Football (soccer)

There is  nothing intrinsically wrong with football (soccer). So why is it that every year about this time the arrival of triumphant advertisements and inarticulate but excited pronouncements from journalists, managers, players and vox pops concerning the new season is so depressing? I suppose one obvious reason is that there is nothing obviously right with football (soccer) either. Objectively, it is neither superior nor inferior to many sports that involve two teams simultaneously trying to propel an object into a target device, while trying to prevent the other team from doing the same. Handball, basketball, netball, hockey (field or ice), water polo and many other sports fall into the same category. I wouldn't swear to it, but trying to propel an object into a target while trying to prevent an opposing team from doing the same thing is possibly the most common sporting format across human cultures. The particular combination of object, target and associated accoutrements (pitch size, team size, rules and so on) that anyone prefers seems to be an entirely cultural phenomenon. There is no point in trying to argue that one or other variation is better than another. They tend to be "better" or "worse" than each other in obvious ways, and which you prefer seems to be entirely dependent on socialisation processes. If you were born in Karachi, you probably think that field hockey is the best sport, if Los Angeles-basketball, if Liverpool-football (soccer), if Toronto-ice hockey. You may learn to enjoy tremendously action-packed, ceaselessly fast-paced high scoring action on a small pitch (basketball); or you may learn to enjoy a generally slower-paced game with short injections of high-speed action and low scores on a large pitch (football).

I suppose the problem is that football (soccer) enthusiasts seem uniquely blinkered. For example, to try to appropriate the term "the Beautiful Game" for one particular version of propelling an object into a target rather than any other (or any one of myriad other sports) seems both arrogant and ignorant. While I'm not a great basketball fan, or netball fan, or hockey fan, I don't see any justification for any of these to be described as less, or indeed more, beautiful than football (soccer). To argue that football (soccer) creates uniquely exciting moments, such as the climax to the 2011/12 English Premiership (or Manchester United/Bayern Munich 1999) is simply wrong. These are not uniquely exciting moments. They are, indeed, very exciting moments and epitomise why human beings enjoy watching sport. But fans of any other major sport could point to equally exciting incidents in their own fields.

Would be nice to think that football (soccer) fans might exercise a little humility, understanding and restraint following the Olympic Games (fat chance). Human beings can deliver astonishing, exhilarating, transcendent, climactic sporting moments without being paid many thousands of pounds a day. Who'd have thunk it?



  

Experience is not experiential learning

These days experiential learning is very popular in marketing education. However, I worry that some marketing educators are providing merely experiences to their students, rather than experiential learning. The most influential theory of experiential learning is undoubtedly that of David Kolb, often presented in textbook form as the learning cycle: concrete experience; reflective observation; abstract conceptualization; active experimentation. Kolb is often cited in papers by marketing educators about the experiential learning tasks they set for students. But has Kolb been misunderstood? 

Two recent articles in particular suggest that we may have a problem with experiential learning in marketing education. Firstly, Hunter-Jones (2012) finds resistance to participation in experiential learning projects from some very able students because they are concerned that the inherent uncertainties in such a learning process may damage their grades.  She calls these the formulaic  learners: “They are less prepared, or even able, to be flexible and accommodating of other learners in case this has a negative influence on their overall mark. They want to be in control of their own achievements and are formulaic in achieving this”(Hunter-Jones, 2012:26).  Most, perhaps all, of the colleagues in the marketing academy with whom I have shared these insights from Hunter-Jones’ article have found them entirely plausible.  Secondly, Young and colleagues (2008) tried out experiential learning on a Principles of Marketing module and found that, unless students are carefully guided through all four stages of the Kolb learning cycle, experiential learning activities can result in surface learning rather than deep learning. They make what seems to me to be a very important point when they say: “experience in and of itself is not educative … if students do not think seriously about their experiences, their experiences may reinforce stereotypes and incorrect suppositions” (Young, et al., 2008:28). For example, I grew up at a time when crass homophobic and sexist jokes were staples of TV comedians. Thankfully, we have now learned that such practices are hurtful, damaging and unacceptable. However, simply sitting through more and more TV shows containing such jokes (greater experience) will not teach you that they are a bad thing, in fact it may simply convince you that such jokes are “normal”, i.e. reinforce the stereotype. 

For those of you not already deeply acquainted with Kolb’s work, let me suggest one or two places where you could start looking. Well, if you haven’t read Kolb’s 1984 book “Experiential Learning: Experience as The Source of Learning and Development”, you may be surprised at the extent to which it engages with the philosophy of knowledge (Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Edmund Husserl, George Hegel), although less surprised at all of the learning theorists who pop up. Here is Kolb’s definition of experiential learning to get you thinking: “Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (D. A. Kolb, 1984:38). Then, of course, one needs a critical perspective on these things, and Christopher Kayes’ (2002) article can serve that purpose. And, naturally, one also has to look at a more recent re-statement of Kolb’s theory re-formulated in the light of two decades of criticism, reflection and reformulation, a purpose served by Kolb & Kolb (2005). An aspect of this more recent work that will interest those who follow developments in neuroscience (or neuromarketing) is that Kolb & Kolb call attention to research that suggests a link between the Kolb learning cycle and the process of brain functioning. They cite biology professor James Zull (2002), and at Zull’s website you find the following interesting information:

“According to our current model of the connection between brain function, human learning, and education, we believe that education can engage the learner's brain to the fullest extent when students follow a cycle of concrete experience with their subject, reflection on their experience and connecting it to their prior knowledge, generation of their own abstract hypotheses about their experience and testing their hypotheses through action, which produces a new sensory (concrete) experience.” (http://www.case.edu/artsci/biol/people/zull.html)

In other words, there is some evidence that the learning cycle is built into the structure of the brain!

