Summary
Addressing the Wealth and Poverty of Nations
The economic model of the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century. This model introduced machine manufacturing and modern industry to serve human needs.
But the Industrial Revolution was a lot more than technology. It was also an unprecedented repurposing of the human language ability to create a new economic model that remains dominant in our world. Ever since developed countries have expressed technology and the factors of production with the language faculty.
In the academic field of linguistics, it is recognized by some that language, as used in conversation, argument, and to express ideas, is made possible by our inborn ability to use language, our inborn organizing principle of language. Scholars, notably Noam Chomsky, consider this ability as separate from the specific language in use. This ability is referred to as the language faculty.
Under the Implicit Curriculum, the economic model’s components, structures, and concepts are comparable to those of language. They are too vast and varied for effective use in a dynamic world without an unconscious organizing concept about how its elements should, could, or might work together. So, the use of the language faculty to command technology is the defining characteristic of the Industrial Revolution. This assertion can easily be verified by implementing the Implicit Curriculum of Higher Education and evaluating the performance of graduates.
Without the unconscious organizing concept of its implicit knowledge, the language faculty, technology is just a static list of how to do things. Contingencies in the real world that call for adapting technology to the situation at hand will result either in failure or substandard execution and maintenance. It is unimaginable how spoken communication can take place if all that people have is a list of words or memorized verses. Yet, in our world, students in developing countries are regularly expected to learn technology in school and implement it for development in uncertain and dynamic environments. Developed countries meet this expectation not because of what they learn in school but because of what they learned passively through culture.
The use of the language faculty to implement technology is the factor that has separated the nations in our world into rich and poor. Nations in the West and a few in Asia (China included), along with their diaspora, express the economic model of the Industrial Revolution with the language faculty. Developed countries are technologically advanced not only because of technology but because they are language-faculty-driven economies. As a result, they have enjoyed continuous economic prosperity.
On the other hand, most of humanity has lagged behind and has lived in persistent underdevelopment because the connection of the language faculty to the technologies of the economic model is not automatic in their cultures.
The claims regularly made for higher education suggest that it integrates the economic model with the language faculty of the student. But nothing can be further from the truth. The best that it does is to expand and sharpen the integration when it already exists. Higher education has no way to deliberately create the connection from scratch. Yet, higher education dominates and consumes all the resources available for systematically making the connection. As a result, there has been no means for developing countries to operate the economic model with success. This is the SINGULAR reason why some countries are rich and most are poor.
The developed countries do not see their own development in the way we present it here. As a result, they do not have a way for even their own people to deliberately integrate technology with the language faculty. Instead, some believe they are developed because they have superior intelligence or because they hold superior moral values. We consider these and related ideas to be speculation.
When compared with developing countries, developed countries consistently interpret the economic model correctly and respond with expressions that create results measurable as effective management, administration, entrepreneurship, and innovation that sustain and propagate development. Maintaining such vigilance so casually on a permanent, ongoing basis is too demanding to be a matter of conscious will. Instead, it has to be an unconscious process acquired in their culture. The only other human phenomenon that comes close to that is the use of language.
Because the economic model has not been thought of in this way, the expectations of higher education are not met in developing countries. Instead, developing countries continue to accumulate large numbers of higher education graduates while underdevelopment and its symptoms remain persistent.
Human beings of every race and in every nation already use language. So, people everywhere possess the basic requirement for expressing the economic model fluently with the language faculty. But due to cultural differences, there has been no means for developing countries to passively acquire the language of the economic model regardless of the quality of conventional education they receive.
For developing countries, education that does not integrate technical knowledge with the language faculty is merely technical training, good only for getting a job. It does not impart competency in the managerial, administrative, and entrepreneurial abilities needed to create good, enduring jobs in the economy and maintain and improve infrastructure or operate social institutions efficiently.
Human Rethink has come up with a way for developing countries to connect the technical knowledge of education to its implicit knowledge, the language faculty. This new way is called The Implicit Curriculum of Higher Education. With this solution, persistent underdevelopment in our world and its symptoms of economic stagnation, instability, poverty, and hopelessness can become a thing of the past.
The hard work has been done. All that remains is to adopt the Implicit Curriculum. That is why this website exists. We ask that you join us to make this happen.
By Samuel Odunsi, Sr. Director of Human Rethink
Development is the rise of a nation to meet the West and other developed countries as an economic equal based on the managerial and entrepreneurial leadership of its own indigenous people, as China is doing—Human Rethink.
