Category Archives: education

The Psychology of Negotiations in Commons

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The Leuphana Digital School in Lüneberg, Germany, has announced the start of an online course on the psychology of negotiations in commons, which will run from May 20 to August 20.  “Psychology of Negotiations:  Reaching Sustainable Agreements in Negotiations on Commons” will be led by Professor Dr. Roman Trötschel, and introduce participants to a psychological approach to negotiations in the context of commons. 

Anyone with an Internet connection can participate.  After successful completion of the course, participants may obtain a university certificate for a nominal fee of 20 euros, which grants participants five credit points that they can transfer towards their own degree program.  Here is a short video outlining the scope of the course.

What are the ruling ideas today? Is “College For All” among them? (Doubts-that-don’t-change-our-practices edition)

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by flickr user ChrisM70

by flickr user ChrisM70

I’ve just finished an article on higher education and the liberal arts, and it’s full of hope and comes to some definite conclusions about particular ways that an education in the liberal arts is valuable. It’s out for peer review right now, which means that if the reviewer is googling phrases maybe she’ll find this, so I want to say up front: I believe in what I wrote there. But I also have doubts about the progressive push towards education for all, the idea that through education we can all shed the demands of material labor, or that the value (and cost!) of an education should be totally disconnected from its role is securing a job.

Automation v. Education

The Economist recently gave voice to this particular error in its article on how technology will increasingly be automating office workers out of their jobs, which will widen the already broad inequality between those who must compete with machines and computers, and those whose jobs cannot (yet) be reduced to an algorithm. Here’s how they put it:

The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers’ fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking.

Technology itself will help, whether through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or even video games that simulate the skills needed for work. The definition of “a state education” may also change. Far more money should be spent on pre-schooling, since the cognitive abilities and social skills that children learn in their first few years define much of their future potential. And adults will need continuous education. State education may well involve a year of study to be taken later in life, perhaps in stages.

Yet however well people are taught, their abilities will remain unequal, and in a world which is increasingly polarised economically, many will find their job prospects dimmed and wages squeezed.

What value, then, is an education, if it won’t prevent the technological obsolescence of our skills? Put simply: if there are going to be ditches (which are required for plumbing, among other things) then there are going to be ditch diggers, or ditch-digging-machine-operators, or ditch-digging-machine-programmers. The move to automation replaces many operators with a few programmers, enriching the educated programmer at the expense of the uneducated operator, and that’s the move that should concern us, since it violates a basic rule of maximin: the people hurt are both more numerous and more needy than the people helped.

The standard economic argument is that lower prices help the poorest the most, and that freedom from unskilled labor allows workers to do something more rewarding, something that requires an education but cannot be imagined under the current political economy that requires so many to dig ditches. It’s like the old joke:

An industrialist is visiting a construction site and watching a newly-invented steamshovel in its first job. The union foreman complains that its job could be done by a dozen men with shovels, each earning a decent wage. The industrialist retorts it could be done by a hundred men with spoons.

Usually I prefer state-level redistribution through a basic income guarantee, but sometimes I think it makes more sense to fight for higher wages for the folks doing the digging than it does to hope that everyone will be able to escape that life if they could only get a Bachelor’s degree or a PhD. That hope in education has an ideological function that exceeds its aspirational and inspirational effects.

Who is the Ruling Class?

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas…”

So wrote Karl Marx in the The German Ideology. I’m not entirely sure that there is a single ruling class in American politics, in the sense Marx articulated it, but if there is one, it’s the folks with Bachelor’s degrees, the modern bourgeoisie. We are often-enough regaled by politicians with solicitations to the “middle-class” or “working Americans” that we might be tempted to identify these groups as the ruling class, but about 60% of the population participates in the workforce, and exactly 60% of the population are in the middle three quintiles of income sometimes identified as the middle class. I would argue that these groups are too large to have conjoined interests or ideas.