References

Hunter-Jones, P. (2012). The Continuum of Learner Disengagement: Ethnographic Insights into Experiential Learning in Marketing Education. Journal of Marketing Education, 34(1), 19-29.

Kayes, C. D. (2002). Experiential Learning and its Critics: Preserving the Role of Experience in Management Learning and Education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 1(2), 137-149.

Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning Styles and Learning Spaces: Enhancing Experiential Learning in Higher Education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4(2), 193-212.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Young, M. R., Caudill, E. M., & Murphy, J. W. (2008). Evaluating Experiential Learning Activities. Journal for Advancement of Marketing Education, 13, 28-40.

Zull, J., E. (2002). The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning. VA: Stylus: Sterling.

Why chess players don't hug

So Andy Murray beats Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and they both have a nice, public cuddle afterwards in the middle of Wimbledon Centre Court. It's a common sight at tennis matches. Also, surprisingly, at boxing matches. Which, you have to admit, is a bit odd. After trying to inflict serious physical injury on your opponent for in some cases up to 12 rounds of boxing, the last thing you might expect is to get a big, often bloody hug.

Then you have to consider the aesthetics of it. I wouldn't mind giving Andy or Jo-Wilfried a nice hug in the normal course of events, although I might have pause for thought about hugging Mike Tyson or Dereck Chisora. But I'm not sure I would be keen on the idea when any of them have just finished doing what they do for a living. Not entirely a savoury idea.

Anyway, and this may be news for non-chess-players, chess players don't hug. I think we can reasonably sure that Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky never enjoyed a mutual cuddle. There is no record of physical contact between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. At the most recent world championship match, I don't believe that, in the course of the entire match, Boris Gelfand and Vishy Anand gave the watching public the treat of a man-hug.

Now, a chess game between world class players typically takes roughly the same length of time as an elite tennis match, and the tension level, however one measures that, is also roughly the same. At the end of a crucial game it is not unknown for a chess player to raise both arms in triumph, or maybe even do a little arm-pump. But, as far as the opponent is concerned, the only permissible contact seems to be a polite handshake. And make no mistake about it, contrary to appearances, the adrenaline is flowing in those guys and their pulse rates are raised way above normal.

I guess we have to turn to Fischer for the answer. That is the Robert J Fischer who is quoted as saying "I like to make them squirm" and "I like the moment when I break a man's ego". Maybe there was a wider truth to this. He who loses an elite tennis match has still only lost a tennis match, but he who loses an elite chess match feels that his sense of identity has been damaged, his ego has been diminished. Or maybe it just doesn't occur to them to hug.

Anyway, note to chess players, particularly of the elite variety: hugging is good, learn to hug!

Marketing paradox

Few things in life are either all good or bad. Maybe nothing is. Most things have obvious pluses and minuses. Close human relationships are very good for us (the evidence from the field of positive psychology demonstrates, if it needed demonstrating); but being in a close relationship exposes the individual to the risk of emotional distress (go see Romeo and Juliet if in any doubt). Spending public money to help out members of the community who are in need is a good thing (cf. The Guardian); but as soon as you have a system in place to do this, you run the risk that the undeserving or criminal will exploit it (cf. The Daily Mail).  

So it is perhaps not surprising that marketing has both its good side and its bad side. The good side is that the practice of responsible marketing brings together people who can achieve mutual benefit through voluntary exchanges; you have something that I value more highly than you do, I have something that you value more highly than I do, we exchange the somethings and, as if by magic new value has been created. The bad side of marketing is that some people may not be so responsible; they may try to manipulate or bully or lie or cheat or confuse or ... well you get the picture. Examples? Well, IMHO, those would include changing the interest rate on a savings account from 3% to 0.01% and not bothering to tell the savers, phoning up a million people using an automatic dialler in the hope that one out of the million might be remotely interested in what you have to say (meanwhile annoying 999,999 people), conducting some fatuous piece of pseudo-research on a new face cream and then selling it on the basis that a particularly biassed interpretation of your hopelessly unscientific research suggests that it might make someone look a bit younger, and so on. Actually, in the UK, 'Which?' magazine is a great place to look for such examples.

Close human relationships are definitely a good thing, despite the flip side. Helping out the needy is also a good thing, despite the exploitative few. And marketing is broadly a good and beneficial activity, despite the dark side. Worth remembering?

Economic literacy at the BBC

I worry about a certain lack of elementary economic literacy evident in the media. The most recent irritant came with BBC TV reporting of the latest inflation figures. I heard the same thing several times, so have to conclude that whoever wrote this was deemed to have nailed it first time. I quote: "The Consumer Price Index for May is 2.8 per cent". No, it isn't. In fact, the CPI at the end of May stood at 122.8 (the base for the index is 2005). The annual rate of inflation as measured using the CPI was 2.8 per cent for May.Yes, I know that's what they meant, but it's not what they said.

Shouldn't someone writing economic copy for the national television station know the difference between an index, and the annual percentage change in an index? (Actually, I have a dreadful feeling that they don't even know what an index is, and that's the basic problem.)

By the way, something interesting, that I did not see commented upon in the media, was that the CPI actually declined from April 2012 to May 2012. Admittedly, only by 0.1, from 122.9 (April) to 122.8 (May). So, using the CPI measure, the UK experienced negative inflation in May. If you use the Retail Prices Index instead, prices were unchanged from April to May. Not a terribly big deal, perhaps. But an interesting curiosity, nevertheless: prices were static or possibly slightly falling in the UK in May 2012.