Author Archives: Peter

mapping a class as a moral community

Posted on by
Reply

On the first day of the spring semester, I asked members of a small philosophy seminar to reflect on their own core moral ideas–meaning not only their abstract principles but also their concrete commitments and role models–and how those interconnect. They gave me their data (concealing any ideas that they wanted to keep private), and I mapped the results as one network for the class as a whole.

In general, the ideas cluster by student (each colored differently in this map); but when two or more people share an idea, the borders among individuals begin to break down.

class map 1.17
I hope that over the course of the semester, the map will become more integrated and denser as the students add ideas and connections among ideas and begin to hold more ideas in common. Their thinking should be influenced, in part, by the readings and by me; therefore, ideas discussed in class should pop onto the map. Agreement is not the goal, but members of a discursive community should share reference points. One student actually predicted increased polarization as new ideas are thrown into the mix, and that is certainly possible.

Why did I ask them to give me networks? I could have asked for lists of ideas (perhaps ordered by importance); for structures (with fundamental ideas implying consequences); or for bodies of text that explained each students’ views.

A list seems problematic because one cannot tell whether each item belongs on it. For instance, if it is true that one should maximize the happiness of the greatest number, then that concept should appear on your list. But if not, it should not be there. How can one tell? In contrast, you can ask questions about your network independent of the content of each node. Is the network dense? Does it cover a wide range of ideas? Are the ideas that turn out to be central worthy of their importance? Is the network connected to other people’s networks?

For elaborate reasons, I am skeptical of ordered structures for moral reasoning. But a network is actually a flexible form that can encompass a hierarchical structure. A utilitarian could give me a network that centered around the utilitarian principle. A network model simply does not presume that a moral worldview must be highly centralized or ordered.

Finally, a body of text would be valuable–but it would have to be very long, and I would be inclined to analyze it by looking for the ideas and connections that it implied. Thus the network is an efficient representation of the text, albeit one that leaves unexplained the individual nodes and the reasons for their connections.

(see also: the place of argument in moral reasoning; epistemic network analysis and morality: applying David Williamson Shaffer’s methods to ethics; Emerson’s mistake; character understood in network terms; and envisioning morality as a network)

The post mapping a class as a moral community appeared first on Peter Levine.

racial pluralism in schools reduces discussion of politics, and what to do about that

Posted on by
Reply

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg and I have published a new article in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy entitled “Diversity in Classrooms: The Relationship between Deliberative and Associative Opportunities in School and Later Electoral Engagement.”  Using a new survey conducted in 2012, we confirm previous findings that attending racially pluralistic high schools–i.e., schools that enroll substantial numbers of students from several different racial groups–seems to reduce the students’ electoral and civic engagement after they graduate. One explanation appears to be that discussion of current controversial issues boosts students’ interest in politics, but such discussion is less common in pluralistic high schools.  We find that classroom discussion is especially important for students who do not participate in political conversations at home. We also find that joining issue-oriented groups encourages voting.

We say:

Considering that strong arguments can be made in favor of racial diversity in schools, it is important to compensate for the lessened electoral engagement in diverse schools by creating policies and teacher preparation resources that promote high-quality discussion of controversial issues in classrooms, and by encouraging students to participate in extracurricular groups that address political issues.

In my opinion, it’s understandable that teachers and students sometimes shy away from controversial topics when the student body is diverse. For example, they may not want to talk about the Middle East if some of the students are Arab-Americans, some are Jewish-Americans, and some are Christians of other backgrounds. Teachers may simply feel unprepared to deal with an issue that students know from personal experience–whether it is the Israeli occupation or racial profiling by police here in the United States. They may also worry about “micro-aggressions” in the form of comments that fundamentally challenge other students’ worldviews and identities. These concerns can arise with respect to most topics (both domestic and foreign), because racial and ethnic differences and conflicts are ubiquitous.

But it is a highly unfortunate result if we see less political discussion in classrooms that are more diverse. That is a waste of the asset of diversity, and it suppresses the political and civic engagement of students who attend integrated schools.

In the article, we call for “policies and teacher preparation resources” that support the discussion of controversial issues in pluralistic classrooms. I think an important policy is simply to affirm that freedom of speech is a positive good in schools. To be sure, a free discussion of a hot topic can lead to truly offensive remarks that cause psychic harm to participants, and that is something to pay attention to. But not talking about difficult issues is worse. It suppresses political engagement. It sends the message that a public space (of which the school is an example) should be a discussion-free zone. And it leaves any offensive private views unchallenged by other students. Better that a student should say something offensive and get a reply than not be allowed to say it at all.

