Monthly Archives: January 2015

Irregardless

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I’m going to come out with a relatively controversial opinion: I’m rather fond of the word “irregardless.”

And yes, it is a word.

Of irregardless, the Oxford English Dictionary says, “In nonstandard or humorous use: regardless.”

Merriam-Webster elaborates:

Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that “there is no such word.” There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.

While, perhaps, it’s reputation has not risen over the years, irregardless has actually be in use for quite some time.

Wikipedia sites the first recorded use of irregardless as being in City Gazette & Daily Advertiser (Charleston, South Carolina). June 23, 1795, p.3, though unfortunately that paper doesn’t seem to be available online for confirmation.

But, irregardless of this history, irregardless continues to be frowned upon.

Part of the reason for this disdain is that irregardless is generally considered to be a portmanteau, a combination of irrespective and regardless.

Incidentally, portmanteau comes from a french word that used to mean suitcase and now means coat rack in French, though a portmanteau is still a suitcase in English. Portmanteau also came to mean a word created by squishing two words together when Lewis Carroll had  Humpty Dumpty – a notorious  blowhard – misuse the term in Through the Looking Glass.

While I’m not a fan of many portmanteaus (eg, amazballs), many others are quite helpful and valuable to the English language. I mean really, who doesn’t love brunch?

So if being a portmanteau is not enough to malign irregardless, perhaps a better question is to ask why we need irregardless when you could just use regardless?

That’s a good question and an area for healthy debate.

Personally, I use the two words differently, and therefore value both. Words have character, you see, and the character and cadence of words matter.

Regardless is a word of practicality. Its a good word to use when you’re talking about something reasonable and and a detail won’t effect the outcome. Regardless of the weather, we ought to go…

Irregardless, on the other hand, is a word of such flippant disregard it much better captures the trivialities that plague our modern lives. Why is their an “ir” before the “regardless”?

It’s irregardless, that’s why.

By it’s very existence, irregardless is saying, “yeah I’ve got a double negative and don’t really make sense, but irregardless, I’m a word and I mean what I mean.”

Irregardless. You’ve got to respect that.

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we don’t know whether students know more or less about civics

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(Arlington, VA) It would be nice to know whether civic knowledge–defined in any way you choose–has been rising or falling. But I don’t think we know the trend at all.

Public survey data don’t help much. The questions that pollsters have repeated over time are ones like “Who is the Vice President?” That is an important correlate of voting and news interest, but it doesn’t reliably measure general knowledge or changes in knowledge. After all, responses to that question would rise if the current VP became more prominent.

The best official source is the federal NAEP Civic Assessment, which I am in Virginia to help plan and have been involved with since 2008. I cannot emphasize enough how dedicated and careful the NAEP’s staff and contractors are. They make every decision with extreme scrupulousness. That includes all the decisions–large and small–that contribute to making each iteration of the NAEP as comparable as possible to previous years. And therefore, I don’t think anyone could produce more reliable trend lines than these (taken from the NAEP Civics Report Card):

The asterisks mark changes that are statistically significant in the sense that there is a very small chance (less than 5%) that the changes were due to random variation in who took the test.

But there are reasons to be wary of these as trend lines:

  • Connecting the dots with straight lines suggests that American kids’ knowledge followed that path over time. But we really just have three measures taken at three moments over 12 years. The actual trend could have bounced up and down over that time.
  • Civics involves understanding the world around you. The world changed from ’98 t0 2010. NAEP generally tries to the keep its constructs and even some of its questions identical over time, in order to preserve the validity of the trend. But the same construct (e.g., “petitioning the government”) meant something very different under Clinton than it does under Obama.
  • Despite Herculean efforts to measure whether each test is comparable to the previous one, that process introduces error that is not measured by the statistical significance test.
  • The population of kids in k-12 schools has changed dramatically in that timeframe. For instance, more students are reaching 12th grade.
  • NAEP is not, and does not pretend to be, a comprehensive assessment of civic knowledge. For instance, it omits current events (in part because the assessment takes three years to design and field). NAEP scores could remain flat even if knowledge of current events soared–or plummeted.