On the other hand, we are sometimes assured that the very rich and very few (for instance, the top 1%) are in fact governing the US, and that the masses don’t perceive the truth of this dominance because of ideology. If I’m right about the college educated, then it’s much too convenient to limit the ruling class to bankers and stock brokers and identify neoliberalism as the ruling idea; if the traditional bourgeoisie still exercises a great deal of control, then even the very rich must still win over that larger group in order to maintain their wealth. Arguably the 99% v. 1% language of Occupy was a clever rhetorical strategy for enlisting the support of the larger ruling class with the interests of the proletariat. It may be that billionaires manipulate the agenda, but the baseline agenda the wealthy are trying to steer is set by the merely well-off.

Another possibility is that that larger class really does share class interests with the 1%, so Occupy was unsuccessful because the ruling class’s ideas can’t be moved by rhetoric if its interests are at stake. (As I understand it, this is Marx’s point: ideology is believing that ideas matter more than practices.)

Bourgeois Ideology

So what does that class (to which I and my readers probably belong) have in common?

  • We are college educated.
  • We work in offices, with computers.
  • We are employed, and if we are in relationships we probably cohabitate with our partners who are also employed.
  • We live in cities or “suburbs” which have been adopted by some metropolitan area.
  • We own our own home (though this may be changing.)
  • We often don’t live near where we were born, or in the same city as our families.
  • We are likely to work in education, health-care, technology, management, or the public sector.
  • Our careers tend to benefit from globalization.
  • We are predominantly white.
  • We have very little contact with police, prisons, or the criminal justice system unless we are employed by those institutions (which many of us are.)

If what I’ve described above is correct, then perhaps these would be the ruling ideas:

  • Education is for everyone, and more equal educational access will create a more equal society.
  • Office-work is difficult and valuable, and education ought to prepare us for it.
  • Jobs and workplace regulations are the primary mode by which the state ought to see to the public’s good.
  • Marriage is good for everyone; even homosexuals should marry.
  • Urban life is better than rural life.
  • The American Dream should require (and subsidize) home ownership even if that punishes renters and those too poor to afford a home.
  • Family ties matter less than economic success.
  • Education, health-case, technology, and the public sector are the “best” jobs and ought to be subsidized.
  • Globablization is good.
  • Race is irrelevant.
  • The criminal justice system should supply entertaining plot lines for movies and television, but it is not otherwise relevant. Probably most people in prison belong there.

To be clear, while I’m not advocating these ideas, I believe (or act as if I believe) many of them. If those ideas are fundamentally aligned with my class-interest, it would be more surprising if I didn’t believe them. It’s not simply a coincidence that those with the most power and influence in society never have their fundamental interests questioned in our politics. That’s what makes them ideological, that these aren’t partisan issues: no one contests the value of education or marriage, and very rarely do they contest the important of home ownership.

Another possibility is that the top 20%-30% of Americans are not members of some ruling class, that the class is either much smaller than that or that there really isn’t such a thing as as single ruling class any longer, just a number of different social groups that align themselves in ways that they can succeed and govern on some topics and not others. For instance, none of the possible ruling ideas I mentioned included things that are quite clearly also governing American culture and politics, like support for the elderly through Medicare and Social Security (unless you think the elderly are the true ruling class), or America’s military role in the world (unless you think the military is the ruling class). Ideas like meritocracy and personal responsibility, patriotism and faith are frequently rejected by the richest two quartiles, precisely because they conflict with the values instilled by higher education and urban life.

If those ideas are also “ruling” in some way, then we would expect that those who hold them would be the true ruling class if all ruling ideas must belong to the ruling class. Perhaps instead, ruling ideas come from all the classes. Indeed, other ideas aren’t even “ruling ideas” so much as deeply felt constitutional claims, like the important of markets and prices for mediating our economic interactions, the idea that personal property and capital property should be governed by similar rules, or the assumption that inequality can ever be justified by increased productivity or merit. These ideas no longer have their source in a single class, even if they once did, just as in some sense American’s deep commitment to the idea of democracy and one-person-one-vote is a classless idea, at least in the US.

(It should be pointed out that what I have just written in the last paragraph is almost precisely the position being lampooned by Marx in The German Ideology. Ironic, eh?)

