A Concept Offensive to Reasonable People

Questions are being asked about possible test-score fraud in the Washington DC public schools.  Michelle Rhee, who's taken credit for performance improvements, has responded quite defensively:  In regards to the investigation of scores, she calls it

"an insult to the dedicated teachers and schoolchildren who worked hard to improve their academic achievement levels....
It isn't surprising that the enemies of school reform once again are trying to argue that the Earth is flat and that there is no way test scores could have improved ... unless someone cheated."

A common criticism of the DC schools (along with just about everywhere else in the country) has been the assertion that the union has "resisted reform".  I think this is probably true, given what "reform" actually means.  I'm curious as to what people think the union in DC has actually done to resist "reform", that any other union hasn't done in any other district.  I'm asking this under the assumption that, as is commonly said of union resistance to reform, they probably feel they have fought against the standard reform platform: performance pay, ending tenure, and general undermining of teacher protections.  The underlying premise of these reforms is that poor teaching is driving the achievement gap, and that what is needed is an improvement in the quality of teaching, and thus the so-called accountability measures.

My problem with this is that it isn't as if the teachers in DC are really much worse than anywhere else.  I mean, they could be in some marginal sense, but it would be really odd for there to be so many bad teachers, to the extent that they are driving such dismal performance in classroom after classroom.  There just isn't anything about DC that would make it so exceptionally worse than other, similarly disadvantaged districts.

Except of course, that all districts with similar demographics are doing terribly.  We tend to say these are "bad schools".  Yet that's largely a useless term.  "School" is simply a building staffed by credentialed employees.  The quality doesn't change substantially from one to the next.  What does change is the student body.  Often in a matter of a few miles - across "the tracks" - scores can almost double. The reality is that these schools face tasks that are really not comparable.  Therefore it is somewhat absurd to speak of them in similar terms, and even more absurd to address them with similar policy. 

Ever wonder why you don't hear about "bad" teachers at "good" schools?  It isn't because they don't exist.  It is because they are largely irrelevant.  As long as they show up and provide some basic level of instruction, the kids will do relatively OK.  This isn't even "bad" teaching, necessarily.  (Just try managing to keep 30 kids somewhat focused and following a curriculum for 6 hours a day, and try not to go insane yourself - the term "bad" will take on new meaning!)  No, what goes on at "good" schools is average teaching.  And that's fine.  We can go into deeper discussions there, but I think that's beyond the scope of the achievement-gap problem.

But what goes on at "bad" schools is... surprise, average teaching.  The problem is, given the resources everyone at such schools are working with, considering the task they face, average produces "bad" results.  The vainglorious hope that modern education reform is after is a concept that should be offensive to reasonable people: poor schools need above average teachers.  This is exactly what Nicholas Kristof wrote in a recent op-ed piece in the NY Times.  We need to

"attract the kind of above-average teachers our above-average children deserve."

Now, there are 3 million teachers in America.  In school districts with millions of kids, hundreds of thousands of them poor and disadvantaged, are we really going to hang our hopes on finding "above average" teachers?

This is the John Rambo, Jaime Escalante model of education.  It looks really cool, and is inspiring to believe.  But ultimately it is disrespectful to the countless teachers out there doing an increasingly thankless job, asked to single-handedly fix modern society's social problems by the sweat on their own brow.  And when they fail - when they are merely "average" - they are labelled "bad", and suddenly now the reason for America's continuing social ills. 

Just imagine if we treated combat soldiers or cops this way?  Not Rambo?  Not Clint Eastwood?  Well, don't complain that we didn't give you the resources to properly accomplish your mission.  You weren't above-average!  Haven't you seen the movies?  Why couldn't you have been just like them?  Well, now we've lost the war.  Now the neighborhood has become crime-ridden.  And it is your fault.

To Deny the Rights of Man

Most of us are well aware of, if not accepting of the basic Marxist critique of capitalism: that an unequal distribution of economic capital results in an unequal distribution of social leverage, inevitably leading to exploitation as inequitable power structures become entrenched, and human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are violated.  Yet a common rebuttal to this critique is that as long as the structural imbalances can be overcome, that there are systems in place to allow for those who desire to overcome them, then neither exploitation nor violation of rights is occurring.

