‘At hope’ kids better than ‘at risk’?: Washington state lawmaker wants to banish negative labels

The bill is motivated by the good-hearted desire for disadvantaged children to see themselves more positively, and for their teachers and others to focus on the children’s potential instead of on their deficits. This change would probably have not merely symbolic importance: psychological experiments provide some reason to believe that the labels we use to describe people actually have effects on their behavior. From a recent Psychology Today blog post:

The long-term consequences of labeling a child like Hannah “smart” or “slow” are profound. In another classic study, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson told teachers at an elementary school that some of their students had scored in the top 20% of a test designed to identify “academic bloomers”–students who were expected to enter a period of intense intellectual development over the following year. In fact, the students were selected randomly, and they performed no differently from their unselected peers on a genuine academic test. A year after convincing the teachers that some of their students were due to bloom, Rosenthal and Jacobson returned to the school and administered the same test. The results were astonishing among the younger children: the “bloomers,” who were no different from their peers a year ago, now outperformed their unselected peers by 10-15 IQ points. The teachers fostered the intellectual development of the “bloomers,” producing a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the students who were baselessly expected to bloom actually outperformed their peers.

Opponents to the bill object to spending money and time changing just the language of education policy. Rather, they stress the importance of actual reforms, expenditures, programs, etc. for the benefit of these children, whatever we call them. There is also the predictable charge of this being a manifestation of excessive “political correctness.”

I think that everyone’s sort of correct. The “at hope” language could really prevent children from thinking as badly of themselves as the  ”at risk” label might. However, it would almost certainly fail to bring about the “paradigm shift” in education that its proposer has in mind. So the bill’s opponents are right that the label change in itself won’t revolutionize the treatment of the children, and they’re also right that there might be more important places to spend money than on passing the bill and changing the label. But, at the same time, it would cost relatively so little to make the change that it may well be worth it – such a small amount of money would be unlikely to do as much good elsewhere in the education budget.

At the end of the day, though, this raises what is essentially a question about the “tracking” of students, which is just what it sounds like – placing them on different academic paths based on their abilities or apparent potential. There are plenty of problems with tracking, and this case gets at an important one: even when implemented with the best of intentions, dividing up student in this way may have negative social and academic consequences, possibly even to the point of outweighing the advantages. Part of the negative social and academic consequences could arise on account of the particular label used, such as “at risk.” But it seems to me that many of the negative consequences are inherent to the practice of tracking, and cannot be eradicated by renaming the groups. Kids aren’t stupid – they will very quickly figure out who are the smart or privileged ones among them, and begin behaving accordingly. And teachers will, of course, still know who the smart and/or privileged kids are. This will tend to affect their behavior towards the groups students (if subconsciously), which can very easily lead to self-fulfilling prophecies about the “at risk” or “at hope” children doing poorly.

Therefore, the apparently benevolent legislators behind programs for “at risk” or “at hope” children are fighting against powerful human psychological tendencies. They need for children to be separated into groups so that some of them can be given special attention, instruction and resources. Maybe that is theoretically just and good. But, in forming the requisite groups, one also nearly unavoidably forms a hierarchy and opens the door for the marginalization of groups with low status.  It will be difficult to decide in advance whether any particular educational enrichment program’s actual effects will further the goals that its crafters had in mind.

Kohn’s main point is that work-related language  encourages thinking about education in ways that are detrimental to student learning. This work-related language pervades education discourse – “homework,” “seat work,” “get to work,” “classroom management,” “investing in education,” needing students to be “competitive” in the economy, and so on.

Work language leads to conceptualizing education primarily in terms of (1) its instrumental value, as a means to an end, and (2) as measurable using quantifiable products. (1) is bad because focusing on education’s instrumental value causes us to neglect learning as intrinsically valuable, contributing to the living of better lives over and above material success. (2) is worse, because focusing on the products of education causes us to support education policy that produces these products rather than policy that actually facilitates learning itself. Combined, the outcome is a school full of unhappy students who varyingly summon, or fail to summon, the motivation to collect grades and test scores that may, or may not, pay off only in the future. Troublingly, learning is not primary in this picture. Kohn recommends that we move away from the work-related language as a way of helping us to move away from the work-inspired policy that the language engenders.

