'Is it time to teach uncertainty in schools?' blog discussion

segarrett

Given that risk management is fundamental to so many jobs, not just those that specifically include it, it might be a good idea to cover this is some point in education, probably for older teenagers.

Everyone needs to have some idea of how to work out what the risks and benefits are of a given action, and the probability and the consequences/cost of them happening.

In your example, we need to know a whole lot of other things (what are the alternatives, how "good" is the job, etc etc) before you can say whether the financial risk is worth taking or not.

There is also the important view of taking the decision of least regret. In your example, if things go wrong so that the cost is financial hardship, but at a level that the family can survive through, and if things go well, the person has a job they love, then the regret at turning down a dream job, will probably be greater in the long term than that of enduring financial hardship for a while. But then if the person thinks they will lose their wife and children if there is greater financial hardship, the regret of this may be even higher than losing the dream job. (Or may be not!)

Errata

all you can do is examine the risks –

That's the key to the whole thing. Everyone does a risk assessment each time they cross a road, or get dressed in the morning, so we all know how to do it.
All that has to be taught is risk assess everything.

antrobus

segarrett wrote: »

Given that risk management is fundamental to so many jobs, not just those that specifically include it, it might be a good idea to cover this is some point in education....

At least that way we might end up with some bankers who actually understood that there was such a thing as 'risk' ....

Mobeer

From original article:
"My answer is that it’s grey debt – without a crystal ball it’s impossible to answer. In fact, this is less of a question about risk and far more about learning to evaluate a situation. Do a risk-benefit analysis and think about the key decision making criteria."


Are you proposing the teaching of risk or the teaching of uncertainty? The blog title mentions uncertainty, but the article keeps mentioning risk. Risk can be covered in Maths, but if you really want to teach uncertainty then you need a Psychology class, and I doubt many schools will run that.

Narc

I think they need to teach risk, most people are horribly overinsured be it breakdown cover or addon insurance that shops try to sell to you.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

Good topic IMO.
I've solved some of my greatest dilemmas in life by finally accepting that there was no solution. Once I truly accepted that fact, it got a whole lot easier.
IMO the trick is to develop as a person. To bolster oneself for getting it wrong and being able to live reasonably happily with getting it wrong.
Rudyard Kipling's "If" says it a lot better than I will ever be able to.
In our society (IMO) there is too much linking of someone's success or failure as a person with material wealth.
I am a resounding success. A debt laden induced tightarse but a success nevertheless. Just the fact that I exist is a success. Everything else is a bonus and only on loan anyway.

Less philosophically, it's better to make some decisions and get the answers wrong rather than to live one's life frozen with fear.
How's it go? "The man who never made a mistake, never made anything else either."

Percy1983

I have always said there is grey debt which isn't right or wrong.

I remember buying a £1000 TV on a credit card in my younger days, which the first reaction is bad debt, but if I then say it had £300 off the price and I paid it off before it attracted that much in interest its not so bad.

Trying to teach my teenage nephew these things in life in general, life isn't black and white.

pixwix

Many years ago (good god, is it really 50 years?) I went to a prominent Catholic grammar school (from which I emerged a firm and lifelong atheist). Many of us were treated like dirt under the teachers' feet because we were 'scholarship boys' - i.e. we'd cheated our way in to a fee-paying school by virtue of intelligence.

But all that is not in fact my most lasting memory. That concerns a term exam in which we were asked to name the finest composer in history. As a teenager newly into classical music, I offered the opinion that it was Tchaikovsky. I got nil out of 100 for that answer - the correct answer was - of course - Beethoven. Opinions hadn't been asked for - the facts had.

Stupid boy!

pixwix

The search for right answers can have serious effects, especially when something I call the 'Graduate Syndrome' comes into play.

Before retirement, I pursued a lifetime of different jobs. In many I had to accept bosses who - because they had a university degree - were acknowledged to be automatically brighter than mere ordinary people with only a lifetime's experience.

No problem as long as they accepted reality - history is full of officers who did well out of having enough sense to stay out of an NCO's way.

As for myself, I've never had any problem accepting that if I didn't know the answer to a problem, someone, somewhere, did know that answer - just a question of finding them.

But increasingly we have management systems (my experience in local government is by far the worst) where educated people simply assume they're so damned clever, that - if they can't think of the answer to a problem - it means there simply cannot be one. I can't solve the problem, therefore the problem is insoluble - QED. No point in looking further.

I'm probably doing an injustice by calling it the graduate syndrome, but I have to observe it's far more common in people that have come directly into management with decidedly unbrown knees than with an older generation who worked their way up from the shop floor.

hpuse

My common sense protrudes reading your article. Probably another way of putting it - is it a good idea to introduce gambling as a science at schools since we have an industry here worth close to £100billions ??