Are You a "Person of Principle"?

Transactional (in)Psychology. An interaction of an individual with one or more other persons, especially as influenced by their assumed relational roles of parent, child, or adult. -- Dictionary.com

Principles? Or Excuses? It's interesting that that the term "transactional", particularly in referring to President #45, has become his normal description. His admirers use it to explain his decision-making, finessing the issue of principle. His detractors use it to focus on (what they considers his lack of) principles.

Were the question of the title posed to you, you might respond, "It all depends on the principle," implying that there is a distance between being "principled" and being "unprincipled." I would tend to agree with you.

In the wider world, especially in this our multicultural, multi-religious, multi-political, more-or-less democratic United States of America in 2019, there are scads of principles, many of them contradicting others, or even themselves.

Do Principles Exacerbate Conflict? Despite this multi-dimensional pluralism (or, perhaps, because of it) we find many, many people who think it is important to be a principled person. They tend to believe that people who claim to be such are more trustworthy than those who are reticent to proclaim such.

Interestingly, it appears that the vaguer, the more-distant-from-everyday-goings-on the principle seems to be, the more likely it will have adherents. Such principles tend to become slogans of camaraderie, rather than moral or practical guides. This development is likely to bolster our democracy, rather than undermine it. It reduces the likelihood of conflict over specifics. Every successful negotiator recognizes this.


But What If You Consider Yourself Principled? (I personally do. I do not preach or practice, I believe, otherwise.) Then, can you answer the following questions about any of your principles?

Here are Ten Questions for Examining a Principle. Can You

1. ... state the principle (clearly)?
2. ... explain the important or critical terms in the principle?
3. ... give an example of an application of the principle?
4. ... contradict the principle?
5. ... give examples of the contradicted principle?
6. ... give reasons, if possible, for accepting the principle?
7. ... give reasons, if possible, for rejecting the principle?
8. ... tell how the principle helps us to think rationally or opens up possibilities for action?
9. ... tell how rejecting the principle restricts possibilities for thought or action?
10 ... find two other principles one more important, the other less important than the principle being evaluated?

Here are two examples of possible principles to consider:

A) An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
B) To get ahead, learn how to fake competence and passion.

Use the questions above to decide whether, and under what circumstances, you might accept or reject the principle.

For fuller explanation, and examples to practice on, see
What is it to Know How to Use a Principle?

Cordially, EGR

Hard Practical Questions? Handle Them or Dodge Them! Here's How. *

edited 4/24/21

If you can't solve a problem, then there is a easier problem that you can solve: find it.¨ -- George Polya, How to Solve It (cited in Kahnemann, p. 98)[1]

Don't go 'roun' flippin' cowpies! -- American Common Sense(?)

An often useful, cost-saving heuristic. Does watching violence on TV make kids more violent? The answers to this question, it appears, could have important practical consequences. But the question itself is problematic: it is highly ambiguous. And it risks generating time-consuming argument and more.

It used to be all-too-common, although somewhat bizarre, to observe even "professionally trained" people spending a lot of time and energy vehemently debating this question without taking the trouble to first determine whether they all understood the terms to mean the same (or similar) things.

Getting practical answers to vague questions can often be addressed by operationalization, that is, the specification of vague terms, e.g., "watching," "violence," by providing replicable, observable procedures for their determination.[2] The down side is that it might require expensive investigation to answer. All we might turn up, in any case, is a lot of dissensus, an impractical impasse!

Our original question about the effects of TV on children's propensities to violence generates even more problematic sub-questions:

1. What do you mean by "watching TV"? Need a child be paying close attention to it, or would just having it on in the background count? How do we determine how much TV a child is watching?

2. What counts as violence? Football? Mighty Mouse? A dramatization of an assault? Documentary footage from a war?"

3. How are we to determine if kids have become more or less violent? From their play-acting? From their actual fighting? From their arguments or threats?