Underdevelopment is a permanent shortage of the effective managerial leadership needed for development. Underdevelopment is the failure of higher education (universities and technical institutions) to train graduates to operate their western-style economic model as well as expatriates do.
It’s assumed that higher education imparts managerial skills. But while it imparts technical skills, it has not imparted the competitive managerial and entrepreneurial leadership skills that will raise productivity and create jobs for the type of prosperity seen in developed countries. So, developing countries have to import competent managerial leadership (expatriates) from developed countries in scarce numbers.
The global south has no alternative to higher education for training the managerial leadership needed for development. So, developing countries keep accumulating higher education graduates even though it has not facilitated development as defined here. Except perhaps at some unknown future date.
Underdevelopment is permanent because of a dire shortage of effective managerial leadership that cannot be remedied with any known method, until now—Human Rethink
Expatriates consist of transient workers from the West and from China and their diaspora living in developing countries as permanent immigrants.
Expatriates usually perform as effectively as their counterparts in their home countries even though they work in developing countries. The local constraints that allegedly hold back effective managerial, supervisory, and entrepreneurial leadership performance among native graduates of higher education seem not to affect expatriates. https://humanrethink.org/inclusive-theory-of-growth/#Expatriates
Modernization occurs when a country appears to be developing but without indigenous managerial leadership. Because of dependence on expatriates for effective managerial leadership, all postcolonial countries have only been modernizing.
This point can be elaborated endlessly by pointing out European dominance in South Africa and in Latin America. And Chinese dominance in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, etc. In the oil-rich Middle East, their modernization rests on their ability to afford extensive expatriate managerial leadership. E.g., UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, etc.
As for India, they have a dominant minority that openly boasts of their Aryan ancestry, aka caucasian.
The difference in development between one postcolonial country and another is measured by the extent of expatriate dominance.
A low level of dominance gives you Nigeria and other countries where expatriate-led sectors are prosperous, but the rest of the population is poor.
A medium level of expatriate dominance gives you some south Asian countries, some Latin American countries, and South Africa. These countries enjoy some prosperity, but the vast majority remain poor.
A high level of expatriate dominance gives you the middle-income trap because there are still not enough expatriates to break the country out of the trap.
The conclusion is that no postcolonial country will develop (to meet the West as an equal like China is doing) without a complete expatriate takeover of every level of the economy, as in re-colonization. The alternative is to train indigenes in effective managerial leadership, which is what the Implicit Curriculum does.
The term “higher education for development” suggests that higher education is the incubator of the managerial leadership needed for development. But while higher education has proven useful for imparting the technical knowledge of development, it has not been effective for systematically training the managers, supervisors, and entrepreneurs of development.
Higher education is the default and only means for developing countries to indigenously acquire the managers and administrators they need for development. The ineffectiveness of higher education is the reason why developing countries have accumulated large numbers of higher education graduates yet, effective managerial leadership is still scarce..
The autonomous behaviors labeled as management, administration, or entrepreneurship are too varied and contingent to be effectively expressed with technical knowledge alone. Such expressions are successfully made on a consistent basis only under the direction of the same versatile and creative ability that makes spoken language possible. Such training is not supplied by conventional education at any level, including the best quality of higher education.
In contrast, the cultures of developed countries passively integrate the economic model with the language ability of the members of their culture. But due to cultural difference, developing countries have no means to acquire the integration no matter how much education their people receive. That is the problem the Implicit Curriculum solves—Human Rethink
U.S. PATENT PENDING 17/394,187
Colonialism imposed the economic model of the Industrial Revolution on post-colonial countries. But it did not integrate the model with local culture. Developed countries take for granted that culture and the technologies of the Industrial Revolution are seamlessly connected. After all, the economic model is a subset of the cultures of developed countries. As a result, developed countries had no need to deliberately connect culture with technology and still have no systematic means to do so.
Developing countries have inherited this omission because their conventional education programs are largely the same as education in the West, and many higher education graduates studied in the West. Conventional education, including higher education, does not include the means to connect technology with local culture. This omission is expressed as a shortage of effective managerial leadership in the economies of developing countries. The result is persistent underdevelopment. The Implicit Curriculum addresses this problem.
As mentioned, the economic model of the Industrial Revolution is more than technology. To get the same results as developed countries and their expatriate diaspora living in developing countries, the economic model must be expressed with the same ability used by individuals to express spoken language. That’s the meaning of integrating the economic model with local culture.