This would be true, as far as it goes.  However, in reality, structural imbalances prove quite difficult to overcome.   The reason for this is goes to a fundamental error in understanding the extent to which structural imbalances exist.  In the classic economic model of structural inequality, a property owner is at an advantage over a renter because of his ability to leverage his relative wealth.  To overcome this inequality, the rebuttal goes, all the renter has to do is find some way of creating his own wealth, and leveraging it himself.  As long as there are no structural impediments to his doing so, such as discrimination or lack of opportunity, he cannot be said to be exploited or denied his rights.

Yet this naively assumes a simplicity to structural imbalance, viewing it only in institutional or economic terms.  What is left out are the other, more powerful forms of capital.  Capital, it ought to be said, is anything that contributes to an individual's agency.  Economic capital (EC) is the financial wealth one owns and is able to do things like invest, trade, or purchase; it is his financial freedom.  Social capital (SC) is the environmental resources available to one, beginning literally at birth, that help him and support his growth and development in life.  It is anything from the type of parents or neighbors he has, to the proximity of  local businesses, to the structure of government under which he lives.  Human capital (HC) refers to the resources within himself that allow him to process external stimuli in the environment and make relevant choices.  This would be everything from the genes he was born with, to the amount of vocabulary he learned before beginning school, to his ability to socialize with others, to his ability to form thoughts and critically analyze information, to his knowledge of computer software or simply control his anger.

Each of these forms of capital are dynamic.  The degree to which they exist at any given time determines the amount of leverage, or agency,  at one's disposal.  So, for instance, an individual poor in EC and SC, yet rich in HC, has a much higher chance of leveraging his HC to establish more SC, and ultimately more EC.  He might be an excellent communicator - a "people person" - which allows him to foster relationships and network, in turn leading to better paying jobs and social support.  Like wise, an individual rich in EC, yet poor in SC or HC, has a higher chance of losing his EC because of poor decisions.  He may make rash business decisions, and without an ability to relate well to others, find himself without support in difficult times.  At root, these forms of capital  make us who we are and allow us the freedom to be successful citizens.

In general, Marxist critique claims that relative inequality in EC is what drives the larger social systems, culture and institutions of man.  He writes:

My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind....

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

I have chosen to emphasize this last line because it makes a fascinating statement about cause and effect.  Marx is here claiming that the individual's EC and SC determines their HC, not the other way around.  Yet to the modern mind, this seems false.  Could not an individual, rich in human capital, thus be in a position to alter their lack of economic and social capital?

Marx wrote those words in 1859, a very different time.  He likely could not have conceived of the modern mixed-economy state, with its social safety nets, public schooling for all, libraries, mass transit, workers' rights, middle classes, public universities, and the like.  It seems that to the degree that we have these things - all of which were fought for almost precisely because of the critiques he outlined in his work - his argument diminishes.  Likewise, to the degree to which we do not have these things, his argument gains strength.  What we have essentially done with the modern state is a soft version of what he would have had us do with communism, that is to drive up HC by providing a baseline FC and SC to all.

Yet, assuming now that some degree of opportunity exists for those with a high enough level of HC, what to do about those who would have that same access yet lack sufficient HC to take advantage of it?  When I work with young (largely delinquent) low-HC teenagers, I face this exact dilemma.  My task is to increase their HC as much as possible, in the hope that this will allow them more leverage to attain EC and SC in later life.  As an employee of the state, offering public education services, I represent a level of SC they would otherwise not have, and thus am in a position to raise their HC.

Student Success, c. Flippen group

Study after study has shown that individuals in poor communities - by definition with less EC and SC - have less HC.  Not only do are those with less HC more prone to lose what EC and SC they do have, but they have likely been born into a world in which those responsible for their development have lower levels of such capital as well, resulting in their.  Because of the realities of real estate property values, individuals with low EC and SC are in effect shunted into geographic locations in which they are surrounded with peers who are similarly disadvantaged, which has the effect of lowering an already diminished level of SC even further.  This means that in the schools, jobs and peer groups of these neighborhoods,are of substantially diminished value.  This is, of course, reflected in the property values to begin with.  It is a self-reinforcing process.

