Low Cost Interventions for a Better World: Reform by Redefinition?

edited 062720

"To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. " -- Publius Cornelius Tacitus
	Alternative Facts?

A PARABLE

In the Republic of Foz a group of high-minded citizens undertook to remove the bitterness from every medicinal preparation. And with all but one potion they succeeded. But there was an elixir the curative power of which diminished with its bitterness. This elixir was the only antidote for the fatal sting of the Fozfly. Thus, there arose at first a murmuring, then public indignation at the efforts of this band of crusaders.

Fearful that their quest be frustrated, our noble champions regrouped and with the help of a government grant formed the Foz Foundation. The members of the Foz Foundation dedicated their research to demonstrating that the sting of the Fozfly, far from being an affliction, was merely an occasion that precipitated a "natural life crisis."

Now, in the Fozian language, nothing categorized as a "natural life crisis" is considered to be a disease. Nor is anything characterized with the term disease also conceived to be a natural life crisis. Since only diseases require medical treatment, the proper Fozian response to a natural life crisis is acceptance and resignation.

Thus as the influence of the Foz Foundation waxed, the need for the recalcitrantly bitter potion waned. In the final stages of enlightenment to which most of Fozian society was educated -- called Fozzy thinking -- there existed in all the land no medicinal preparation that had a bitter taste.

And death by Fozfly -- still rumored by certain barbarians to be avoidable -- came to be accepted as natural and necessary, if still a discontent of Fozian civilization.

To examine these issues further, see School Violence, Punishment, and Justice

See, also, Cheating Well

Cordially
--- EGR

It’s Effective? Effective For What? Maintaining working relationships.

Never underestimate the effectiveness of a straight cash bribe.—Claud Cockburn, British Journalist (1904 – 1981)

Dependency. History and common experience show this: mutual dependency helps ward off severe conflict. Even though minor struggle is not unusual among people, they shy away from anything more than small-scale quarrels with those they believe they might need. Successful diplomacy begins and ends with smiles.

Even though disagreement may arise, hostility can be constrained by careful avoidance of “contentious questions.” People may propose different courses of action, each proponent vaunting his or her own as the most “effective.”

However, avoiding contention runs its own risk: it is that false consensus may develop that hides discord across a broad span of issues. (Just consider the present relations between China and the United States.) Mutually dependent people tend to hide their antagonisms. Smiles mask scowls. But this disinclination to confront one another can get out of hand. An “elephant in the room” can soon multiply into a herd. (See Hiding the “Elephants-in-the-Room” )

For example, during the 19th Century, Britain’s Queen Victoria, the “grandmother of Europe,” hoped to promote international consensus -- among the ruling classes, at least -- by marrying off her children into royal families across Europe. (See What Does Consensus Mean, Anyway?) Ironically, in the 20th Century the combatant countries of World War I, thanks to Victoria, had come to be ruled by individuals related by blood or marriage.

However, the parties to the argument seldom just walk out on each other. They need each other’s help to garner political and general public support to reach their many other more general goals. So, even though they disagree on a particular issue, they maintain their connection by avoiding more basic, and even more contentious questions.

Their disagreements often result from perceived disagreement on moral issues, believed by many, many Americans to be not subject to compromise. We might reluctantly agree with Claud Cockburn’s quote above as to the effectiveness of a cash bribe. Nonetheless we might still question its morality. (Woe the American who must try to do business in a foreign country where bribery is a long-established tradition. It is still a violation of American law.)

Other questions threaten to open even deeper divisions if introduced into broad public venues. Is homosexuality just another life-style? Should women be treated as equals to men? Is marriage only a man-woman relationship? Are Whites a superior race? Should children receive sex education? Should English be the official US language? Should sex be restricted to marriage? Does patriotism require that American history be taught without mentioning social, racial and class antagonisms? Is there only One True Religion? Is Scientific Authority to be accepted? Should forms of discomfort be employed as teaching methods if persuasion doesn’t work?

Effectiveness: more Group Dynamics than Science Unless there is well-established technical information available to be used by evaluators we can trust, effectiveness is generally judged relative to the interests of those evaluators or of their employers. Effectiveness is not infrequently defined by disregarding causes and effects not believed to promote the evaluator’s professional success.