In most situations, people would find this detailing process tedious. It distracts from the entertainment purposes of many a "debate," normally a sort-of quasi-intellectual arm wresting, or a contest in one-upmanship. Easy questions are usually thought to be "more interesting" than hard ones if only because they can be appreciated by a wider, "technically-challenged" audience (i.e. anybody having to weigh in on something beyond the reach of their experience).

So it is that even though the rituals of open discussion seem to satisfy our commitments to "democratic" participation, they muddy the flow of decision-making. Operationalization with its consequent query-reformulation process takes much more patience, with no guarantees of high-consensus outcomes to enable a push to the point of practical application.[2a]

Daniel Kahneman calls the reformulation of a query the Question-Substitution Heuristic. Developing heuristics often, if not always, involves operationalizing vague, general terms into something more specific and apprehendable without intricate processes. In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman gives a chart of comparisons between what he calls Target Questions (hard) and Heuristic Questions (easy).[3]

Target Question	Heuristic Question
How much would you contribute to save an endangered species?	How much emotion do I feel when I think of dying dolphins?
How popular will the president be six months from now?	How popular is the president right now?
This woman is running for the primary. How far will she go in politics?	Does this woman look like a political winner?

Chart 1: Abridged from Kahneman (2011) pp. 98-99

Note that working out answers to the target questions, especially when money is involved, is often a laborious undertaking. By contrast, heuristic questions can be pretty much answered off the top of the head: they reduce the information-base for answering to what the questioning persons can easily access in memory. How likely this procedure is to provide good solutions to real problems one might judge by the example of participants of TV talk shows and no small number of our political and social pundits. (The accuracy of an expert, much less a pundit, in futurology tends to randomness. [3a])

But professional scientists, even, have been criticized for providing answers to questions they seem to have reformulated as easy.[4] Congressional response in 1958 to the question, "Why did the United States fail to beat the Russians into space?" was reformulated in the easier "who's-to-blame" mode, and ultimately responded to with the passage of the National Defense Education Act.[5]

The Theory-To-Practice Gap. An example. Public-supported institutions in our democratic society are often under severe pressure to widen participation, little matter whether those to be involved are even minimally informed or not. Consequently, questions that the most practiced and learned professionals might disagree on are usually decided by the least practiced and least knowledgeable of people.

What is mathematics, in its essence? Professional mathematicians can and do disagree. Likewise professional historians, on history. And professional political scientists, on political science. But, for example, educational institutions or systems, have (often elected) local governing boards, who must act to distribute (often, partially) tax-funded budgets. These governors, often with minimal knowledge, if any, about subject matter content, resource-needs and age-appropriate teachability, tend to decide all such questions as matters of budget. Consequently, matters of mathematics and history course contents become fodder for political brewhahas!

The operative heuristic for cost-chary governing boards dealing with broad, general questions is an interrogatory[6] that looks somewhat like this:

a. Are there any foreseeable, imminent and severe repercussions to our ignoring this question? If not, "table" it.

b. Is there any demand for any of these subject matters from Influential Constituencies (ICs) ? If not, "table" it.

c. What costs would different programs, say, of mathematics education, entail, were we to decide to implement one of them in the schools? Get those estimates. (Don’t rush. "Table" it.)

d. Will our ICs likely support us in our decisions? If not, "table" it.

Lets mimic Kahneman’s chart 1. The target question group, in the left column, will contain the kinds of questions encountered, for example in educational governors' meetings (or, even, in casual public discussions). In the right column well put the heuristic questions, the kinds of questions likely to be substituted by governing boards' committees.

Target Question	Heuristic Question
What are the aims of our institution's educational programs?	How can we use our institution to satisfy the demands of different community and political constituent groups?
Should beginning (pre-college or undergraduate) students be required to take introductory classes of a general nature?	Can we make room in the budget for such new courses without threatening the sacred cows of influential people?
Should all K-12 students be prepared to go to college?	Who can we overlook without raising a din that threatens our tenure as governors?