For developing countries, the economic model is effectively a foreign language with zero means to deliberately learn it, until now. Learning to fluently use a foreign or second language means that the second language has been integrated with the human ability that enabled the use of the first language. But a foreign language can’t be directly taught. Competence in a foreign language can only be acquired [1]. So, the Implicit Curriculum (IC) does not attempt to directly teach the foreign language of the economic model either. Instead, it’s imparted to students by the Implicit Curriculum in the same way that a person acquires a foreign language.
Persistent underdevelopment shows that the professional training of higher education is of little value for economic development led by indigenous people, since all it seems to do is teach technical skills only. The technical skills required for development are abundant in many developing countries already. So, the Implicit Curriculum is a replacement for undergraduate education for students that participate..
Because of its rigorous cognitive demands, the same qualifications needed to enroll in higher education are needed to enroll in the IC. In the program, the student must render executive level decisions on dozens of controversial real-world situations that add up to the same amount of learning credits required for an undergraduate degree over a 4-year period. In the literature review for each topic, the student will discover the concepts and policies behind each controversy and their history.
In 5 simultaneous research projects per semester, and under faculty supervision, the student of the IC will organize, analyze, and synthesize input from his or her own library research about controversial topics in the economic model of a developed country for the purpose of resolving them. The literature review, analyses, and conclusions for each topic are then presented in writing to demonstrate that the components of the topic are understood and that the proposed solution is logically and morally well reasoned.
There’s nothing strange about this process and there’s already a name for it. It’s called the controversy-centered capstone (CCC). According to the Association of American Colleges & Universities, the capstone is the crown jewel of liberal higher education[2]. And the Association is not shy in heaping praise on its cognitive benefits, interdisciplinary rigor, and coherent knowledge integration.
But the capstone is currently only a single course in the final year of undergraduate education. A single capstone dose is of no value for subjecting the economic model to the command of the language faculty because it’s is too weak and meagre.
The IC accomplishes the best intentions of the liberal curriculum in a manner that higher education has only promised without fulfilling. This is done by replacing all other jewels in the higher education crown with capstone jewels. And in the manner of the trivium and quadrivium of the Europe of old, technical training that is stripped of the liberal arts becomes optional specialization after graduation in the IC. Such optional training will thereby take a shorter time to complete than is currently the case.
Also, supervision of IC courses is to be conducted by faculty in higher education institutions in developed countries. That’s because the measure of economic success for a developing country is the standard of developed countries. The IC is about results, not politics. Learning is made local with Enrichment Classes.
By these means, the student discovers the details and complexities of the economic model in a quantity that isn’t provided by conventional education. Through research, analyses, argument, and written presentations, these inputs are comprehended to expand, correct, and reinforce what the student knows about how the world works and how it could work. With time, these rigorous exercises will train the student to decipher modular cognitive patterns and regularities (or grammar) for how to use the economic model in his or her own unique way for effective contingent expression. Over 4 years, so much “comprehensible input” from so many areas of the economic model will be consumed that the integration of explicit knowledge of the economic model with the existing ability of the student to use language is “inevitable, unavoidable, and cannot be prevented.” Yes, in the same way that a foreign spoken language is acquired.
The mechanism of spoken language acquisition is not fully understood and has been the subject of endless controversy at least since Noam Chomsky introduced the field of modern linguistics. Likewise, the mechanism of the language of the economic model in the mind is equally speculative. But it’s clear that the concepts and content of the economic model are more numerous, varied, dispersed, and more subtle than those of any spoken language. Only the governance of our language ability can automatically organize and manage such complexity for coherent expression. The economic model cannot be reliably expressed on a continuous basis with technical knowledge alone. Which is what developing countries have tried to do and failed. Nobody can do that. The success of developed countries show that they’re language-faculty-driven economies. The IC is the way for developing countries to become as efficient, so they too can escape persistent underdevelopment and middle-income—Human Rethink.
[1] Stephen D. Krashen, The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications (New York: Longman Press, 1985): 80.
[2] Association of American Colleges & Universities. “Capstones & Signature Work.” Accessed Sep 21, 2019. https://www.aacu.org/signaturework
The Implicit Curriculum, along with the Inclusive Theory of Change derived from it, constitute a higher-order paradigm that is proven true by the performance of graduates in the real world as effective managers, entrepreneurs, and innovators. In contrast, conventional explanations have served to only explain the status quo. They include biological, moral, statistical, psychological, mathematical, and economic explanations. Compared to the Implicit Curriculum, conventional explanations are ineffective placeholders that have failed to make development happen. They have failed because they do not challenge the narrative of ‘higher education for development’ in developing countries and, instead, divert attention away from ineffective education by citing causes that ultimately hold developing countries responsible for their plight. Moreover, conventional explanations cannot be falsified—Human Rethink
Human culture is a big, nebulous topic encompassing almost all aspects of experience. The big topic of development and underdevelopment, for example, is a subset part of culture. But the Implicit Curriculum suggests that the aspect of culture that matters the most for development is the human ability to use language, the language faculty.