See also “on religion in public debates and specifically in middle school classrooms,“  “defending free speech in public schools,” and “who is segregated?”

The post racial pluralism in schools reduces discussion of politics, and what to do about that appeared first on Peter Levine.

horizon as a metaphor for culture

Posted on by
Reply

(Chicago) The philosophers Edmund Husserl, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jürgen Habermas use the metaphor of a horizon to describe the background or framework of experience. Without addressing thorny questions of interpretation involving these three disparate and difficult authors, I’d like to defend the metaphor in general terms:

Any person at any given moment has a unique visible horizon–the line that divides the objects on the earth from the sky. Yet if I stand right next to you, or stand where you were a minute ago, my horizon will closely resemble yours. Thus the metaphor captures the uniqueness of individual experience while making difference a matter of degree that is somewhat within our control.

It’s possible for two people to have entirely different horizons–they cannot see any of the same objects. Yet those two people could move until their horizons overlapped. A person could stand between two individuals whose horizons did not overlap and be seen by each. Or a whole chain of people could connect two remote individuals, allowing them to share vicarious experiences.

Your horizon is a function of the way the world is and how you see things. To a degree, you can change how you look and where you stand, but you must start from somewhere that you did not choose.

You have the capacity to see anything within your horizon. But you cannot see it all at once. You can describe and communicate anything within your horizon, but you cannot ever describe it all. You are aware of the horizon as a whole, but your attention focuses on objects within it.

I think if you replace “horizon” with “culture,” most of these sentences will ring true. At any rate, ever since my first book, I have been criticizing theories of culture that presume that everyone who belongs to Culture A shares the same structure of beliefs, which must be different from the structure that defines Culture B. That kind of model promotes unwarranted relativism and skepticism.

The post horizon as a metaphor for culture appeared first on Peter Levine.

big data comes to the social sciences

Posted on by
Reply

Gary King, director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, has written a manifesto entitled Restructuring the Social Sciences. I have mixed feelings about it, but it’s a useful statement of influential trends in academia. King begins:

The social sciences are in the midst of an historic change, with large parts moving from the humanities to the sciences in terms of research style, infrastructural needs, data availability, empirical methods, substantive understanding, and the ability to make swift and dramatic progress.

King is highly enthusiastic about these trends, asserting that “the social sciences are undergoing a dramatic transformation from studying problems to solving them.” Solving problems certainly sounds like a good thing. One important reason is that social scientists are moving from statistical models based on samples (for instance, surveys) to the analysis of comprehensive datasets, such as all the job announcements posted in a set of newspapers over many years, or all the votes cast in the 2012 election. Social science thus merges with the kind of research conducted by firms like Google and Facebook, government agencies like the NSA, and political campaigns. Disciplinary boundaries are blurred, as some of the most interesting basic research on society now comes from computer science and business rather than the liberal arts.

In practical terms, King advocates the creation of centers like his own that can provide a shared infrastructure and a meeting place for diverse social scientists who use the new techniques. He claims that qualitative methods will retain an important role, because the masses of data that ethnographers and interviewers collect can also be mined by data analysts.

He suggests that centers for social science can become dramatically more efficient and effective if they apply their findings about organizational psychology to their own operations. For instance, they need lots of IT support, and they can provide that in ways that mimic the best-practices of IT firms. Finally, King would make a place for theorists, arguing that their insights can be helpful. “Moreover, theorists don’t cost anything! They require some seminars, maybe a pencil and pad, and some computer assistance.”

I am left with several questions:

  1. What does King mean by the humanities? He repeatedly describes the social sciences as moving away from the humanities, but what does he think they are leaving behind? Solo research? Unsystematic research? Unproductive research that doesn’t solve problems? (See my post on “What are the humanities? Basic points for non humanists” and also “Stop problematizing–say something“)
  2. How successful are these new techniques, really? In particular, are they generating new general knowledge and frameworks, or simply ad hoc answers to very particular problems? King cites a study that used massive data to demonstrate discrimination against people with stereotypically African American first names. I think that is an important finding. But does it tell us anything about the underlying reasons for racial prejudice or general strategies that we might use to defeat it? (Cf. “Bent Flyvbjerg’s radical alternative to applied social science” and my “critique of expertise, part 1″)
  3. What are the ethical pitfalls of increasing our power to track, predict, and influence human behavior? To put it another way, if the social sciences move from studying problems to solving them, are the “solutions” ethically acceptable in terms of their means, their ends, and the ways that they engage the affected populations? (See my “qualms about Behavioral Economics” and “the new manipulative politics: behavioral economics, microtargeting, and the choice confronting Organizing for Action.”) This, of course, is why the humanities remain so important in an era of big data.

