I am reading William Bowen’s neat (in a number of senses) new book on the economics of elearning: Higher Education in the Digital Age. It is a highly accessible book on a very opaque subject – sometimes you feel the opacity isn’t natural it is a product of smoked glass screens. Towards the middle of the book Bowen give us a parable about teaching a horse to talk. It goes something like this:
A prisoner who is about to be executed buys his life by claiming that if he is spared for a year, he will, during that time teach the King’s horse to talk. The King agrees and releases him. His friends are horrified – they are pretty sure no one can teach the horse to talk. But the -now ex- prisoner explains: a year is along time, he might die, the horse might die, the king might die, there might be a miracle and the horse might talk. He’s got a year’s grace, in which lots can happen, and he has lost nothing from the bargain – after all he had nothing to lose.
Bowen uses the parable as a message: Buy time – the future is likely to produce something like a miracle.
Unfortunately it’s not a parable that has such a positive resonance for me. Investing money in claims for new educational technologies and practices that will teach horses to talk sounds very familiar.