Chart 2

From Chart 2 and the preceding interrogatory we can see why, despite much lip-service to the contrary, academic programs will likely continue to be kept in distant second place by educational decision makers in comparison to their personal or political concerns. With a bit of adjustment the processes shown in Chart 2 can be adjusted to many different kinds of institutions and the problems they are faced with.

Why Is It Wise to Consider Using the Substitution Heuristic? The heuristic can be useful for transforming idealistic, but vague claims into something that can be tested for implementation, but ... nonetheless, it's use is somewhat of a distraction from the original hard problem. In fact it may lead quite far from the original problem if cleverly transformed by sloganeering supported by enthusiastic promotion. For example, instead of dealing with the difficulties of admitting underprepared students to higher education, we focus on "expanding" opportunities by reducing entrance requirements. This may address the issue of underfilled classrooms, but exacerbates the problem of second- or third-year dropouts.

The drop-out problems might, in turn, be addressed by giving credit for "experience" or watered-down course work so as to satisfy public perceptions of equity in admissions, instead of funding pre-admission courses in remedial training for academic demands.

A decision-maker ought to learn and retain the Substitution-Heuristic for unforeseen necessities. Why is that? It's because honesty is not always the best policy if one wants to keep one's position or reputation in one's institution. Inverse correlations between celebrated "high expections" demanded and resources available are not uncommon. Just as a stupid question is said to merit a like answer, so does a complex and difficult problem, masqueraded as a simple, "common-sense" inquiry merit calling up an intricate process of analysis, starting with the temporizing of the Substitution Heuristic. Why? Ultimately, for the sake of one's rationality and personal mental-emotional health.


Cordially,
----EGR
12/5/17

* The above blog developed from my essay, "A Pathological Heuristic: dodging hard practical questions/ published in New Educational Foundations Volume 2, Spring 2013

ENDNOTES

[1] Kahneman, Daniel Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) New York: Ferrar, Strauss and Giroux.

[2] Rozycki, EG available at Operationalization

[2a] Clabaugh, GK & Rozycki, EG available at "Getting It Together." The nature of consensus.

[3] Depending on circumstances, heuristics often work and are much more economical than alternative processes. See Gigerenzer, G & Todd, P Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart (1999) NewYork: Oxford U Press

[3a] Tetlock, P (2005) Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Princeton University Press ISBN-10: 0-691-12871-5. pp/ 161-162 and throughout.

[4] See Moyer, M "Person of the Year Nomination for Higgs Boson Riddled with Errors" Scientific American Blog 11-29-12 at http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/11/29/person-of-the-year-nomination-for-higgs-boson-riddled-with-errors/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_BS_20121130

[5] See Rozycki, EG (2008) at Illogic and Dissimulation in School Reform

[6] See Rozycki,EG (12/5/17) Available at Developing Interrogatories to Aid Analysis

Engaging Conflict: a Leadership Necessity?

War is Peace1984 -- George Orwell I would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good. – Napoleon Bonaparte.
	The Epee of Europe

Dilemmas. Leadership offers an incumbent realms of opportunity; and, also, realms of temptation. It is in the interests of the followership (and, also, of the disinterested) to hold leadership in rein. But it is natural, even necessary, for leadership to strain against it. The priorities of leadership and followership not infrequently butt heads. (See A Leader's Primary Pursuit: Incumbency)

Leadership as “Service.”

"The king is foremost the servant ... of the State.“ -- Frederic II, King of Prussia (1712 - 1786)

Incumbent candidates of all kinds support their proposal of incumbency with often not too subtle threats. A traditional approach is to claim a “servant’s” role to some widely “honored”, if fuzzy, goal or person, for example, Servant of God, Servant of The People, Servant of Justice, Servant of Peace.

As such, a Servant-Leader, the proposed incumbent promises to clarify, pursue and actualize the “Will” (or “True Meaning”} of God, People, Justice or Peace.