I am really of two minds on this article. On the one hand, it sounds essentially correct to me. Learning isn’t just like work, neither is it play, it’s a different kind of activity that has its own goals, methods, and rewards.

On the other hand, though, I remember my parents using work-related language to describe school, and I don’t think it harmed me. In particular, I recall being told that my purpose in life, for the time being, was to be a good student. As such, I was excused from much other work – I wasn’t required to do alot of part-time work outside of the home, as many teenagers are, and I wasn’t even required to do alot of work at home – “chores” were virtually nonexistent. I was a pretty good student, and I generally produced the results that were being asked of me. I didn’t balk at being told that school was my job, because it was clear to me that everyone has to have some work to do and if mine weren’t school then it would have to be something else.

Having read Kohn’s article, I would change one important aspect of my parent’s message, however. It’s quite different to say that learning is a child’s job than to say that school is a child’s job. Learning shares some of the positive features of work: not always easy but you can make progress, involves effort and skill, often goal-oriented. But school mostly shares work’s negative features: getting bossed around, lacking autonomy, being scrutinized and criticized, just wanting the day be done already.

If I had a kid, I would not hesitate to tell her that learning is her job – the primary task with which she should concern herself, and that developing herself is her work, in the sense of being her contribution to the world for the time being. But, be careful not to forget that school is only tenuously related to learning and becoming educated. Jumping through the hoops of school may be a necessary evil, but to take doing that in itself as one’s job or purpose does not seem likely to result in life satisfaction.

To that end, I have recently begun reading a LOT more education stuff – probably quadrupled the number of blogs, and I have a number of education-related books on deck. One thing that has become immediately apparent to me is that education, particularly ed policy, is crazy complicated and very highly interdisciplinary. It involves psychology, sociology, history, economics, statistics, etc.

While I’ll be doing a concentration in ed policy, my work will have a more overtly philosophical orientation than other policy people’s. I’m interested in distinctively moral questions surrounding education. Answers to moral questions are informed by empirical information, but not always straightforwardly. As such, and as I’ve written before, I don’t see this move as leaving philosophy at all. It’s just a strategic move that is likely to be more rewarding personally, and possibly professionally.

Even so, I want always to know exactly what’s going on in education today. Most of my colleagues at Teachers College will *not* be philosophers, and most of the professors and guest speakers will be more on-the-ground in education. I can’t demand that they all become interested in philosophy on my terms, but I can try to make myself a very interesting philosopher who speaks to them and their interests. I don’t like the idea of spending a lifetime doing philosophy that no one outside of philosophy really cares about, so achieving this is important to me.

So, you’ll see my Google Reader sharing, tweets, and blogging turn substantially in this direction. Please pass along any education-related items of interest (book recommendations, news articles, etc.) that you think I should know about. I look forward to being that friend of yours who fills the education niche in your life.

A year and a half ago, I taught an introduction to philosophy course independently. The lectures were in person, but the tests were online because the class only met once per week and I didn’t want to use up a whole week’s worth of lecture for each test. The students were repeatedly instructed, both in class and on the test itself, not to use any sources other than their notes and textbooks.

Upon grading the first test, I discovered that a few students had copied and pasted answers or parts of answers directly from Wikipedia and Yahoo! answers. This was very disappointing, and I dreaded having to deal with the situation. I arranged times to speak with the students, planning to deal with them pretty harshly.

However, when I spoke to them, I was surprised by what I heard. At least two of them seemed kind of baffled that what they had done was wrong, as if they didn’t know that it constituted plagiarism and/or as if they had done the copying and pasting totally unthinkingly. This fit with the fact that the rest of their tests were quite good – there was no need for these students to cheat out of fear of failing. It seems that, in today’s internet culture, it didn’t even occur to them that there could be anything wrong with the casual, undocumented use of online sources.

I was, and continue to be, torn about what to do in these cases. On the one hand, I did plainly forbid the use of other sources in the test’s instructions. Taking a test constitutes tacit consent to its terms, and I would have been well within my rights to give the students a zero on the test, or worse.

