G’day, I’m Dr. Karl and I’m going Back to School With my new best friends forever,
Student Edge. You should too. They rock.
Well, Dr. Karl, tell me, what were you like as a teenager?
Teenager. Well, basically at school I was fairly solitary; often bullied because I was
a wog kid with a funny name, having grown up as a refugee. At university I tried to
have sex and failed a lot.
I was basically a bit of a loner, which I didn't really want to be, but being a wog refugee, you didn’t get a lot of slack
in those days.
Was that tough? I mean, obviously I assume it was tough, but did it galvanise you in
a way? To throw yourself into your studies?
Not particularly. I was good at school because the Christian brothers just bullied us and
would hit us a lot. And when I went to university I didn’t do any study because I didn’t
have to, and then I did really badly the first time around.
So you weren’t necessarily passionate about study or science from early on?
No. Well I was very impressed by an astronomy book I got when I was seven, and what it said
was that, “Hey, the solar system is big – the universe is just full of about six
hundred thousand million galaxies, each with about six hundred thousand million stars.”
“Oh my God.” I could not believe the size of it, and that filled me with a
sense of awe and wonder that we would never ever get to the end of knowing everything
and that sense of awe and wonder has always stayed with me.
However, once I got to university and having to do some work, and without people bashing
me up and hitting me if I didn’t do it, I just simply did none and did really badly.
So, were you curious as a child?
I always wanted to know what was going on. I always wanted to understand. But it’s come upon
me more in later life. So once I went to New Guinea and worked in research doing hair and
wool, and then become a drug-crazed hippy, and then I really wanted to understand exactly
what is going on.
I ended up in New Guinea when I was 21, and I had a land rover, and I couldn’t fix it.
And suddenly I could see the disconnect. I knew how the universe began with the big bang, but
I couldn’t fix the handbrake on the land rover. There was something wrong with me.
I wasn’t fully balanced. So I end up going into being a car mechanic, and that was a
terrific education.
Do you still feel that same passion, to know everything? Because even now, someone as esteemed
as you and as…
Well, I’m not that worthy, but thank you…
As learned as you.
Well, I am learned, I’ve got 28 years of education, thanks to the taxpayers of Australia
paying for it. I paid nothing. Thank you very much taxpayers. Thanks. It was really nice
of you. Thanks. Thanks guys.
There is a limit to how much a human can possibly take in in a lifetime? Do you feel content
now with what you’re got?
I’m very happy to be on something that I recognise to be an ultimately futile, asymptotic
event to try and learn everything there is to know in the universe. And I know I’ll
never get there and I’m perfectly happy with the path. I want to learn everything,
I know I won't get there, but the journey is terrific.
Do you feel as someone who has studied for close to three decades, and beyond really,
that we treat education as a means to an end?
Yes and that’s good and that’s bad. On one hand, you have to have stuff just stored
in your skull. You have to have a mental toolbox with little data bits in it.
But then you need the imagination.
And sure, anybody can pretty well do anything, but to do it brilliantly and to love it, you
need to be hooked in with your natural wiring up. So some people want to play a cello
and other people want to play a saxophone, and they just never want to cross.
You’ve got to have the raw data in your brain and you’ve got to go down what is,
at that time in your life, your natural pathway.
So while you were studying all that time, did you have particular career aspirations?
Something that you were hoping to build towards? Or were you just absorbing what you could
take?
Nuh. No to both. I was just floating like a paddle pop stick in the gutter of life on
a rainy day, and discovered this sense of curiosity where I didn’t have to do anything
except float. I found that I just loved knowing and learning and absorbing stuff, where I
didn’t have to do stuff. I was desperately poor, so basically I lived off taxi driving,
doing the minimum amount I could.
Live on brown rice and soy beans which I bought in 20kg bags, and the way I got my vegetables
was that every Monday morning the greengrocers would throw away their stuff, so I’d go
with a wheelbarrow to the local greengrocer and take bags and bags of stuff that he was
throwing out, and the stuff that was bad we chucked in the compost, and the good
stuff we ate.
And so I lived well, without much money.
And then the job was getting boring so I went into a different thing. I started studying
biomedical engineering, and then Fred Hollows gave me a scholarship to design and build
a machine to pick up electrical signals off the human retina. Because this time around,
my second time around, I really wanted to study.
I was doing it, not because it was a pathway, but it was what I wanted to do.
Why is that? Why did you now want to do it?
I dunno.
Just through the collection of your experiences, you felt like you finally got to a place where
it was exactly what you needed and wanted?
I’d been in a bunch of jobs and I’d been very observant and seen there were many people
in jobs they were doing that they didn’t like, and it made them sour and unhappy and
I didn’t want to be one of those people.
So then what is your advice to the curious out there who maybe don’t have a particular
career goal in mind where they can get into a particular field and study and then go
out into the workplace?
The amount of time, at this stage, by the time you get to the end of high school that
one has spent in the system, between baby jail and high school, is about 13 years, which
is about roughly the amount of time you get for murder, in jail.
So for some people they’re happy to go on and study; for other people you need a year off.
Both my kids took a year off. So with my daughter we took her to Spain. We walked across Spain
on the Camino; 790km in five weeks. Then we snuck off and dumped her. She went to the
university for strangers, or foreigners, in Perugia and learnt Italian.
My son, also he took a year off; went around the world and came back with a worm that big
in his skull. You can see the advantages immediately of going around into the Amazon.
So, for some people you need a break; some people don’t.
Secondly, I think the education system in Australia does the high school students badly.
In most cases, it prepares them for university and I think that’s wrong. I like the Finnish system,
where you don’t do any homework at all. Scandinavia, zero homework. And, you work
hard and you work solidly. And there’s only government schools; no private schools. And
the teachers all have a masters degree in education and masters degree in whatever they’re
teaching. And they get paid a quarter of a million dollars a year.
And then you’ve got good teachers. And then, you go through – everybody does the same
course until about Year 9 or so – and then you split into the trades or university, depending
which way your natural bent is. And we respect the trades. We don’t do that in Australia.
But in the Scandinavian and European countries, they do respect the tradies.
But basically, you’re living in the most peaceful time ever, you’re smarter, and
you can fix the problems. And you’ll live long, with crisper.
That’s good news. Dr. Karl, thank you so much for talking with us today.
Thank you very much Dr. Simon.
Hey guys, if you enjoyed that video, click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Or find more of our stuff at studentedge.com.au