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 7:21

Why “God” Needs a “Devil.” It is the real or imagined threat of conflict that disciplines a “distractable” followership into supporting incumbency. The normal inclinations of people to go about their own business, giving only lip-service to the proposals of authority, tend to undermine that authority or lower its esteem.

Leaders looking to use their organization as an agency of change have to carefully distinguish between members who are marginal, those who are interested and those who are zealots. It really makes a difference. (See Assessing the Likelihood of Implementing Change )

So it is that “natural” priorities, e.g. attention to personal physical needs, to personal gain, to individual interests, or to ties to family, friends, or neighbors have to be demonized, if only minimally lowered in esteem, as “distractions” from pursuit of “nobler” goals, i.e. those goals “clarified” by the would-be incumbent. People must be “educated” to resist the “temptations” of such “selfish distractions.”

So it is that all over the world, Societies send out Teachers to Educate the Intellectually and Morally Underdeveloped so as to reduce Discord, Crime and Corruption.

The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. Matthew 13:41

Conflict: A Balm for Incumbents? Louis Coser identifies several important functions of conflict.

a. Conflict makes connection. It is a basic form of exchange and interaction. It is a negotiation.

b. Conflict among groups sharpens their exterior boundaries.

c. Conflict among groups revitalizes traditions and norms.

d. Information gathering, reconnaissance, is a function of conflict.

e. Conflict among groups causes their replication of each other, a balance of structure and functions which may encourage formation of similar markets and power centers.

Generally often overlooked issues are several:

1. Who, specifically, benefits from these outcomes of conflict?

2. Who, specifically, pays the costs?

3. Does the leadership and followership share benefits in some fair proportion to the costs borne by them?

4. Why do incumbents tend to resist raising such issues?

The Moral Hazards of Leadership that strives to be heroic are unavoidable. But they can be dealt with. There are enough extant conflicts in the world to provide many an incumbent with opportunities for heroic leadership. (See LEADERSHIP vs. MORALITY: AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT?)

The dangerous temptation is for the incumbent to create conflict merely to protect his or her own incumbency with little regard for those whom he or she leads. History has long shown this to be a not uncommon hazard. Leaders not infrequently tend to seek out, if not create, what they can present to their followers as an unavoidable conflict -- often prettified nowadays with the label, "challenge."

And inept, uninformed leaders generally end up being either just lucky, or, more frequently, losers. Much more so their followers. (See Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?)


For examples and to examine these issues further in a widely presumed less important, less turbulent context, see The Functions of Conflict in the Context of Schooling )

Cordially,
--- EGR

Searching for “Reality"? Stipulate A Turtle!

edited 102119

"What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"
— Hawking, 1988 A Brief History of Time

Traditions of Stipulation Define Disciplines. We find in West’s Encyclopedia of Law[**] the following characterization of stipulation as it is used in legal proceedings:

An agreement between attorneys that concerns business before a court and is designed to simplify or shorten litigation and save costs. During the course of a civil lawsuit, criminal proceeding, or any other type of litigation, the opposing attorneys may come to an agreement, foregoing further investigation, about certain "facts" and "issues". Such an agreement is called a stipulation.

From this conception of stipulation it is easy to construct parallels for almost any kind of research that does not or cannot push to some ultimate, incorrigible result. Within a discipline practitioners tend to pursue answers to questions arguably recognized as within the scope of their discipline, using methods arguably related to traditional methodologies. One cannot proceed within a discipline without some potential for recognition from others in that discipline that their undertaking is appropriate. Every graduate student learns early on how narrowly one must frame a research question for it to be acceptable to an advisor. (See Becher, T. Academic Tribes & Territories: the Cultures of the Disciplines. 1989.) See All Definition Ultimately Rests on Stipulation, i.e. Communal Agreement.

Of course, one can strike out on one’s own pursuing “gigantic truths” and risk possible self-delusion, uncompensated-for bias,and dismissal, should one's efforts, in the long run, not stand up to criticism from interested parties. Many famous discoverers have run this gauntlet and met with success, if only posthumously. (Many more of us console ourselves with advice from an ancient and also unremembered author: Pan metron ariston.)