On the other hand, though, I’m sympathetic to these students on account of the fact that they appear not ever to have had a respect for academic honesty and a crippling fear of accidental plagiarism instilled into them. Babies don’t pop out knowing about plagiarism, after all. Given the sorry state of education, many of my students probably never learned about plagiarism – what counts as plagiarism, how to cite things properly, what the consequences of committing it can be. And if they didn’t have the relevant knowledge, then there is a case to be made that they are less than fully responsible for their acts of plagiarism.

On the other hand (you have three hands, right?), a lack of knowledge concerning plagiarism doesn’t immediately imply that these students have no responsibility for their acts. They could be responsible for not taking the initiative to learn about plagiarism on their own, such as by reading the whole student handbook or the materials made available on the school’s library’s website. This is a kind of second-order responsibility; failing to take these steps reveals a blameworthy deficit of concern for the academic terms to which one has agreed and amounts to a form of negligence.

Furthermore, a lack of knowledge concerning plagiarism also doesn’t immediately imply that the students ought not to be punished for acts of plagiarism. Punishments, blameworthiness, and responsibility are interrelated in complicated and controversial ways. Sometimes there are prudential or moral reasons not to punish someone who is responsible for a bad act and blameworthy for it (punishment would be too expensive, or the person is now old and sickly, or not punishing the person would somehow or other maximize utility). And sometimes there are prudential or moral reasons to punish someone who was not fully responsible for a bad act, and/or who is not properly blameworthy for it. In the plagiarism case, it’s very difficult to tell who did or didn’t know what constitutes plagiarism or that plagiarism is wrong. Maybe it is better to send a message that there is “zero tolerance” for plagiarism of any kind – willful, ignorant, or willfully ignorant. This has the added benefit of saving teachers all the time and trouble of deliberating endlessly about the particulars of a plagiarism incident.

Yet, I remain undecided on this kind of case. Plagiarism is obviously unacceptable, but the circumstances surrounding can differ widely and seem to matter. I hope that in the future, I either never encounter plagiarism again (fat chance) or that it is so egregious that I can punish it without qualms (but isn’t that kind of a weird thing to hope for?)

Anyway, I hadn’t donated blood in over six months so I finally went. And there’s something that really bothers me about the United Blood Services center that I visit: they really overemphasize all of these stupid rewards programs for frequent donors. It’s tacky as hell, and somehow a little insulting. No, I don’t want to fill out a slip that will enter me in a sweepstakes to win a car. No, I don’t want to log in online and trade my points for prizes. Just to top off the juvenile atmosphere, they have a popcorn machine in the center, and so the whole place smells like a carnival. (I used to give blood at a Red Cross center, and don’t remember it being like this, but I see that even they have introduced an elaborate racing-themed incentive system).

Obviously, the point of these programs is to offers donors some material benefits (or the chance of winning them), above and beyond any intrinsic satisfaction a person might receive from giving blood. I’d be surprised if the programs worked very well, but who knows? People are funny. Just as I was contemptuously eyeing the popcorn machine, a middle aged lady ran in and excitedly started scooping some out for a pre-donation snack.

And donors have to settle for the stupid incentives or nothing, because most blood donations in the U.S. cannot be compensated in cash, by law (I think only some plasma donations are paid). But actually, I’d rather receive nothing but a post-donation snack rather than be subjected to the incentives. They just make me feel like I’m back in elementary school, being baited with junky plastic toys to sell more overpriced wallpaper to my neighbors in some dumb fundraiser.

So, my blood donation preference ordering:

1. Paid donation: This is number 1 not so much because I want or need the money, but because there is a strong moral case to be made in favor of paid blood donation. Unlike most organ donations, blood donations do not cost the donor much in terms of time, sacrifice and health/safety. As such, it is not possible for donors to be badly exploited. And there is good reason to think that blood would be available in greater supply if donors were paid, even minimally. This is of moral significance, because blood saves lives. And a payment, even a small one, signals respect for donors.
2. Totally uncompensated donation: Hey, at least you get to feel purely altruistic. Sometimes you get a “I gave blood” sticker, so that other people will see how virtuous you are.
3. Incentive systems: Arguably and at least in my opinion, these do not show respect for donors. They probably don’t encourage anyone new to donate, and they are somewhat insulting to those who would have given to begin with. Give us something actually of value to everyone ($, however little) or just don’t even go there.

