American Movie Classics'(AMC's) Madmen is great television. Madmen's quality equals HBO's and Showtime's, which puts it a cut above today's Hollywood movies.
Madmen stars Jon Hamm as Don Draper. It is about an advertising agency in the golden age of television, the late 1950s and early 1960s. The name "Draper" alludes to draping or deceiving, and we are reminded of the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, whom Dorothy exposes behind the drapes of the control room. Like the Wizard, Draper's job is to create illusion. One of the story lines is that Draper's firm represents the Nixon campaign pro bono in the 1960 election, the first that television influenced.
Before watching Madmen it would be useful to read a history of consumerism. One is William Leach'sLand of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture and another is Gary Cross's All Consuming Century. Both books provide rich perspective on the dynamic of consumerism and its implications for culture. Leach goes into an extended analysis of the Wizard of Oz.
Following amusement parks, Wannamaker's department store decorations, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and L. Frank Baum's ideas (Baum, besides being an author, was an early expert about window displays), advertising has been the basis of consumerism. That is, one of the characteristics of consumerism is the creation of imaginative imagery about consumption. Thus, New York and several other large cities became the centers not only of art, culture, theater and television, but more importantly of imagery about consumption that created today's global culture. Such imagery would be unnecessary or unimportant were it truthful. The association of consumerism and advertising suggests that deception is at consumerism's root.
There is an inherent conflict. To be possible, consumerism requires advances in technology. In turn, technology depends on uncovering of the truth, discovery of fundamental principles and a relentless willingness to let old modes, business methods and social constructs die. Schumpeter called this creative destruction. But stimulation of consumption relies on creating an image, one that is often false, romantic or misleading.
At the same time the left is a romantic movement that itself is a reflection of consumer society and advertising. The left manufactures political ideas that are romantic but have as little truth or reality as the mountain stream in a Newport cigarettes ad. The left claims to oppose the deception inherent in commercialization, but does so through "draping" and deception that parallel commercialization. To the left, ideology plays the role that advertising plays to consumerism. The left substitutes lies about a romanticized past and a fictional claim to ethical belief. It deceptively claims that the past is the future.
Thus, the left claims that centralized economic planning (monarchy) is economically superior to markets, a lie. The left claims that government power and regulation, much like the power of kings, is more humane than limited government and private enterprise, which is a lie. The left claims that monetary expansion, which favors the wealthy over the poor, is necessary to help the poor, which is also a lie.
Hence, the dialogue of twentieth century America* was largely between a conservative, market-based view which depends on the truth and technology for its foundations, but furthers its ends through lies and mass media; and a left-wing view whose ideology is itself a lie. Both modern conservatism and left/liberal ideology depend on groupthink. Both rely on the mass media. Both focus on the trivial. Both advocate policies whose effects are the reverse of what they claim. It may be said that in the twentieth century the Sophists triumphed and that the Sophists now dominate our most retrograde institutions, such as universities.
The Republicans claim to be for less government, then when elected expand government. The Democrats claim to be for the poor, but create massive inner city slums, urban ghettos that isolate racial minorities and the poor. As well, the Democrats' educational policies, via left-wing institutions like NCATE, cripple the poor by enfeebling them educationally; and they and the left attack private institutions such as Wal-Mart that benefit the poor economically.
Were it not for the left, the role of intellectual would in part be the one that L. Frank Baum assigned to Dorothy: lifting the drapes from the Wizard's control room, and exposing him for the fraud that he is. That is the tradition of Thorstein Veblen as well as the Austrian economists. But the academy fell prey to ideology, and has adopted rigid, ideological deception, commitment to elitism and attacks on the poor, for instance, through attacking Wal-Mart and through favoring the Federal Reserve Bank, low interest rates and inflation. Universties themselves are a state supported system that encourages class stratification, alienation of the average person and economic isolation of the talented poor. Universities are institutions who demonize the average person, humanity, in the name of an inept elite that produces nothing and whose main purpose is to institutionalize itself.
Doug Ross @ Journal lists "Hillary's Top Ten Fabrications". These include her claim that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary although she was born five years before he climbed Mt. Everest; her failure to disclose profits from Whitewater; and her description of abortion as a "tragic choice".**
It is not surprising that Hillary is a liar. Nor would it be surprising that the Republicans are equally liars. The groupthink; lack of vision; fixation on trivia; emotional outrage about superficial issues and ignoring the fundamental issues such as special interest group influence; corruption of the democratic process through gerrymandering and related processes; misleading disclosure in areas like government operations and inflation; monetary expansion and the corruption of the dollar; claiming to be for less government when you are for more government (such is the history of Rudy Giuliani) all suggest that Republicans and Democrats have similar stakes in equivalent forms of corruption. Both are parties of liars.
It is increasingly important that competition be introduced into the political system. "Voters for None of the Above" offers a mainstream alternative. I discuss NOTA here.
*In Europe, with the exception of Britain, the chief ideologies of the twentieth century were mainly variants of the left, to include fascism, Nazism, communism and today's dirigisme.
**Concerning the abortion issue, William Saletan of Slate writes:
"...against the ugliness of state control, she wants to raise the banner of morality as well as freedom...'There is no reason why government cannot do more to educate and inform and provide assistance so that the choice guaranteed under our constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances.'...Once you embrace that truth—that the ideal number of abortions is zero—voters open their ears...Admit the goal is zero, and people will rethink birth control. 'Seven percent of American women who do not use contraception account for 53 percent of all unintended pregnancies'..."
But Clinton's argument, which transfers the moral concern about abortion into a discussion of abortion as a quality process, a quality target that needs to be minimized, is itself a form of draping.
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Monday, October 15, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Enhance Fiduciary Liability of University Trustees
Jose Cabranes is a former trustee and general counsel of Yale. Candace de Russy mentioned that he came up with the following suggestion, which seems to be a good one:
>"Perhaps it is time for law-making bodies to reconsider the historic restrictions on the standing of a university’s co-owners to bring legal actions enforcing the duties of university fiduciaries. [As Cabranes explains,] [i]n most states, by law or custom, only the state attorney general may bring an action against directors of a charitable organization [to include university trustees] for breach of fiduciary duties."
Bravo. There are numerous realistic and legitimate duties that the public ought to expect university trustees to fulfill, and morally these duties to parents, students and the public are fiduciary in nature. Private parties ought to have the right to enforce these duties under the law because Attornies General are likely too busy and often too corrupt to enforce them. That they are not enforceable suggests that there has been corruption in fact vis-a-vis charitable institutions and universities.
It is time to discard out-of-date restrictions on law suits against trustees that allow academic administrators and faculties to hide behind a charitable institutional veil that permits them to waste, mismanage and even steal.
>"Perhaps it is time for law-making bodies to reconsider the historic restrictions on the standing of a university’s co-owners to bring legal actions enforcing the duties of university fiduciaries. [As Cabranes explains,] [i]n most states, by law or custom, only the state attorney general may bring an action against directors of a charitable organization [to include university trustees] for breach of fiduciary duties."
Bravo. There are numerous realistic and legitimate duties that the public ought to expect university trustees to fulfill, and morally these duties to parents, students and the public are fiduciary in nature. Private parties ought to have the right to enforce these duties under the law because Attornies General are likely too busy and often too corrupt to enforce them. That they are not enforceable suggests that there has been corruption in fact vis-a-vis charitable institutions and universities.
It is time to discard out-of-date restrictions on law suits against trustees that allow academic administrators and faculties to hide behind a charitable institutional veil that permits them to waste, mismanage and even steal.