But even well-established contexts of research have their own problems. Coordinated group activities, in general, are subject to tensions among authority, consensus and efficiency. Research problems frequently raise issues as to who decides procedures and goals, how much agreement among participants has to be obtained on these issues to come to a decision; and, how best to use the resources available for it.

The sticking point is this: such decision-types, i.e. those arbitrating authority, consensus and efficiency, may reiterate themselves for every decision consequently reached. This reiteration is often dismissed by invoking some tradition of stipulation contexts, e.g. budget limits, time and opportunity costs, political opposition from funding sources, diminishing returns on output, even researcher fatigue or boredom. (See The Fractalization of Social Enterprise)

Just as lawyers on opposing sides may stipulate evidence they have no hope of subverting, so do researchers in any field forego spending time and effort on pursuits that consume scarce resources with little promise of compensatory yield.

But What About Objectivity? Wouldn’t stipulation make it impossible?

In the early 1970’s I met a researcher whose speciality was disease etiology. Her interest was aroused by an apparent correlation between increased density of cancer cases and density of chemical manufacturers in certain neighborhoods of a large Eastern city. She obtained federal funding and began her investigations by interviewing people in those neighborhoods.

Two weeks into her interview schedule, she received a phone call at 3:00 A.M. The caller warned her not to continue the interviews; not even to come back in to the neighborhood. Otherwise, she would “end up with two broken legs.”

Being of a somewhat crusading spirit, she considered continuing with her research despite the phone call. Her husband, however, was not comfortable with her ignoring the threat. Little matter: one day later, while she was still weighing a decision, she received a phone call — this time at an appropriate hour — telling her that the funding for her research had been cancelled. No explanation was given.

No doubt from the research perspective of trying to see if there was a relationship between cancer victims and numbers of chemical plants, a set of conditions had been stipulated which impaired the objectivity of her research. The research was terminated before the experimenter’s intended procedures had been carried out. Lacking more information, we can speculate as to what the research-termination procedure was stipulated to be, although we do not know who had the power or authority to do it.

Objectivity depends on what the proposed object is. If all you want to do is stare through a tube to see pretty patterns, then a kaleidoscope will do as well as a telescope. Every procedure, or instrument employed in a procedure, can be questioned to what extent it creates as well as gathers “data.” Reliable instruments, stipulated as such, may permit reasonable stipulated outcomes, e.g. abridgments of otherwise lengthy procedures. (See Can Criminal or Immoral Behavior Be Dealt With Objectively?)

For references and to examine these issues further, see Knowledge: The Residues of Practical Caution


Cordially
--- EGR

[**] West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. S.v. "stipulation." Retrieved August 9 2016 from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/stipulation

Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?

Definition of Moral Hazard: “...any situation in which one person makes the decision about how much risk to take, while someone else bears the cost if things go badly.” -- Krugman, Paul (2009). The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, p. 62

Buffering is any position assumed or action taken by someone in order to protect decision-makers from the consequences of their decisions.

There are a variety of colloquial expressions that identify buffers, i.e. persons who buffer, or buffering, i.e. the protective actions they take: for example, “running interference,” “flak-catchers,” “covering for,” “press secretary,” “security staff,” “administrative assistants,” “receptionists,” “vice-presidents,” “terms of office,” and, even, "transfer" or “promotion.”


Buffering is often both necessary and not morally objectionable. And most organizations have regulations and policies that mandate buffering to protect their decision-makers from being called to defend their decisions on a short-term or daily basis. Judges, policemen, teachers, doctors and lawmakers, for example, are buffered from personal attack on the assumption that they have followed the appropriate procedures in good faith in rendering decisions that affect others. (For an interesting recent court decision, see Can universities claim immunity in misconduct lawsuits?)

However, buffering may have pathological consequences as well.