The author spent 20 years as a vegan. Understandably, veganism became ever nearer and dearer to her identity, but it also ruined her health (depression, hypoglycemia, spine problems, chronic pain, reproductive health issues, etc). Eventually, she came to realize that vegetarianism only apparently resolves the issues that trouble its practitioners: animal welfare, nutrition, and social justice. This book is partially a telling of Keith’s journey. However, the story is filled out generously with evidence to support the conclusions at which the author eventually arrived.

The book has three main sections:

1. Moral vegetarians: This section dispels the common vegetarian idea that abstaining from animal foods allows you to eat without causing any death. Rather, it is an inescapable fact that all life requires death. Plants have to eat, and even to grow grains the soil must be fertilized either with animal by-products or synthetic fertilizers produced using huge amounts of fossil fuels. Monocrop agriculture is also very harmful to natural environments, ruining soil and water which causes the deaths of many animals. As such, your vegetarian diet is only apparently death-free.
2. Political vegetarians: This section discusses various political aspects of the eating of animal foods which vegetarians often criticize. For instance, some vegetarians claim that fewer people would be starving if we fed more grains directly to people, instead of to industrially produced animals, and they point to the huge amount of water that it takes to grow a cow. This is misleading, for a variety of reasons. The animals produced for food are more nutritionally dense than grains. And, they are only fed grains due to a perverse history of agricultural subsidies and incentives that makes it cost efficient. But, when raised naturally on grasses, food animals give back nearly as much to the land as they take from it – in stark contrast to the destructive grain crops. Because grains ruin the land, countries need more and more of it, possibly leading to economic exploitation of, or militaristic action against, other countries. And anyway, most alternative vegetarian foods are produced by brands owned by the largest agricultural conglomerates in the world. Vegetarianism, then, is not really the diet of peace and justice that it is made out to be, and it doesn’t really help you to opt out of the oil-fueled, government-assisted food industry. The realities of food production and distribution are much more complex.
3. Nutritional vegetarians: Keith discusses some ways in which conventional nutritional wisdom has gone wrong. Contrary to the dietary establishment, she argues that a low-fat, high-carb diet is unnatural to humans and unhealthy for us. Special attention is paid to debunking the lipid hypothesis and presenting some of the work of the famous alternative health practictioner Weston A. Price. Keith also discusses the dangers that soy poses to human health, which is of particular interest to current and former vegetarians who often eat soyfoods instead of animal foods.

The whole book is rather depressing, and Keith’s conclusion is pessimistic. She think that the only way to achieve morality, justice and good nutrition is to dismantle the foundational institutions of our current way of life (agriculture, suburbia) and to return to being hunting and gathering locavores.

I really, really enjoyed the book. Of course, it is not comprehensive – what book on those mammoth topics could be? – and I have not verified all of the research myself. But it was invaluable to hear all of these things from someone who understands the pull of vegetarianism and who felt that pull enough herself to learn its pitfalls the very, very hard way. Keith switches effortlessly from educational sections to personal narratives and back again. I’m neither religious nor spiritual, but at times I felt myself responding to her prose in that way you’re supposed to respond in church.

However, no book review would be complete without a few criticisms:

• Animism: Keith argues that humanism is morally bankrupt, leads to exploitation of the earth and its creatures, and must be abandoned in favor of an animist ethic. I think this is crazy. I don’t believe that humans have souls, let alone rocks, and I can’t accept any moral worldview that promotes disregarding important moral differences between beings (consciousness, capacity for reason, etc). It’s easy to see why animist cultures did a better job of respecting the environment – they thought that they could actually wrong it in some way. As such, the environment placed moral demands on them, rather than mere demands of self-interest in producing food. But I don’t think there’s anything about humanism that’s inconsistent with more sustainable practices; Keith’s understanding of humanism seems like a caricature in this regard.
• Masculinity: Keith thinks that the cause of exploitation of the earth, among other forms of exploitation, is a kind of masculinity (not to be confused with biological maleness) that is obsessed with dominance and power. I’m not really sure what this adds to the book, other than making its main points look more radical than they really are. Keith is an anti-pornography kind of feminist, so actually I wouldn’t be surprised if the masculinity stuff figures more prominently into her thinking than the book suggests. I’m not really interested in this form of social criticism and don’t know what legitimacy or value it has.
• Technology: Keith repeatedly worries that the human population has grossly overshot the carrying capacity of the earth, and she is condescending toward those who hold out hopes for technology that will solve the problem. I think this condescension is quite unwarranted, considering that her proposed alternative is radical, grassroots political action. Why think that technology is so much more unlikely to fix things than some people holding democratic meetings in a basement somewhere? It’s this obsession with old ways of life (and old spiritual practices, like animism) that really turns me off to many environmentalists and other social critics.

