Laws and Policies: weak bulwarks against bad character?

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope. --Maya Angelou

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. -- Thomas Jefferson

The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. -- Groucho Marx

Sadly, what Maya Angelou says about love holds also for hate, if it is strong enough to overcome the natural impulses of self-preservation. The many suicide bombers we hear about daily in the news media attest to this. Organizational efforts to protect its leaders, or even, its lowest-ranking members, can provide no foolproof barriers to those intelligent and ruthless persons willing to sacrifice themselves to overcoming them.

Conversely, leaders, despite their frequent and even vehement lip-service to widely shared organizational interests and ideals, may pursue their own exclusive, private interests even at the risk of severe collateral damage. (Of such, recent events in US politics provide ample evidence.)

Many people in organizations shield themselves from these realizations. Instead they hold on, often unconsciously, to a more peaceful, comfortable model of organizational behavior that misrepresents the nature of much organizational activity.

In his book, Ambiguity and Choice James March (with Johan P. Olsen, Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1976) presents a critique of this Edenic conception that he calls an oversimplified, albeit traditional model of organizational activity:

a. the cognitions and preferences held by individuals affect their behavior;

b. this behavior of individuals affects in turn organizational choices;

c. organizational choices affect environmental acts;

d. environmental acts affect individual cognitions and preferences.

This cycle is assumed closed and connected, e.g. a->b->c->d ->a->b->c….

However, March continues, there may be attitudes and beliefs which do not interact with organizational behavior: for example, rules may prevent racism in hiring. Conversely, organizational obligations may elicit behavior that has no basis in individual preferences, e.g. group-think.

March asserts that this simple model, a->b->c->d, predisposes us to assume that what appeared to happen, did happen; and, that what happened was intended to happen or had to happen.

He continues that nothing happens that can be used by organizations independent of persons who interpret these happenings as relevant events. Organizational functioning, therefore, requires trust in such interpreters. But this trust -- better, credibility (not seldom “credulity”) — in "happening-interpreters" may be extended or withdrawn as individual circumstances require.

Certain problematic happenings may fail to attain status as such within an organization because persons in positions of influence do not want to be bothered with them, whether for lack of interest, courage, resources or competence. So long as the costs can remain hidden, problems need never be acknowledged as existing. (See Hiding the “Elephant in the Room”)

For a restricted case study illustrating such a situation and its collateral damages, see

 THE ORGANIZATIONAL PROBLEM: ILLUSION AND REALITY

. (For broader case examples this late Summer 2017, consult your news media outlets.)

- Cordially, EGR

WHY MULTICULTURAL “RAINBOWS” ARE HOKUMby Gary K. Clabaugh

Immigrant children from every niche and cranny of the globe are flooding into our public schools; and bringing with them a bewildering array of cultural beliefs and practices.

Multiculturalists see this as an opportunity for teachers to turn their classrooms into multicultural rainbows where every shade of the worldwide social spectrum is encouraged to shine. Unfortunately, this ignores the fact that the foreign values and behaviors brought into the schoolhouse can and do often clash with one another. Some cultures even define themselves, in part, by their deep and abiding animosity toward other cultures.

Worse still, foreign cultures not only clash with one another, they often clash with core American values. For example, Americans have finally concluded that women’s rights should equal those of men. But the cultures of some immigrant children oppose that entirely. Some even tolerate honor killings while insisting that it is acceptable for wives to be beaten by their husbands.

Americans also are slowly coming to accept homosexuals as worthy of the same rights as other human beings. Some other cultures still prefer stoning them to death.

Then there is the matter of religious tolerance. Americans have, over time, wisely decided to agree to disagree. But some other cultures still enthusiastically persecute any religion other than their own.

Despite all the present day multicultural hokum, it is child’s play to assemble a long list of cultural values and behaviors that are utterly unacceptable if America is to retain its hard-won tolerance. Plus, let’s keep in mind that many immigrant children do not even want to be defined by their parent’s cultural practices and affiliations. They long to escape these confines and join mainstream America. Should educators join forces with their parents to keep these kids in the old-world fold?

Immigrants bring much that is of value to America. We have no corner on living wisely. But that does not alter the fact that multicultural education is far more problematic than it’s evangelicals would have us believe. Let’s forego all their mindless happy talk and give this matter the serious consideration it deserves.

For a more detailed version of this blog see The Limits and Possibilities of 'Multiculturalism' also offers a number of other commentaries on multiculturalism.

