Bullshit: Common Currency in Public Discussion?

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.
--Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit (2005) Princeton University

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. -- Alberto Brandolini

Diverting Inquiry. When was the last time you asked a question and got a straight answer? If you can remember it, treasure it, because it doesn't happen all that much; particularly, among adults and those children trying to act like them.

When I was a kid I had an uncle who, when I asked him a question, would respond, "Whatsit teeya?" (What is it to you?) This was a very effective response for:

a. blocking a question he probably didn't know the answer to; or
b. extorting some favor in return for an answer he supposedly had; or
c. challenging my personal authority to even ask a question – "Children should be seen and not heard!"

Learning the Game. Kids have a hard time. They're fed the story that honesty and forthrightness always come first. But they soon learn the bitter lesson that it is adults who decide what is honesty and what is impertinence. There is also the painful "one-up(wo)man ship game" to be mastered. Those who are one-up can mistreat those who are not.

By the time we are "grown up," we expect bullshit in politics and commerce; it useful for getting around without having to tell a bald-face lie. Bullshit is not quite lying, but it confers many of the benefits of lying -- and is considered much more "tactful." But, many people still ask with bewonderment, "B. S.? Even in Education and Political Campaigning?!!!" (Drop your jaw at this point.)

Benefits of the Practice. We are quite accustomed to merchandisers "enhancing" the descriptions of their wares to attract us to them. Caveat Emptor, as they say. But why do educators, politicians and even (Horrors!?) religious leaders bullshit?

Because BS is tactful, therefore more likely forgivable than lying. Unlike a suspected lie, it doesn't burden the recipient with the compulsion to check it out and risk being perceived as challenging authority, i.e. "impertinent." Consequently, almost everything stated is cautiously taken with a "grain of salt," a taste that is all too easy to get used to. One can boast to oneself of having a critical mind without running any of the real risks of such a possession.

Most importantly, BS is functional; it works. On your first day, say, in class as a teacher, some wiseacre raises his (just a likely, "her") hand and asks you, smirking pointedly, if you had a "good" night last night. If you say, "My private life's none of your business," you can be reasonably sure that kid's parents are going to complain about your "unfriendliness." (Kid's complaint to helicopter parent: "Our new teacher won't even answer our questions!") Your principal will likely drag you in to remind you that the "acceptable professional conduct needed for renewal of one's contract" requires one to attempt to maintain "good public relations." Better smoke, mirrors and good, old B.S.

However, there is such public trust in educators that, up until quite recently, they could get away with massive bullshit for a longer period than could businessmen or politicians. School districts test their students and report their own results. They wouldn't possibly fake them, would they? (See Gaming the System: a Great Tradition!.)

The Risks. There is, at issue, status and money. Let's look again at my uncle's, "Whatsit teeya?" Certainly few degreed educators can own up to not knowing an answer. Especially when the question appears simple to the questioner or the public listening in. (If asked an uninformed or stupid question, for the sake of appearance one must, it appears, give either a stupid or uninformed answer. But one always has good old BS to the rescue!)

But ask a simple, honest question, and you get BS, too. Is there a kind of extortionary pressure given in an answer? Perhaps, if it takes place at an alumni banquet where a question of concern is brought up. For example a response to such a question might be, "We have several possibilities to address the issue you bring up, but little budget for it."

The challenge to the questioner works if he or she is seen as lower in rank then the person questioned: "I think the salary issue, which most of you will concede has been debated to exhaustion, will be handled at a faculty meeting that takes place after the trustees meet. Your committee chairs will be notified." (I have heard university officials, on many an occasion, say something similar despite having taken no polls to find out how many believe debate has ever reached the exhaustion stage.)

Spreading It. There used to be a farm implement called a manure-spreader. It did what you imagine. Those specimen-donors who believe themselves to benefit from spreading BS imagine that their donees, like growing crops, benefit also. Only the essential growth elements are missing.

For more on this, plus references see what follows. Some years back, before BS was referred to directly and euphemized for the sake of propriety, I asked a group of my university students who had school aged children to report on some of the "sloganeering" they encountered in the children's schools. You can find their essays and further references at

Disciplinary Slogans: A Critique of Three Slogans

Pseudo-Solutions: three disciplinary slogans.

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“Cat” is NOT a Cat. “Reform” is NOT a Reform.