A very important kind of buffering is an insurance policy, a contract with an insurer who will pay monetary compensation if harm is suffered under certain circumstances. The hazard arises if insured persons relax exercising the caution and forethought they did before they were insured.

For example, driving more recklessly because one has insurance would be an example of a long-recognized moral hazard. Krugman’s idea, mentioned in the epigraph, intensifies the moral aspect by considering that the injury suffered by the insured’s recklessness would likely affect others who were not involved in the decision to act recklessly.

Consider the expression, “fiddling while Rome burns,” i.e. not exercising one’s duties despite an existing emergency. Buffering enables this. A legislator or leader, protected by terms of office and security staff, may well act, or avoid action, to his or her own narrow interests with the consequence that evil befalls the great majority who have little or no say in the decision-making.


Here is a case of buffering through promotion: in studies of several large corporations, Robert Jackal found that it was not unusual for leaders to escape the consequences of their bad decisions by leaving behind the circumstances in which they occurred. He comments,

... one way of looking at success patterns ... is that that people who are in high positions have never been in one place long enough for their problems to catch up with them. They outrun their mistakes. (-- Robert Jackall (1988) Moral Mazes. The world of corporate managers. New York: Oxford. p.90)

Obviously, those who can’t run away are left to live with those consequences.

But buffering may not only protect a person from some threats, but make him or her multiply vulnerable to others. Consider the situations of military personnel, policemen, and public school teachers. Their positions seem so secure, immune, for example, to threats from market fluctuations and political controversy. There are laws which protect their tenure, income and pensions. But buffers often come with conditions of oversight. And the overseers themselves may be buffered, usually politically, from the consequences of their own bad decisions.

Soldiers are fed, clothed, housed and given medical care. They are also subject to avoidable injury and death caused by faulty military decision -- historical examples abound. Similarly for police personnel who can fall afoul of political interference into their normal functioning.

Public school teachers are a peculiar group. People imagine them buffered by a sinecureal tenure, school law and public esteem, an illusion which many educators themselves harbor. The reality is often different. (See, for example, What Can A Teacher Do? Two Myths of Responsibility )

In fact, public school teachers have very little control over their working conditions, the students they are given to teach, the rooms in which they teach, the materials they must use, the discipline they can enforce, the schedules they must follow, or the grades they must assign for work completed. (See Who Controls Teachers’ Work? )

One accepts buffering to defend against the importunities of one’s potential victims, usually outsiders, only to become vulnerable to the demands of those insiders who provide the buffering. Multiple sources of buffering harbor multiple sources of moral hazard.

For references and to examine these issues further, see LEADERSHIP vs. MORALITY: AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT?



Cordially
--- EGR

Institutionalizing Wisdom: uses of delay and obfuscation

We appreciate frankness from those who like us. Frankness from others is called insolence. -- Andre Maurois

One of the most popular myths of our democratic culture, The Frankness Rule, is that communication is almost invariably improved in a face-to-face encounter by frank, plain-speaking people. Such "transparency," such direct talk is supposed to avoid misunderstanding and therefore unnecessary conflict.

Given as an example justifying this belief in frankness is the hotline telephone conversation that occurred in October 1962 between President Kennedy and Premier Krushchev that brought about a resolution to the confrontation between US and Russian forces during the very scary Cuban missile crisis.

What was overlooked was by all of us democracy-loving free-society afficionados was that this reconciliation was not presented for review to the general, diverse American public; or, even the Congress of the US. Nor did Kruschev ask the Russian people -- nor, I suspect, the general membership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union -- for their "input."

(I remember the situation -- the little we knew of it -- well. I was a junior in college at the time and expected, as did most of my classmates, that that our nuclear incineration was imminent. We planned the most amazing good-bye party and were not completely ecstatic, although very relieved, to hear shortly later that the crisis had been resolved.)

What is overlooked by our happy harbingers of frankness is that direct confrontation can just as well exacerbate a deteriorating situation, unless a good deal of wisdom is brought to it.

