The Roundabout
Some people find them a bit annoying, but the studies are conclusive: roundabouts are much safer, cheaper, and make traffic flow better. They provide a space for public art, to boot – win, win, win, win. They have started to spread like a virus all over the United States.
I’ve attempted to trace how the roundabout caught on, because it is the perfect demonstration of how a simple, local idea can end up helping millions.
World Culture Theory
There is an arcane theory in social science, World Culture Theory, or Institutional Isomorphism, which says, in short, that the (boring) institutions (and values) of the nation-state have been replicating all over the world. This replication includes all of their flaws and poor initial assumptions.
It is a consciousness-raising theory. An example: although there are enormous, passionate differences between governments all over the world, a ten-year-old child will be sitting, bored, behind a desk, doing similar math problems, whether that child be in Texas, Sweden, South Africa, Cuba, or North Korea. Schools, with all their similar imperfections, are a perfect example of World Culture Theory. (In fact, the only country that did not have a school system in the post-War world was Cambodia during its genocide.)
Back to the roundabout: The modern roundabout was developed in Britain in the 1960’s. It spread through Britain and the rest of Europe by the 1980s. The United States is a late adopter, starting slowly in the 1990’s. It seems that the Washington State Department of Transportation noticed the success of the modern European roundabout and spread it through the state, with other states quickly taking notice.
The traffic engineer at the Washington State DOT who started pushing for roundabouts has probably reduced the number of deaths in the United States by a few hundred thousand by now. And who is this hero engineer?
I could not find any names.
Kangaroo Mother Care
In a desperately overcrowded hospital in Bogota, Columbia, in 1978, Dr. Edgar Rey was wracking his brain for a solution to the lack of space and equipment for premature infants. By chance, he read an article about marsupials caring for their young and decided to put the premature infants in skin-to-skin contact with the mother (and eventually, the fathers), replacing the need for expensive incubators.
The solution was a resounding success, driving down the mortality rates immediately. There were other wins: the parent’s stress was reduced. The infants benefited emotionally from the close contact. The effects of what came to be called Kangaroo Mother Care went beyond survival: the children end up stronger, more-well adjusted, and with better immune systems than traditionally incubated premature babies.
The wonderful thing about medical doctors is that they are both practitioners and academics, and Dr. Rey was able to collaborate with a French academic physician to conduct rigorous studies on the method in the 1980s. The World Health Organization took notice, and the practice has spread all over the world.
This model of practitioner-academic is one that education should emulate: both the traffic engineers and Dr. Rey were able to substantiate their intuitions and practices with formal studies. The practice drove the research. In education, it is too often the reverse. There is a wall of separation, right now, between classroom practitioners and academics, and both sides suffer.
Bloomberg
One of the tenets of world culture theory is that it is the nation-state that is the unit of replication. Increasingly, cities are posing unique challenges; successful mayors of large cities are meeting and exchanging policy ideas directly with each other, sidestepping the national governments.
The city, therefore, is also a unit of replication for policies and institutions.
Michael Bloomberg, present presidential candidate and former three-term mayor of New York City, created a philanthropy after his mayorality with the goal of spreading “government innovation” to cities around the world.
Changing Education
It is too soon (and too much of a political football) to say whether Bloomberg has been effective in spreading solutions around the world, but the lessons are clear:
- The modern crisis in education is primarily a crisis in urban education, and solutions addressing that crisis will travel to cities all over the world. Well over half the world will grow up in a city. Good solutions will affect billions of people.
- Education needs more practitioner-driven research, to substantiate and spread the amazing innovations that are happening in schools and classrooms around the world. Posting lessons on Twitter and TeachersPayTeachers is nice, but we entrepreneurs must get serious if we want to make lasting change.
- The starry-eyed entrepreneurs and innovators who will devise the solutions must be prepared to be anonymous.
“A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it.” – Father Strickland