And yet, many firms and institutions are organized so that political, i.e. control and marketing, decisions are isolated from influence by the technical functions supposedly needed to achieve the organization’s goals. Salesmen informally promise customers what engineers cannot -- within budget -- achieve. Marketers kick and scream about “government regulation” that requires them to mention the “counterindications,” i.e. dangers, of their products -- if only in rapidly sotto voce-- accompanied with distractive videos of frolicking people apparently in the best of health.

You’ve Gotta Accentuate the Positive... Just as universities have dropped many entrance and graduate requirements, so have major manufacturers done away with quality controls. They calculate quite rationally that the financial risks of product recall are often small enough to bet that their customers will misperceive dysfunctions as random occurrences. The “Buy Brand Names!” doctrine, so cleverly inculcated via our media, appears to be the only educational goal needed by citizens, .i.e. consumers, in a “free” market economy. (“Fashion mavens” have known about this for centuries.)

The upshot is this: even in apparently technical disputes, effectiveness of a proposed means is judged by focusing on short-term benefits disregarding those costs whose identification would undercut enthusiasm for the proposal. We see this everyday in advertisements for new drugs, or for adult education, health clubs, or chocolate-covered goji berries.

Eliminate the Negative … The other side of the coin is, of course, the Blame Game. The winning trick here in (mis-)judging effectiveness is to strongly characterize those who resist one’s obviously superior, commonsense, legal, moral and non-fattening proposal as not merely “part of the problem,” but as The Problem, Itself.

So it is that “burocrats” not political favorites, “reckless kids,” not faulty equipment, “gluttonous consumers,” not unhealthily confected foods are the reason for the discontents that plague the “righteous, “ who stand in judgment of the miscreants. (See Losing the Series; Blaming the Bat Boys)

Decision-makers in many organizations are routinely buffered from the full consequences of their actions. (See Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making? ) Such “leaders” tend to “solve problems” of production and politics (marketing), by sacrificing organization members often farthest from the arenas of failure to the leaders’ own continued incumbency. (See A Leader's Primary Pursuit: Incumbency)

Socializing Cause and Effect Out in your backyard, you hit a golf ball a little to hard. It bounces off a neighbor’s tree shaking down quite a few leaves, which cover a storm-water drain near his house. Rain and wind arrive shortly after. Your neighbor’s drain backs up. Water flows into his cellar recreation room. Damages are extensive.

Which damages, if any, did you cause? Which are effects of your acts alone? Before you venture to answer questions about your responsibility, notice that a crucial assumptions must be addressed. Is the depiction of events in the previous paragraph a sequence of links in a unitary cause-and-effect chain? Or, are the events somewhat independent, a mere temporally sequenced recounting of possibly many causes and pre-existent conditions?

For example, the drain may have been clogged up prior to your hitting the golf ball. Or the drain may have functioned well but the downpour have been so intense that the overflow would have happened without the covering of leaves. Or, even, a previous rain may have caused some of the damages.

You can no doubt see that the social and legal consequences for you are likely to be very different how the sequence of the events is described and evaluated.

Let’s extend the scenario. Your neighbor, though unhappy about the damage, does not hold you responsible for it. He knew the drain was already clogged. The following week a stranger entering his property slips on those leaves and breaks both a leg and a cellar window. An alarm goes off. The police come and apprehend the stranger who turns out to be a notorious burglar.

Ought you be commended as a very-effective crime-fighter?


For additional information and to continue this train of thought see, Cause & Effect: essential belief, misapprehension, moral hazard?



Cordially
--- EGR

Charades of Evaluation: mis-connecting cause and effect

updated 4/23/19

"…passing a failing student is the #1 worst thing a teacher can do. … Changing grades is the most undermining contribution to a student’s failure, but above all else – it invalidates your data. Putting aside creating and submitting inaccurate school data for the moment, entering a 'false grade' will make it virtually impossible to reliably measure any improvement of your skills as a teacher. Your improvement will now be based on unsound and worthless data." -- M. Cubbin (8/2/15) The Business of School

"… Is the Customer Always Right?" -- Farrington, Frank (1915) in Merck Report, Volume 24 pg 134-135

Pseudo-Evaluation. Data are not fundamental. On their face, data cannot be distinguished from outputs of a random number generator. Data are like shell chips on a beach mixed in with sand; or, like foam on the tide. (For an article relating “data” and “objectivity,” see Can Criminal or Immoral Behavior Be Dealt With Objectively?)

Far more important to know is what the processes are by which the putative data are collected. And even more critical is knowing which theories connect the data and collection process to what supposedly they indicate.