It is a forlorn hope to expect that, as a commonplace, a good deal of wisdom will be exhibited in everyday life. So it is that organizational shields act to keep separate powerful decision makers from others like them in rival organizations. This not only protects the in-house leaders from exterior aggression, but buffers them from their own inadvertent, or rash missteps.

I was once hired as a headmaster of a private school whose board of directors, although publicly hail-fellows-well-met, were not infrequently in disagreement. This was not very serious, since they seemed to be only peripherally interested in the school; but, it was important enough for them not to publically display mutual animosity: they were mostly all neighbors living in the same community.

Their solution was to try to recruit the headmaster (me, as well as my predecessor) as a go-between or intermediary decision-maker with a bias toward their own individual desires, so as to present the fellow with whom they were in conflict with a winning fait-accompli, as it were.

I announced this perception at a board meeting -- being at the time an adherent of the Frankness Rule --, remarking that they should approach each other directly since I was not going to bear the pressure of trying, at the same time, to surreptitiously prosecute and defend every board member’s personal agenda. I suspect this comment substantially reduced, in their eyes, the expected length of my tenure.

Wise action often requires preparation time for careful thought. This helps avoid rash decision we may well end up regretting. In smaller, intimate contexts, social niceties and etiquette enable us to temporize. We may, for example, at a family party meet relatives we would rather not maintain extensive contact with. So, we say, “It’s been nice talking with you again. We should try to get to see each other more often.” But, disregarding The Frankness Rule, we do not say, “O.K. let’s just say some nice words to keep the rest of the family happy. But we’re really out of here. Don’t call.”

Organizations institutionalize barriers to use of The Frankness Rule by setting up structures that cause delays and obscurities in communication. Personnel, e.g. secretaries, public-relations people, lawyers, are hired to formalize and to assist in what would otherwise be just another social strategem.

The last thing President Obama wants to have is an easily publicized, face-to-face conversation with President Angela Merkel about the NSA tapping of her private phones. Just as the last thing you want to have is a frank conversation with your significant other about a past ephemeral, yet very stupid thing he or she has done.

Being a decision-maker is often hard enough, and risky. Openness and speed of reply to one’s actions does not help persuade one to accept the burdens of such a role.

To examine these issues further, see Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?


Cordially
--- EGR

Bestowing Trust

Those who control how you trust, control you . (See Related Blogs)

There is much ado, both socially and politically, about which aspects of our society our laws should give priority to, for example, “free markets” or “government control.” Many people pick sides, founding fan-clubs of sorts, and spending a lot of time “debating” the “issues.” This is like a bunch of rabbits tuning in on a quarrel between wolves and foxes as to how those predators should arrange their dinner menus.

Of course, the rabbits have a role to play here. They -- in their massive numbers -- have to trust either wolves or foxes in order to facilitate the carnivores’ meal-making (and not flee or resist their needed participation).

There are seldom, if ever, any “free” markets: there are only people free to manipulate the trust of others. But neither are there, however exalted, any “trustworthy” institutions, in and of themselves: it is our bestowal of trust that makes them so. The very common ideas of “need to know,” or “proprietary secrets,” “name-brands” and “Trust me!” attest to this.

Judgment is regularly and openly diverted from a search for information in order to make a comparison to standards, to the well-encouraged short cut of emotional response to advertising. Caveat emptor -- like many another commandment in our “faith-based” society -- is given lip-service, only, and disregarded in practice.

Much of the expatiation on Constitutional rights and liberty, as well as that on community and tolerance is little more than seduction into trust. But it will likely be the thoughtless bestowals of trust by ill-informed, mal-educated, or distracted individuals that pave the road to innovative (!), modern (!) , 21st Century (!) forms of slavery.

To examine these issues further, see PERSONAL LIBERATION THROUGH EDUCATION?


Cordially
--- EGR

Must Schools in a Democracy be “Democratic”?