The Hard Sciences Are Politically Correct Too!
Beware optimisim about any corner of higher education. Professor Frank Tipler, a mathematical physicist at Tulane University, just sent me the following e-mail about political correctness in physics. Many of us in the social sciences think of the hard sciences as the last bastion of academic standards, but sadly this appears to be over-optimism. The text of Professor Tipler's e-mail follows.
Dear Mitchell,
>>
>> Why do you except the hard sciences from your critique? During the
>> thirty years I've been a professor of Mathematical Physics, the
>> physics departments at the "leading" American universities have
>> become hostile to the fundamental laws of physics, specifically
>> quantum mechanics, relativity, and the second law of thermodynamics.
>>
>> It is my impression that most technological advance during the past
>> two decades has come, not from university science and engineering
>> departments, but from private individuals, and researchers at
>> industrial labs. For example, the revolutionary idea of the quantum
>> computer was first advanced by David Deutsch, who, although he has
>> the title of Professor of Physics at Oxford University, actually
>> receives no salary from the university. He earns his living by free
>> lance writing, and the occasional prize for his work (like last
>> year's $100,000 Edge Foundation Prize). Deutsch, a supporter of the
>> Conservative Party, is too unorthodox to hold a regular university
>> position. Michael Shor, who invented the Shor Algorithm that,
>> running on a quantum computer, could break any of the Internet
>> Security codes, was and is employed by what in my childhood was
>> called Bell Labs.
>>
>> A few years ago, Science magazine ran an article showing that most
>> science articles paid for by NSF were never even cited by anyone
>> except the author. Completely worthless work, in other words.
>>
>> Most university mathematics departments teach a theory of probability
>> and statistics that was created in the early 20th century by
>> psychologists and sociologists instead of a more sophisticated theory
>> created around 1800 by the great physicists Simon de Laplace and Karl
>> F. Gauss. Using the physicists' probability theory, it is possible
>> to show that the social scientists' probability theory is designed to
>> tend to confirm whatever the experimenter wishes to be true. To the
>> best of my knowledge, the physicists' theory of probability is taught
>> only at four universities: Cambridge, Stanford, Washington St. Louis,
>> and North Carolina State University. See Edward Jaynes' Probability
>> Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2002) for a history of this
>> nonsense, together with a description of the correct theory of
>> probability.
>>
>> Unfortunately, the incorrect theory of probability is required by the
>> FDA in tests of drugs. Fortunately, DNA typing uses the correct
>> theory of probability.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Frank J. Tipler
>> Professor of Mathematical Phyiscs
>> Tulane University
>
Dear Mitchell,
>>
>> Why do you except the hard sciences from your critique? During the
>> thirty years I've been a professor of Mathematical Physics, the
>> physics departments at the "leading" American universities have
>> become hostile to the fundamental laws of physics, specifically
>> quantum mechanics, relativity, and the second law of thermodynamics.
>>
>> It is my impression that most technological advance during the past
>> two decades has come, not from university science and engineering
>> departments, but from private individuals, and researchers at
>> industrial labs. For example, the revolutionary idea of the quantum
>> computer was first advanced by David Deutsch, who, although he has
>> the title of Professor of Physics at Oxford University, actually
>> receives no salary from the university. He earns his living by free
>> lance writing, and the occasional prize for his work (like last
>> year's $100,000 Edge Foundation Prize). Deutsch, a supporter of the
>> Conservative Party, is too unorthodox to hold a regular university
>> position. Michael Shor, who invented the Shor Algorithm that,
>> running on a quantum computer, could break any of the Internet
>> Security codes, was and is employed by what in my childhood was
>> called Bell Labs.
>>
>> A few years ago, Science magazine ran an article showing that most
>> science articles paid for by NSF were never even cited by anyone
>> except the author. Completely worthless work, in other words.
>>
>> Most university mathematics departments teach a theory of probability
>> and statistics that was created in the early 20th century by
>> psychologists and sociologists instead of a more sophisticated theory
>> created around 1800 by the great physicists Simon de Laplace and Karl
>> F. Gauss. Using the physicists' probability theory, it is possible
>> to show that the social scientists' probability theory is designed to
>> tend to confirm whatever the experimenter wishes to be true. To the
>> best of my knowledge, the physicists' theory of probability is taught
>> only at four universities: Cambridge, Stanford, Washington St. Louis,
>> and North Carolina State University. See Edward Jaynes' Probability
>> Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2002) for a history of this
>> nonsense, together with a description of the correct theory of
>> probability.
>>
>> Unfortunately, the incorrect theory of probability is required by the
>> FDA in tests of drugs. Fortunately, DNA typing uses the correct
>> theory of probability.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Frank J. Tipler
>> Professor of Mathematical Phyiscs
>> Tulane University
>
Academic Reform as Charade
The notion of reform assumes an institution that is worth saving. There is scant evidence that higher education is so, with the exceptions of technology, the sciences, and professions. While there is a long standing human capital argument that would favor higher education, there is no evidence that higher education optimally enhances necessary skills. There are no controlled or comparative studies of say business school graduation versus military service, or community college versus apprenticeship programs, not to mention creative alternatives that have been ignored because of the dominance of higher education systems. It is entirely possible that human capital can be more effectively enhanced through alternative institutions that have not received state support. The fact that universities depend on extraordinary degrees of government largesse and donations suggests that the economic returns due to the human capital that they produce do not justify the universities' extent. If this were not the case, state support and donations would be unnecessary, especially in today's liquid debt markets. Donations can infer not gratitude for economic returns, but the quest for social image and status, hence cannot be assumed to reflect repayment for economic benefits. If universities produced the value that they consume, students and firms would voluntarily pay to cover universities' costs to obtain the valuable knowledge that they produce.
The movement for academic reform takes as a starting point the view that intolerance of traditional approaches to education; the rejection of core curricula; and political correctness are impediments to the proper functioning of universities. Like any reform movement, it argues that improving the institution will be worthwhile because then it will perform more authentically, effectively and efficiently. In pursuing such ends, the reformers become part of the university system.
Phil Orenstein has been working on an article that argues that Nazism was a direct offshoot of the 19th century German university, and that Fichte and other German Idealists were the bedrock foundation on which not only Nazism, but also the modern university rests. In Phil's view, both the holocaust and the modern university are the heirs of the 19th century German university. Phil's idea is seminal because today's universities foster totalitarian ideologies and support intolerant extremism that, though cloaked in left wing garb, is little different from Nazism. Hence, the pattern of political correctness becomes not peripheral, or externally introduced by 1960s radicals, but rather fundamental to the culture and processes of universities themselves. Universities foster totalitarianism, and totalitarianism is inextricably linked to universities, not a peripheral malaise.
Academics who claim that they aim to reform their institutions from within thus have far-fetched, self-contradictory aims. Not only are universities culturally adverse to performing what the public expects (balanced education, for example) but their hiring and assessment policies are impossibly skewed toward favoring faculty who support totalitarian approaches and state-based solutions, and to suppression of any who disagree. The notion of reform in the real-world university context thus is a self-serving charade. Self-serving because the professor/reformer, whose conscience tells him that the institution is fraudulent or politically suppressive, can assauge his conscience while remaining secure in his knowledge that his activities will come to naught.
The spread of universities hearkens a deterioration of American democracy. This occurs in part through decades of advocacy of state-based solutions, Keyensian economics, Marxian sociology and similar university movements that advocate destructive social goals. It also occurs because of values that universities inculcate, such as identity politics, political correctness, uniformity of thinking and conformity to a professor's whims.
