Hermeneutic Heretic

Why school achievement isn’t reaching the poor - The Boston Globe
Other research in places like Dallas and Houston that show how high-poverty students are so much more likely to receive ineffective teachers repeatedly confirm how the nation’s school children suffer from a ”crushing impact of maldistribution” of teachers, according to the Education Trust. In Capitol Hill testimony two months ago, Education Trust director Kati Haycock asked, ”What’s happened with all the new money and all the new focus on teacher quality? No one knows. . . . What we are left with is a bold policy initiative from Congress that has never seen the light of day.” She said many states ”have yet to even acknowledge the disparities in access, let alone craft a plan to address the problems.”

This, by the way, is from an advocate who praised No Child Left Behind in general in the same testimony for its ”dramatically positive impact on American education.” The studies keep coming that show that schools can raise student achievement with stoic principals and dedicated teachers who toil in a ‘’shared culture” against all odds. It will be a great day when every child has a chance to share in the culture.

One possible problem might be with the unrealistic expectations of reformers who try to apply a ’single success’ model to a whole significantly more complex system. Perhaps, system-wide changes should receive their own solutions rather than those derived from the system-is-person metaphor.

BBC - Thought for the Day, 29 November 2005
Should the aid workers [recently kidnapped] still have been in Iraq? I was struck yesterday by the different perspective of those commenting on the kidnapping. The spokesman for Care International, another aid agency, was quite clear. For him, the answer was “No”. His priority in a dangerous environment was the safety of his staff. Canon Andrew White, much involved in the Iraqi conflict, was reported as taking the same line; indeed, he’d warned the group a year ago that if they didn’t leave they risked being kidnapped.

So were the group irresponsible in staying, and by so doing, putting their own life at risk? A local bishop, Bishop Riah, Bishop of Jerusalem, took a very different line. He was glad that they’d stayed, because their presence demonstrated that the Christian community is not merely a part of an occupying force. Their presence demonstrated that they were on the side of the Iraqi people. Their’s could be a reconciling presence articulating the voice of the voiceless.

“Yes, but is it worth the possible sacrifice?” the bishop was asked. “Definitely,” was his answer. “Reconciling partners may always risk their lives, but that is the right thing to do in a worthy cause.”

The Rt Rev. Tom Butler takes his thought for the day in the direction of ‘martyrdom’ and consequences thereof. But there is more to be learned from Bishop Riah’s position. It shows a certain view of life and the role of an individual’s life in the overall scheme of things. This idea runs counter the currently prevalent version of enlightenment called ’secular humanism’ which, strangely enough, is shared (at least in the ‘culture of life’ rhetoric) by the religious right. This maintains that the individual’s life, ambitions, potential is of paramount concern and the needs of society at large (or other suprapersonal groupings) need to be subjugated to it.

This is present in many of the narratives of our time (such as the ‘love conquers all’ or ‘rags to riches’ schemas). However, there are also many narratives that try to grapple with the dilemma. Some do it through the prism of personal responsibility (Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a great example of that) others through describing alien cultures (one particular episode of Star Trek comes to mind). The two possible interpretations of Anna Karenina might exemplify this as well (thanks to Jamie Potter for reminding me): 1. impersonal and callous societal rules hounded her to suicide 2. her betrayal of the values of the society gave her no other option but to commit suicide.

It is interesting how all explanations of suicide bomber motivations in the Western press stem from the individual (angry mothers or sisters, enemployed men, mentally unstable individuals) whereas historically, such ’sacrifices’ were considered simply a role an individual is required to play as part of the whole (I’m reminded of the Oceanic small-island nations whose members would set out to sea in times of food shortages to die - described by Jared Diamond in Colapse). Presumably, the Arab press might give a different slant (but I have no evidence of that). But we can only read such a perspective as a ‘glorification of violence’ (so presumably much of the westernized Arab press will do the same) and never even consider the ‘glorification of doing one’s duty’ (or what is perceived as one’s duty).

If this sounds like cultural relativism, it is probably because it is cultural relativism. But not in the naive sense (that Jerry Fodor hates more than people in motor boats). Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to delve into the subject later.

Terror’s stealth weapon: women - Los Angeles Times
The stereotype exploited by terrorists is that women are gentle, submissive and nonviolent. Women evade most terrorist profiles because they are perceived as wives and mothers, victims of war-torn societies, not bombers. But terrorist organizations are increasingly employing women to carry out the most deadly attacks.

Based on my study of suicide bombings in Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Israel and the occupied territories, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt and Iraq, 34% of attacks since 1985 have been carried out by women.
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Arab feminists argue that women want to show that they are as dedicated to the cause as their brothers, sons and fathers.
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It becomes clear that perpetrating violence has done little to help women level the playing field in societies that consider their deaths more valuable than their lives. But in death, they serve another grim purpose: prompting security services around the world to subject women, including pregnant women, to humiliating and sometimes invasive searches — thus feeding the resentments that lead to more terror.