To ignore or to discount the fundamental role of human and social capital in social justice and liberty is to deny nothing less than the rights of man.  To the extent that one benefits from his higher level of HC and SC relative to another, the relationship is exploitative.  We perceive this on a gut level when we purchase the services of someone from a lower class than ourselves.  We know instinctively that a maid, busboy, gardener, or convenience store clerk is fulfilling a role that has been determined by their relative lack of HC and SC.  For were they to have higher levels of either, they would no doubt not have to suffer menial labor.  To the degree that we find ourselves in a higher class position, it is no doubt due to higher levels of HC and SC.  Our relative incomes, or FC, traditionally used as a shorthand for class, are actually quite secondary to the leverage that HC and SC afford an individual.

The area where this chasm between capital classes is most striking, is between the criminal and the conformist classes.  Our deepest systems of morality and justice are written around - or in spite of - the disparities between capital classes.  When a man steals a car, abuses drugs, or beats his wife, we perform what amounts to philosophical hand-waving, as we assume that he has performed an act that we would not have, were we in his position.  Yet his "position" is assumed to merely a place in space and time, and not the psyche of an actual human being with a lifetime of experiences that has lead him to that exact instance in which he took the action he did.  For if we were indeed in his "position", we would have to accept his relative level of human capital - his knowledge, his critical thinking ability, his ability to understand and control his emotions, etc.  If we were indeed in his position, there is little doubt we would have chose differently at all.

So when the criminal stands accused before the court, his deeds those we have decided as a society to label as crimes, we are leveraging our relative richness in HC against his relative lack.  To the degree that our conviction is retributive, and not for utilitarian purposes, we are purposefully ignoring his diminished HC so as to absolve ourselves of any part in the crime.  For if we were to include the role his HC played in his crime - admittedly, an almost impossible task - we would be forced to consider the inequity in distribution of HC in our (society's) relationship with him that allowed him to commit the original offense.  Our damnation of him would in turn need to be directed back at ourselves.  This would be like taking a failing bridge to court for crumbling into the river below.  To the extent that we acknowledge the bridge's disrepair as relative to our own structural integrity, it would be illogical for us to hold the bridge accountable for failings attributable to integrity that we take for granted in ourselves.

In our desire for a veneer of social harmony, we ignore the complex relationship between human development and human action.  Those with lower levels of HC and SC are functionally incapacitated, and therefore easily exploited and victimized by those with higher levels of capital who wish for cheaper services or the satisfaction of retributive justice.  By denying that these forms of capital are intrinsic to human liberty, we deny not only our responsibility to create a just society, but ultimately the very rights of man.

Measuring SES

It is a well known fact that Catholic schools in general tend to have better success with poor students than public schools.  While its hard to know the degree to which selection plays a role in the success of Catholic schools with these kids, we know that it does play a role.  I guarantee you that the most difficult children in any any class will be those with parents that are "not in the picture".  These are the kids that are frequently absent, don't return homework, don't respond to consequences, and  - no surprise - have little respect for authority.

One of the things that gets glossed over in education debates (which are really about poor schools), is the meaning of SES (socio-economic status).  What this is often measured by is a simple formula: free/reduced lunches = low-SES.  The problem with this formula is that while it is a pretty good at measuring financial capital, it is a poor measure of things like parent education, intact family, substance abuse, parenting skills, and a variety of other factors that are profoundly deterministic in a child's development. 

I think this is something that is generally missed in discussions of poverty in general.  Everyone can look at poor neighborhoods and see how much more dysfunctional they tend to be.  But then we see that some people do manage to grow up poor and find success.  Yet this doesn't mean that there is no correlation between poverty and lack of success.  It just means that poverty alone doesn't determine failure.  What determines failure are a variety of risk factors, such as substance abuse, lack of education, etc., that strongly correlate with poverty.  Not everyone in a poor neighborhood has every one of them, but they are much more likely to.

