Self-Driving Cars, Run-Away Trams, & “Unavoidable” Accidents

How should the (self-driving) cars be programmed to act in the event of an unavoidable accident? Should it minimize the loss of life, even if it means sacrificing the occupants or should it protect the occupants at all costs? Should it choose between these extremes at random? -- Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill -- MIT Technology Review, October 22, 2015

A primary cause of philosophical illness: a one-sided diet. One nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example.--- L. Wittgenstein (1967) Philosophische Untersuchungen, §593 (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt a.Main) p.189. (My translation. - EGR)

Who Broke the Copy Machine? And Other Follies.

Vignette, the First: In the main office of his company, Larry waits patiently for a colleague to finish using the common copy machine. Larry needs to duplicate a report for a later meeting. At his turn, Larry loads the machine and pushes the copy button. A strange, loud groan issues from the machine. The attention of everyone in the office is now diverted to an astonished Larry. The machine goes dead and smoke issues from it. The office manager comes over and fretfully asks Larry, “What have you done?” In the ensuing atmosphere of reproach no one mentions -- if they even know -- that the office manager, himself, put off maintenance for the copier, doubling the service interval, at the behest of the company president that expenses be reduced wherever possible.

Vignette, the Second: Mack drives a tram (trolley car) the movement of which is constrained by a track. Mack can only make it stop, go, speed up, slow down or switch over to a connected track. One day, while approaching a blind curve, Mack realizes that his braking mechanisms don’t work: he is in a runaway vehicle. Rounding a blind curve yet picking up speed due to descending an incline, Mack sees a group of people ahead on the track. He fears the worst. Luckily there is a parallel track he can switch over to. Alas, there is already a single person ahead on that track. It is, it seems, a matter of life-or-death. Switch or not-switch. Kill many or one? Which should he choose to do? (See, for example, Thomas Cathcart (2013) The Trolley Problem)

Vignette, the Third: A group of automotive engineers is perplexed. They are constructing the control programs for a self-driving car. No passenger will be a driver, i.e. make driving decisions. They are aware of some form of Vignette, the Second. (They don’t stop to think of examples like Vignette, the First.) The engineers jump to a dismaying preliminary conclusion: in the (likely rare?) event that an unavoidable accident threatens risking human damage and death, the car must, willy-nilly, be programmed for a lethal decision. If faced with the choice of Vignette the Second the car must be programmed to kill, whether many or one. But, in the aftermath, who -- they worry -- will bear responsibility for the damage? (See Will Knight, “How to Help Self-Driving Cars Make Ethical Decisions”)

Responsibility & Intervention. The three vignettes appear to have similar underlying structures. However, there are substantial differences among them. In the first and second vignettes, the actors whose choice behavior we are considering are caught up in a chain of events which they have had no part in structuring. They are, so to speak, minor officers on the Titanic. In the third vignette, the actors are Planners not confronted with choices that immediately threaten catastrophe. The Planners -- and the analysts cited above, i.e. Thomas Cathcart and Will Knight -- mistake the second vignette as a model for the first or third vignettes, respectively, by conflating important distinctions:

a. they confuse “Role” with “Function;”
b. they confuse “Choice” with “Responsibility;”
c. they invoke a vague notion of “unavoidable” that allows equivocation between “Intervention” and “Prevention.” (See Intervention: helping, interfering or just being useless?)

In Vignette, the First Larry’s role, for which he is responsible, is as a procedure-follower. If machinery is involved, Larry is, shall we say, an Engager. He is not himself a duplicate-producer. He employs the copier; it is the copier which produces duplicates. The casual speech of office politics may confound these distinctions, but morally and legally, should it come to that, his having followed procedures may protect him, even if the machinations of other organizational members would have him take the blame. (These distinctions are often disregarded in cases of organizational “disruption” based on what is masqueraded as “performance evaluation.” )

Once started, Larry was not likely able to intervene in the rapid self-destruction of the copier, even had he realized what was happening. Prevention, which is neither part of Larry’s role nor responsibility had been deliberately left undone by the office manager -- a risk taken that failed. The destruction was practically unavoidable, once initiated. But Larry, despite facing issues of responsibility had no practical choice in the matter.

In Vignette, the Second Mack is, also, a procedure-follower, an Engager, whose personal responsibility is delimited by the well-functioning of his machine. The “choice” between not stopping killing many or killing one does not relieve those responsible for accident preventive procedures of their responsibility. This consideration is regularly ignored by those who take advantage of some person’s being a link in a chain of events ending in catastrophe to charge that person with major responsibility for the catastrophe. Mack has a choice, but no fair responsibility.