"The symbol is NOT the thing symbolized; the word is NOT the thing; … -– S.I. Hayakawa (1949)

We live in a society where a “Going Out of Business Sale” sign on a store probably doesn’t mean that the store is going out of business after the sale is over. “Reality” shows on TV are far from reality, the confections of TV writers and producers. Brand names, too, are not infrequently assurances of quality that is non-existent.

Even our schools promote their own form of BS -- think only of the all-too-vagrant usage of such words as “challenged,” “basics,” “excellence,” “diversity,” “needs,” and “standards.” Unfortunately, BS, like other forms of S, can be infectious: it can produce a mind-set that borders on pathology.

Sean Cavanagh in an article, “In War of Words, 'Reform' a Potent Weapon,” (Education Week, 3/2/11) writes

A set of stock phrases, sound bites, and buzzwords has come to dominate the public discourse on education, summoned reflexively, it often seems, by elected officials and advocates who speak a shared, accepted language.

In other words, Big-Wig BS: on such rests the fate of our school populations.

To propose what you call a “reform” is to do two things:

a. it is to propose a change; and
b. it is to recommend that change as desirable.

Here is where the fight begins.

Not every possible change will be seen as a change for the better. Death is a change. It is not a reform. It is because people disagree on what is desirable that the controversy about school reform exists.

To examine these issues further, see The Need for and Possibilities of Educational Reform


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Who Benefits From School Reform? A Trick Question.

Who does benefit from school reform? Don’t say, “Everyone.” You don’t know everyone. And even if you mean that everyone should benefit, that is a different story. If should’s were does’s, we’d all be rich, happy and beautiful.

Who benefits from school reform? Don’t say, “the kids.” This may make you feel warm deep inside, but that’s where the warmth stays. Expect to be asked, “Which kids?” “Whose kids?” “Where, when, how?”

Does this mean that the idea of benefits from school reform is romantic nonsense? No. It just means that it is highly relative. And in our pluralistic democracy, “highly relative” means “politically difficult to achieve” and when publicly talked about, “likely little more than B.S.”

Certainly, nothing is a reform unless it is a change. And no change is a reform unless it is for the better, that is, the ratio of benefits to costs increases as compared to the status quo.

So, can we recast our “trick question” as “Who receives an increase in benefit/cost ratio when schools are changed?” That’s getting somewhere.

Now we have to tackle the reasonable distinction between benefits (or costs) as perceived in contrast to actual benefits (or actual costs). And who makes those judgments?

To examine these issues further, see Pursuing Educational Targets: 
What is the Collateral Damage?


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Killing the Messengers? Disregarding School Reform Critics

Ignorance is Bliss -- Thomas Gray (1742)

Wealth or celebrity, in our Land of the Free, provides those who enjoy it, special people, both broad opportunity and wide audience to promulgate shallow opinions no matter how deep their ignorance. Non-special people who dare venture critical comment against such self-indulgence risk being punished as proverbial messengers of bad news.

For example, whistle-blowers in government face weakening of the laws that protect them from retaliation. Also, AgGag laws are passed to strangle free speech criticism of selected industry practices.

We can imagine the following dialog in, say, a college lab coffee room:

Harry: Yum! This leftover chocolate pudding I found in the frig tastes pretty good!

Jack: I hate to tell you, but that’s not chocolate pudding you’re eating.

Harry: Dammit, Jack! You’ve ruined my whole day!

When it comes to reforming public schools, heavily endowed opinionators importune the many educators seemingly all too ready to swallow down celebrity offal at face value, if sauced over with sentiment invoking the welfare of children or national competitiveness.

Bullshit, -- oops! (Pardon my Anglo-Saxon.) -- chocolate pudding, abounds providing sustenance (brain-food, no doubt) for myriad “researchers” willing to ride their bandwagons to escape academic and occupational ennui. Even when these reform enthusiasts, failing to extirpate criticism, finally come around to begrudging opposing viewpoints, they can count on their celebrity to finesse any apologies of shame or regret.

As to school reform? No matter! So never mind. Wasted time, money and human resources are just so much past history. And real “pro-active” Go-Getters don’t lose sleep over past history! They stand ever ready with that Tool they wield so effectively, to promote the next social reform that distracts them from ennui.