Society needs to begin to think of creative alternatives to universities that will sidestep the cracked views of a professoriate whose greatest contributions are left wing totalitarianism and the will to power.
Candace de Russy responds to this essay at:
http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTdkNzU5OWQ0MjAwYmIwNTE3MTJjN2I5ODQ4OGVmZTc=
The movement for academic reform takes as a starting point the view that intolerance of traditional approaches to education; the rejection of core curricula; and political correctness are impediments to the proper functioning of universities. Like any reform movement, it argues that improving the institution will be worthwhile because then it will perform more authentically, effectively and efficiently. In pursuing such ends, the reformers become part of the university system.
Phil Orenstein has been working on an article that argues that Nazism was a direct offshoot of the 19th century German university, and that Fichte and other German Idealists were the bedrock foundation on which not only Nazism, but also the modern university rests. In Phil's view, both the holocaust and the modern university are the heirs of the 19th century German university. Phil's idea is seminal because today's universities foster totalitarian ideologies and support intolerant extremism that, though cloaked in left wing garb, is little different from Nazism. Hence, the pattern of political correctness becomes not peripheral, or externally introduced by 1960s radicals, but rather fundamental to the culture and processes of universities themselves. Universities foster totalitarianism, and totalitarianism is inextricably linked to universities, not a peripheral malaise.
Academics who claim that they aim to reform their institutions from within thus have far-fetched, self-contradictory aims. Not only are universities culturally adverse to performing what the public expects (balanced education, for example) but their hiring and assessment policies are impossibly skewed toward favoring faculty who support totalitarian approaches and state-based solutions, and to suppression of any who disagree. The notion of reform in the real-world university context thus is a self-serving charade. Self-serving because the professor/reformer, whose conscience tells him that the institution is fraudulent or politically suppressive, can assauge his conscience while remaining secure in his knowledge that his activities will come to naught.
The spread of universities hearkens a deterioration of American democracy. This occurs in part through decades of advocacy of state-based solutions, Keyensian economics, Marxian sociology and similar university movements that advocate destructive social goals. It also occurs because of values that universities inculcate, such as identity politics, political correctness, uniformity of thinking and conformity to a professor's whims.
Society needs to begin to think of creative alternatives to universities that will sidestep the cracked views of a professoriate whose greatest contributions are left wing totalitarianism and the will to power.
Candace de Russy responds to this essay at:
http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTdkNzU5OWQ0MjAwYmIwNTE3MTJjN2I5ODQ4OGVmZTc=
Comptency-Based Education and the NCATE Banana Peel
The problem with business school is that until recently it has not done enough to teach how to succeed in business. In the 1970s and 1980s, when I attended UCLA's business school, there were two models for MBA programs. One, the "quantitative" approach, presented MBA education in accordance with the claim that business and management are scientific problems that can be solved through optimization and modern financial models. By that time, of course, David Halberstam had written "The Best and the Brightest" which in chapters 12 and 13 included a scathing critique of Robert McNamara's management science, which discarded common sense in favor of statistical modeling. Moreover, it is absurd to claim that even a modest percentage of the challenges business executives face involve problem solving. This is a common claim, but most anyone who's labored in the corporate world knows that interpersonal and political skills are far more important to success than problem solving. But business school had been doing next to nothing to develop such skills. The second approach was the case study method, which is somewhat more practical than teaching business students how to do regression analysis, but frequently covers irrelevant material and concepts and also does little to develop interpersonal skills. Two graduates of the Harvard Business School (most closely associated with the case study method), Jeff Skilling and Rebecca Marks, did well with the case study method in school but lacked elementary business competencies (see The Smartest Guys in the Room, by McLean and Elkind)
I thought about this for years in my twenties and thirties (in the 1980s) as I realized that I had learned next to nothing of practical value in business school, with the exception of a course called "Nucleus" that was taught by Professor Eric Flamholtz, who was a pioneer in the competency-based approach. Flamholtz's exercises and insights showed me that teaching business competencies was a yet-unrealized possibility. (Which isn't to say that I didn't have many other excellent academic experiences at UCLA, starting with my chief academic inspiration, Professor Dominique Hanssens in the marketing department there. But there was little that could be applied in most real world business settings as opposed to statistical modeling and hypothesis testing.)
As I thought about how to make business school more practical and of use to students, I realized that the key issues for junior executives involve developing interpersonal skills, politics and power. I suggested to other academics that this be taught, but I wasn't clear how to do so. Finally, I learned about competency-based education through a colleague at Iona, Ted Schwartz.
The idea of competency-based education is that skills are identified and targeted. Students assess themselves with respect to the skills (objective assessment not being valid or even available). Then, they read about how to improve with respect to the skill. The skill can be cognitive or acognitive. For instance, the skill could involve technical knowlege, but more importantly it can involve self-awareness, emotional intelligence, communication, interpersonal skills, conflict resolution and use of power. After learning about how to improve with respect to the skill the student then applies the skill in a real-life setting (skill application) and writes about why they chose to work on the particular skill in the particular setting. David Whetten and Kim Cameron have developed this model in their textbook Developing Management Skills.
NCATE claims that education schools ought to apply "skills assessment" as part of their accreditation program. I have no problem with developing skills. My problem is the "assessment" part. A competency-based approach is effective for teaching purposes as it focuses on teaching and improving with respect to a targeted skill set, and skills that students should be learning in applied programs like business or education can be targeted. This is still done only to a limited degree in business schools, which is unfortunate.
But one thing that I never heard from any of the folks involved in the competency movement is that anyone should ever be penalized or judged for having or not having a competency or be "assessed" in a punitive way. I really don't think anyone ever suggested that and if they did they would have been wrong. The idea is much more subtle than that. Competencies interact with the work environment, so there is no one right competency in the sense that mathematics is right. Of course, there are general competencies that are beneficial across a wide spectrum of occupations. For example, good interpersonal skills, understanding how one's emotions influence one's judgment, etc. are good competencies to have, along with math, reading and writing skills. I'm all for business schools and education schools teaching things like that.
To assess such competencies is another story. It is much more difficult to assess than to describe or teach about a competency like interpersonal skills, communication, how to gain power, etc. Even if they can be tested students can fake their responses once they realize what the test is for. Also, development of tests is extremely hard to do. So there shouldn't be any assessment or testing unless you are willing to invest in a "live" assessment center approach involving structured exercises and hundreds or thousands of dollars per assessee. On the other hand, using these concepts in structuring education programs is something I support as a component of education. Students need to develop interpersonal and self awareness skills as much as writing and math skills. All of the above should be part of a professional education program.
As far as NCATE, they did not describe any methodology about training or teaching the competencies such as social justice. They did not define social justice. They just told education schools that they should assess students using social justice dispositions, which is nonsensical. NCATE slipped on an ideological banana peel. First you have to define what the dispositions mean, then develop measures, etc.
So in short I object to the "assessment" but not to the "dispositions".
I thought about this for years in my twenties and thirties (in the 1980s) as I realized that I had learned next to nothing of practical value in business school, with the exception of a course called "Nucleus" that was taught by Professor Eric Flamholtz, who was a pioneer in the competency-based approach. Flamholtz's exercises and insights showed me that teaching business competencies was a yet-unrealized possibility. (Which isn't to say that I didn't have many other excellent academic experiences at UCLA, starting with my chief academic inspiration, Professor Dominique Hanssens in the marketing department there. But there was little that could be applied in most real world business settings as opposed to statistical modeling and hypothesis testing.)