At What Cost?

I worry that the cultural promotion of the value of education is ideological, often, because I both benefit from it and yet also regularly watch how “College For All” seems to be disadvantaging a lot of my students. My fellow progressives who rail against the false equality of opportunity that makes the poor think they will someday be millionaires ought to understand why college can’t be an exit from the working class for everyone. Sure, anyone can be a millionaire or good at college, but everyone can’t. It’s a meritocratic institution, not an equalizer, and very little of the so-called college wage premium goes to those who graduate from community colleges and unselective four year universities. The inequality is built into our political economy!

I mean no disrepect to my students, either. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to appreciate the priorities of those who are actually choosing between homework and subsistence labor, for instance, or attendance and childcare. I’ve only been working at an unselective institution for three years, after seven years at selective universities, and the difference is palpable. I watched one student’s children so she could take exams without leaving them accessible to her abusive ex. She barely passed, and we both called that a victory: she hadn’t had much time to study, and had to read her notes through a hell of a black eye. Was education really the most important thing to do for her? What did she learn that she’ll remember later?

What about the student who I have cried with because she is dying from cancer: her husband just left her because the chemo makes her not want to have sex, and all she wants to do is graduate before she dies? Or the student who discovered she was pregnant and came to me because she didn’t know what to do? Or my student whose brother was shot and broke down in class? Or my student who was followed into class and physically threatened? Or my student who thought she had to be a nursing major until she realized she was really good at philosophy, but is still majoring in nursing to be practical? Or my student who asked me to help him figure out how to transfer when he realized that the only way he’d get a good education in computer science was if he left us? Or my students who are also incarcerated?

Rights and Privileges

I’m not saying that they don’t deserve an education: they do! Those are almost all people who will have college diplomas or already have them. Most of them are women. They won’t dig ditches, but they will work in jobs that only require a college degree nominally, where the skills they’ve often failed to learn are irrelevant. The diploma will prove that they have grit and conscientiousness, and give them a leg up in a job market where signaling such things are necessary, but they, like most people, will not remember what Modus Ponens is or how the the Rawlsian original position is supposed to help us think about justice.

There’s a difference between saying, “Right now, you have more important things to do than your logic homework, and that’s okay,” and saying, “Because you are poor, you don’t deserve a college education.” My students in prison are much better academically than the ones who are free, just because they have the time to focus on their studies, and I think there is a lot of value in the work that we do together. But no Pell Grants means no credit, and a felony record means that the skills they learn may never be put to work.

Maybe there’s a difference between “deserving” and “needing” an education. Most people don’t need a college diploma, certainly not to do their jobs, and probably not to be good citizens. They need a union or a basic income guarantee or a social minimum or a citizen capital grant or workplace democracy. But increasingly the only people who still have unions and political power are the people who also have college degrees, and those of us in that group like to pretend that increasing subsidies for bourgeois students (our kids) will help the ditch-diggers, too. That’s a bit too convenient, isn’t it?

The Importance of Infrastructure to Commons

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My friend Silke Helfrich recently wrote a great blog post about the importance of infrastructure to the commons, drawing upon the keynote talk on infrastructure by Miguel Said Vieira at the Economics and the Commons conference in Berlin, in May 2013.  Silke reviewed Miguel's talk, prepared in collaboration with Stefan Meretz – and then added some of her own ideas and examples.  Here is her post from the Commons Blog:  

Infrastructure is, IMHO, one of THE issues we have to deal with if we want to expand the commons….Let’s start with a few quotes from the (pretty compelling) framing of the respective stream at ECC, which was called, “New Infrastructures for Commoning by Design.”