Overall, I think we can guess that American kids’ civic knowledge has been pretty flat since the 1990s. Even rougher comparisons to the earlier Civics NAEPs suggest that knowledge has been pretty flat since the 1970s. Dramatic changes would likely have been noticed. But I don’t think we can reliably say that knowledge has ticked up or down. For that, we would need much more regular assessments.

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A Participant’s Reflections on NCDD 2014

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We were so appreciative of the reflections on our 2014 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation that NCDD supporting member Cynthia Kurtz shared on her blog that we wanted to share them here on ours. There are great lessons she took away that all of us can learn from, so we encourage you to read her piece below or to find the original version here.

What I Learned at the NCDD 2014 Conference

So I’m back from my first real conference in ten years, and I learned a lot. This is the conference I mentioned a few blog posts back, of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation.

NCDDers-with-signs-borderThe first thing I learned was: I’m ten years older than I was ten years ago. Conferences have always been exhausting, but this one felt like a strange dream in which crowds of faces surged and receded while I surfed on crests of … of … lots of stuff. However, I survived; I have vague memories of the event; and I have some things to tell you.

Natural story workers

One thing that surprised me at the conference was how many people there do story work. Only a few people said they do story work, but a lot of people worked with stories in some way, while they were trying to get people to understand each other.

My initial reaction on pointing this out to myself was, “Sure, but they don’t really do story work. It’s not as intense or authoritative or authentic or deep or….” And in the midst of trying to justify myself to myself, I realized that I may be on my way to becoming pompous.

Do you remember the thing I’m always saying about how the best storytellers are the people who don’t realize they are telling stories? About how, once people begin to be proud of the quality of their storytelling, the quality of their storytelling declines? I’m starting to wonder if there is a parallel process in doing story work. Maybe the best story workers are people who work with stories without knowing it. Maybe, over the years, I have become not only a story performer but a story-work performer as well. I’d like to think I have passed through the story-work-performer state into a state of deep wisdom, where I have become both natural andskilled; but, alas, I find that my skills of denial cannot rise to the challenge of this assertion.

Solutions to pomposity and story-work performing I can come up with include the following.

  1. I could stop doing this work for a while – six months or longer – and see if the pomposity goes away. However, this is not an option, because I still have many promises to keep.
  2. I could keep reminding myself that I am not the owner of anything (except my good name) and that many people have had great ideas about story work. But I’ve been doing that all along, and it doesn’t seem to have saved me. No, humility alone is not enough. I need to take positive action.
  3. I am always encouraging people to share stories. So why don’t I encourage myself to share story work? If I can make a conscious effort to recognize, respect, and connect with the story work other people are doing – even if they don’t call it that, or maybe especially if they don’t call it that – I can regulate myself to open my mind to all forms of story work. I’ve done some of this in the past, but honestly, I’ve done far less than I could have done.

Number three is my new plan. One part of the plan is the “translation dictionary” idea, which I think I mentioned here before. This idea is to develop a set of (relatively brief, don’t worry) writings about how PNI connects to as many fields and approaches and methods as I can possibly find. Before I went to the NCDD conference, I thought I should build a translation dictionary because it would be helpful to you. Now I think I need it even more than you do.

My least-favorite assumption is still alive and well

I am sorry to tell you that the “story work means telling stories” assumption is still going strong. People are still very little aware of natural, everyday story sharing and the functions it provides in society and in communities and organizations. When people talked to me about ideas for using stories in their work, their first impulse was always to talk about how they might use stories to communicate with the public — i.e., to tell stories.

I don’t ever want to minimize the function of storytelling as purposeful communication. It is reasonable and laudable to convey essential messages through stories. However, if this is the only thing people think they can do with stories, or get from stories, that’s a sad thing. Because using stories to communicate is just the tip of the iceberg of what stories can do for a community or organization (or society). Those of us who care about stories have more work to do to get that word out.

It’s getting crowded in here

In More Work with Stories, I connect PNI with nine other fields. But I have been realizing lately that I could probably connect it with ninety, if I broadened the scope to methods and approaches as well. Getting involved with the NCDD has helped me to learn that I have been hiding in a hole in terms of the many ways people have developed to help people make sense of things together. Just because a method doesn’t say anything about stories doesn’t mean it doesn’t have anything to do with stories. If it has to do with people and communication, it has something to do with stories.