Proverb: Too many cooks spoil the broth. Is this true?

During the 1975 - 76 school year I helped coordinate a parent-run private pre-school in Philadelphia. We shared a building with an experimental private K-12 school, call it Walden, whose fundamental premise -- the headmaster told me -- was that everyone, staff, administration, parent and student, got to participate in decision making: everyone had a voice. And they all had a single vote in the community.

In September, I would see large numbers (over 100) of adults and children going daily into a commons room to discuss what was to be taught, and how. During the year I noticed many, many students playing in the schoolyard at all times of the day.

By the next May I saw far fewer people assembling in that same commons room. I asked the headmaster how things were going. “We have made some progress toward a general idea of what the curriculum might turn out to be; but we have yet to have classes. The students can’t seem to agree with their parents and the kids can outvote the adults.”

Considering that the State of Pennsylvania recognized Walden as a replacement for public schooling, I often wondered what the parents thought they were paying for and whether they got their money’s worth.

To examine these issues further, see Democracy vs Efficiency in Public Schooling

Cordially,
-- EGR

Higher Academic Education: a Road to Servitude?

The farm laborer and the artisan are in a state of servitude, and have to do what they are told, but that is where it ends.

But the courtiers of a tyrant ingratiate themselves with him and beg favors of him, and the tyrant, seeing this, requires them not just to do what he says but to think the way he wants them to and, often, to anticipate his desires.

It is not enough that these people obey him, they must also please him in every way, they must endure hardship, torment themselves and drive themselves to the grave in carrying out his business; his pleasure must be their pleasure, his taste must be theirs, they must distort and cast off their natural disposition, they must hang on his every word, his tone of voice, his gestures, his expression; their every faculty must be alert to catch his wishes and to discern his thoughts.

Is that a happy existence? Can that be called living? Is there anything in the world less tolerable than that? And I do not mean less tolerable to a man of valor, a man of natural goodness, but simply endowed to a man with common sense, or just someone who has the appearance of a man? What way of life is more abject than one bereft of possessions, in which one's comfort, liberty, body and life depend on someone else?

– E. De La Boetie (circa1548) A Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

Technical and Skills Education, known also as Vocational Education, has long been a dumping ground for students whose benighted teachers and school counselors have thought them to be “not suited” for higher “academic” studies, when, in many cases, what they lacked was maturity, docility, or refined manners.

The great irony of this 21st Century is that along with an ever increasing ardor for college life, high school graduates do not, in increasing numbers, come to the university with what many consider the requisite level of preparation to succeed at their studies.

Parents and students have been oversold on the idea that finishing college with a high G.P.A. is automatically the road to a good life, a future in the Seat of Command and Respect. But unless students acquire needed economic skills along the way, the likelihood is that they will end up, at best, in a large organizational environment, perhaps, even with a comfortable salary. And they will spend their lives “playing office politics,” catering to the whims of higher-ups, rather than producing desired goods or services. (Think of the cartoon, Dilbert -- it is not, by any means, based on pure imagination!)

This is what has happened in public education where politicians, courts and other distantly situated "tyrants" endeavor to remove the last vestiges of professional decision-making from those most closely connected to schoolkids.

To examine these issues further, see "Tracking" in Public Education: preparation for the world of work?


Cordially
--- EGR

Perplexing Educational Decisions: what you'd like vs what you must

You can do anything, but not everything. — David Allen

Why aren't the best teachers assigned to teach the worst students?
Why do many schools spend more money on landscaping than on salary increases?
When school budgets are cut, why is it more likely that a music teacher rather than a football coach will lose his job?

The answers to these questions are all cut from the same cloth: it depends on the distinction between what a community can agree that:

a. it would be nice to do; and,

b. what needs to be done.

Like many organizations, schools are run by decision-makers who are very concerned with who pays the costs, and who gets the benefits. And what keeps them, the decision-makers, employed.

For more on this see Mission vs. Function: Limits to Schooling Aspiration
-- EGR