Hitler's Toothbrush

According to Wikipedia*, the toothbrush-style mustache became popular "as a response by working-class men to the flamboyant, flowing Kaiser-style mustaches of the upper classes".  Or at least, I would imagine, those wishing to express such sympathies.  Would the Hillary bowl, Kerry hunt, or Bush brush-cut would be similar such examples of cynical shibolethery.

At any rate, not only was Hitler responsible for horrendous crimes against humanity, but he single-handedly destroyed the toothbrush mustache.  Has there ever been such a fashion disaster?

*a BBC article is referenced, which in turn quotes a comedian as an authority.  Oh, Wikipedia.

Compatibilism and Religion

Soft determinism, or compatibilism, is the belief that while we all have an ability to make choices in life, the choices we make will always ultimately have been determined by genetic and environmental factors that have shaped who we are.  It just feels like a kind of personal freedom.  As Schopenhauer famously wrote, "Man is free to do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills".  As we learn and grow, our sphere of choice, or agency, expands or contracts, depending upon experiences.  So, for instance, a self-reflective insight into one’s psychodynamic tendency to allow others to take advantage of oneself because of a history of ill-treatment by family members might enlarge one’s freedom, in the sense that in the future, this new consciousness will allow one to make choices that were before unknown.  Or, in an opposite instance, a traumatic experience involving a breaking of trust between close friends might cause one to become overly skeptical of the motives of future acquaintances, and thus reduce one’s sphere of choice.

There are of course countless interpretations of the various religious doctrines.  Yet what all religions have in common is their primary concern with the moral behavior of man.  That is, they are concerned with right and wrong, good and evil.  What they offer, their own unique claim, is a path towards moral righteousness.  This assumes, at least, the conscious ability of man to make a moral choice. 

This is not necessarily at odds with determinism.  In the Eastern religions, where the concept of karma is the basis for reincarnation, one’s soul is on a journey towards ultimate enlightenment.  Built into this notion is the idea that the Earthly experience, through which souls continuously cycle, is the plane of consciousness wherein souls will incarnate bodies in order to grow and ultimately transcend them.  Implicit in this dynamic process is the idea that no soul should ever be able to go through this journey in a single lifetime, much less any given moment, when a choice is required for action.  Because in doing so, there would be no point to the soul’s journey to begin with.  The journey is thereby deterministic, in that a process of cause and effect is continuously occurring, such that each choice will have been influenced by the process of having grown and experience prior choices.   This process of learning from and being influenced by the past is embodied in the concept of karma.  The choices that we make become actions, which then have effects in the world which in turn inform our future choices.

Reincarnation, like any religious framework for morality, is a closed system.  It is a natural law, an inescapable reality.  One simply cannot step outside its boundaries – wherever that may be, depending on the religion.  In the Judeo-Christian universe, the soul has but one incarnation, and one life in which to learn obey the religious teachings, moral and otherwise.  This makes the concept of determinism more difficult.  Unlike reincarnation, where the soul has in theory an infinite number of lifetimes to “get it right”, so to speak, emphasis is placed on the individual’s moral choices within one lifetime.  This makes the logistics of learning and growth much more difficult.  

One way that this problem is solved is by foregoing the notion of cause and effect almost entirely, at least in terms of moral justification.   Moral questions are framed not in terms of a connection between the soul and an Earthly plane, where actions have real consequences, but between the soul and God himself.  One does not necessarily follow moral law in the context of an Earthy cycle in which bad deeds create bad, while good creates good, and thus one’s actions are accountable – maybe integral – to a harmony in the universe.  Instead, one’s actions are judged in relation only to whether or not they are morally correct.  One does not do good in order to receive good, or so as not to spread evil in the world, but simply to follow the word of God as spoken. 