--- Gary K. Clabaugh

"The Stimulus” remains a Hypothetical Construct; or, Guessing At What Elicits Behavior

(Researchers) … have implicitly allowed their own behavior to define the stimulus… --- Blough & Millward, (1965) "Learning: Operant Conditioning and Verbal Learning," in Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 16

Our conclusions, even at the level of measurement and scaling (which seems such a firm foundation for theory building), are already a consequence of theory. A measurement or scaling model is actually a theory about behavior, admittedly on a miniature level, but nonetheless theory. -- Clyde H.Coombs (1964) Theory of Data, 5. New York. Wiley.

What “stimulus” is it that provokes anyone to harm, to kill, even, another human being? We are continually bathed in emanations from our sun as well as from distant stars. Are they part of our “stimulus environment”? Is it sunspots that cause felonies?

Parents, teachers, professors, law enforcers, juries and judges -- are all, not infrequently, profoundly self-centered. They judge the behavior of others on the basis of how they, each one of them, imagine that they personally would have or should have perceived, reacted, thought and responded.

So it is that they praise or punish, pass or fail, arrest or dismiss, convict or exonerate, commit or constrain persons under their domination to praise or to humiliation, to liberty or to incarceration or death.

It’s all too easy to talk about stimuli; after all, we’re educated, aren’t we? We’ve got the vocabulary! But it can be very hard to say what particular events, or aspects of events, constitute a stimulus.

Want to see if a rat can distinguish Mozart from Schubert? Put it into a Skinner box, starve it a bit and then feed it only if it presses the bar when an interval of Mozart’s music, not Schubert’s, is playing. The discriminatory behavior of the rat will help us identify whether or not, and to what extent, the music is a stimulus.

Having made the acquaintance of many an intelligent lab rat, I would bet its pressing responses would show a correlation with the snatch of music from the composer we have chosen to reward it for upon presentation. We will likely find out that some difference between the Mozart and the Schubert matters.

Is it color that matters? Not for us humans who hear only sound (but, perhaps so, if we have a rat with synaesthesia). Maybe one piece of music has a sound of a frequency that the other doesn’t. We’ll have to investigate that. The behavior per se doesn’t give us the answer. It just helps us focus the question: what precisely, if anything, is the stimulus?

And has the rat learned anything about Mozart or Schubert? Or even that one interval of sound or the other relates to them? What do you think? Wouldn't you have to put this to a test?

How much education, intellectual, physical or moral, is so much Schubert in a Skinner box?

For references and to examine the issues raised in this article further, see Can a Consistent Behaviorist Finish an Experiment?


Cordially -- EGR

Do as I say! Not, as I do!: Learning From Bad Example

updated 11/8/19

You've got to be taught
Before it's too late
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8
To hate all the people
Your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught
-- South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein

Supposedly, kids learn morality from example or precept. That is, by watching others behave as they should; or, by having it drummed into their heads through merciless repetition.

There must be a third way, since precepts are generally ignored because they are taught mostly by people who are perceived not to practice what they preach. However, children have it hammered into them that it is “good manners” or “mature behavior” on their part not to call attention to hypocrisy.

It is particularly hard to forgive clergy and basic educators for their “lapses” from the moral standards they promulgate. (Business, military and show people, like college professors, are already -- it is generally assumed -- well beyond the pale.) What must kids think when their teachers of morality, be it ever so secular a morality, are just thought to be mouthing words to suit their own convenience?

I remember what I thought. I remember what the other kids I knew thought, also. Some of us were dismayed. Others were empowered.

For many years I taught a course in ethics to university students. I would get back many a knowing smile when I would remark, as I often did early in the course, that one reason they might have to study ethics was to be able to tell people they had studied ethics. There were far fewer in that course, year after year, who were dismayed than who felt empowered.

(The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. -- Groucho Marx)

Public educators, in particular, are under constant pressure to satisfy the wants of powerful constituencies in their communities regardless of what is good for their students. However, not only are educators seldom taught how to handle such pressures, they are given to understand that their concessions are prerequisite to any recognition, award or promotion they may pursue.

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Ethical Miseducation of Educators


Cordially
--- EGR

One Foundation Stone of American Educational “Science”: wishful thinking

Thus, he comes to the conclusion,
The whole experience was but illusion.,
Because, he argues -- razor-witted --
That cannot be which is not permitted.
***** Galgenlieder – Morgenstern (trans.W. Kaufmann)

And, now, another quote. But this time from someone you are more likely to recognize.

Science is a willingness to accept facts even when they are opposed to wishes. Thoughtful men have perhaps always known that we are likely to see things as we want to see them instead of as they are, but thanks to Sigmund Freud we are today much more clearly aware of "wishful thinking." The opposite of wishful thinking is intellectual honesty -- an extremely important possession of the successful scientist. -- B. F. Skinner,Science and Human Behavior, (New York: Free Press, 1953) p.12

It’s easy to preach.

To examine these issues further, see A Critical Review of B.F. Skinner's Philosophy

Cordially
EGR