This (for me) is a compelling argument for radical conceptual feminism. Gender-based roles, status, and symbolic and resource control form a complex (and surprisingly stable) whole which can easily integrate one small change in the system (such as women behaving like men in certain, often ritually sanctioned, contexts). Paradoxically, these small changes often serve to buttress the system of inequality because traditionalists can argue that not much more change is needed.

A column about labor relations and automotive job losses.

Labor’s Lost Story
Almost everybody right of center sees the job losses as inevitable, the result of the American auto industry’s failure to meet foreign competition and the “excessively” generous wages, health benefits and, especially, retirement programs negotiated by Reuther’s union.

The believers in inevitability inevitably cite the economist Joseph Schumpeter to the effect that capitalism “is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is, but never can be, stationary.” It is capitalism’s gift for “creative destruction,” Schumpeter argued, that guaranteed new consumer goods, new methods of production and new forms of organization.

A different story is told left of center, though it will come as no shock that progressives can’t quite agree on a single narrative.
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As medical costs rise, more Americans will need government help. More employers will need to offload the costs of medical insurance to avoid bankruptcy. Yes, that’s “socialized medicine,” just like Medicare. But don’t tell anyone. The phrase plays terribly in focus groups.

For 60 years New Dealers and social democrats, liberals and progressives, turned Schumpeter on his head. They insisted that few would embrace capitalism’s innovations if the system’s tendency toward creative destruction was not balanced by public innovations to spread the bounty and protect millions from being injured by change. It’s a compelling story. Walter Reuther knew it well. Too bad it isn’t told very often anymore.

This is interesting both for the points it makes about the role of capitalism in social progress but also about the importance of narratives in political discourse.

Killing the written word by snippets - Los Angeles Times
Students are trading in books for search-and-seizure learning on the Internet, and real literacy is getting lost along the way.
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One memorable freshman sagely informed me that people shouldn’t be reading entire volumes these days anyway.
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Many of this generation are aliterate — they know how to read but don’t choose to. And abridgment of texts is now taken to extremes, with episodes from micro-novels being sent as text messages on cell phones.
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Much as automobiles discourage walking, with undeniable consequences for our health and girth, textual snippets-on-demand threaten our need for the larger works from which they are extracted.

This seems to neglect a whole host is issues around literacy (as much by assumption as by assertion). Literacy is a complex issue, it is a relatively recent addition to our culture, and it largely replaced ‘oracy’ as the main mode of transmitting information of all kinds (including socialization). There are also styles of reading and information collection that need to be taken into account.

To be fair, the author mitigates some of these points

Admittedly, back in the days when research necessitated opening dozens of books in hopes of finding useful information, no one read each tome cover to cover. It is also fair to say that given how scattershot our searches sometimes were, we often missed what we were looking for.

and admittedly I was wondering the same thing myself about a week ago on this blog:

But that said, we also happened upon issues that proved more interesting than our original queries. Today’s snippet literacy efficiently keeps us on the straight and narrow path, with little opportunity for fortuitous side trips.

This, however, while a valid question worthy of more investigation, again relies to heavily on one particular model of literacy.

Will effortless random access erode our collective respect for writing as a logical, linear process? Such respect matters because it undergirds modern education, which is premised on thought, evidence and analysis rather than memorization and dogma. Reading successive pages and chapters teaches us how to follow a sustained line of reasoning.

If we approach the written word primarily through search-and-seizure rather than sustained encounter-and-contemplation, we risk losing a critical element of what it means to be an educated, literate society.

There’s no ‘good’ divorce - The Boston Globe
Many experts and parents embrace the idea, confident that it’s not divorce itself that harms children but simply the way that parents divorce. If divorced parents stay involved with their child and don’t fight with each other, they say, then children will be fine.

There’s only one problem. It’s not true.

In a first-ever national study, the grown children of divorce tell us there’s no such thing as a ”good” divorce. This nationally representative telephone survey of 1,500 young adults, half from divorced families and half from intact families — supplemented with more than 70 in-person interviews conducted around the country — reveals that any kind of divorce, whether amicable or not, sows lasting inner conflict in children’s lives.

The interpretation of this survey in such a way (my emphasis) neglects several crucial points (speaking as a reasonably happy child of moderately amicably divorced parents) the most salient of which is the assumption of human mental equilibrium that is natural and can only be disturbed. Children’s lives are complicated and influenced by many factors. By focusing just on the results of divorce it is not surprising that effects are found. It would be ridiculous to assume otherwise. The question is not ‘is the divorce having an effect that is not hugely positive’ but ‘does divorce cause lasting irreparable damage from which only negative can be derrived?’ I wonder is research designed with this focus (e.g. asking what were the benefits of your parents’ divorce) might bring quite different results.