Much “data-collection” is like trying to identify proportions of bird-species during a fall migration. If the process were merely to tally varieties of southward flying objects, we might well end up confounding red-winged blackbirds with jet planes and monarch butterflies. (See Is It Really a Test? Or Just Another Task?)

In the above epigraph, Cubbin presumes a connection, presumably ideally possible, between school grades, student failure, and teacher skill. Using teachers as graders cuts costs, but is begging for inconsistency: not, because teachers may not “know their stuff.” But, because many institutional processes can overrule even the best of teachers’ judgments, e.g. administors’ prerogative, special education policies, or political involvement in the grading process. There is little consensus, when interest-group push comes to shove, on either goals or concepts appropriate to education. (See What Does a Consensus Mean, Anyway?" )

Requiring teachers to grade then grading the teachers is like judging baseball coaches using their players' batting averages. There will likely be only a tenuous, if any, connection between the data and any causal relationship to coaching (teaching) efforts. (See Power Failure: Losing the Series; Blaming the Bat Boys )

The Diploma-Holder Markets: is the customer always right? An important assumption Cubbin seems to make is that markets for test-passers are comprised of persons looking for those who possess certain proven skills. This is only a minor proportion of the markets for certificate- or diploma-holders.

Consider these other markets for whom actual skill levels are a distant, if even, a second consideration to applicant grade-point average:

a. Colleges, public, private or commercial, who have external, e.g. federal, or foundational, funds available for applicants with a certain grade-point average -- especially if the recipient institutions have tight budgets;

b. Institutions legally required to have certified staff but faced with employee scarcities, e.g. hospitals, clinics, civil-service;

c. School districts needing both adults certified as teachers, and students with birth and health certificates, in order to be run at even somewhat remove from peak efficiency;

d. Government administrations pursuing certain public policy initiatives that depend on items a, b and c, preceding; e.g. special education, affirmative action, STEM (Science, Technology & Mathematics); and last but not least,

e. the children applicants, legacies, to colleges which favor (paying) parents who are past graduates.

If skills really counted, there would be something like board standard examinations to be passed; normally, to be retaken at standard intervals. Teacher grades would not be accepted in place of board exam results. (See The Dangers of Diplomas)

But where the sheepskin alone is most important, rarely will the sheep’s diet be.


For examples and to pursue the issues raised in this essay, see

1. “Data-Driven”: a slogan to distract from organizational disagreement?;

2. Classification Error in Evaluation Practice:
the impact of the "false positive" on educational practice and policy

Cordially
--- EGR

Common Sense, or Merely Common Hubris?

edited120918

“Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.” ― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

Hume was on to something. John Locke had proposed that our senses responded to our experience by presenting sensations to the mind. The mind in turn worked to store these sensations as memories or to connect and then store these sensations as complex memories.

David Hume saw Locke’s theory as disabling the distinction between what we nowadays call “correlation” and “causation.” Our sensations are of events in our experience. All we can observe through our senses, even our senses amplified by instruments, are events. But we are in the habit of believing in cause and effect if one kind of event is consistently followed by events of another, different kind.

Indeed this tendency to connect one predecessor class of events to another following class gives rise to the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, “after that, therefore because of that.” For example, people more often feel queasy after eating raw clams, than after eating zucchini; so, they think, "Raw clams cause queasiness more so than does zucchini.” (But what if people who eat raw clams stuff themselves more frequently than those who eat zucchini?}

Between correlated event-classes we do not observe an intermediate event, a causal nexus, as it is sometimes called, that helps us distinguish between causation and “mere” correlation. True. But there is another way to look at this.

Maintaining Cause and Effect. Immanuel Kant attempted a rescue by proposing that Locke had gotten it wrong. The Mind (in German, Verstand, translated both as “mind” and as “understanding,” -- not Seele, Gemüt, or Sinn also translatable as “mind”) does not merely make connections of sensation brought in through the senses. The Mind’s very structure tends to process correlative event classes as cause and effect. We can hardly help but understand -- at least initially -- repeated correlation as indicating cause. This theory has been found to be much more attractive in the US since the withering of radical Behaviorism in the later 20th Century. (See A Critical Review of B.F. Skinner's Philosophy )

However, invoking some logic, there is a more direct way of thinking about it. We can accept Hume, yet maintain the distinction between correlation and causation. Consider universal negatives, which are statements that propose that, at any place or at any time, something is not; or, that nothing is, a certain way or thing.