"Commons, whether small or large, can benefit a lot from dependable communication, energy and transportation, for instance. Frequently, the issue is not even that a commons can benefit from those services, but that its daily survival badly depends on them. … When we look at commoning initiatives as a loose network, it does not make sense that multiple commons in different fields or locations should have to repeat and overlap their efforts in obtaining those services (infrastructures) independently…“

We need to sensitize commoners about the urgent need for Commons-Enabling Infrastructures (CEI). That is, we need infrastructures that can “by design” foster and protect new practices of commoning; help challenge power concentration and individualistic behavior are based on distributed networks (as extensively as possible) provide platforms which enable non-discriminatory access and use rights (for instance: a “ticket-free public transport system” is not cost-free, but it is designed in such a way that the funding of maintenance is not tied to the traveller’s individual budget).

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Bullying: What is it? How do we prevent it?

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This issue guide was created by the David Mathews Center for Civic Life in 2012 for Alabama Issues Forums that took place in 2012 and 2013. The issue guide provides a brief overview of the bullying issue and outlines three approaches to addressing this public issue.

Bullying-coverThe David Mathews Center—a non-profit, non-partisan, non-advocacy organization—does not advocate a particular solution to the bullying issue, but rather seeks to provide a framework for citizens to carefully examine multiple approaches, weigh costs and consequences, and work through tensions and tradeoffs among different courses of action.

The issue guide’s introductory essay, authored by Dr. Cynthia Reed of Auburn University’s Truman Pierce Institute, outlines the impact the bullying issue has on Alabama and the nation:

“Although bullying is often thought of as only a school-related problem, in reality it affects us all. Bullies can be students, parents, teachers, administrators, work colleagues, or others in the community. Likewise, bullying can occur at school, at work, at church, or at other community functions… Today, most states have legislation requiring schools to address bullying. Yet bullying remains prevalent in our schools, workplaces, and communities.”

The issue guide outlines three possible approaches to addressing the issue:

Approach One: “Get Tough on Bullying”
Reports of bullying incidents are reaching epidemic proportions. Bullying is unacceptable. It must be treated with zero tolerance. Increased reports of bullying in our schools demand that schools, principals, and school districts do more to help prevent and provide tougher consequences for bullying. We must ensure that district anti-harassment policies and student codes of conduct in Alabama are strictly enforced.

Approach Two: “Equip Students to Address Bullying”
Students need practical knowledge and skills to react to and report bullying. Not every young person understands what constitutes bullying and how to respond to it. Many feel powerless as victims and/or bystanders. Many bullies do not understand the effects of their actions. The lines between victims and bullies often become blurred when circumstances change and/or victims retaliate. The bullied may be charged as bullies if they retaliate. We should concentrate our efforts on educating students about bullying and how to respond to it. We should create supportive, enriching school cultures that equip young people to address the root causes of bullying.

Approach Three: “Engage the Community and Parents in Bullying Solutions”
Bullying is a widespread behavior. It is not limited to schools. Parents and the community should accept more responsibility for talking about and preventing bullying. The cost is too high for the community if bullying is not addressed. Bullies take up school time and police time. Bullies can end up convicted of crimes when they reach adulthood. Teachers and administrators do not have the time, personnel, and resources to eradicate all bullying. They cannot address its complex root causes outside the school environment. We, individually and through our community organizations, must communicate to young people that bullying is unacceptable. A great amount of bullying and violent behavior begins in the home. We must reach out to parents. We must reach out to young people. Some young people do not have supportive home environments and need community help.

More About DMC Issue Guides…

David Mathews Center issue guides are named and framed by Alabama citizens for Alabama Issues Forums (AIF) during a biennial “Citizens’ Congress” and follow-up workshops. Alabama Issues Forums is a David Mathews Center signature program designed to bring Alabama citizens together to deliberate and take community action on an issue of public concern. Digital copies of all AIF issue guides, and accompanying post-forum questionnaires, are available for free download at www.mathewscenter.org/resources.

For further information about the Mathews Center, Alabama Issues Forums, or this publication, visit www.mathewscenter.org.

Resource Link: www.mathewscenter.org//wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Bully-Brochure_press_PMS.pdf

This resource was submitted by Cristin Foster of the David Mathews Center for Civic Life via our Add-a-Resource form.

Dropouts: What Should We Do?