In Vignette, the Third The automotive engineers worry, as they should, that in order to make their autonomous cars salable, they may end up being held responsible, to some extent, for the damage that results. Just consider the scandal with Volkswagen where their vehicles were programmed to create false pollution reports to enhance salability. There are many other examples of vehicle recall and successful lawsuit that come easily to mind. The engineers are, by role AND function, responsible actors in that they contribute to the production of the outcomes, although not so much as their organizational leadership who may determine what the engineers are permitted to do..

NOTE WELL: It is at this point that the vagueness of the term, “unavoidable,” comes into play. In the debate on autonomous vehicles the invoking of "unavoidable accidents" functions to buffer those in leadership positions from the moral hazards they run as they give considerations other than product safety higher priority. “Unavoidability” provides a shield for morally questionable leadership. (See Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?)

Avoidability. To call something “unavoidable” is not to make a simple empirical judgment. Just consider: if an event is called “unavoidable,” what observations, by themselves -- even with trustworthy instruments -- could support that judgment? It’s a slightly different matter if we modify “unavoidable” with adverbs such as “practically,” or “economically.” These allow us to consider narrower options on which we may find an easier consensus as to what is desirable or not. But there is likely still some necessity for theoretical argument.

Basically, to call something “unavoidable” is to make either of two negative possibility claims:

1. It cannot be intervened in so that its potential effects are nullified; or
2. It cannot be prevented so that its potential effects are nullified.

At this stage of our knowledge (2015) -- examples of practically non-intervenable events would be -- once initiated -- an atomic bomb explosion, the short-range discharge of a bullet, or the ingestion of cyanide. However, they all could be and are preventable prior to their initiation.

It would seem that, logically, any intervenable event is preventable. But there are some things we cannot logically prevent prior to their initiation, because the character which prompts us seeing them as needing prevention does not manifest itself prior to the event, e.g. mayhem, having developed from mere rough-housing. Or disregard for traffic signals. Or possible future adult criminality in children. Attempts at pre-emptive treatment for such examples risk violations of legal and other rights.

Solutions? There is yet another rub: many interventions or preventative actions may be seen as too monetarily costly for individuals, or even large communities; for example, such actions as providing closely monitored special limited access roadways for confining the use of self-driving cars.

In the end, self-driving cars may be treated as many would like to do in the U.S. with firearms: requiring vetted ownership licenses and heavy usage restrictions. This is much more likely since human-driven cars kill more people every year than do firearms. (See Gun Fun or Safe Kids? Must We Make Tradeoffs?)

Unlike with firearms there is, at this time in the U.S. no widespread, traditional use of autonomous vehicles (AV’s) to damp the enthusiasm for imposing restrictions. Nor is there any Constitutional basis for arguing every citizen’s right to own AV’s. But what counters the enthusiasm for highly restricted use of self-driving cars -- e.g. consumer mistrust in their programming and intentions by designers to block owner attempts to intervene at will -- will also counter market enthusiasm to invest in their manufacture.

I will close the present considerations with a more sanguine opinion:

The wide adoption of self-driving, Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) promises to dramatically reduce the number of traffic accidents. Some accidents, though, will be inevitable, because some situations will require AVs to choose the lesser of two evils. For example, running over a pedestrian on the road or a passer-by on the side; or choosing whether to run over a group of pedestrians or to sacrifice the passenger by driving into a wall -- Bonnefon, J et al. (2015) Cornell University Library. Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars? arXiv:1510.03346 [cs.CY]

Afterthoughts. The moral hazards risked by the leadership on issues pertaining to self-driving cars may well become the physical hazards of those affected by that leadership’s decisions. And with it, American worship of the automobile may come to acknowledge the blood sacrifice it has long been paying. Greater evils may be avoided at the cost of creating lesser ones. But it may not be a matter of the length of casualty lists.

To pursue these issues, see Leadership vs. Morality: An Unavoidable Conflict?

Cordially, -- EGR

Autonomous Car Collides with Bus: an illusion of abstractions?

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

re-edited 3/12/16

An Illusion is not Necessarily a Perceptual Error. It is usually just a rather run-of-the-mill experience. We encounter illusions frequently. To our personal benefit, our own bodies often produce illusions, e.g. 3D vision or directional hearing, or even the pains we experience from surprising external or internal systemic pressures, or, even, upon hearing bad news. The pain in our bare foot is not the tack we just stepped on; nor, the pleasure we feel, the chocolate we just ate.