For example, as part of my NCDD learning, I recently bought The Change Handbook, which describes 61 methods for helping people create positive change. Can you guess how many of those 61 methods I was familiar with before I found the book? Eleven. Why have I not been building more connections? (Because I’ve been writing a book, that’s why; but still.) Now I want to know: How does PNI connect with the World Café? The Art of Hosting? Dynamic Facilitation? Wisdom Circles? Bohm Dialogue? Open Space? Systems Dynamics? Charrettes? Non-Violent Communication? Future Search? And so on.

This universe of connections is yet another reason to build a translation dictionary. I had been thinking about the dictionary as a way for people to understand PNI, and above I described it as a way I could share story work more completely. But a translation dictionary could also help people move back and forth between PNI and a variety of other methods as they build the suites and composites that best fit their contexts and purposes.

I started thinking through what a template for a translation dictionary might look like. I came up with this process:

  1. Summarize each of the two approaches with a paragraph or two. (One will always be PNI, but I’m trying to be general.)
  2.  Look for pairings in each of three areas: goals or principles; concepts or ideas; and methods or techniques. Come up with at least one and at most three pairings in each category.
  3. For each pairing, decide whether it’s a similarity or a contrast. If it’s a similarity, describe how the two elements are similar, and how they are (subtly) different. If it’s a contrast, describe how the elements differ, and how they are (subtly) similar or at least complementary.
  4. For each pairing, describe how it might be used in practice to combine what is best in the two approaches.

I visualize the whole pattern as something like this:

…where the grey circles indicate similarities, and the yin/yang symbols represent contrasts. Here I have vertical circle placements showing the relative centrality of each element to each approach, but that might be too fussy. I like diagrams, but I know some people would not get much out of the extra visual information.

So as I thought about this template, I realized that I had seen something similar before. What I was creating looked a little like a template for a pattern language. You could even say that my categories of goals, concepts, and methods are like the pattern language elements of context, problem, and solution.

Here’s a question for you: Everybody loves pattern languages, and rightly so, but why do we have to stop there? Could there be more kinds of languages than just of patterns? What about connection languages that, instead of describing patterns, describe connections? Might pattern languages, which are typically used within approaches (or transcending approaches), contribute to a lack of sharing among approaches? Maybe pattern languages could connect to connection languages, so that you could follow links from inside a particular approach, through its connection language, and into the pattern languages of other approaches.

What if lots of people made connection languages? What if, someday, it would be considered uncool to talk about one’s approach without also showing one’s connection language? What if connection languages were printed on cards, and people could use them to brainstorm about ways they could combine different approaches and methods to get results for their communities and organizations? What if, instead of going shopping for isolated approaches, groups could find the best combinations of methods and ideas for their contexts and purposes?

These are just wild speculations, and some might not agree with them. My plan right now is to make a start on my own connection language, using a template like the one above (which will evolve), and fold it into the second book. If you are interested in the idea of connection languages and want to work with me, or do something similar, let me know.

The great benefit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time

I went to the NCDD conference pretty much by accident. A champion of my book told me that he was going to the conference and planned to tell people there about my book. I said, hmm, what’s this, and if people there might like my book, should I think about going too? I had been thinking that I could start going to conferences again, now that my son is old enough that I can (stand to) leave home for a few days. So I joined the NCDD and signed up. (Sadly, my champion was not able to go due to a family emergency.)

Ending up in what seemed to be the wrong place at the wrong time was a revelation. Even though I might never have chosen this conference without someone else planning to go there first, it was just the right conference for me to go to. I have long complained about how there are no good story-listening conferences to go to, how people who do the work I do have to show up as beggars at knowledge management and decision support and management conferences. But I’ve now come to realize that this poverty is a strength in disguise.

I would have learned so much less at a conference where everyone already knew what I had to say, and where I already knew what everyone else had to say. It is so very mind-expanding to go to a conference you feel like you have no reason to go to! In fact, I am now resolved to seek out conferences that have as little as possible in common with what I have done before. If I will not be hopelessly lost and over my head, I should not go. If you know of a conference I should not go to, please let me know about it!