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This issue guide was created by the David Mathews Center for Civic Life in 2010 for Alabama Issues Forums that took place in 2010 and 2011. Dropouts: What Should We Do? provides a brief overview of the dropout issue and outlines three approaches to addressing this public issue.

Dropouts-coverThe David Mathews Center—a non-profit, non-partisan, non-advocacy organization—does not advocate a particular solution to the dropout issue, but rather seeks to provide a framework for citizens to carefully examine multiple approaches, weigh costs and consequences, and work through tensions and tradeoffs among different courses of action.

The issue guide’s introductory essay, provided by the Alabama State Department of Education, outlines the impact of the dropout issue on Alabama and the nation:

Every 26 seconds a student drops out of school.

The dropout crisis is one of the greatest threats to the United States. The students that leave our education systems without a diploma create an economic, social and generational crisis for the entire nation. Every state and its students are impacted by dropouts, who create deficits in the educational wealth and financial stability of the population.

The issue guide outlines three possible approaches to addressing the issue:

Approach One: “Emphasize Achievement”
Dropouts from our K-12 schools are regrettable, but our primary focus should be on emphasizing achievement, initiative, discipline, and creativity among those who choose to stay in school. These characteristics are best promoted through competition and recognition of success in that competition. These are characteristics we want in our work force. These are characteristics we need to be successful in individual life, community vitality, and global competiveness. We need our best young people to be all they can be.

Approach Two: “Emphasize Preventative and Corrective School Programs”
Social costs are too high if we do not address dropout prevention and correction. Dropouts don’t always simply lack individual initiative, discipline, and perseverance. Some young people come from poor family backgrounds and lack support for learning outside the school environment. Others get behind early in reading ability and lack positive role models. Some students have understandings and skills that are not easily quantified and measured, and they give up competing in situations that are beyond what they see as leading to productive lives. Some have family situations that require their primary attention, including those who serve as the primary wage earner for the household. We need solutions that take into account students backgrounds and situations.

Approach Three: “Emphasize Community Responsibility”
Ideally schools might emphasize both achievement and prevention, but some problems are beyond the resources and capacities of schools to address. Some young people need more help than they can get during school hours. Communities should think broadly and creatively about their overall educational resources, not just their schools. Moreover, some young people have substance abuse problems and/or such rebellious behavior that they cannot be kept in schools. Yet, if they do not receive constructive attention, they may become even worse problems.

More About DMC Issue Guides…

David Mathews Center issue guides are named and framed by Alabama citizens for Alabama Issues Forums (AIF) during a biennial “Citizens’ Congress” and follow-up workshops. Alabama Issues Forums is a David Mathews Center signature program designed to bring Alabama citizens together to deliberate and take community action on an issue of public concern. All AIF issue guides, and accompanying post-forum questionnaires, are available for free download at www.mathewscenter.org/resources.

For further information about the Mathews Center, Alabama Issues Forums, or this publication, visit www.mathewscenter.org.

Resource Link: www.mathewscenter.org//wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Issues-Brief_web.pdf

This resource was submitted by Cristin Foster of the David Mathews Center for Civic Life via our Add-a-Resource form.

Sustaining the Commons, a Textbook Overview of Ostrom’s Research

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For newcomers to the commons wishing to acquaint themselves with Elinor Ostrom’s work, it can be a hard slog.  Her scholarly treatises, while often quite insightful, can be quite dense in delivering their hard research results and refined insights.  It is a real pleasure, therefore, to greet Sustaining the Commons, a new undergraduate textbook that has just been published.  The book provides a general overview of the intellectual framework, concepts and applications of Ostrom’s research on the commons. 

Best of all, in a refreshing departure from most academic publishing, the authors of the 168-page book decided to make it available for free as a downloadable pdf file.  Just go to the book’s website and blog, http://sustainingthecommons.asu.edu.

Sustaining the Commons is by John M. Anderies and Marco A. Janssen, both associate professors at Arizona State University and directors of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, which is the publisher of the textbook.  Both authors worked with Ostrom from 2000 until her death in 2012.  Although Ostrom’s name is mostly associated with Indiana University, where she co-founded and ran the Workshop on Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Ostrom was also a part-time research professor at ASU from 2006-2012.