The various Judeo-Christian faiths differ of course in their views on ultimate judgment and eternity.  But they are unified in their monotheism, and their conception of the soul as having one lifetime within which to achieve moral righteousness.  This has the effect of “upping the ante” on each choice, placing onto it the full weight of eternal consequence.  (Having been raised in a quasi-Hindu family, I remember well my mother’s wry response to my expression of skepticism towards the faith, “That’s OK, son.  You always have your next life to find the right path.”)   So within reincarnation, enlightenment is inevitable.   But within Judeo-Christianity, there simply is not the time to “get right with the Lord”, as it were.  And in most popular sects, failure to choose correctly directly results in some form of eternal damnation and penance.   There would seem to be no stronger opposition to determinism than the idea that one would spend an eternity in hell for a choice made in life.  This would seem to preclude all such Judeo-Christian faiths from determinism, compatibilist or not.

So what Judeo-Christian interpretations would be compatible with a determinist view?  A good place to start would be as far away from anything like eternal damnation as possible.  Likewise, one must also avoid the concept of eternal reward, or heaven.  A determined choice would mean that the moral consequences of the religion must not exist as ends unto themselves.  For if a soul’s fate has already been determined, then what sense is there in rewarding or punishing it for something it had no choice but to do?  If the goal is merely to pass a test of obedience, the idea that the will to choose is not really free would make the test meaningless.

In the Eastern concept of reincarnation, the act of choosing would be compatible with morality because it is process-oriented, not result-oriented.  That is, by going through the process of spiritual awakening, lifetime after lifetime, the soul gradually finds itself in something like unity with the spiritual universe.  To achieve sudden enlightenment would not only be impossible, but it would defeat the internal logic of reincarnation.

Something like this can be found in Judeo-Christian religions.  If the emphasis is placed on the process of living, in that there is learning to be had, then it would not ultimately matter if we were to have been determined.  If “getting right with God” does not mean merely following a linear set of rules so as to earn eternal salvation, but instead  to open one’s consciousness to a higher reality and experience of the “divine”, then a soul could be entirely determined yet still able to fulfill it religious destiny.

If religion is compatible with determinism, there are still many questions to ask.  For instance, why would some souls be destined for such short lives of seeming misery, in which little is learned?  Why are other souls allowed to live lives of sheer ignorant bliss?  Yet these are questions that must remain within each faith, asked and answered by those who accept that particular universe.  From an outside perspective, the question is one of finding common ground, and whether it is possible that the ways in which we are all trying to find our own paths in life might overlap in more ways than we might assume. 

 

Scientific materialism cannot help but find more and more evidence of a determined world.  And the study of the human mind will undoubtedly be no different.   We know more about the ways in which we are determined, or at least limited and stimulated, than ever before.  This will increasingly place science at odds with those for whom the idea of a determined life clashes against ancient traditions, philosophical and religious assumptions.  There will no doubt be gaps that remain forever unclosed.  But we may find that instead of gulfs between us, they lie only at our side, and our paths point towards the same horizon.

Reflections

Creation of Light, Gustave Doré

Yesterday in Texas, a 20-month old toddler was found drunk on 4 Loko, the notorious caffeinated alcoholic beverage.  Police found the mother outside the apartment complex with friends.  Apparently she had fallen asleep in bed while drinking, then woke and went outside.  After a roommate found the infant tangled in sheets, turning blue, she called 911.  When they arrived they found the toddler wandering drunkenly outside. The mother's mug shot was plastered front and center below the headline.

Lashawnda Allen, 32, lives in a poor section of North Houston, most likely in this apartment complex.  The nearest elementary school ranks 4/10 according to statewide exams.  I was able to find her My Space page, on which she has posted pictures of her toddler, her 5 month old, and random pictures of her mugging for the camera.  The backgrounds in the pictures are of grimy apartment walls, dirty carpet and a barren concrete walkway in front of a row of government-style housing.  There is no picture of a father figure to be found, aside form a somewhat steely-eyed young boy Lashawnda notes is her cousin.

This story plays out daily in poor (often minority) communities across the nation.  Broken homes, substance abuse, poverty and despair.  These are the worst possible conditions under which to raise a child.

A terribly tragic story.  Yet what struck me were the comments that followed the piece I read.  A brief glance at responses across the internet shows a similar reaction.

"Drunk while in the care of such small children and in the middle of the day???? I can't imagine even having the desire when my kids were babies to start pounding down booze. What an idiot."