Essential energy

What excited me most about this conference was that I was able to connect with people who shared my passion for helping people get along and create better futures together. I sometimes feel alone in what I do, like nobody cares if we stop telling each other stories, like people are content to see stories used only to manipulate and influence. Our nascent PNI Institute is building a new community in the story space, so that’s changing already. But the people I met at the NCDD conference really cared about participatory democracy; about inclusion; about bringing power to the people; about bridging divides; about finding better ways forward. They didn’t consciously work with stories for the most part, but they cared about the things I cared about. Is this my tribe? I’m not a one-tribe person; I like to flit among several tribes. But this might be one of them.

The rest of the story

I have placed my full conference notes here for those who would like to read about what went on (that I saw) at the conference.

My favorite quotes from my conference notes:

  1. Where do you find the public voice? It’s not a trained voice. We hear it every day in every place. In waiting rooms, in bars, around water coolers, in lines at the grocery stores. It is all around us. So why is it unavailable? Because we don’t recognize it for what it is. It is too ordinary.
  2. There is no them once you know them.
  3. It’s healing for people to experience people with other beliefs just listening to them.
  4. Polarization is the antidote to American ingenuity.
  5. Deliberation by itself is not nearly enough when big systems have strong tendencies, and when a merciless climate clock keeps ticking. It is not just an absence of public voice, but strong structural problems. There needs to be an ongoing critical conversation about what our world needs.
  6. We need real human experiences, and a non-judgmental, non-politicized space to describe experiences.
  7. Instead of coming to agreement, we can take the need to agree away and simply try to understand each other. If you do that, it is easier to understand, and you get to deeper issues.
  8. We need to listen to each other in an open-hearted way. We need to have collaborative solutions that have the possibility of going to the next level of facing big issues.
  9. We learn from breaking things, making mistakes, trying to do things when we don’t know how. A game is like that: a challenge you need to approach via play. People know how to play games. If we want to make it accessible, we have to draw on things they know. Drawing on inherent forms of communication and action works.
  10. Giving people a voice ensures that justice and peace aren’t just about fighting each other. It’s the fact that people can work out their issues on their own. Justice will come about because of a common sense of peace.
  11. We have the world’s greatest renewable resource: creativity.

Hooray for creativity! And for collaboration.

You can find the original version of Cynthia’s post on her Story Colored Glasses blog at www.storycoloredglasses.com/2014/10/learnings-from-ncdd-conference.html.

Apply to Join the 2015 Summer Institute of Civic Studies at Tufts

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The annual Summer Institute of Civic Studies is an intensive, two-week, interdisciplinary seminar bringing together advanced graduate students, faculty, and practitioners from diverse fields of study. The Good Society covered it in our Winter 2013 issue. The Framing Statement used by the Institute is published in our latest issue.

Organized by Peter Levine, Tisch College, and Karol Sołtan, University of Maryland, the Summer Institute features guest seminars by distinguished colleagues from various institutions and engages participants in challenging discussions such as:

  • What kinds of citizens (if any) do good regimes need?
  • What should such citizens know, believe, and do?
  • What practices and institutional structures promote the right kinds of citizenship?
  • What ought to be the relationships among empirical evidence, ethics, and strategy?

To apply: please email your resume, an electronic copy of your graduate transcript (if applicable), and a cover email about your interests to Peter Levine at Peter.Levine@Tufts.edu. For best consideration, apply no later than March 15, 2015.

 

Honesty and Social Clues

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There’s this quintessential moral dilemma: someone asks for your opinion on something and your honest feedback is…less than positive. Do you give positive feedback out of a sense of compassion, or give negative feedback out of a commitment to honesty?

It’s a question open to great debate.

But it may be primarily a debate of theory – when asked for feedback on someone’s hideous new outfit, for example, it’s possible that the most common reaction is neither lie nor truth – it’s paralysis and, possibly, fear.

Nobody knows what to say.

It’s not just a problem of moral paralysis, it is a problem of social paralysis. What is the “right” thing to say? Asks both about what is moral and what is socially optimal – and the later is definitely context dependent.

If someone is bristling with excitement over the outfit they just dropped a small fortune on you may not want to respond in the same you would to someone who is trying to decide how they feel about their newest hand-me-down.

What’s particularly interesting is that in many of these conversations you – the person beading with sweat trying to figure out how to respond – are really just a spectator to another person’s inner dialogue.