We humans rely on illusions. We use them for better or worse to lead our lives. Seafarers have long guided themselves across oceans using star constellations. But we know now that there’s no Big Dipper, or Belt of Orion, to be found “out there.” Constellations of stars are illusions due to slow cosmic change and to our position as viewers. Human racial differences, too, have been a commonly encountered practically exploitable illusion due to slow change and social position. (See Philosophy & Racial Discourse.)

Wayfarers and pilots, too, may venture into or over deserts and forests, cross-referencing their positions along the way by triangulating imaginary lines-of-sight between “fixed” terrain features. (Even such “fixtures” as expected mirages of an oasis or other bodies of water can work.)

We humans are not unique in producing illusions in pursuit of the “goals” patterned in our genes. Our use of duck calls, fishing lures or pheromone hunting baits illustrates this. Animal species, too, may pursue prey or fend off predators by, feigning death, or, ferocity, or venomousness.

Illusion is not in the perception, in the appearance, but in what we take that appearance to be. We learn at a young age “Appearances can be deceiving.” We certainly hope so, when we aggressively yell to frighten off an approaching animal; or, when we go to meet someone on a first date.

How do we learn what is illusory and what not? By using as many of our senses as we can, in as many variations of position as we can manage, in order to see what happens. It is no accident that most illusionists do their presentations to audiences fixed in their seats. Or that séances are held in the dark. Or that proselytizers of every stripe discourage broad learning in their followers. Narrow perspectives blur the distinction between illusions and realities.

Not only do we vary the manner in which we confront what we suspect may be illusory, but we do it noting the context of presentation. Is it “normal”? Is the lighting different from daylight? Would art museums display their traditional exhibits under intense red light? (Try sorting blue, black and brown socks under incandescent light. Why is fluorescent light better for the task?)

Is image, tone, feel, odor, or taste sufficiently persistent? How far away (intense) does the apparition, tone, etc. seem to be? Smallness and haziness are indicators of distance. If we can estimate its height (or loudness, etc.), then, more is closer.

Strained or strange body positions on the part of the observer are likely to indicate something amiss. Cross a middle finger under a forefinger, close you eyes and touch the tip of you nose with both fingers simultaneously. You will feel two noses!

We tend to judge the reality of the perception that confronts us based on the degree of “normal” corroboration among our different sense modalities in the context of our estimation of the “normality” of the perceptual situation.

Is the image, tone, feel, odor, or taste sufficiently persistent? Can we compare it with tracings from memory, or with our hypothetical constructions about confrontations to come? Both past and future are processings left as mental traces, not the evanescent qualia that phenomenologists say present themselves to us only in the passing moment. (See Similarity: not a given; but, a composition.).

Motion pictures, or their derivatives, provide us an interesting example of illusion. They are composed of stills, or frames, the projections of which are clearly illusions, which appear less illusory when perceived quickly and sequentially. Their most important consequence is the illusion of cause and effect.

Cause & Effect. What conditions “connect” perceptual events into perceived chains of cause and effect? This feature seems to be “wired into” us; (or, as Immanuel Kant proposed much earlier, cause-effect is a essential structural component of Mind - Verstand) Cause-Effect is often an illusion we must take pains to recognize as such; e.g. Post Hoc, Propter Hoc. (See Cause = Perceptions + Assumptions )

How do we correct a suspected misconception as the reality of a perception? By probing any hunch – called in exalted educational circles, “testing our hypothesis” – to see if it holds up under questioning. Usually fatigue, boredom and feelings of risk set in long before any “personal hypothesis” is thoroughly criticized. (See Good Lies, Wise Evasions )

Reality, Knowledge? Just Presumptions? Some long while ago, at a cocktail party, in my late youth and early marriage, a chemistry professor, having had a bit too much chemical and having heard from my in-laws that I was still in my middle-twenties (!) stumbling around after a profession, confided in me: “Consider Chemistry! By the year 2000 we will be all efficiently taking various pills instead of eating, having to waste our time and effort chewing, so-called-healthy crunchies for hors d’oeuvres.”

Granted, time passes, new things are discovered, the old dies away. Today’s knowledge becomes tomorrow’s superstition; today’s realities, tomorrow’s illusions. This seems inevitable in a culture which practices an empirically-based knowledge acquisition model.