The post big data comes to the social sciences appeared first on Peter Levine.

when east and west were one

Posted on by
Reply

(Washington, DC) I am highly skeptical of distinctions between “eastern” and “western” thought, considering the enormous diversity within both domains, the thousands of years of interaction between the two, and the arbitrariness of any border. (Why, for example, should a body of water less than 2,000 feet across be considered to divide two continents, Europe from Asia?)

But if you are committed to the distinction, it’s worth taking a look at the Milinda Pandha.  This is a dialogue written originally in Sanskrit or Pali before the year 200 CE. It describes a dialogue between a Greek king of India named Milinda (who is probably Menander I) and a Buddhist sage named Nagasena.

Menander I is well attested in Greek and Indian texts and archaeological evidence as a Greek king who converted to, and patronized, Buddhism. Here he is on a silver coin that reads “King Menander the Just” in Greek on one side and “Great King Menander, follower of the Dharma” in the Kharosthi script of South Asia on the other.

Nagasena is not known outside of this dialogue, wherein he is described as the son of a Brahmin who, having quickly exhausted the Vedic scriptures, studied Buddhism under a Greek monk named Dhammarakkhita (“Protected by the Dharma”).

Compared to a Platonic dialogue, the Milinda Pandha includes more fantastical details. The gods, for example, are directly involved. But it paints appealing portraits of the human characters. Menander goes around stumping sages with metaphysical paradoxes until he meets Nagasena, who bests him on a couple of those exchanges. Then the King simply asks questions about Buddhist doctrine and Nagasena answers with illustrative similes. The King replies after each one, “Very good, Nagasena!”

I can read the text only through the 19th century English translation of T. W. Rhys Davids. As far as I can tell, the perspective of the original document is orthodox Theravada Buddhism. Thus I am glimpsing Menander I through layers of interpretation, Asian and English; and it is hard to imagine how this European-born king of ancient India might actually have thought. But he and Nagasena seem to share the same social and cultural horizon, and the differences between them stem only from their respective roles as monarch and sage:

The king said: ‘Reverend Sir, will you discuss with me again?’

‘If your Majesty will discuss as a scholar (pandit), well; but if you will discuss as a king, no.’

‘How is it then that scholars discuss?’

‘When scholars talk a matter over one with another then is there a winding up, an unravelling; one or other is convicted of error, and he then acknowledges his mistake; distinctions are drawn, and contra-distinctions; and yet thereby they are not angered. Thus do scholars, O king, discuss.’

‘And how do kings discuss?’

‘When a king, your Majesty, discusses a matter, and he advances a point, if any one differ from him on that point, he is apt to fine him, saying: “Inflict such and such a punishment upon that fellow!” Thus, your Majesty, do kings discuss.

‘Very well. It is as a scholar, not as a king, that I will discuss. Let your reverence talk unrestrainedly, as you would with a brother, or a novice, or a lay disciple, or even with a servant. Be not afraid!’

The post when east and west were one appeared first on Peter Levine.

50 Core American Documents

Posted on by
Reply

I was a little amused to receive a letter that began, “As a leader in the Conservative Movement, you know that ideas matter.” The letter continued, “At Ashbrook we teach young Americans about the big ideas that define America by using original historical documents–avoiding the distortions that textbooks introduce to the story of American history.”

Although I am less worried than Ashbrook is about distortion in classrooms and textbooks, I am grateful for the volume that came with the letter: 50 Core American Documents: Required Reading for Students, Teachers, and Citizens, edited by Christopher Burkett.

It collects quite diverse perspectives. For example, John C. Calhoun’s “Speech on the Oregon Bill” denounces (as a “dangerous error” and an unnecessary insertion into the Declaration of Independence) the clause that “all men are created equal.” But the very next document is Frederick Douglass’ great speech for equality, “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Calhoun should be read; he reminds us that secession was driven by hostility to human rights. But I might have chosen his Senate speech arguing that slavery was a “positive good” as a more illustrative historical example. And if I had chosen Calhoun’s “Speech on the Oregon Bill,” I would not have deleted the beginning. The excerpt in the 5o Core Documents begins:

The first question which offers itself for consideration is — Have the Northern States the power which they claim, to prevent the Southern people from emigrating freely, with their property, into territories belonging to the United States, and to monopolize them for their exclusive benefit? …

In the quoted excerpt, the nature of the “property” under discussion is not clarified; the question is presented as one of interstate migration and commerce. But Calhoun actually began his speech with slavery. This is his first sentence:

There is a very striking difference between the position on which the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States stand, in reference to the subject under consideration.