"This kind of story frightens the hell out of me on a lot of levels. We hear of them more and more often too. Are we as a nation really dumbing down this much? I realize not everyone has the benefit of a good education but the sheer lack of common sense here boggles me."

"What a waste of space. I don't understand how these people are smart enough to figure out how to "breed"."

The patten being expressed in the majority of comments on this story shows a profound lack of understanding of the causal mechanisms at work in low-income, disadvantaged communities.  The idea that this woman is an "idiot" is absurd.  Of course, what she did was terrible and shows a profound level of ignorance and dysfunction.  Yet there are reasons she developed into the person she is.

Many of the students I work with come from just these types of environments.  Not only have they received almost zero positive role-modeling in their lives, but the culture in which they live has social norms that would be unrecognizable to those who have not grown up in the ghetto.  The students live in a world in which the future stretches no further than the coming weekend, and sex, drugs and fighting are respectable pleasures in a bleak reality of absent or imprisoned fathers, overworked or depressed and dysfunctional mothers, and extensive peer groups where delinquency is the rule, not the exception.

It is a natural human impulse to become angry over what we do not understand.  Why didn't this mother - "these people" - make better decisions?  Yet she is doing the best she knows how to do, in a world of shadows in which she cannot see the way out.  Let us be angry at this, the disenfranchisement and despair that plagues the ghetto.  Let us try and find ways to help, instead of passively sitting back, judging from a distance, assuming that we would have known to different had we been raised in such a world.  Let us be thankful that we have had the privileges we have had.  Let us be grateful that our world is filled with the light to do right both by ourselves and our fellow man.

Let us take that light and reflect it into the darkness as an act of love, not hatred.  Lashawnda and her children could use it.

Structural Problems

60 Minutes aired a segment last Sunday night about a charter school in New York that pays its teachers $120k a year in hopes of attracting "great" teachers, so as to end the achievement gap.  Apparently it isn't quite working yet.  They say they do this all without private financing - which makes me think they are at least hiring a great accountant.

But here's the thing.  The premise is the same old one we hear from ed reformers: bad schools just need better teachers, bad schools just need to do a better job
.
Deb Meier writes about the real problems driving the achievement gap. She says the schools can't do a good job because of larger structural problems. She  references the notion of "soft bigotry of low expectations", that pointing to these social problems are simply an excuse for "bad teaching".

"It has been reported that 56 percent of black Chicagoans (over the age of 16) are not employed, 21 percent are officially unemployed, and a third live in poverty. These figures are double and triple those for whites. .... More and more members of the lower-middle-class white community are moving in this direction, too. In fact, it's even affecting—less dramatically—the solid middle class (like my own children and grandchildren). Isn't it time to look beyond schools to blame our plight?

But it's considered "soft racism" to mention these factors as relevant to the test-score gap, the graduation-rate gaps, etc. We are expected to believe that young people growing up in such intensely poor communities will not be damaged by it unless we have "low school expectations"—plus lazy, overpaid, unionized teachers!"

As an educator, I've always found this infuriating. A) it denies that there are real problems out that that get in the way of student learning, and B) in doing so it devalues these real claims and thus doesn't treat them.

So when a kid is absent too much because his mom can't afford to fix the car and get him to school, we blame the teacher, when in reality we need a more robust transit or school bus system. If a kid's homework is not getting done because his parents work two jobs, we blame the teacher instead of paying for after-school tutoring. Or if there is a lack of education in the home, resulting in cognitive and knowledge delays, instead of expecting teachers with 29 other similarly disadvantaged students to get them to the same place as advantaged kids, we ought to be investing in getting those kids the interventions they need, preferably 1-2 years before kindergarten even starts.

All teachers are asking for is more targeted support for interventions. Poor kids tend to have greater need for differentiation and remediation. Why isn't this factored into classroom expectations? Why aren't there more resource specialists or small-group aids.

Can we please get past the facile dichotomy of bad teachers vs. disadvantaged kids? Let's acknowledge that different populations have different needs and that services should be tailored accordingly.