For example, “There are no such thing as dragons,” or, what is logically equivalent, “There are no dragons, anywhere, ever.” The issue here is not whether the claim of the non-existence of dragons is true or false; but, whether there is an observation we -- or beings like us, of limited breadth of experience in space and time -- can perform to establish it.

Note that it is easier to disprove a negative universal than to establish it. The find of one dragon disproves it. But despite a very, very large number of failures to find a dragon, any claim that they don’t exist is not proven by that failure. It was, in fact, widely believed in the 19th Century and earlier that there was no such thing as a black swan. There are, in Australia. Also, tomatoes were considered to be poisonous, e.g. there was no such thing as a tomato that could safely eaten by humans. We know differently.

Disproving "No Swans are Not White."

Reconsider the example given above about the relation of eating raw claims and queasiness. The very argument against its being causation demonstrates that we bring much more to such a causal claim than a narrow consideration of correlation: we consider possible alternatives, or intermediaries, standardly characterized as confounding or mediating variables. A host of assumptions and presuppositions supports our observational reports.(See Identifying Trans-ideological Epistemological Presuppositions)

The “Common Sense” of American (School) Reform. There is always the possibility of hidden, overlooked or disregarded causes or effects that undermine an assertion that one situation causes another. As many have discovered, an apparent “common-sense” causal relation can disappear under closer scrutiny due to confounding or mediating variables.

There are a host of causal myths involved with all sorts of reform efforts, in particular, American education, primary, secondary, and higher, be it public, private or parochial. For example:

Bad or insensitive teachers are the primary cause of failing students.

Students have learning styles. Teachers can teach to them, i.e. no child is unteachable.

College is a pure waste of time, i.e. nothing worth the cost is learned.

Today’s schools are in a position to forestall 21st Century employment problems.

(See References to Schooling Myths.)

Such “common sense” beliefs underlie the hubris that drives a great many of today’s school reform undertakings. Their prospect is to continue on in a century-long American tradition: the cavalier waste of mis-aimed scarce resources leading to reform failure.

To examine these and related issues at greater length, see Moral Responsibility in the Education Industry: 
how much can school reform enhance a student's occupational fitness?)


Cordially
--- EGR

Cause & Effect: essential belief, misapprehension, moral hazard?

updated 071322

The brain is a construction of the brain. -- Nietzsche

There Must Be a Better Way! (The proctological principle?) I was waiting in a doctor’s office to arrange an examination, when a nurse answered a phone call. The irate voice on the other end of the line resounded throughout the small room: “I’m getting a colonoscopic exam tomorrow and I’m told I have to flush my system out by drinking a gallon of some insipid water concoction over the next twenty-four hours.” “That’s correct,” replied the nurse. “That’s absolutely ridiculous!” retorted the caller. “In this day and age there must be a better way to do it!” “No, sir. There is not,” responded the nurse.

A stream of expletives gushed from the telephone receiver. I thought to suggest to the nurse that she advise the patient to use a plumber’s snake instead of the prescribed water solution. But I kept my silence.

Practically Necessary Beliefs. Our way of life depends on a certain system of beliefs handed down through the centuries, although substantially modified in the process. Our notions of self-control, insanity, responsibility, criminality, and justice rest ultimately on the belief that some events relate to one another as cause and effect.

Daily we debate about who has done what; or, who can do what -- pretending all along that these “practical” questions have little to do with what “ivory-tower types” would call “philosophy.” In the debate we presume our investigations rest on a firm foundation: not merely the “belief,” but the “reality” of cause and effect. The operative train of thought here seems to ride on the Proctological Principle: if we (think we) need it, it must, in this day and age, be “a reality.”

Are Cause and Effect Illusions? Bertrand Russell recounts in his memoirs how, as a young man, he woke up in his bed one morning and came to a frightening understanding as to what David Hume meant by his theory of causation. All we ever observe, Hume had written, are correlations; regular sequences of event. Cause is our interpretation, our belief, more commonly, an assumption that normally observed regularities of precedence and propinquity will continue into the future.

Russell feared to step out of his bed onto the floor. It might, if Hume were right, suddenly open up beneath him, since there was nothing more than assumption to guarantee the persistence of its support. Thus, he would fall into an abyss of … nothingness (?).

(Russell’s reasoning here is somewhat inconsistent: If he could not trust that the floor, though sound and normal, would continue to support him, how could he come to any conclusion about what might happen next? Maybe he might float over the abyss!)