As I thought about how to make business school more practical and of use to students, I realized that the key issues for junior executives involve developing interpersonal skills, politics and power. I suggested to other academics that this be taught, but I wasn't clear how to do so. Finally, I learned about competency-based education through a colleague at Iona, Ted Schwartz.
The idea of competency-based education is that skills are identified and targeted. Students assess themselves with respect to the skills (objective assessment not being valid or even available). Then, they read about how to improve with respect to the skill. The skill can be cognitive or acognitive. For instance, the skill could involve technical knowlege, but more importantly it can involve self-awareness, emotional intelligence, communication, interpersonal skills, conflict resolution and use of power. After learning about how to improve with respect to the skill the student then applies the skill in a real-life setting (skill application) and writes about why they chose to work on the particular skill in the particular setting. David Whetten and Kim Cameron have developed this model in their textbook Developing Management Skills.
NCATE claims that education schools ought to apply "skills assessment" as part of their accreditation program. I have no problem with developing skills. My problem is the "assessment" part. A competency-based approach is effective for teaching purposes as it focuses on teaching and improving with respect to a targeted skill set, and skills that students should be learning in applied programs like business or education can be targeted. This is still done only to a limited degree in business schools, which is unfortunate.
But one thing that I never heard from any of the folks involved in the competency movement is that anyone should ever be penalized or judged for having or not having a competency or be "assessed" in a punitive way. I really don't think anyone ever suggested that and if they did they would have been wrong. The idea is much more subtle than that. Competencies interact with the work environment, so there is no one right competency in the sense that mathematics is right. Of course, there are general competencies that are beneficial across a wide spectrum of occupations. For example, good interpersonal skills, understanding how one's emotions influence one's judgment, etc. are good competencies to have, along with math, reading and writing skills. I'm all for business schools and education schools teaching things like that.
To assess such competencies is another story. It is much more difficult to assess than to describe or teach about a competency like interpersonal skills, communication, how to gain power, etc. Even if they can be tested students can fake their responses once they realize what the test is for. Also, development of tests is extremely hard to do. So there shouldn't be any assessment or testing unless you are willing to invest in a "live" assessment center approach involving structured exercises and hundreds or thousands of dollars per assessee. On the other hand, using these concepts in structuring education programs is something I support as a component of education. Students need to develop interpersonal and self awareness skills as much as writing and math skills. All of the above should be part of a professional education program.
As far as NCATE, they did not describe any methodology about training or teaching the competencies such as social justice. They did not define social justice. They just told education schools that they should assess students using social justice dispositions, which is nonsensical. NCATE slipped on an ideological banana peel. First you have to define what the dispositions mean, then develop measures, etc.
So in short I object to the "assessment" but not to the "dispositions".
More on NCATE and Teacher Dispositions
While presenting at the US Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity on Monday, June 5, in Arlington, Va. I mentioned that there is a well-developed body of knowledge about managerial competencies, which is the same idea as NCATE's "dispositions," and the Hay-McBer consulting firm, founded by the well-known psychologist David McClelland, has done considerable work in developing competency measures and validating them. But NCATE has not toiled in this way and so its claim to use dispositions in assessing prospective teachers is spurious. Last year, NCATE failed to respond to my repeated inquiries as to what measures they use to assess dispositions in students that they claim to evaluate using "dispositional assessment", and whether and how they have validated such measures. Since NCATE has no realistic measures and no validated measures, their claim that they use dispositions to evaluate students is nonsense. The chief reason for NCATE's making a misleading claim that I can think of is the possibility that NCATE wants to encourage harassment of some categories of students, such as conservatives who disagree with its political ideology. Hence, I presented at the meeting that the entire use of dispositions is inappropriate and in violation of judicial statutory interpretation that prohibits governmental use of ideological litmus tests. Contrast NCATE's fly-by-night claims to be using "dispositional assessment" with how it has been done in business schools.
Boyatzis* defines competencies as "an underlying characteristic of a person which results in effective and/or superior performance in a job." Each competency has two dimensions. The first identifies the various competencies. The second involves three competency levels: motives (unconscious), self image (conscious) and skills (behavioral). "Each level may vary in its impact on the disposition of the person to use the competency." Here we see the infamous word "disposition" that NCATE throws around.
Boyatzis distinguishes between motives and traits. "A motive is a recurrent concern for a goal state...A trait is a dispositional or characteristic way in which the person responds." Boyatzis argues that there are dynamic interactions among (from most unconscious) traits and motives, self-image, skills, the person, job demands and the organizational environment.
Boyatzis's book uses data from 12 organizations and 2,000 people in 41 job titles. He uses "the job comptence assessment method" which involves analyzing each job, scoring interviews of job incumbents ("behavioral event interviewing"), development and application of objective tests to measure the competencies, and correlation of the interview and objective test scores to job performance measures, i.e., validation.
In 2000 the Hay-McBer firm with which Boyatzis is associated did a study of teaching competencies in the UK. They found the following competencies:
Challenge and Support
Confidence
Creating Trust
Respect for Others
Analytical Thinking
Conceptual Thinking
Drive for Improvement
Information Seeking
Initiative
Flexibility
Holding People Accountable
Managing Pupils
Passion for Learning
Impact and Influence
Teamworking
Understanding Others
These competencies explain 30% of the variance of an outcomes measure. Note that Hay-McBer does not claim that it can assess teachers or prospective teachers along these dimensions. The only competency-related measures that can do so are behavioral assessment centers that involve multiple reviewers who anonymously evaluate performance on structured exercises. The reason is that written assessment measures can be gamed, and so often do not have validity in prediction of performance. The chief exceptions are integrity tests and the conscientiousness measure of the "Big-5" personality inventory (for example the NEO-AC instrument).
Note that "social justice disposition" is nowhere to be seen in any of these discussions. Also note that none of the experts who have studied competencies claim that even objective test measures can validly predict future job performance. Moreover, none of the experts who have studied competencies and dispositions has come anywhere close to asserting that a particular professor can assess competencies in a particular student, particularly when such a professor dislikes the student's politics.
That NCATE advocates or accepts such procedures is evidence of incompetence.
*Richard E. Boyatzis, The Competent Manager: A Model for Effective Performance, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982.
**self awareness, conceptualization, concern with relationships, concern with impact, developing others, diagnostic uses of concepts, efficiency orientation, logcial thought, managing group processes, memory, perceptual objectivity, positive regard, proactivity, stamina and adaptation, use or oral presentations, use of socialized power, use of unilateral power.
Boyatzis* defines competencies as "an underlying characteristic of a person which results in effective and/or superior performance in a job." Each competency has two dimensions. The first identifies the various competencies. The second involves three competency levels: motives (unconscious), self image (conscious) and skills (behavioral). "Each level may vary in its impact on the disposition of the person to use the competency." Here we see the infamous word "disposition" that NCATE throws around.
Boyatzis distinguishes between motives and traits. "A motive is a recurrent concern for a goal state...A trait is a dispositional or characteristic way in which the person responds." Boyatzis argues that there are dynamic interactions among (from most unconscious) traits and motives, self-image, skills, the person, job demands and the organizational environment.
Boyatzis's book uses data from 12 organizations and 2,000 people in 41 job titles. He uses "the job comptence assessment method" which involves analyzing each job, scoring interviews of job incumbents ("behavioral event interviewing"), development and application of objective tests to measure the competencies, and correlation of the interview and objective test scores to job performance measures, i.e., validation.