When someone asks what you think, it doesn’t always mean they care what you think.

Perhaps they are looking for validation or confirmation of what they’ve already decided. You can give it or not, but either way it’s not really about you. You’re just a mirror for what they want to see.

The real social challenge is that generally we don’t know what’s in the other person’s head. Do they really want feedback? Do they just want a reinforcement of their view? If that’s the case, what is their view and what kind of reinforcement can be provided?

These are the types of thoughts that run through my head as I stare panic-stricken at my interrogator.

So I think, actually, the best response to stall for information. Ask questions, make non-committal statements, see how they play their hand.

My favorite response is what I call the air-suck, that is, the noise you make when someone asks for feedback and you respond with, “Well….<air-suck>.” It may be the universal sign that you’re not comfortable providing your honest feedback.

And it provides your questioner with an important opportunity – they can create a space for honest dialogue or they can finish the thought for you. In that case, you didn’t lie – though you didn’t tell the truth – but you did serve as a mirror, which is all that was really asked of you anyway.

And, of course, if someone is genuinely interested in your honest, open feedback, the solution is simple – give it.

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IAF N. American Conference Content Proposals due Jan. 24

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We want to make sure that NCDD members are aware of a great opportunity to participate in – and maybe present at – the International Association of Facilitators‘s 2015 North American Conference (IAFNA 2015), which will be taking place this May 14th – 16th in Alberta, Canada. The conference has recently released a call for proposals, and NCDD members are encouraged to submit conference proposals before the January 24th deadline.

Iiaf logoAF was one of the wonderful co-sponsors of our NCDD 2014 conference, and we know that IAFNA 2015 will be a great event that NCDD members will find useful. We want to thank them for supporting NCDD, and we hope you will support them as well!

The theme of IAFNA 2015 is Innovating, Promoting and Applying. This is a bit more on how IAF Canada, who is hosting the event, describes the conference:

The IAFNA 2015 Conference will weave the three learning streams Face-To-Face, Graphic (Visual), and Virtual through the Conference themes of Innovating, Promoting and Applying facilitation expertise. Additionally, the Saturday morning sessions will focus exclusively on how these three streams may be applied in Indigenous/Multi-Cultural situations within any nations. Coupled with the less structured other three half-days, we‘re inviting a wide variety of educational opportunities for our Delegates.

If you are interested in submitting a workshop proposal, you can get started by downloading the detailed call for proposals PDF file, which can be found by clicking here, and downloading the submission form, which you can find by clicking here.

The IAFNA 2015 conference organizers have this to say about content proposals:

All proposals should provide new concepts of high-quality content, solid training, and interactive learning experiences with a focus on application. The extensive range of facilitation experience and diversity of facilitators at all levels should be taken into consideration. Each workshop must be aligned to at least one of IAF‟s Core Facilitator Competencies:

  • Create Collaborative Client Relationships
  • Plan Appropriate Group Processes
  • Create and Sustain a Participatory Environment
  • Guide Group to Appropriate and Useful Outcomes
  • Build and Maintain Professional Knowledge
  • Model Positive Professional Attitude

We know that there are plenty of NCDD members who have valuable lessons and experiences to share with the IAF community, so we strongly encourage you to apply if you have an idea for a workshop! But content proposals are due Thursday, January 24th, so don’t put it off!

Good luck to all of those who submit content, and we can’t wait to see a successful IAFNA 2015! For more info on the IAFNA conference, visit www.iafna2015.com.

op-ed on including civics in the new education bill

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(Arlington, VA) I am here for a meeting on the NAEP–the National Assessment on Education Progress. Meanwhile, Scott Warren of Generation Citizen and I have an op-ed in The Hill calling on Congress to remember civics when they revisit the Elementary and Secondary Education Bill. We begin:

With a new Congress in power and the Obama administration looking for issues that have a chance for bipartisan support, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called to replace the landmark No Child Left Behind education law. The proposed new law would focus on quality universal preschool education, better support for teachers, and a reform of assessment standards. As the administration works with Congress on the largest change to education policy in the last 14 years, it should emphasize another initiative in the rewrite: reviving effective civics education and ensuring that our students are learning the core tenets of active citizenship.

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