An Equation-like Metaphor. But this is no argument for returning to a culture of unquestionable, alledgedly prophesy-based dogmatism. Rather, think of “reality, R,” as a limit condition, a congeries, at least, of truths, T. The disconfirmation of hypotheses, as a procedure (a function), D, which moves us away from previous illusions and toward “reality, ” as the number of disconfirmations, D, increases, likely to infinity (since we and the universe around us evolve). Knowledge (i.e. Compiled Truths, {T}, which will in the limit comprise Reality, is the residue of practical, experimentally exercised caution. See Knowledge: The Residues of Practical Caution..

A metaphorical equation: (lim K/_{(D → ∞)}) = {T} ⊆ {R}

Read this: In the limit, our knowledge, K, as the disconfirmation of tentative hypotheses increases to infinity, approaches - via {T} - Reality (R),

a. T is the set of all truths, {T}, i.e. hypotheses that have survived disconfirmation tests;


b. {T} is reasonably expected by less-than-omniscient beings such as us, to be always less than (R).

I concede this to be a metaphor because I am not even sure it makes much sense taken literally. (See Measuring Educational Outcomes: truth, tricks and hype.) Certainly the total number of English (or other language) words (and the power sets of all their combinations and permutations) is less than the number of events discriminable by us in the universe as we know it, or even as we might come to know it in the future, given superior instrumentation and language to expand and communicate our experience.

Contingently Dysfunctional Characteristics: explaining AI failure. I do not have enough particulars to deal with the specific recent collision event. But I do have a broader concern that may apply to it. It is that there is a problem with the traditional notion of abstraction used by (only some, I hope) AI researchers.

The Platonic conception of abstraction introduced by Socrates in the Meno – the traditional use of necessary and sufficient (N&S) conditions -- common to many theoretic activities to this day, appears in full bloom in chapter two, “A Model of the Neo-Cortex,” of Ray Kurzweil’s book, How to Create a Mind.

(Compare Alfred Korzybski's "Structural Differential," shown above - from Science & Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1941) - that he used to explain his conception of abstraction.)

This model of abstraction, call it the N&S model, is, what I will call a “ context pro-functional” accumulator. It sets up a checkpoint for the selection of candidates in a given class of situation, call it [S1], to moving up the ladder of abstraction. It allows items to climb that meet certain functional requirements for an AI construction goal. It may even cull out an [S1]-dys-functional elements, if they are of concern.

But such dysfunctional elements may be overlooked or disregarded, as being, for example of low probability of happening, or of low enough cost in the long run to allow to pass through. See Concept as Abstraction. A hindrance in developing intelligence?

But the [S1]-appropriate abstraction may also be a sort of “sludge-accumulator,” in that it allows to pass through any items with [Sn?1]-dysfunctional characteristics so long as they are [S1]-functional. A situation [S31] may arise in which the response set available contains [S31]-dysfunctional items that are nonetheless [S1]-functional.

So it is that an autonomous car might accelerate to pass a bus that has lain quiescent for twelve seconds, [S31], but may accelerate on eight because the bus driver left his running lights off, creating in the car an "illusion" of [S1], signaling a permanent stop.

Using the common N&S concept of abstraction is very much like an admissions procedure to an organization based on education, ethnicity, profession and income that welcomes anyone who meets these four requirements but ignores, say, their legal status, e.g. felon or not, their level of indebtedness, their history of violent public behavior, and the condition of their health.

How to Avoid Such Difficulties Basically it comes down to three things:

a. investigating broad ranges of functional situations;

b. looking at not only those characteristics that are pro-functional, but considering whether there are potentially dysfunctional characteristics that may manifest themselves in not impossibly remote circumstances;

c. building in different kinds of input systems to enable corroboration among them.

Scanners alone, like visitors' eyes at a seance, will not easily help their user recognize illusions.

For examples and to pursue these issues, see Physical Objects as Non-Individuated Entities. (A universe of constructs) )

Cordially
--- EGR

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

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

Moral Hazards in Teaching: inculcating irresponsibility

Here is a link to a blog by a public high-school teacher who is a law school graduate. It makes a lot of sense. Just click HERE

Why do many teachers permit, even support the moral hazards mentioned in Jay Braiman's article? It begins with their training and the pressures of getting a job.

Undergraduate teacher candidates are commonly unself-possessed, befuddled by pedagogical catchwords, and often all-too-ready to abandon what few ethical precepts they have for the sake of a job.

By contrast, the increasing number of mature change-of-career entrants coming into education have a sharpened critical sensitivity that often leaves them dismayed upon first exposure to the ethical and political morasses not infrequently encountered in today's schools. That there is a ethical dimension to education need hardly be argued to this experienced group. Inexperienced undergraduates, on the contrary, generally only want to talk about technique.