In 2000 the Hay-McBer firm with which Boyatzis is associated did a study of teaching competencies in the UK. They found the following competencies:
Challenge and Support
Confidence
Creating Trust
Respect for Others
Analytical Thinking
Conceptual Thinking
Drive for Improvement
Information Seeking
Initiative
Flexibility
Holding People Accountable
Managing Pupils
Passion for Learning
Impact and Influence
Teamworking
Understanding Others
These competencies explain 30% of the variance of an outcomes measure. Note that Hay-McBer does not claim that it can assess teachers or prospective teachers along these dimensions. The only competency-related measures that can do so are behavioral assessment centers that involve multiple reviewers who anonymously evaluate performance on structured exercises. The reason is that written assessment measures can be gamed, and so often do not have validity in prediction of performance. The chief exceptions are integrity tests and the conscientiousness measure of the "Big-5" personality inventory (for example the NEO-AC instrument).
Note that "social justice disposition" is nowhere to be seen in any of these discussions. Also note that none of the experts who have studied competencies claim that even objective test measures can validly predict future job performance. Moreover, none of the experts who have studied competencies and dispositions has come anywhere close to asserting that a particular professor can assess competencies in a particular student, particularly when such a professor dislikes the student's politics.
That NCATE advocates or accepts such procedures is evidence of incompetence.
*Richard E. Boyatzis, The Competent Manager: A Model for Effective Performance, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982.
**self awareness, conceptualization, concern with relationships, concern with impact, developing others, diagnostic uses of concepts, efficiency orientation, logcial thought, managing group processes, memory, perceptual objectivity, positive regard, proactivity, stamina and adaptation, use or oral presentations, use of socialized power, use of unilateral power.
NCATE Ends Its Advocacy of Social Justice Dispositional Assessment
I took the Amtrak to Washington to attend a meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity. The Advisory Committee was reviewing petitions to extend recognition of various accreditation associations such as the American Dental Association Commission on Dental Association, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and the National Accrediting Commission of Cosmetology Arts and Sciences.
Among the accrediting organizations requesting extension was the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). NCATE submitted a petition for renewal of recognitioin and expansion of the scope of its recognition so that it could accredit distance learning programs.
Last spring (2005) there was a controversy at Brooklyn College concerning NCATE's approach to dispositional assessment concerning a student named Goldwyn and his professor, Priyar Parmar. In addition, Steven Head of San Jose State has filed suit at San Jose State University concerning SJSU's treatment of his candidacy in its teacher education program because of NCATE's and SJSU's approach to dispositional assessment.
At the Advisory Board meeting Arthur Wise, head of NCATE, indicated that NCATE has dropped social justice from its accrediting criteria. Naturally, Steve Balch, head of NAS, Anne Neal, head of ACTA and Greg Lukianoff, head of FIRE as well as myself were delighted.
In my remarks to the committee I described Steven Head's case and the fact that he said that all conservatives had been driven out of SJSU's teacher ed program. I indicated that NCATE's entire approach to using dispositions is inappropriate because the dispositions that they use have not been validated and that they sent me on a wild goose chase when I asked for evidence that their approach had been validated. Dispositions are too easily used as pretexts for politically motivated retaliation to be used in assessing students unless there are objective instruments and measures. I also said that NCATE has overseen the decline of American education, that students with median SAT scores cannot do basic math or write because of teaching approaches that NCATE advocates and that NCATE is the nexus of educational decline, that they are a bunch of losers and should be declined accreditation recognition altogether.
Among the accrediting organizations requesting extension was the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). NCATE submitted a petition for renewal of recognitioin and expansion of the scope of its recognition so that it could accredit distance learning programs.
Last spring (2005) there was a controversy at Brooklyn College concerning NCATE's approach to dispositional assessment concerning a student named Goldwyn and his professor, Priyar Parmar. In addition, Steven Head of San Jose State has filed suit at San Jose State University concerning SJSU's treatment of his candidacy in its teacher education program because of NCATE's and SJSU's approach to dispositional assessment.
At the Advisory Board meeting Arthur Wise, head of NCATE, indicated that NCATE has dropped social justice from its accrediting criteria. Naturally, Steve Balch, head of NAS, Anne Neal, head of ACTA and Greg Lukianoff, head of FIRE as well as myself were delighted.
In my remarks to the committee I described Steven Head's case and the fact that he said that all conservatives had been driven out of SJSU's teacher ed program. I indicated that NCATE's entire approach to using dispositions is inappropriate because the dispositions that they use have not been validated and that they sent me on a wild goose chase when I asked for evidence that their approach had been validated. Dispositions are too easily used as pretexts for politically motivated retaliation to be used in assessing students unless there are objective instruments and measures. I also said that NCATE has overseen the decline of American education, that students with median SAT scores cannot do basic math or write because of teaching approaches that NCATE advocates and that NCATE is the nexus of educational decline, that they are a bunch of losers and should be declined accreditation recognition altogether.
Has Higher Education Overstepped Section 501(c)(3)?
An editorial in the NY Sun concerning anti-Semitic rants published as putatitive research by professors of leading research universities ("Harvard, Chicago and the Lobby", March 17-19) and an article in today's Sun that says that David Duke has been praising research about the "Jewish lobby" at Harvard indirectly raises a question that has beome increasingly salient. Universities like Harvard and Chicago receive a tax exemption under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
The 501(c)(3) deduction is available to educational institutions but is not available to organizations that engage in political advocacy. Hence, there is a question as to whether Professors Walt's and Mearsheimr's work amounts to propaganda and so crosses the line of using universities' assets for political purposes.
The question of propaganda's inclusion in section 501(c)(3)'s definition of education has not received significant attention from the IRS in recent years, which is unfortunate because universities have been inceasingly distracted from their tax-exempt educational purposes.
In several cases in the early 1980s, such as National Alliance v. United States, the federal courts vacated the IRS's previous requirement of an organization's offering " a full and fair exposition" the facts as too vague, but the IRS has not taken steps to provide clearer guidance as to how much lobbying and ideology in an educational institution are too much. This is unfortunate as universities have increasingly become little more than crackpot advocacy organizations for the extreme left.
The 501(c)(3) deduction is available to educational institutions but is not available to organizations that engage in political advocacy. Hence, there is a question as to whether Professors Walt's and Mearsheimr's work amounts to propaganda and so crosses the line of using universities' assets for political purposes.
The question of propaganda's inclusion in section 501(c)(3)'s definition of education has not received significant attention from the IRS in recent years, which is unfortunate because universities have been inceasingly distracted from their tax-exempt educational purposes.
In several cases in the early 1980s, such as National Alliance v. United States, the federal courts vacated the IRS's previous requirement of an organization's offering " a full and fair exposition" the facts as too vague, but the IRS has not taken steps to provide clearer guidance as to how much lobbying and ideology in an educational institution are too much. This is unfortunate as universities have increasingly become little more than crackpot advocacy organizations for the extreme left.
Required Student Lobbying and Tax Exempt Status of Universities
I have started reading about the impact of faculty telling students to write letters on behalf of candidates on the tax exempt status of the universities in which the professors teach. As I'm reading through a law book on section 501 c 3 it turns out that there have been revenue rulings on the subject of faculty telling students to campaign on behalf of a candidate. In Revenue Ruling 72-512 and 72-513 the IRS has held that a university is NOT participating in a political campaign by providing a political science course that requires the students' participation in political campaigns OF THEIR (the students') CHOICE nor by provision of faculty advisors and facilities for a campus newspaper that publishes the STUDENTS' editorial opinions on political matters. That contrasts with recent reports where the professor requires a given viewpoint. Also, an exempt broadcasting station that provides EQUAL air time to all electoral candidates in compliance with the Federal Communications Act does not violate the prescription against partisan political activities. (Bruce R. Hopkins, Tax Exempt Law of Organizations New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1983).