Only a small minority of grown children of divorce — just one-fifth — say their parents had a lot of conflict after their divorce, but the conflict between their parents’ worlds did not go away. Instead, the tough job of making sense of their parents’ different beliefs, values, and ways of living became the child’s job alone.
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Many grown children of divorce told us they rose to the challenge by becoming a different person with each of their parents.

This of course is perfectly natural for children to do. From a very different age children have to learn to ‘code-switch’ there are even those (and not an insubstantial number) who speak a different language to each parent. Multiple identies is what we are not some aberrant form of schizophrenia. No doubt, divorce makes things difficult for children but so does going to school (or being in a famine) or finding new friends. All of these demand the development of new identities and is inherently stressful (witness the Buffy the Vampire Slayer - high-school is hell - motto). Again, a broader issue of psychological causality (my favorite theme) is relevant here.

Today, one-quarter of young adults are from divorced families. Their message to our society is clear: Divorce is sometimes necessary, but for children there is no such thing as a ”good” divorce.

And this implication of a societal impact is even more questionable.

The Very Foundation of Conservatism - New York Times
The Olin Foundation’s leaders understood that success is often unplanned, and so they focused on creating the conditions for success rather than thrusting a set of detailed agendas and goals upon grant recipients. Nobody, for example, expected that Allan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind” would become a runaway best seller whose meaning is still debated two decades after it was published; the John M. Olin Foundation merely decided in the early 1980’s that Mr. Bloom, a political theorist at the University of Chicago, was a genuine talent who deserved financial backing.

What’s more, philanthropists must have Job-like patience, because in the war of ideas there are few quick payoffs. More than five years passed between Mr. Bloom’s first grant and the publication of his landmark book; and few of the foundation’s successes were as obvious as his case. The idea was simply to provide a steady source of assistance to conservative thinkers, who could devote themselves to writing books and articles rather than to raising cash for next year’s budget.

As a liberal, I might be naturally sceptical of anything John J. Miller, a writer for National Review and the author of “A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America,” has to say. However, he does bring up an interesting point. Large and/or complex systems (not-necessarily nonlinear but probably so) are notoriously difficult to manage. It is much easier to manage their environment or context (that’s what central bank of country in effect does). However, because of their sensitivity to initial conditions (the butterfly effect) even this may be too ambitious if the goal is to achieve a specific target. For instance, a central bank can predict an impact on the up or down trend of inflation but not its actual value at one given time, and even they cannot exactly predict its effect on the economy. However, believing in the power of self-organization can be equally dangerous because of its predictably inequitous results (absolutely free-markets will - by definition - always produce people who are absolutely starving because that is part of their mechanism). Now, the ’solution’ may be in allowing for the self-organizing processes in any system to take place (not believing, of course, in the idea that the self-organization is progressing towards an equilibrium and freely acknowledging that regulation must be a part of such a process) but actively mitigating the worst of its societal effects. The problem is that this sounds too much like the Blair ‘third-way’ which is not working too well. Watch this space for more musings on this subject. (Sebastian Mallaby makes a similar point in today’s WP.)

iDNES.cz - Å est Å¡kůdců, kteří zaruÄ?enÄ› zniÄ?í váš poÄ?ítaÄ?
Pokud nenastane zvrat v použitých technologiích, za 15 let budou procesory a grafické Ä?ipy vyzaÅ™ovat na centimetr Ä?vereÄ?ný stejné teplo jako sluneÄ?ní povrch.

Now here’s an interesting throwaway line in an article about protecting hardware: “Unless there is a change in the technologies used, in 15 years processors and graphics chips will emit as much heat per square centimeter as the surface of the sun.” This refers to the importance of heat in computing which, while keeping much of the progress, in check remains almost completely obscured from public technological consciousness (how many people have heard about a water cooled computer plugged into somebody’s refrigerator).

But this conceals an even broader point. The much talked about Moore’s law (originally formulated for the increase in transistor density now often simply [mis]stated as predicting the doubling of computing power every 18 months) has so far withstood many predictions of doom due to supposed physical limits (the effect of ‘natural-selection-like’ processes might be a useful area to investigate). In effect, the computing power of many of the components found in a computer has risen astronomically. However, technological progress has left the psycho-social (for lack of a better term) aspects of computing behind. Speech recognition is nowhere near enough to some of the outlandish claims made for it in the recent past (although http://www.podscope.com can do more than I ever thought possible) and semantic text processing relies more on complex stochastic processes than real analysis. It is surprising how bad even the most moder text-to-speech generation sounds and any pruposeful text generation still remains in the ‘gimmick’ stage. Now, I remember my computational phonetics teacher saying more than 10 years ago that no new major advances in speech recognition would be made irrespective of the speed of computing unless the theoretical model changed. Until very recently I believed he was right but I’m beginning to wonder whether he underestimated the raw power of pure ‘natural-selection’ driven engineering (I owe this concept to Steve Jones in Almost like a whale). It would certainly be worth investigating what has changed and how to allow for Podscope and what the limits of it are.