Texts won’t teach or explain themselves. They must be presented in some way. Political texts make complete sense only in institutional and historical contexts. For instance, a reader must understand that John C. Calhoun was a Senator, that the Senate has specific powers, and that Calhoun represented South Carolina as a slaveholder and apologist for slavery when the Senate was deciding whether to admit new states (such as Oregon) as slave or free soil. Students cannot avoid an interpretive framework that has some kind of ideological valence. Thus I don’t fully endorse the premise that an anthology of original texts suffices.

I am also not so keen on presenting history as a series of statements by national leaders (even if some of them are insurgents and critics). Ordinary people have roles as well, and they can be given voice. But certainly this volume presents a welcome diversity of views, including, for example, presidential defenses of the New Deal and Great Society. The idea of choosing fifty documents is worthy, and I would recommend the book as well as the website on which all the contents are available free. Although it makes some debatable choices about which texts to include and how to excerpt them, the debate is valuable.

Meanwhile, the Pioneer Institute, which is generally considered conservative, held a terrific session on the Civil Rights Movement with the goal of deepening how it is taught in k-12 schools. They invited my colleague Peniel Joseph, who said, “we live in the belly of the beast… we live in the American Gulag”; and Robert P. Moses, “who blasted a recent ruling by the Supreme Court that he said invalidated part of the Voting Rights Act.” Jamie Gass, director of Pioneer’s Center for School Reform, writes:

Where one comes down on any one aspect of history matters very little. People will always disagree — otherwise, historians would have little to do. But learning about the depth and richness of our nation’s civil rights movement, the injustices that existed and still persist, the blood that was shed, lives lost and destroyed, and the real progress that has emerged, ought not to be an adjunct or afterthought in our schools. It should, rather, be front and center in every curriculum.

Our civic responsibility as Americans demands nothing less.

The post 50 Core American Documents appeared first on Peter Levine.

programs for poor people are poor programs

Posted on by
Reply

Georgetown Law professor David A. Super argues that the technical problems with the Obamacare website are unusual mainly in their mildness and the degree to which they have been rapidly addressed. Obamacare was heavily scrutinized because of the political stakes for the president–and because many middle-class American voters were trying to use the website. The White House jumped to address the initial failure. But when only poor people are involved, services can be far worse and nothing is done to address errors. Among the “epic” meltdowns that Super lists, Georgia recently neglected to send renewal notices to 66,000 food stamp recipients and then terminated their benefits for failure to respond to the unsent messages.

He cites failures in electronic services, but the adage that “programs for poor people are poor programs” also applies to face-to-face services like policing, health services, and (too often) k-12 education.

The ideological valence of this point is complicated. Progressives (like me) believe that poor state services for poor people should receive more attention; this is a core explanation of social inequities. But in making this point, we are indicting governmental agencies, the very tools we want to use to address inequality and suffering. At a minimum, the argument for more state action requires an extra step: some plausible strategy for improving the quality and responsiveness of state services.

One piece of that strategy may be adequate investment: decent services always cost money. But we know that some urban school systems have high per-student spending and still deliver unsatisfactory education. So cash per recipient hardly guarantees success.

Another piece of the strategy may be political empowerment. The White House jumped to fix Obamacare because voters were mobilized. But voter turnout among poor people is low. That is one reason that leaders don’t care about welfare services. But again, political empowerment is no panacea. Some cities have demographically representative electorates and leaders and still deliver poor results.

The people who most emphasize poor quality in governmental services are reformers who want to disrupt unionized bureaucracies by introducing competition or radical decentralization. I am not talking only about glib politicians, but also about hard-working founders of charter schools and social enterprises. They are usually labeled “conservatives,” but the label can be confusing. Witness the way that charter schools appeal to both left and right, or the scrambled ideological debate about education reform. Some people hold inconsistent views about unionized public services, defending prison and police forces while demonizing teachers and social workers–or vice-versa.

In my book We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, and in other work, I argue for culture-change within institutions and communities: the Gramscian “long march,” if you like that kind of terminology. The very concept of “service” needs to change, because citizens who interact with government are more than service-recipients. Market mechanisms may have a place, but markets have special limitations for the delivery of welfare and education. (See also this post on housing vouchers.) Top-down reforms may sometimes do some good, but technocrats always set objectives incompatible with the legitimate values of diverse poor people, and top-down reforms always run out of steam. Serious improvement does require political empowerment, but that does not mean more voting alone. Better skills, better processes, more collaboration, more discussion, and better relationships are essential. Of course, the question is how we can get that–and I do have some suggestions in my book.