Being ultimately a pragmatist, as we all tend to be, Russell got past this fear and out of his bed and on with his life. Possibly he came to the realization that his bed, too, -- or the foundation of his house, or England in its entirety -- could just as likely open up to swallow him as he imagined the floor might.

Ultimately, perhaps, Russell, being a philosopher, might have come to concede (he did so, later) that there is more involved in identifying cause-and-effect relations than what our perceptions give us. Even today we warn our students, friends, associates, and acquaintances, perhaps, -- often futilely -- that mere “correlation” neither indicates nor denies “cause.” Little matter; if they are gamblers, day-traders, newspaper columnists, or political incumbents, they tend to ignore us.

Cause = Perceptions + Assumptions. Russell’s, and our, ability to act in this world rests heavily on structures of trust in generally unproven (and purely empirically unprovable) regularities of persistence. We construct edifices of trust with bricks of hope and desire cemented together with no more than the mortar of our assumptions. (See Varieties of Explanation & Cause.)

Immanuel Kant, some decades after Hume, presented a counter to Hume’s apparent empirical skepticism by denying that the human mind could go beyond experience, even such experience as augmented with scientific apparatus, to settle questions such as the “nature” of causation or objectivity. Our knowledge, Kant says, such as it is, is limited to phenomena.

Phenomena are constructed within the framework of human categories of understanding, which constitute the structure of the human mind, although interacting in someway with entities -- or entity -- of the extra-phenomenal world. Number, unity or plenty, says Kant, is a category of human understanding; not necessarily to be expected to parallel extra-phenomenal “reality.” (Check out the notion of quantum entanglement to appreciate how Kant's distinctions still retain relevance; although, he seems not to have considered how developing technologies and theories might interact to substantially expand human experience.)

It is amazing how many people in so many walks of life just hate this kind of theory: the theory that in culling out the true from the false, the wishful or delusional from the real, we ultimately invoke items of belief that themselves can only be judged, ad infinitum, by invoking other items of belief. (See Getting Down to Facts: can we avoid making assumptions?)

Is there a Bedrock of Knowledge? So what if claims of knowledge are always risky, resting on a potentially infinite chain of assumptions? Why the panic? Or more likely, the dismissive disdain? (Much more polite, if more condescending.)

I suppose it’s frightening. What? No absolute bedrock of The Known upon which to build our temples of Value, Prestige, Justice and Faith? Must everything be at risk? Can we, no matter how high our IQ or repute, how vast our wealth or influence, never be free from the risk of mistake?

Excepting formal linguistically constructed systems, i.e. knowledge by definition or stipulation, never, it would seem.

But does it really matter whether we occasionally stumble through life, rather than exhibiting perfection in all our decisions? Apparently to some people it does. Many who would reject the idea that knowledge may be essentially tentative are not inclined to even bother to present counter-argument or -evidence. Their basic concern, one might suspect, is more to preserve their incumbency in privileged positions; or, their right to importune others less empowered, i.e. to be in a condition of permanent moral hazard.

For references and to examine these issues further, See Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?

See also Varieties of Explanation. & Cause

Cordially
--- EGR

**Consider the similarities also in

Isaiah 45:7 (KJV) "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."

And, also, the conversation between Faust and Mephistopheles (1335-1337 and 1345-1358 Original German edition, my translation -- EGR) wherein Faust's question as to who Mephisto is is answered "I am a part of that power that always pursues Evil yet always yields Good."

Faust counters, "How can you be a part of something when you present yourself to me as a whole?", Mephisto replies,"... Although (you) a human, from that a tiny world of fools, may consider yourself a whole, I am a part of a part that once was Everything, the Darkness that gave birth to Light."

Are You A Free Individual? Or Just Deluded?

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.-- Edmund Burke

“If only I didn’t have to work!” is likely said a million times a day.

The reality is that you don’t have to work, if you are willing to accept the consequences of not working. You don’t have to do anything, if the consequences of not doing it are no concern of yours. This is an obvious kind of freedom we all have. This is why some religions preach giving up all connections to other things to achieve Nirvana. But what "sane" person can just stop being concerned about all consequences, all connections?

If you think you can, just try this practice for a day. Deal with your bodily functions the way you did as an infant. See if you can keep that going for very long.