Anderies and Janssen taught a course at ASU on Ostrom’s work, with a special focus on her books Governing the Commons (1990) and Understanding Institutional Diversity (2005).  Out of that teaching arose the idea for this book.  Ostrom herself saw and approved of the first draft of the book in April 2012, shortly before her death. 

The book is a lucid, logically presented introduction to the key concepts of Ostrom’s research.  There are chapters on “defining institutions,” “action arenas and action situations,” and “social dilemmas.”  There are also a series of case studies on the management of various types of common-pool resources – water, forests, domesticated animals – and a review of “design principles to sustain the commons.”  

There are a number of chapters on human behavior as it is studied by social science.  How do people make decisions about collective matters and how do they develop trust?  How are these behaviors studied in the laboratory?  What sorts of rules and social norms matter? 

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MOOCs and Maximin

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hook_menu() by nyuhuhuu on Flickr.

hook_menu() by nyuhuhuu on Flickr.

Quick reaction post. If you’re a gamer friend, sorry, this isn’t the “Mooks and Minmaxing” post you’re looking for.

Over on FaceSpace, John Protevi linked to this critique of Thomas Friedman’s breathless support for MOOCs (massively online open courses).

Its main point (TL;DR) is that, in the name of “democratizing” education, the MOOC era is ushering in a new and even-harsher oligarchy on the side of the professorate. This should be totally unsurprising to anyone who’s, like, heard of Marx – MOOCs make education more capital-intensive, which tends to concentrate power more.

All of this is, I think, quite a valid concern. But it struck me that the article buried a perhaps even more important point.

Friedman did mention the online revolution’s potential disadvantages—“Yes,” he conceded, “only a small percentage complete all the work, and even they still tend to be from the middle and upper classes of their societies.”

I don’t think we should move off this point too quickly. I’ll admit to being very torn on the issue of MOOCs. On the one hand, I share many worries about their implementation, but on the other, I am attracted to their potential.

But this strikes me as a phenomenally important issue. Many professors make much of the fact that watching some lectures and taking online quizzes doesn’t replicate the atmosphere of intellectual vibrancy that a well-run face-to-face discussion can provide.  But I think that’s in many ways the pinnacle of the classroom experience, and one that the best of us (me not among them) can only reach inconsistently. It’s a sort of maximax ideal in itself.

A lot of what a human teacher can do is help with the problem that is briefly acknowledged both by Friedman and by the critique: she can help students who struggle with the material find a path to mastery. Poorer Egyptian students who drop out of MOOCs are likely not doing so because they are not as smart as their wealthier colleagues – but they are probably disproportionately burdened with inadequate preparation, busier and more exhausting lives, etc.

Helping weaker students is hard, frustrating, unsexy work that is often not even that highly esteemed by professors – it is very easy for us to look at students who aren’t “getting it” and make snarky jokes about them to our colleagues, and then focus on the keeners. I’m at least as guilty of this as anyone else.

And structurally, many of our schools aren’t set up this way. I have several friends and colleagues who teach at less prestigious schools and do the backbreaking labor of trying their best to help their students succeed. And they are often not honored for it – no one gets famous in Philosophy academe for being the best teacher at Anne Arundel Community College (intentionally not a place where I personally know someone teaching), and your teaching load is likely to interfere with publishing. Without breaking confidentiality or airing dirty laundry, I think I can safely say that whether my state school has a special responsibility to accept weaker students and try to help them succeed is a perennial discussion we have on the admissions committee, on which there has never been consensus.

So my worry is this: very many of us, especially the elites in the profession, are already often helping the powerful rather than the weak, already reinforcing social hierarchy. If we are not practically committed to not just teaching models, but career models (what I do in my classroom is less important than who can sit in it, in many ways) that help those with less social power, we maybe shouldn’t be surprised if we’re cast aside when a more efficient way to reinforce elite advantages comes along.