Undergraduate teacher candidates tend to dismiss ethical concerns. They expect that their principal or their school's policies will give them ready answers. Older change-of-career teacher candidates can hardly get enough discussion of such questions. They know that policies are one thing, but in-the-trench-decisions are quite another.

For more on this see The Ethical Miseducation of Educators


Cordially
--- EGR

Will That Dog Bite? Will That Applicant Be an Effective Teacher?

The proof is in the pudding. -- Proverb

A recent (2009) article asks, in its title, an intriguing question: Can You Recognize an Effective Teacher When You Recruit One?. The authors propose testing potential teacher recruits for two factors: “cognitive skills” and “non-cognitive skills.” On the basis of their tests they claim they can predict likely future student academic achievement, thereby reducing or sparing school districts the costs of probationary appointments.

When I applied for the Peace Corps in 1964, I and the other applicants were subjected to two kinds of tests: one for cognitive skills; another, for non-cognitive skills. Those of us who “passed” them nonetheless participated in programs with various outcomes: some successful and some not. I have never run across any indication that program successes or failures showed any correlation with Peace Corp Volunteer scores on either test.

What seems to be going on here with this “predictive testing” is an example of what some psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Error -- ignoring contextual and environmental factors by locating all causality, all responsibility, in the individual person.

The tests mentioned in the article will likely be very popular with school boards and parents because they basically wipe the slate clean when it comes to asking what influence, and what responsibility, these groups have for student achievement.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Increasing Teaching Efficiency: 
the evaluation of method


Cordially
--- EGR

Student Debt and Graduation Rates: mislinked indicators of value?

If forecasts were certain and wants, precious stones
We’d eat beef and chicken and never see bones.-- N. Fulano de Tal

In 1975 I interviewed for a position with a major private “educational research corporation.” My task would be to develop a description of a vocational-education project so that it could be replicated across the country. The already-in-place federally funded ($3 million) pilot project had a 100 percent job placement rate for its graduates. The corporation hoped that with an adequate description, a substantially larger grant ($41 milion) could be obtained.

I asked how it was possible to get 100 percent placement. My interviewer told me that this was done by offering prospective employers a stipend to offset future wages to be paid. No student was accepted into the program unless an employer had been found who had accepted the agreement.

When I asked how such arrangements could be replicated across the country, given that we did not control our economy the way the Soviets did, I received the reply, "Ed, that is the one question around here that we never ask."

I did not accept the job. Someone else did. The description was written up. The large government grant was secured. That late 1970’s project left has no traces. Its perpetrators have advanced in reputation and position.

Which is the better school?

a. Grumbling U which graduates 20% of its original freshman classes who then regularly find good jobs that enable them to pay off their student loans; or
b. Pensyl U which graduates 98% who afterward cannot find a job that enables the grads to pay off their tuition debts.?

Barring fraud in the recruitment process, wouldn’t you pick Grumbling?

Open admissions policies have long been promoted as providing opportunity to more people for higher education. But the graduation rates tend to be lower because many more are unprepared for college demands. Should colleges, or other schools be expected to do something about this? Do schools and colleges control the market for their graduates?

Reported in Education Sector’s Biweekly Digest of Aug 2, 2011, some are suggesting using a borrowing-to-credential ratio as an indicator of college value: the student-loan debt they have to repay after graduation divided by the percentage of students graduating. But this is like defining wealth (value) as currency on hand (diplomas) rather than asking what that currency might buy (access to high paying jobs -- or, maybe, something else). This overlooks systemic effects on the costs and benefits of credential attainment.

On the borrowing-to-credential ratio measure, if we assume their tuitions are pretty much the same, it seems that Grumbling is ahead of Pensyl. However, don’t a lot of other factors have to be evaluated? ? Would it matter if it turned out that with another year or two, the great majority of all students graduated?

How should any schools prepare for something, especially when it is not clear what they are preparing for? Our society changes quickly and there is little consensus on both specific ends and means in education. Why are schools to be held responsible for market outcomes they do not control?

For references and to examine these issues further, see

How much can school reform enhance a student's occupational fitness?

Cordially
--- EGR

Should Colleges Be Made Responsible For Their Graduates’ Earnings?

Riddle:
What’s the first question that college graduates learn to ask on the job?
”Will you have fries with that?”
-- A sad, current joke.