Now, suppose you don’t want to give up connections. Someone might say, “I’m free. I can do what I please. I can just follow my whims and impulses!” This is another kind of freedom, perhaps, but what if other people or things can control what you please? What if things like advertising, or expressions of approval, disapproval, like or dislike, can be used to constrain your whims or impulses? Would you call that “freedom?” Or is your “freedom” a delusion that makes your obedience, your submission to external authority, tolerable?

You have been through years of schooling. You have probably forgotten most math, foreign language and social studies. But you have not forgotten how to raise your hand, to keep your opinions to yourself, to stand in line, to wait until a person in authority is willing to recognize you, and to not contradict what that authority says.

Can you control these responses? Can you extend your internal locus of control over those things that you respond to as authority?

To examine these issues further, see PERSONAL LIBERATION THROUGH EDUCATION


Cordially
--- EGR

Technician, or Magician: Can You Tell the Difference?

udated 1/26/21

… he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currently without discovery ... — Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark, 1656

If baldness treatments really work then why does a wealthy man like Donald Trump still have problems? If Hollywood spas and diets really work, then why are they visited again and again by pretty much the same movie stars? If prisons help to reduce crime, why is the American prison population the largest in the world and still growing?

If pious declarations of Faith mean anything then

a. why is the Bible Belt plagued by “acts of God” so very much more than the Sin Cities of this country; and
b. why are many of the previously unsuccessful “prophets” of the End Time still pushing their wares?

Why do even “the best” hospitals and universities closely guard data as to their successes and failures? Why does the popularity of our political, economic and psychological pundits contribute directly to the failure of their predictions? (See Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment)

What is the difference between a magician (an illusionist) and a technician? It is not, merely, that one wears stage clothes and the other, "scientific" garb, e.g. a stethoscope, a loupe or a sheepskin. The important difference is whether the causes and effects they believe to be at work are, in fact, at work.

People everywhere show a desperate willingness to believe in some kind of causal connection, a hope that somebody, somewhere knows what and how to do something. Many sincere people, possessed by one or another blinding Faith, stumble about in search for answers. But their very Faith often makes it impossible even to carefully examine the “answers” they encounter.

If private and parochial schools are so much better than public schools, why don’t the better students of the former consistently beat out those of the latter? Why are schools, already crammed full of gimcracks and geegaws from a thousand different manufacturers and universities, nonetheless perpetually in “need” of reform?

How many school "reformers" turn out to be little more than illusionists? How much talent, hope and money has been wasted pursuing their illusions?

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Teacher as Technician


Cordially
--- EGR

Diagrams: Show me how you think schools influence on-the-job success

In the United States of America educators have been told for years and years that it is they who have to prepare students for the “World of Work.” It is they who have the major responsibility to get kids ready for a job.

Unfortunately, educators have accepted this burden without thinking it through. It is clearly nonsense! What responsibility does your ninth-grade English teacher have for the fact that you got laid off 25 years later because your company is "resizing" because it overexpanded?

In a world of commerce – “free enterprise” it is misleadingly called – in businesses that can’t even keep track of legal records, that can’t and won’t police its own pirates, whose stock markets are vulnerable to arbitrary manipulations, exactly how is a first, or second, or for that matter, an eleventh or twelfth grade teacher supposed to influence his student’s future success on the job?

Diagram it! Let A -> B be read “A influences (causes) B.” What in-school-A's influence on-the-job-B’s? Watch out here that you don’t step in any fresh cowpies! There are two basic rules to follow:

1. Every effect, B, has more than one (contributing) cause.
2. Every cause, A, has multiple effects.

When you start diagramming all the possible causes influencing any B, you soon see that school influences may be a weak contribution to the total.

To examine these issues further, see Moral Responsibility in the Education Industry: 
how much can school reform enhance a student's occupational fitness?


Cordially
--- EGR

"Making Kids Learn” and Other Twitter-Worthy Superstitions

updated 2/3/21

A good deal of TV airtime is spent showing talking heads talking to other talking heads chosen by mysterious persons for obscure reasons to fill-in time between commercials. The economy is the hot issue right now so we get “experts” – who somehow managed not to see the crash coming – telling us how it should have been avoided and how it can be fixed. Ah! The Science of Economics!

Another favorite topic for talk-show wheezes is how to “fix” the public schools. Taking time away from their spells and potions, assorted “authorities” present their latest encantations to ward off or invoke obscure, ill-defined “effects” by manipulating even vaguer “causes.” Ah! The Science of Education!

To examine these issues further, see
Causal Fallacy in Teaching and Learning


Cordially

--- EGR>