But there is also an interesting point to be made from the perspective of the user. I’m always reminded of Microsoft’s OLE (Object Linking and Embedding - now called something else) which claimed to revolutionize the integration of different styles of documents but which took almost 10 years of increases in computing power to approach anything near usability. Now people embed spreadsheets in documents without even noticing but it was not always so.

The whole point is the limits of technological progress as a predictor of social progress. It is certainly a facilitator of it (as the telephone, railways and other technologies for communication - which includes roads) but it may take a tremendous amount of it to induce even a modest change or just a tiny nudge to result in a whole sale transformation. (I’d better stop writing before I get into complexity theory but I will not stop thinking about this. Here’s an article that is making the same assumptions about complexity in a different context.)

Unexpected countenance of change - The Boston Globe
SOMEONE, a psychiatrist, discouragingly once said that people don’t change very much, but the little ways they change, when they do change, are enormous. It seemed a dour but accurate assessment.

It was practical wisdom — the kind someone would acquire after being in the business many admirable years. Just recently, a patient proved to me that it is utterly wrong.
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People change vastly, and for many reasons. It makes life worth living.

This is a good example of two conflicting models of a particular aspect of human nature. In one, exemplified by large-scale data, people change only a little, in another exemplified by one specific (and emotionally salient) case, they change radically. There are two points of interest here:

1. How is this particular kind of expert (or even academic) knowledge constructed, maintained and applied? (Goffman’s frames or Lakoff’s models have a lot to contribute to the answer here).
2. Can conflicting models such as these be reconciled through some formal heuristic? The answer is most likely no. But hopefully reference to some of the above mentioned research might help with the reconciliation.

www.lidovky.cz - Intelektuální obrana xenofobie
Podle Huntingtona dezinterpretovali liberální multikulturalisté 70. a 80. let povahu Ameriky, když ji líÄ?ili jako kulturnÄ› otevÅ™ený prostor vymezený pouze univerzálními zásadami lidských práv a demokracie. Na rozdíl od identit evropských národů, které jsou uzavÅ™eným dÄ›dictvím minulosti, byla podle nich identita Ameriky otevÅ™ená do budoucnosti - mÄ›la totiž povstávat ze stále nových vln pÅ™istÄ›hovalců pÅ™icházejících z různých kulturních okruhů. Podle Huntingtona vÅ¡ak žádný takový rozdíl mezi Novým a Starým svÄ›tem neexistuje. Amerika není národem kulturnÄ› různorodých pÅ™istÄ›hovalců, nýbrž národem angloprotestantských starousedlíků, kteří tam pÅ™iÅ¡li a usadili se v 17. a 18. století. Termín imigrant se zaÄ?al používat až v dobÄ› války za nezávislost na konci 18. století a signalizoval, že pÅ™istÄ›hovalci pÅ™icházejí do již utvoÅ™eného národa, jehož identitu musejí pÅ™ijmout.

An interesting article comparing Huntington’s ‘Crisis of American Identity’ with Bat Ye’or’s ‘The Euro-Arab Axis’ entitled ‘Intellectual defense of xenophobia’

Podle realistického konzervativce Huntingtona není smyslem amerického boje s terorismem obránit a zachránit svět (jak by to plynulo s Bushova diskursu), ale obránit Ameriku a zachránit její identitu. Ultrasionistická Židovka Bat Ye‘orová naopak věří v povolání Ameriky zapojit se do planetárního zápasu se zlem, před nímž Evropa kapitulovala a jemuž Izrael chrabře odolává.

Both authors in effect defending xenophobia as something natural and therefore to be accepted in the ‘us against them’ sense. The opposing view is that of xenophilia which says that everything different (or ‘diverse’) is good. Surprisingly (for an old multiculturalist like me), it is the xenophobes’ analysis of the processes at play when cultures encounter each other that seems more intellectually honest. It is their choices based on that analysis that are suspect because of a generally static view of cultures, they maintain. This allows them to advocate a ‘defense-through-offensive’ strategy which aims to ossify the intercultural status quo with a slight tipping of balance in the struggle over resources. And that is why their approach ultimately fails (both practically and analytically) over the slightly more naive ‘multiculturalist’ one. It holds for any one snapshot of history (or memory) but not for the overall pattern of change and development.