For references and to examine that Tool further, see BS -- It Really Serves a Purpose


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Functional Analysis in Education: Science or Just Plain Old B.S.?

edited 040620

Inch worm, inch worm
Measuring the marigolds ...
--F Loesser (1952)

Instead of saying, “Johnny’s bad behavior comes from his parents’ being too strict,” we can put on the appearance of being highly learned, a scientist, even, by saying, “Johnny’s behavior is a function of the way his parents punish him.”

Rather than teachers’ being asked what might provoke disruptive behavior in their classes, they are instructed to look for “functional relations” in environmental variables, as though formulating it this way would make it any less speculative

Then there is Euler’s argument for the existence of God: "(a+ bⁿ)/n = x, therefore God exists". (Maybe God is supposed to equal x.)

Educational research abounds with formulas and statistics. Are they meant to be informative or merely impressive?

To examine these issues further, see The Functional Analysis of Informal Models

See, also, The Functional Analysis of Behavior

Cordially
EGR

What You Don’t Learn in Teacher Training: Effective Student Motivation

Everybody’s talkin’ at me.
I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’.
Only the echoes of my mind.
– Harry Nillson Aerial Ballet (1969)

Can you imagine anyone’ s attending a course called, “Controlling Your Smoking Habits” in a “school” called “Tobacco Growers' University?” How about attending a course called, “How Used Car Salesmen Lie” at the “Automotive Dealers Institute?”

I had a graduate student complain to me once that the facts and considerations that I presented in class tended to diminish her “enthusiasm” for entering the teaching profession. I asked her in response if she would go to a doctor who was enthusiastic but barely skilled rather than someone like the TV character, House: little charm, little optimism, but with a ton of competence and no b.s. Her choice was clear, and wise.

Suppose you had been explicitly trained in what might motivate kids of all ages to perform on command – “on command,” because this is what your supervisor, your principal, your school board members and your kids’ parents will expect you to do. (Not that they themselves could do it!)

If you had such knowledge of motivation you would soon discover how infrequently you could use it, because the behavioral foundations for its success were lacking both in the students and in the school environment. Kids who don’t try to read, or can't play without bullying, or are unwilling to pay attention to anything that doesn’t deal with gossip, toys, games, or movies – and for teenagers, sex and violence – are difficult to get involved consistently in classroom activities. (Let’s not even get into the typical class interruptions your administrators believe it to be a matter of life or death to make at any time of the day!)

Just as a skillful doctor could tell whether you have been not taking your medicine or straying from your exercise plan or diet, so would you, a motivational expert, be more likely to recognize the many outside influences that undermine a student’s motivation for school activities.

Just think about who and what those outside influences might be. Would they welcome your observations on how they interfere with or fail to support student motivation?

And, by the way, would the course you took called something like, “Classroom Management,” have been more honestly labeled, “Keeping Up Your Teacherly Enthusiasm While Your Class (and Career) is Going to Down the Tubes?” Would any university or college permit their "cash cow," the Department of Teacher Preparation -- or something similarly named -- risk rocking the boat by teaching its students how parents, politicians, school administrators and college professors all contribute to stultifying student motivation?

To examine these issues further, see Motivation: why is this a worry?


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Public Opinion Is Like A Public Bathroom: universal entitlement suppresses quality

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003)

You use a public bathroom, since you may, if you must. But you expect a stench. In recent years lot of people have lost a lot money investing based on what “everybody knew” was going to happen.

The stench of the generally casually used (if not deliberately misused) bathroom facility is, in many places masked by the liberal application of some eye-watering chemical. So, too, the off-putting qualities of “what everyone thinks” are covered over by official or celebrity testimonial.

Missed by both the hasty-pudding economics of public opinion and liberal-versus-conservative political ideologies of professional pundits are these points:

1. Entitlement does not by itself create demand. Just visit the great emptinesses of our underutilized public libraries, museum and parks. Or the low attendance at many public schools, even when bullying is minimized and facilities are good.

2. Consequently, suppliers of repeatable services for entitlements run a higher risk of loss, which they tend to compensate for by providing items of the lowest quality that avoidance of imagined “bad publicity” allows. (Whence the saying, “Take the money and run!”)

3. Entitlements may in fact reinforce group conflicts, for example, among those who

a. don’t need or use them and resent paying taxes for them;

b. those who use them regularly and develop an attitude of caring for them, e.g. a library, a park, a garden, or a monument; and

c. those who might use them but tend to abuse them when they do. (Consider the litterbug, the graffiti “artist,” the disruptive pupil, in general, the Tragedy of the Commons.)