I am curious as to whether there have been subsequent revenue rulings about the kind of lobbying that has been reported in recent years (the book I have was published in '83). For example, there have been reports of professors requiring that students write letters on behalf of Kerry and of requiring that students take a required position regarding a law or proposed legislation.
I am curious as to whether there have been subsequent revenue rulings about the kind of lobbying that has been reported in recent years (the book I have was published in '83). For example, there have been reports of professors requiring that students write letters on behalf of Kerry and of requiring that students take a required position regarding a law or proposed legislation.
Trade, Wal-Mart and New York Democrats’ Attack on the Poor
The Economist 's lead story this week on globalization ("Tired of Globalization: But in Need of Much More of it"—Nov. 5) mentions Senator Schumer’s proposal to impose a 39% tariff on Chinese imports. As well, the New York City Council, the politburo of the People’s Republic of New York City, has imposed a law imposing health insurance costs on large supermarkets in order to capriciously discriminate against Wal Mart. At the same time, there were anti-trade demonstrations in Argentina concerning the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and by implication the latest round of tariff-reduction talks that especially affect agriculture.
Schumer is a Harvard grad and, hopefully was exposed to David Ricardo’s concept of comparative advantage in college (although along with the Harvard faculty’s belief that there are no differences between men and women, who knows what laws of economics they have concocted).
These latest assaults on economic freedom do what all restraints on economic freedom ultimately do—assault the poor. Schumer’s bill would forestall economic progress in China, in the long term reducing wage gains and diminishing learning of Chinese workers and future entrepreneurs. The ban on Wal-Mart means that those New Yorkers with low incomes must pay inflated prices for their groceries. The Doha round of trade talks would directly help the farmers of Brazil, Africa and other third world countries and low-wage people in America, while the agricultural tariffs that the demonstators seem to support help domestic producers such as Del Monte at consumers' expense.
I brought these issues up in my class at Brooklyn College, and was interested in how few students (a) had heard of the theory of comparative advantage, (b) had thought about the impact of trade on economic outcomes and freedom and (c) had heard of or were critical of the ban on Wal Mart and protectionism. One student argued that Asians who work in factories would be better off starving to death than working in American factories overseas because of poor factory conditions. This student did not say whether she wished her ancestors had so starved to death in the 19th century. Another student said that it is good that poor people in New York pay higher prices to supermarkets because they would just fritter away the money anyway. I questioned the student whether this wasn't the same economic philosophy that governs North Korea, and why wouldn't he want to live there.
It seems to me that the left’s use of universities and schools to ideologically brainwash students to believe in their failed and erroneous economic theories has worked. It will be a long path to counteract the economic ignorance that the schools and universities have wrought on the American public, and that shows itself in the illiterate discussions of trade among elected officials like New York's Senator Schumer and New York City's politburo, and among left wing demonstrators.
Schumer is a Harvard grad and, hopefully was exposed to David Ricardo’s concept of comparative advantage in college (although along with the Harvard faculty’s belief that there are no differences between men and women, who knows what laws of economics they have concocted).
These latest assaults on economic freedom do what all restraints on economic freedom ultimately do—assault the poor. Schumer’s bill would forestall economic progress in China, in the long term reducing wage gains and diminishing learning of Chinese workers and future entrepreneurs. The ban on Wal-Mart means that those New Yorkers with low incomes must pay inflated prices for their groceries. The Doha round of trade talks would directly help the farmers of Brazil, Africa and other third world countries and low-wage people in America, while the agricultural tariffs that the demonstators seem to support help domestic producers such as Del Monte at consumers' expense.
I brought these issues up in my class at Brooklyn College, and was interested in how few students (a) had heard of the theory of comparative advantage, (b) had thought about the impact of trade on economic outcomes and freedom and (c) had heard of or were critical of the ban on Wal Mart and protectionism. One student argued that Asians who work in factories would be better off starving to death than working in American factories overseas because of poor factory conditions. This student did not say whether she wished her ancestors had so starved to death in the 19th century. Another student said that it is good that poor people in New York pay higher prices to supermarkets because they would just fritter away the money anyway. I questioned the student whether this wasn't the same economic philosophy that governs North Korea, and why wouldn't he want to live there.
It seems to me that the left’s use of universities and schools to ideologically brainwash students to believe in their failed and erroneous economic theories has worked. It will be a long path to counteract the economic ignorance that the schools and universities have wrought on the American public, and that shows itself in the illiterate discussions of trade among elected officials like New York's Senator Schumer and New York City's politburo, and among left wing demonstrators.
Review of Jane Jacobs' Dark Age Ahead
New York: Random House, 2004, 241 pp., $23.95 hardbound
Jane Jacobs’s book Dark Age Ahead, published last year, is a major disappointment. In her most famous book, Life and Death of Great American Cities, Jacobs’s arguments are close to those of the Austrians and other free marketeers. She argues that communities need to evolve spontaneously, and that large scale planning schemes such as the urban renewal of the 1950s had been a failure.
Dark Age Ahead shows that without an underlying theoretical grasp, even the most brilliant authors with the most brilliant insights, such as those evinced in Life and Death of Great American Cities, are likely to falter. In Dark Age Ahead Jacobs claims that Western civilization is teetering on a Dark Age because our culture cannot cope with technological change and interest group pressure on public policy. Ms. Jacobs defines a Dark Age to be a state of cultural amnesia, a “horrible ordeal” where a previous way of life slides into “an abyss of forgetfulness” (pp.6-7). She claims that five trends interactively evidence an incipient Dark Age. These include: (i) The decline of the suburban family and community, (ii) credentialing in higher education, (iii) second-rate science in fields like traffic engineering, (iv) incompetently managed public finance systems and (v) the decline of ethics in the accounting profession.
With respect to the decline of the family and community, Ms. Jacobs points out that the spirit of community characteristic of the urban neighborhoods of the 1950s is missing in twenty-first century suburban communities. Her point that modern urban planning has resulted in the deterioration of community spirit and family relationships is similar to arguments in Death and Life of Great American Cities.
In the second chapter, Ms. Jacobs argues that credentialing, or an emphasis on obtaining a degree regardless of the quality of the underlying education, has become the primary business of North American universities. Complaints about the rituals of higher education date back at least to Thorstein Veblen’s (1993) Higher Learning in America, and in light of this tradition Ms. Jacobs does a credible job of depicting higher education’s transformation into an employment signal. In her view credentialing has served the narrow economic interests of universities as well as employers.
With respect to second-rate science, Ms. Jacobs criticizes the lack of scientific imagination of traffic engineers, public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control, and Canadian economists.
In a chapter entitled “Dumbed-Down Taxes” Ms. Jacobs discusses the fourth trend, incompetently managed public finance systems. Ms. Jacobs argues that government works best when it is responsible to the people it serves, and that this objective is best satisfied when government finances are transparent. Government accounting and budgeting processes often serve to cloak what “provincial kleptocracies” (p.110) do with federal grants. Not enough resources are available for social programs, and there is an absence of fiscal accountability because government accounting information is obscure. Her concerns about fiscal responsibility and budgetary equity in Canadian provinces are similar to issues that face state governments in the U.S.