All in all, though, a more than worthwhile read. I would especially recommend it to anyone who has spent time as a vegetarian, and to anyone who has a currently or formerly vegetarian family member or friend.

First, I’ll backtrack just a little and say that there is a meaningful respect in which you “cheat yourself” when you cheat. Many people agree that there is something intrinsically valuable about an education, apart from its value as a means to a career and a livelihood. As such, in cheating, you may keep yourself from life-enriching educational opportunities that would have had intrinsic value. The line between prudence and morality is not firm or easily defined, however, so it may be difficult to tell whether or not the “cheating yourself” line is more of a distinctively moral aphorism or more of an appeal to a students’ self-interest. You can read my last post as a defense of the latter interpretation. I suspect that people provide this advice to students as a kind of backup motivation for not cheating, in the case that they don’t see the moral force of other-oriented considerations, or just don’t care.

But here are some of those other-oriented considerations, ordered from those typically involving the most to the least harm:

1. Your fellow students: These are the people who you harm the most when you cheat on a test or on a paper. Even though your professor may not deliberately “curve” grades, he or she surely grades at least somewhat relatively to the abilities and performance of the class. It is very common for a professor to look over the test or papers to get a feel for them before marking any scores. Particularly in a small class, one or two cheaters could skew the grades all by themselves. Further, as Adam notes in this comment, enough cheating can ultimately end up devaluing diplomas. Finally, even if your cheating does not affect anyone else’s grade or diploma, the existence of cheaters negatively affects all students via the effects it has on your teacher (more on this below).
2. Your teacher: I had no idea of how much cheating (including plagiarizing) harms teachers until I personally began teaching about two years ago. Previously, I figured that it would be kind of fun to catch cheaters and punish them mercilessly. Actually, it hasn’t been like that at all, at least in my experience. I have come to dread reading any work that students have done at home, for fear of finding plagiarism. When I copy and paste a sentence of a student’s work into Google, I brace myself for the results. I didn’t really have an awesome “gotcha!” feeling when I caught someone with a crib sheet during a test. Because cheating and plagiarism happen with quite some frequency, I now approach all students as potential cheaters and must investigate all students’ work (perversely, especially the best work) for evidence of academic dishonesty. This attitude is detrimental to the relationship that teachers ideally ought to have with students: one marked by cooperation, congeniality, goodwill and mutual respect. Beyond a teacher personally being harmed in having to play cheating detective and then deal with the offenders, the negative effects on a teacher can easily trickle back down to the students in changing the way they are treated by a teacher for the worse.
3. The author: Honestly, I doubt that authors whose work has been plagiarized are often materially or substantially harmed by the plagiarism. In the kind of courses I’ve taught (critical thinking, intro to philosophy, biomedical ethics), very few of the students are headed for academia, and the assignments are not of the type that one could go on to publish. But harm to authors can and does occur, probably mostly when one academic plagiarizes work from a lesser known academic and gets all the credit for it.

I’d really like to hear from anyone else who has teaching experience, either to confirm or disconfirm (2) above.

Also, there are probably even more reasons why cheating is wrong. I want to hear them!

First up: the “you’re only cheating yourself” perspective on academic dishonesty

Two questions:

1. Does this perspective adequately explain the badness/wrongness of cheating?

2. Does this perspective adequately explain why we enforce academic dishonesty policies?

“You’re only cheating yourself” might explain one aspect of the badness of cheating, albeit in an awkward way. Ordinarily, “cheating” is used to express an act involving fraud or deceit. While academic cheating does involve fraud or deceit, they are not directed towards oneself, as the saying suggests. (And, while it is possible to deceive oneself, cheating and plagiarism are not usually accurately described as self-deceit). Other bad features of cheating do affect oneself, though: cheating (and plagiarism) involve basically telling a lie about the origin of one’s work, and this threatens a person’s integrity.  It also cheapens the value of a student’s word, as everyone at least implicitly agrees to some academic misconduct policy by enrolling in courses at a college. But of course, it is much catchier to say “you’re only cheating yourself” than “you’re only harming yourself,” for instance.

