, Inc. (formerly Counseling and Rehab Services, Inc.), a company that managed mental health programs for over seventy adult health facilities throughout Maryland, Virginia and several other states. Prior, she worked as, among other things, a classified documents librarian dealing with military research and abstracting. Currently, Zee is doing business planning consulting and assisting a theater group in organizing and marketing college tours while she looks for full-time work in administration.
Zee also actively volunteers. Besides her recent work with Learning Life, Zee has volunteered for many years with her synagogue’s Sisterhood Gift Shop, for which she does sales, product display, and inventory design and updating. She also volunteers with food banks, shelters, the homeless, and a theater group.
We thank Zee for her valuable volunteer work with Learning Life, and wish her the best in her pursuit of full-time employment!
Want to learn more about volunteering with Learning Life? Contact us at email@learninglife.info.
Advisor Spotlight: Roxane Rucker
We are very pleased to introduce our readers and supporters to Ms. Roxane Rucker, who has been volunteering with Learning Life since October 2012.
Like Learning Life’s founder, Paul Lachelier, Roxane changed careers in 2012. But while Paul moved from academia into the non-profit sector, Roxane transitioned from business into the non-profit world.
Roxane worked for over twenty five years as a telecommunications executive for AT&T and most recently, CenturyLink, earning numerous awards for her performance. She has a B.A. in economics from Northwestern University and a M.B.A., with a specialty in finance, from The George Washington University.
Asked why she made the transition from business into the non-profit world, she explains:
“My transition from business to the nonprofit world was driven by a desire to experience greater personal fulfillment through a life of service. I had experienced many successes in business, but was frequently left feeling unfulfilled and detached from the mission. In contrast, my time spent tutoring and mentoring youth, serving on the boards of nonprofit organizations, and building homes and schools in Nicaragua, filled me with a deeper, more meaningful sense of purpose and connection to my community.”
Roxane has traveled twice in the last three years to Nicaragua, the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere, to build homes and schools with Bridges to Community.
She also serves on the board of directors for two innovative and progressive schools – Bishop McNamara High School, and Imagine Hope Community Charter Schools – both of which are committed to delivering an academically rigorous educational experience to traditionally underserved communities in the Washington D.C. area.
Roxane has also recently worked for the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC), a public-private partnership dedicated to improving government using information technology. With ACT-IAC, she chaired the Telecommunication Shared Interest Group, comprised of representatives from 40+ major service providers, and co-authored the study “Unleashing the Power of Information Technology Innovation to Reduce the Budget Deficit.”
Roxane brings to her non-profit work extensive experience in finance, staff recruiting and training, managing diverse stakeholders, implementing sound business practices, developing successful proposals and reports, and building relationships with government, industry and community partners.
As a volunteer with Learning Life, she has taken the lead in identifying relevant foundation grants and other funding opportunities, and is involved in our long-term planning.
Asked why she decided to volunteer with Learning Life, Roxane says:
“There were two factors that influenced my decision to volunteer with Learning Life.
“The first is the innovative use of technology to connect people to information. By using the surfaces of everyday life to spread knowledge, Learning Life offers a new way to inspire learning. It was immediately apparent to me that adapting Learning Life to areas such as educational curriculums and public health messaging had the potential to capture and retain the attention of students and citizens in a totally new way.
“The second factor was the dedication and commitment of Learning Life’s founder, Paul Lachelier. Paul is passionate about Learning Life and its mission, and his passion is contagious. As an educator, Paul understands that our society frequently fails to provide equal access to education and information for everyone. Learning Life cannot alone overcome educational inequalities, but it will make a positive change in many communities to come.”
Want to learn more about volunteering with Learning Life? Contact us at email@learninglife.info.
Tackling Public Ignorance with Incidental Learning
Knowledge matters. People who know more tend to think better, understand more, and remember more (for research on this, see my previous post “On the Importance of Knowledge”). Further, people with more knowledge and education tend to enjoy better jobs, incomes, health and longevity.
This leads to an important paradox of our age:
There is a wealth of valuable information – about health, safety, and the environment, about how cars, governments, and economies work, about history, science, and philosophy – yet surveys show that many people know more about the most popular TV shows than they do about, say, nutrition, or how their government works, things that really affect their lives.
In short, our age is marked by information abundance, and public ignorance.
Yes, many will seek out the ever increasing amount of free information and courses online when they want or need it. Yet surveys of public knowledge reveal that people generally know little more than some basics about topics that affect their lives (see, for example, the Pew Research Center’s surveys of the U.S. public’s knowledge of government and current issues, available here). Furthermore, those poorest in knowledge are often the least likely to seek information that matters to their lives, and most likely to consume the endless torrent of new and exciting entertainment that amuses, but does not typically inform.
Indeed, given the choice between watching a fast-moving, eye-catching TV crime drama, and reading, say, a book about nutrition or government, most of us choose the former every day. After a long day’s work, it’s a lot more entertaining!
That’s why we cannot rely strictly on deliberate learning, whether in schools or online.
Most educational efforts assume learning is deliberate. You want to learn something? Then go to school, take an online course, read a book, watch a video, etc.
Yet a lot of learning is not deliberate, but incidental, and unintended. Let me give you an example: I know more than I want to know about Coca-Cola. I know its trademark colors and design, some of its history (if you are old enough, you might remember the furor surrounding “New Coke” in the 1980s), and a lot of its advertising (the older jingle “I’d like to buy the world a Coke…,” and the more recent Coke-drinking, holiday polar bear).
No one among my family or friends works for Coca-Cola. I don’t own stock in Coca-Cola. I don’t even drink the stuff (some call it “liquid candy” given the sweetened versions’ sugar load).
I know things about Coca-Cola not because I deliberately sought to learn about it in class or on the internet, but because I happened to be watching TV, reading a magazine, glancing at a billboard or online ad, or else.
A lot of what we know we learn not deliberately in school, but incidentally in everyday life, as we casually watch media around us, and talk with family, friends, acquaintances, even strangers.
Advertisers know this, and accordingly do their best to capture our attention not in class, but in everyday life outside of class. If businesses do this all the time to sell their products and services, why don’t governments, public schools, universities, public interest groups, and others that are trying to inform and empower the public?
What if county or state governments provided public schools with posters (on world geography, human anatomy, history, etc.) to give children and their parents, encouraging them to place the posters at home where they will see them, in the bathroom, bedroom, or else? Such an initiative could reinforce deliberate learning in schools, connecting class discussion and tests with incidental education at home.
What if city governments partnered with local businesses and non-profits to increase public awareness of free and low-cost community services, volunteer opportunities, and more on tabletop tents in area restaurants, cafes, and bars?
The possibilities for reducing public ignorance through incidental learning are as promising as our collective will allows, and as extensive as the surfaces at which people gaze, from tabletop tents and cereal boxes, to posters and wallpaper.
Information – about where the job openings are, how to apply, who to contact, how to distinguish oneself, etc. – matters greatly. However, our strong ties are less likely to know information we don’t know because they tend to be more like us (the adage “birds of a feather flock together” is far truer than “opposites attract”). Our weak ties, however, are more likely to know information we don’t know – information that could lead to a job – precisely because they are less like us.