Ms. Jacobs’s observations with respect to the fifth trend, the decline in professional ethics, notably with respect to the accounting profession, reflects the recent series of corporate scandals involving Adelphia, Enron, Lucent, Tyco, Worldcom and other large firms. This chapter is weak because it confuses issues involving government accounting with the corporate scandals, and fails to address either government accounting or the scandals coherently. Harvard professor Robert N. Anthony (Anthony and Young, 1993) has spent a substantial part of his notable career arguing that government and private sector accounting should not be treated all that differently, and conservative economists such as Mancur Olson (1983) have developed theories that explain the lack of transparency of public sector accounting in terms of special interest group pressure. But problems with government accounting are at most obliquely related to the private sector accounting issues that have been relevant to Enron et al.
An underlying problem with Dark Age Ahead is that Ms. Jacobs’s definition of Dark Age is vacuous. Ms. Jacobs’s definition of a Dark Age as cultural forgetting implies that 18th century American culture is in a Dark Age of cultural forgetting because the techniques of slave driving, horse-drawn carriage driving, and blood letting as a medical cure have been forgotten. Rather, some form of compulsion, elimination of free choice, or erosion of transportation or communication systems would seem to be necessary for a Dark Age.
Social scientists sometimes accuse economists of methodological imperialism when the economists extend their neoclassical paradigm to adjacent fields. In this book Jacobs seems almost imperialistic in discussing education, labor economics, general science and political science.
I had philosophical quibbles with much of the book. For instance, Ms. Jacobs’ claims about the Centers for Disease Control study are overdrawn. Rather than suggesting a Dark Age, the incentive structure provided to government researchers likely offers clues as to why their work was of poor quality. The solution might be to redesign the incentive structure, although the special interest group pressures that government employee unions pose may play a role. Perhaps Ms. Jacobs should have included a chapter on the role that public sector unions play with respect to economic decline.
Likewise, in the chapter on government finance, Ms. Jacobs intelligently argues for fiscal accountability in government. But she also condemns “neo-conservative” approaches to “reinventing government” such as requirements that government programs pay for themselves. Of course, the reason voters often have favored such “neo-conservative” reforms is the very lack of accountability and misuse of government monies that she observes in other contexts. Ms. Jacobs seems to argue both that (a) government programs should be encouraged even though (b) government behaves unaccountably.
Ms. Jacobs is a fine writer and imaginative observer, but this book is far from her most important work. Rather than indicating a Dark Age ahead, many of the issues that she adduces could best be resolved by limiting government, a solution that she paradoxically opposes. It is a significant loss to libertarians that Ms. Jacobs lacks the theoretical rigor that would have directed her toward a more consistently free market solution set. Her ideas are garbled and self-contradictory. This book represents a loss to anyone seriously interested in seeing reform of liberalism’s failed institutions.
References
Anthony, R.N. and Young, D Management Control in Non-profit Organizations Seventh Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin 2003.
Jacobs, J. Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Olson, M. The Rise and Decline of Nations, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983
Veblen, T. The Higher Learning in America, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993.
Jane Jacobs’s book Dark Age Ahead, published last year, is a major disappointment. In her most famous book, Life and Death of Great American Cities, Jacobs’s arguments are close to those of the Austrians and other free marketeers. She argues that communities need to evolve spontaneously, and that large scale planning schemes such as the urban renewal of the 1950s had been a failure.
Dark Age Ahead shows that without an underlying theoretical grasp, even the most brilliant authors with the most brilliant insights, such as those evinced in Life and Death of Great American Cities, are likely to falter. In Dark Age Ahead Jacobs claims that Western civilization is teetering on a Dark Age because our culture cannot cope with technological change and interest group pressure on public policy. Ms. Jacobs defines a Dark Age to be a state of cultural amnesia, a “horrible ordeal” where a previous way of life slides into “an abyss of forgetfulness” (pp.6-7). She claims that five trends interactively evidence an incipient Dark Age. These include: (i) The decline of the suburban family and community, (ii) credentialing in higher education, (iii) second-rate science in fields like traffic engineering, (iv) incompetently managed public finance systems and (v) the decline of ethics in the accounting profession.
With respect to the decline of the family and community, Ms. Jacobs points out that the spirit of community characteristic of the urban neighborhoods of the 1950s is missing in twenty-first century suburban communities. Her point that modern urban planning has resulted in the deterioration of community spirit and family relationships is similar to arguments in Death and Life of Great American Cities.
In the second chapter, Ms. Jacobs argues that credentialing, or an emphasis on obtaining a degree regardless of the quality of the underlying education, has become the primary business of North American universities. Complaints about the rituals of higher education date back at least to Thorstein Veblen’s (1993) Higher Learning in America, and in light of this tradition Ms. Jacobs does a credible job of depicting higher education’s transformation into an employment signal. In her view credentialing has served the narrow economic interests of universities as well as employers.
With respect to second-rate science, Ms. Jacobs criticizes the lack of scientific imagination of traffic engineers, public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control, and Canadian economists.
In a chapter entitled “Dumbed-Down Taxes” Ms. Jacobs discusses the fourth trend, incompetently managed public finance systems. Ms. Jacobs argues that government works best when it is responsible to the people it serves, and that this objective is best satisfied when government finances are transparent. Government accounting and budgeting processes often serve to cloak what “provincial kleptocracies” (p.110) do with federal grants. Not enough resources are available for social programs, and there is an absence of fiscal accountability because government accounting information is obscure. Her concerns about fiscal responsibility and budgetary equity in Canadian provinces are similar to issues that face state governments in the U.S.
Ms. Jacobs’s observations with respect to the fifth trend, the decline in professional ethics, notably with respect to the accounting profession, reflects the recent series of corporate scandals involving Adelphia, Enron, Lucent, Tyco, Worldcom and other large firms. This chapter is weak because it confuses issues involving government accounting with the corporate scandals, and fails to address either government accounting or the scandals coherently. Harvard professor Robert N. Anthony (Anthony and Young, 1993) has spent a substantial part of his notable career arguing that government and private sector accounting should not be treated all that differently, and conservative economists such as Mancur Olson (1983) have developed theories that explain the lack of transparency of public sector accounting in terms of special interest group pressure. But problems with government accounting are at most obliquely related to the private sector accounting issues that have been relevant to Enron et al.
An underlying problem with Dark Age Ahead is that Ms. Jacobs’s definition of Dark Age is vacuous. Ms. Jacobs’s definition of a Dark Age as cultural forgetting implies that 18th century American culture is in a Dark Age of cultural forgetting because the techniques of slave driving, horse-drawn carriage driving, and blood letting as a medical cure have been forgotten. Rather, some form of compulsion, elimination of free choice, or erosion of transportation or communication systems would seem to be necessary for a Dark Age.
Social scientists sometimes accuse economists of methodological imperialism when the economists extend their neoclassical paradigm to adjacent fields. In this book Jacobs seems almost imperialistic in discussing education, labor economics, general science and political science.
I had philosophical quibbles with much of the book. For instance, Ms. Jacobs’ claims about the Centers for Disease Control study are overdrawn. Rather than suggesting a Dark Age, the incentive structure provided to government researchers likely offers clues as to why their work was of poor quality. The solution might be to redesign the incentive structure, although the special interest group pressures that government employee unions pose may play a role. Perhaps Ms. Jacobs should have included a chapter on the role that public sector unions play with respect to economic decline.
Likewise, in the chapter on government finance, Ms. Jacobs intelligently argues for fiscal accountability in government. But she also condemns “neo-conservative” approaches to “reinventing government” such as requirements that government programs pay for themselves. Of course, the reason voters often have favored such “neo-conservative” reforms is the very lack of accountability and misuse of government monies that she observes in other contexts. Ms. Jacobs seems to argue both that (a) government programs should be encouraged even though (b) government behaves unaccountably.