Human societies used language long before they could write it. The language faculty does not require schooling or formal education to work. So, under the Implicit Curriculum, developing countries have easily met the cultural requirement for development.
Noam Chomsky is an iconic academic famous for pointing out that the ability of people to use language is separate from the language they speak. And that human beings are born with the ability to use any language, the implicit knowledge of language. So, when we learn a second language, it is done with the same language faculty. The language faculty is the organizing principle of the mind that enables us to aggregate the disparate elements of a spoken language, the words, meanings, classifications, and other aspects, and synthesize them to interpret and express different ideas for unlimited communication and contingent debate in ways that make sense to others. It is almost unimaginable how language can be conducted without something like the language faculty.
The Implicit Curriculum suggests that the implicit knowledge of language, the language faculty, is also the implicit knowledge of the economic model expressed by developed countries. The elements of the economic model are as numerous, varied, and disparate as the elements of language, perhaps more so. The technologies, relationships, terminologies, procedures, concepts, and artifacts of the factors of production are divided into categories and knowledge areas with endless details. The unconscious organizing principle of the language faculty is the only way to coherently process such variety and complexity, and then express it contingently and dynamically to manifest managerial, administrative, or entrepreneurial effectiveness on a consistent basis. Through unknown mechanisms, the culture of developed countries passively connects the economic model with the language faculty of individuals to routinely achieve this outcome. This connection between the economic model and language faculty is already made outside the classroom long before college age. Formal education simply serves to expand this cultural learning with technical details and enhance it with training.
Under the Implicit Curriculum, development is the permanent command of technical knowledge with its implicit knowledge, the language faculty. When this is the case for much of society, the result is economic development as we define it here. So, developed countries are language faculty-driven economies.
Because cultures are different, developing countries don’t enjoy the advantage of developed countries. The economic model is not automatically connected with the language faculty via culture. No amount of conventional education has made up for that. That is why “higher education for development” has not been effective in postcolonial countries.
Underdevelopment is the expression of the economic model with technical knowledge alone. Without the imaginative and contingent dynamism of the language faculty, the complexity of the economic model is reduced to a static list of technical protocols. Technical knowledge is then used to express technical knowledge.
Using the resources of higher education, the Implicit Curriculum repurposes the existing language faculty of students to govern and command the economic model.
IMPORTANT: The term “language” refers to the human ability to use language, the language faculty. It does not refer to spoken language. Concepts about the relationship of spoken language with development are distracting mental exercises that lead to gimmicks and a dead end. We don’t go there.
The use of language is the most creative, innovative, and imaginative thing that everybody does every time they speak. Every person who uses language is endlessly imaginative and innovative. Not sometimes, but every time they speak. E.g., there are endless ways one can say the same thing, yet be understood by others. You don’t even think about it. You just say it. There is no limit to the ways one can combine words and ideas to express even the most casual or serious things.
When you apply this capability to the elements of the economic model. When you deploy the economic model with the same unconscious organizing principle of language, one can visualize how expatriates do what they do instinctively, relatively easily, and seemingly without effort. It is hard for a manager that is competent in this manner to make a mistake doing something routine. In the same way that people instinctively correct misspoken words, such a manager will detect and correct mis-expressions of the economic model. The constant vigilance for accuracy and etiquette of self-correction is too demanding and laborious to happen consciously. It is not a deliberate act. It is instinctive.
But when the economic model exists as technical knowledge separate from the language faculty, then it is merely a list of steps comparable to a memorized verse or poem in a “language” that is not understood. So, all one can do is implement technical knowledge technically by the book. There is no room to modify it on the fly based on real-world contingencies. Hence, the response to real-world contingencies, regardless of technical accuracy is frequently ineffective for the situation at hand. When this is the case across the board, you have persistent underdevelopment—Human Rethink.
Although more specific that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” the concept of TFP (Total Factor Productivity) marks the boundary of what is objectively known about the difference between development and underdevelopment, beyond which redundant speculations begin. To be useful, any answer to the TFP puzzle must translate into a means for equalizing productivity differences between developed and developing countries. The Implicit Curriculum does that—Human Rethink