Many college students go into substantial debt to pay tuition. Yet, they graduate unable to find jobs that pay enough to permit them to live in poverty, even, and pay back their education loans. Education Week reports,

Students at proprietary colleges represent 12 percent of
higher education enrollment, yet they take out 26 percent of
all student loans and represent 46 percent of all student loan
dollars in default. -- Education Week, June 10, 2011

The same article in Education Week, announces new regulations by the U.S. Department of Education that require college degree programs to disclose information about loan repayment rates and graduates’ earnings. The expectation is that if college programs fail to graduate students who can avoid loan default, they will lose federal funds to support student tuition loans.

Is it fair to the colleges and universities to make them responsible for economic outcomes of student career choices?

One argument has it: Yes! Make them accept the burden. Students are strongly encouraged by university personnel into programs on the basis of their “personal interest” with little consideration when they choose a major as to how they will support themselves afterwards. If earning potential were to become a touchstone of desirability, universities might have to, for example, dip into endowments or provide special scholarships to support the faculties needed to maintain certain traditionally highly esteemed programs with low graduate earnings potential.

A counter-argument has it: No! It is a basic moral principle that the burden of one’s responsibility ought be constrained by the range of one’s control. The requirements for and the availability of employment outside the educational institution are not controlled by those educational institutions. We live in a society that has a more-or-less free market economy. This introduces a certain whimsy into the existence and size of job markets.

There is a good argument for exempting K-12 education from later-life employment responsibilities. (See below) However, a college education is not compulsory the way basic education is. And, unlike basic education, it is strongly correlated with a person’s level of economic success.

To examine the argument against basic education’s economic responsibility, see Moral Responsibility in the Education Industry: 
how much can school reform enhance a student's occupational fitness? Can higher education offer the same kind of defense?


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 Effective Teachers: engineering or wishful thinking?

“Every child deserves an effective teacher,” says Brian Armstead, director of civic engagement at the Philadelphia Education Fund. (Reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, March 31, 2009 B4) What Armstead said sounds good; and it’s so very heart-warming. But it’s not only wrong; it’s misleading. What someone deserves depends importantly, not on some magic pill, but on how they personally contribute to the process of their own betterment.

Consider the idea, “Every patient deserves effective medicine.” Would a patient who mixes Tylenol with alcohol, or who skips doses have a valid complaint should they not improve? Only if the effectiveness of a medicine were to be misjudged by not considering whether every patient actually took the medicine prescribed for them in the manner indicated. Effectiveness of a medicine is judged on the assumption that it will be properly used by the patient.

Also consider the idea, “Every driver deserves a safe car.” Would a driver who speeds in and out of dense traffic, or who fails to have safety checkups for his car have a valid complaint should he get into trouble? Is the basic safety of a car to be downgraded because its owner is a bad driver?

The best of teachers will not be effective with a student who comes to class unprepared, who does not do his homework, or is disruptive or inattentive. Learning is not merely a teacher effect on a student, but the outcome of a cooperative effort between teacher and student (and often parent).

Armstead’s group, as well as Philadelphia School Superintendent Ackerman, talk as if they or someone else can determine the effectiveness of teachers in advance and apart from the kinds of students they are assigned to teach. This is clever politics – it tells parents and an uninformed public what they want to hear. But, it is wishful thinking.

To examine these issues further, see Increasing Teaching Efficiency

Cordially
EGR

Hard Wired Choice?

Intelligence, wisdom, circumspection, delay of gratification, strategic skill: it looks like it all might be a matter of neural growth. What, then, about our practices of reward and punishments for the choices people make?

Or, to take it from the other end, what if supporting healthy development in children is crucial? Can we continue to pretend that one person’s poverty is not our general concern?

But maybe we are just mechanisms, generating text and uttering sounds, living in the delusion that we are in control. We do what we do and we don’t what we don’t. End of discussion. Permanently.

To review the article which prompted these conjectures , see Separate Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards

For practical application, see PAIN VERSUS ANGUISH:
Is There No Need For Corporal Punishment?


Cordially -- EGR

Staff Development: Bibbidee, bobbidee, boo!

A Soviet-era Russian joke: The workers’ paradise -- we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.

A related hypothesis: any occupation where it is not clear what is being produced, or how what is produced is to be evaluated, will have someone whose job it is to provide “staff development.”

If you release me from my job responsibilities to sit and jawbone about peripheralities and, especially, to “open up” and “confess” how I “feel” about them; then, I might well join in and pretend that you, too, are earning your keep.

To examine these issues further, see How Not to Develop Staff

Cordially,
-- EGR