Ms. Jacobs is a fine writer and imaginative observer, but this book is far from her most important work. Rather than indicating a Dark Age ahead, many of the issues that she adduces could best be resolved by limiting government, a solution that she paradoxically opposes. It is a significant loss to libertarians that Ms. Jacobs lacks the theoretical rigor that would have directed her toward a more consistently free market solution set. Her ideas are garbled and self-contradictory. This book represents a loss to anyone seriously interested in seeing reform of liberalism’s failed institutions.
References
Anthony, R.N. and Young, D Management Control in Non-profit Organizations Seventh Edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin 2003.
Jacobs, J. Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Olson, M. The Rise and Decline of Nations, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983
Veblen, T. The Higher Learning in America, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993.
The Failure of American Public Debate
The New York Sun reports that various politicians and pundits have been offering pessimistic assessments about the Iraqi conflict. Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy expert from the 1970s and 1980s who did not predict the important emergence of Islamic terrorism in the millenium, advises us that the war in Iraq is not winnable. The same Sun article quotes John McCain as saying that "there's only one thing worse (than deploying more troops), and that is defeat." Today, the Sun quotes Senator Obama of Illinois as saying that "a substantial number of American troops ought to be withdrawn" from Iraq. Thomas Friedman of the Times (Paid access, November 8) insists that the Bush team arrived in Iraq with too few troops (ignoring that, like Friedman, the Bush team was mostly in the United States and that it relied on the US military, specifically Tommy Franks, to project troop strength). Friedman, bombastic and ill-informed as always, suggests either reshaping Iraq into a federation (bad) or leaving Iraq by a fixed date (worse).
What is fascinating about all of these analyses is the willingness to make strong or absolute assertions without the benefit of a falsifiable theory or a body of empirical evidence that would point to the viability of one theory over another. Rather, pundits like Friedman and Kissinger and politicians like Obama and McCain (with whom I viscerally agree) pretend to know what they are talking about.
What is revealing about the discussion about Iraq is not just the failure of US intelligence and strategic planners (on both the intelligence and military sides) to anticipate and devise an updated strategy that would anticipate the diverse tribal and religious differences in the Arab world and methods for effectively handling terrorism, but the degree to which the politicians, press and media continue to remain uninformed. The arguments being made in the public press suggest a failure of American public debate and an unwillingness to learn.
In particular, Kissinger, McCain, Friedman, Obama and their ilk have had many years to conceptualize an intelligent response to terrorism and to develop a method of proactively responding to strikes like 9/11. Yet, no ideas are forthcoming. Instead, given their assessment that the American military has failed to respond competently (a point concerning which they offer no information and are apparently utterly uninformed), the "pundits" and politicians carp critically but offer no body of falsifiable theory nor any empirical evidence for their endless complaints and criticisms. Those of us who have other occupations (I work in the human resource management field) are forced to spend our valuable time reading about Iraq because those who are paid to do so have done such an incoherent and, plainly put, stupid job.
For example, consider Kissinger's claim that the war in Iraq is not winnable. This is obviously false. We can win any war by redefining it as a total war and killing the entire country of Iraq. I am not suggesting this as an option. However, the use of our moral restraint as propaganda to attack us is a tactic that ought not be permitted to work indefinitely. Perhaps total war ought to be an option against population groupings that support terrorism. I'm not sure why saying it isn't is "realpolitik". Because Kissinger says so? But Kissinger hasn't come up with a solution to terrorism, so what does he really have to offer? Is he the kind of 17th century physician who used leeches to bleed patients? I suspect that the entire field of foreign affairs has this quality of quackery. So why is the public taking the quacks seriously?
The Iraqi war is certainly winnable. The question is which path maximizes the US's interests. One thing that I am certain of: defining the war as not winnable is not in the US's interests. Kissinger ought to reframe his analysis to make it more precise. Someone who has failed to grasp the nature of or project methods to resolve the terrorist assault on America, like Kissinger, ought to be busy revising his theories and doing some basic reading instead of offering advice that has proven unsuccessful in the past. Yet, I do not hear anything new.
It seems evident that in dealing with a multiplicity of terrorist groups the concept of winning and losing that held true through World War II may no longer apply. The question is, how to convince the people of Iraq to support a moderate government and how to convince them to take action to stop terrorist violence. This might involve securing control of specific territories, providing economic support in those areas, propagandizing to the remaining areas, targeting specific terrorists and eliminating immigration here to the United States. There are likely other approaches. One might be total war.
But we are not hearing about them. What we are hearing is that the US's media, press and politicians lack ideas.
What is fascinating about all of these analyses is the willingness to make strong or absolute assertions without the benefit of a falsifiable theory or a body of empirical evidence that would point to the viability of one theory over another. Rather, pundits like Friedman and Kissinger and politicians like Obama and McCain (with whom I viscerally agree) pretend to know what they are talking about.
What is revealing about the discussion about Iraq is not just the failure of US intelligence and strategic planners (on both the intelligence and military sides) to anticipate and devise an updated strategy that would anticipate the diverse tribal and religious differences in the Arab world and methods for effectively handling terrorism, but the degree to which the politicians, press and media continue to remain uninformed. The arguments being made in the public press suggest a failure of American public debate and an unwillingness to learn.
In particular, Kissinger, McCain, Friedman, Obama and their ilk have had many years to conceptualize an intelligent response to terrorism and to develop a method of proactively responding to strikes like 9/11. Yet, no ideas are forthcoming. Instead, given their assessment that the American military has failed to respond competently (a point concerning which they offer no information and are apparently utterly uninformed), the "pundits" and politicians carp critically but offer no body of falsifiable theory nor any empirical evidence for their endless complaints and criticisms. Those of us who have other occupations (I work in the human resource management field) are forced to spend our valuable time reading about Iraq because those who are paid to do so have done such an incoherent and, plainly put, stupid job.
For example, consider Kissinger's claim that the war in Iraq is not winnable. This is obviously false. We can win any war by redefining it as a total war and killing the entire country of Iraq. I am not suggesting this as an option. However, the use of our moral restraint as propaganda to attack us is a tactic that ought not be permitted to work indefinitely. Perhaps total war ought to be an option against population groupings that support terrorism. I'm not sure why saying it isn't is "realpolitik". Because Kissinger says so? But Kissinger hasn't come up with a solution to terrorism, so what does he really have to offer? Is he the kind of 17th century physician who used leeches to bleed patients? I suspect that the entire field of foreign affairs has this quality of quackery. So why is the public taking the quacks seriously?
The Iraqi war is certainly winnable. The question is which path maximizes the US's interests. One thing that I am certain of: defining the war as not winnable is not in the US's interests. Kissinger ought to reframe his analysis to make it more precise. Someone who has failed to grasp the nature of or project methods to resolve the terrorist assault on America, like Kissinger, ought to be busy revising his theories and doing some basic reading instead of offering advice that has proven unsuccessful in the past. Yet, I do not hear anything new.
It seems evident that in dealing with a multiplicity of terrorist groups the concept of winning and losing that held true through World War II may no longer apply. The question is, how to convince the people of Iraq to support a moderate government and how to convince them to take action to stop terrorist violence. This might involve securing control of specific territories, providing economic support in those areas, propagandizing to the remaining areas, targeting specific terrorists and eliminating immigration here to the United States. There are likely other approaches. One might be total war.
But we are not hearing about them. What we are hearing is that the US's media, press and politicians lack ideas.
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