But the reformulation of “you’re only harming yourself” starts to make clear what’s wrong with the “you’re only cheating yourself” perspective on academic misconduct – it’s plainly false. While there surely is some sense in which you are cheating/harming yourself, there are also plenty of other people you could be harming, typically including but not limited to the author(s) from whom you stole work and your teacher who has to deal with the problem.

So basically, “you’re only cheating yourself” tries to make cheating look like it’s not in your self-interest and therefore is an imprudent thing to do. But, beyond being imprudent, cheating is typically immoral. As such, “you’re only cheating yourself” provides only an incomplete account of the badness/wrongness of cheating.

But let’s just pretend that “you’re only cheating yourself” were true, and that cheating does not harm anyone other than yourself. It would still be a misguided perspective to hold on cheating, because it can’t convincingly explain why anti-cheating policies are enforced. After all, students do tons of things that are inconsistent with fulfilling their academic potential: drinking too much, not paying attention in class, skimming or skipping assigned readings, etc. Cheating is only one among many such practices, and it is not obviously worse in terms of imprudence or “cheating yourself.”Maybe you’re a student who conscientiously comes to class and reads the textbook, but you’re having trouble writing one little section of a paper and so you plagiarize it. Or, you’ve studied well but you draw a blank on an important test question and so you cheat off of your neighbor. Why are these academic misconduct scenarios necessarily any morally worse than a person who always spaces out or falls asleep in class? In terms of harms to oneself, they are actually better.

It would be seriously and inconsistently paternalistic to enforce academic misconduct policies on the grounds that a student is cheating herself, while not enforcing all other similarly self-harmful student behaviors. Enforcement only makes sense on the assumption that some other people are harmed or have their rights violated when you cheat. More on this next time.

“Turn your thoughts within – find yourself”

People say things like this quite alot. It sounds very romantic and exciting to describe one’s trials and tribulations as being in the service of some greater, higher goal – that of finding oneself.

Now, I’m not particularly into the philosophy of personal identity, and I don’t know the literature at all. But this quote implies what I consider to be a quite mistaken point of view regarding identity. In order for it to make much sense, you must think there is something to find. What could this something possibly be?

One possibility is that there are facts about what kinds of people we are meant to be, and that we can find or discover these facts through introspection and life experience. I suspect that this view appeals to many religious folks, in particular those who think we were created by some divine intelligence to fulfill our parts in a cosmic plan. Thinking you are “meant” to have a certain kind of life, or that you have a “purpose” of some kind entails that there is some agent who has intended that kind of life for you or who has given you that purpose. I’m an atheist, and I don’t see any alternate explanation for how there could exist a fact about what kind of person I’m meant to be.

Less theistically loaded is the view that there are things going on in our Freudian subconscious that affect what kind of lives are best for us. For instance, you may have some previously unrecognized desire, or some conflict from your past that keeps you from having satisfying relationships now. But the idea that you can go digging into your subconscious to look for something, as if it were some locked up basement full of stuff just sitting there to be found, is dubious at best. The conscious and subconscious are all wrapped up together. There is no way to just find or uncover independently existing subconscious states and processes. Rather, when we engage in introspection, we are always at the same time engaging in a constructive and interpretive process that far exceeds a simple “finding.”

As such, I would like to see us adopt a new, better figure of speech: to make yourself (there’s actually an Incubus album and song by this name, if it sounds familiar). This implies a more accurate view of personal identity: that, to a large extent, we can choose (or at least actively endorse) the values, desires, roles and choices that comprise the core of who were are. The “make yourself” figure of speech also does a better job of casting us as active, rather than passive, in the quest to get meaning out of life.

So, if you’ve been struggling to “find yourself,” may I humbly suggest that you call off the search, and get hard at work on making yourself instead.