This is not make an argument against public works or for universal privatization. Civilizations have learned the sad, hard way that some social functions, especially those involving high degrees of concentrated power, e.g. police functions, use of lethal force, or massive wealth transfers, are ill-trusted to individuals or very small groups, especially in a culture glorifying specific individuals or their offspring.

The content of public opinion generally ranges from moderate BS to pure myth. (Recall that January 1st, 2000 was supposed to be the year when all the computers in the world crashed. Some have it that in 2012, as foretold by the Aztec calendar, the world will end. ) For over a hundred years public opinion has had it that American public schools are terrible, getting worse; thus, today, more than ever, threatening the demise of American Civilization.

The growing public opinion, even mouthed by high officials, is to convert public schools into what they imagine are factories, something more “business-like.” The present reform movement seems to be serious. Is it merely stench?


To examine these issues as they relate to public education, see What Works? Under What Conditions? And Who Really Cares?


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--- EGR

Sustaining Illusions of Leadership

The appearance of moral authority and even a sacred aura at the top of the hierarchy is essential to sustain the privileges of leadership. -- Jeffrey S. Nielsen, (2004) The Myth of Leadership

I find it depressing that we would want to discuss the state of leaderhip in organizations from the perspective of what feels good and uplifting, rather than what the evidence shows to be true. -- Jeffrey Pfeffer (2015) p. 194 Leadership BS

In all-too-many an organization in this U.S. of A, there is often little more that shouts “Leadership!” than a big, big salary. This is like confusing a rectal syringe with a thermometer.

There is a two-way superstition at work here. When organizations are successful, their leadership gets the most of the credit, even when luck plays a major role in that success. (See Marshall Goldsmith on The Success Delusion.) When businesses do not succeed, their leaders are not infrequently sacrificed -- especially in professional sports -- to the misfortunes that have befallen them. (See also, G. I. Kolev, Pay for Luck in CEO Compensation: Evidence of Illusion of Leadership?)

Some theorists have emphasized subordinating purely internal goals to integration into the community where the organization is located. Many business leaders and even leaders of public institutions disagree, emphasizing that the business of their business is their own business: even after they have asked for public assistence.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Philip Selznick, LEADERSHIP IN ADMINISTRATION
Also see Edward G Rozycki (1994) LEADERSHIP vs. MORALITY: AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT?

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--- EGR

The Curse of Knowledge vs The Dunning--Kruger Effect: an instructor's dilemma

updated 3/15/20

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. -- George of Trebizond (c. 1433)

Laurence J. Peter: “Look around you where you work, and pick out the people who have reached their level of incompetence. You will see that in every hierarchy the cream rises until it sours.” -- Laurence J. Peter The Peter Principle 1970

Too often, our confidence that we know what is going on is greater at the beginning of an episode, than it is at the end. -- Sloman S & Fernbach P (2017) The Knowledge Illusion p.19

Introduction. In 1960, in the early years of the Cold War, my freshman year, I was placed in ("invited to") a course called "Honors Physics." Three days a week at 8 AM our professor, who, we were told was a renowned researcher, would come in and fill six boards with notes. Except for the two class "geniuses" who, having built a cyclotron in high school, just sat there occasionally nodding their heads, we spent all our time furiously copying. The prof, an apparently shy person, entertained no questions and was not accessible outside of class.

Help understanding the prof's notes was to be provided in small-group seminars by graduate physics assistants. We, the freshmen -- geniuses excepted and usually absented -- often couldn't understand what the prof was getting at. More than occasionally, a graduate assistant would confess the same problem. The seminars soon evolved into deciphering sessions.

Of course, we worried about our grades, since nobody -- geniuses excepted -- ever made above a 50 on the quizzes. (The geniuses regularly got 100's.) On the final, the geniuses were excused by the prof from taking the exam. The rest of us were graded, we were told, by the prof. I got a thirty-six, which seemed to be about average, so far as an informal consensus determined. No matter, the class average was a 34. So I was awarded a B. After all, we surmised, how could a class of "specially invited honors students" be flunked en masse?


Caught Between The Curse of Knowledge (COK) and The Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE). Many of us have had a teacher or professor who, we felt, consistently "talked over our heads." This was mostly, I would hope, not done intentionally. What usually happens is that the teacher overestimates how much their students know. This happens often, if not more, as you go up the educational ladder (where it is more embarrassing to admit to ignorance). The professor exhibits this psychological bias, the Curse of Knowledge, by not taking into consideration the possibility of class disparities in prior knowledge. (College entrance exams are presumed, I suspect, to have precluded such ignorance down, even, to course-level specifics.)