The post programs for poor people are poor programs appeared first on Peter Levine.

new CIRCLE report on teaching news

Posted on by
Reply

From the CIRCLE website:

With news sources changing rapidly and fragmenting along ideological lines, understanding how to use news and information media (“information literacy”) is an important civic skill. A new fact sheet by CIRCLE deputy director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg explores the extent to which information literacy is taught in high school civics classes and how its teaching varies.

Using the data from CIRCLE’s National Civics Teacher Survey, which asked teachers about the courses they taught in Fall 2012, this analysis found that overall:

  • Civics teachers believe that information literacy is critical and that students must be able to identify and gather credible information
  • Less than half of teachers are very confident about teaching information literacy. A majority are interested in receiving more training and resources.
  • Teachers commonly use news articles as sources, and 80% discuss election-related issues at least weekly
  • AP and honors courses are more likely to incorporate information literacy than courses that are required for graduation.
  • Teachers who perceive more support are more likely to teach information literacy.

Read the fact sheet National Civics Teacher Survey: Information Literacy in High School Civics. The National Civics Teacher Survey was conducted as part of CIRCLE’s Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge.

The post new CIRCLE report on teaching news appeared first on Peter Levine.

new book–Civic Studies: Approaches to the Emerging Field

Posted on by
Reply

Published today, Civic Studies: Approaches to the Emerging Field is a volume co-edited by me and Karol Edward Soltan and published by Bringing Theory to Practice and the American Association of Colleges and Universities as the third in their Civic Series. It is available for free download (pdf) or for purchase at $10 for the volume. Contents:

The post new book–Civic Studies: Approaches to the Emerging Field appeared first on Peter Levine.

what defines conservatism?

Posted on by
Reply

Popular political words like “liberalism” and “conservatism” often name disparate ideas and movements. No one controls their definitions, and therefore no one can complain if they are used for incompatible phenomena. For instance, “liberalism” can mean government interventionism or pro-market critiques of the state; and “conservatism” may be equally ambiguous. Yet we ought to be able to say something about the central tendencies of conservative thought. A helpful generalization should have three features:

1) It should be trans-historical and global, not limited to current US terminology.

In the US today, conservatives often present themselves as being critical of the nation-state and bureaucracy. But that has not been true of, for example, Christian Democrats in Europe.

2) It should be reasonably encompassing of the movements that have actually called themselves “conservative.”

For instance, if one defines conservatism as libertarianism, that omits traditionalist and communitarian conservative movements. If one defines conservatives as people who want to return to the past, that omits Newt Gingrich types who are utopians about technology and markets.

3) It should be charitable.

You should define a political idea in a way that a proponent would accept before you debate his or her views. For instance, although I have not read Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind, I am highly skeptical of Robin’s definition of “conservatism” as “animus against the agency of the subordinate classes.” According to Robin, “conservatism “provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.” But what conservative would accept this characterization?

I would propose that the heart of conservative thought is resistance to intellectual arrogance. A conservative is highly conscious of the limitations of human cognition and virtue. From a conservative perspective, human arrogance may take several forms:

  • the ambition to plan a society from the center;
  • the willingness to scrap inherited norms and values in favor of ideas that have been conceived by theorists;
  • the preference for any given social outcome over the aggregate choices of free individuals;
  • the assertion that one may take property or rights away from another to serve any ideal; and/or
  • the elevation of human reasoning over God’s.

Now, these are separable claims. You can be an atheist conservative who has no objection to elevating human reason but deep concerns about state-planning. That is why conservatism is a field of debate, not a uniform movement. But it’s also possible to build coalitions, since, for example, Christian conservatives and market fundamentalists can unite against secular bureaucracies. Their reasons differ, but it is not only their practical objective that unites them. They also share a critique of the bureaucracy as arrogant.

If this is a fair description of conservatism, it should roughly describe the main tendencies of thinkers who have called themselves “conservative” over a broad sweep of time. I think it does. And some aspects of this definition are still visible in today’s Tea Party Republican Party. But our whole ideological spectrum is confused and atypical. If my definition of conservatism generally fails to describe the Republican Party, that may be because the GOP is not conservative in a deep sense. Meanwhile, as I argued in “Edmund Burke would vote Democratic,” it is sometimes the left in the US that seems most appreciative of local norms and traditions, most concerned about “sustainability” and fearful of human arrogance, and most resistant to planning and social control.

The post what defines conservatism? appeared first on Peter Levine.