Students often exhibit a bias complementary to the COK, the DKE. This is a tendency to overestimate the knowledge one has acquired from minor acquaintance with a topic or area of concern. It seems that some people, even in high places, believe that, from TV, or conversation, or reading fiction, or newspaper reports, they know as well, if not better, as anybody, -- excepting, "nerds" and "wonks" and "so-called" experts -- about, say, law, espionage, economics, politics, and diplomacy, etc.

Countering the Biases. The instructor can counter both biases to some extent by giving pretests that don't affect the students' grades. The procedure is

a. create (an often difficult procedure) and administer the pretest (See, e.g., Your Image of University Life: a course prequiz );
b. have students indicate what they think their grade will be (they can write it on the pretest;
c. grade the test and let the students see their graded papers.
d. tell them about the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

I have used this technique for years for students through high school up through doctoral education. For upper-level research writing, make the students' grades partially dependent upon their writing in critical "editors-subgroups" reviews of each other's papers.(See Examples of Papers and Critiques.)

Institutional Resistances to Trying to Counter COK and DKE biases. Sometimes students react to pre-testing by dropping out of the course. I had one such student - in a course focussed on policy evaluation -- tell me that he thought his experience as a highly trained laboratory technician would get him through "the BS of the soft-science stuff."

I had a dean worry to me that letting students on to how much they would have to learn might reduce the number of applicants in the long run.

I talked with a professor -- who really worked at accommodating his students' personal weaknesses -- who told me how his college was going to relax admissions requirements so as to increase tuition revenues. He didn't think he could deal with both increased numbers of students whose literacy and math levels were much below the already feeble standards that were traditional.

At another university of my long acquaintance, professorial folklore has it that new faculty who win recognition for excellent teaching take it to be an omen of future failure to get tenure. Trustee opinion: "If a professor spends so much time trying to engage students well, how can he or she be participating in committees and doing good research besides?"

An interesting situation is when a governor of a university exhibits DKE with respect to how educational processes proceed. At a meeting of faculty and university trustees, I heard the following comment from a trustee, "I hear that there are members of the faculty who have published books this last year. That's really good! Very productive! What I want now is to see you all publish two books next year."

To pursue these issues, see What is Worth Knowing? A Philosophical Distraction from a Problem in Leadership


Cordially, EGR

Name-Dropping Is Not Enough: faking it with buzzwords

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. -- Matt. 7:21 KJ

A graduate student asked me to recommend him for admission when I was an advisor in a university doctoral program. He was in his regular life a businessman as well as a long-term elected official in a nearby township where he was expected to decide on such things as policies and contracts.

I asked him, “Considering you’re already fifty-seven, why do you want to go to the trouble of studying to get a doctorate?”

He said, “Because I want to speak with authority on how our school district should be run, and not always be suspected of just trying to feather my nest with contracts.”

I said, “Anyone can appear to have authority if the audience is ignorant enough. And if they use impressive buzzwords. You know, both academia and the business world are full of them. I’ll recommend you with the understanding that – as much as possible – you'll convert those buzzwords into meaningful ideas and use them in a well-reasoned way. Your authority should be based on knowledge; not, BS!” He accepted and eventually became my dissertation student.

Schools and businesses are remarkably similar in many ways. Both in education and management, whether it occurs in the classroom or office, in a school system or in an entire corporation, lack of understanding, of resources, or of consensus is masked with buzzwords.

Words expressing the most profound of concepts can be reduced to a buzzword when they are used unthinkingly or merely to impress the ignorant. (Or to pass licensing examinations!) Some big concepts typically misused as buzzwords in education or business are, among many others: synergy, constructivism, team-player, reinforcer, measurement, accountability, win-win, knowledge, reward, market, research, post-modern, Foucaultian, Lacanian. (See Living in a Cloud of Buzzwords? Two possible remedies.)

If you don’t know what something is or isn’t; or, where it might work, or won’t; or, what difference knowing about it makes, you are merely faking authority.

To examine these issues further, see

Analyzing Buzzwords, Slogans & Mottoes: Exercises.

Also,

Using, Rather Than Merely Alluding To, Theory

Cordially
--- EGR