Well, recently I stumbled on a really interesting answer to the questions of what philosophy is for and what it can, and cannot, do. Richard Taylor’s essay “Dare to Be Wise” (Taylor 1968) has a bold, but satisfying, thesis that philosophy has taken a mistaken direction in questing for philosophic knowledge:

I shall maintain that there simply is no such thing as philosophical knowledge, nor any philosophical way to  know anything, and defend the humble point t hat philosophy is, indeed, the love of wisdom (615).

I want to briefly rehearse Taylor’s argument before discussing why I see his view as a very ennobling one for philosophy. Briefly, in suggesting that philosophy is not about knowledge but wisdom, philosophy does not try and be as other disciplines, but offers something that is more unique that other disciplines can’t as adeptly provide. And, of course, I also happen to think Taylor’s argument is basically true.

Taylor starts with Socrates and the Greeks (Stoics, Epicureans). He suggests that the works that they produced and what they (likely) saw themselves as doing was offering wisdom rather than knowledge. Knowledge is the search for what can be demonstratively proved and is true in a factual sense. Wisdom is a deep acquaintance with a problem, sensitivity to its subtleties and parts, and (possibly) an acquaintance with possible-rules-of-thumb-type answers. While this may be a bit of oversimplification, think of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as the quest for moral wisdom and Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals as the quest for moral knowledge; in the former case, Aristotle thinks through some moral problems and reasons about some overall possible solutions that are subtle, flexible, and not considered to be ‘true’ in any provable sense. Kant, on the other hand, had it as his mission to discover via reason a moral imperative that could be proved every bit as true as a law of physics, and that was invariant to circumstance, social convention, etc. (Where Taylor may miss the mark about the Ancient Greeks is with Plato, who conceived of the philosopher as the one who could, via reason, attain the truth in the midst of those who saw only appearance.)

Taylor also questions whether there is a unique method to philosophy that can yield true answers to questions. Doubtless, philosophers have toolkits; we use logic, dialectical discussion, the Socratic method, etc. But do these things yield true answers, or just interesting ones? To me, part of the problem is that philosophy deals with so many questions where it is ambiguous what would even count as proof of a statement’s truth. How does one prove that it is right to pay one’s debts even when they are incurred in moments of weakness or lack of meaningful choice? How does one prove that we are not determined in our actions, but are actually free at least to some degree? Many of philosophy’s attempted proofs amount to little more than appeals to intuition, highly speculative counter-factual or possible-worlds “proofs,” or quibbles about differing definitions of words (what do we mean by ‘free’ and is there one correct definition)?

And, long and short, if philosophy is to stand and fall based on its ability to yield true philosophic knowledge, then quite honestly, philosophy is hopeless. In science, questions are talked about, falsifiable and corrobarable hypotheses are made, experiments are designed, and over time, consensus on one answer is built. But says Taylor:

It is perfectly commonplace to find philosophers who meet and talk daily, customarily read and discuss each others’ work, who have abundant time to acquaint each other with their fruits of their inquiries and the foundations upon which these rest, and who yet agree upon absolutely nothing of a philosophical nature (618).

I don’t want to make it sound like Taylor is just down on philosophy. He was a philosopher and, by all accounts, one deeply passionate about his field. The point of the article is not to denigrate philosophy, or set lower standards for it, but to try and rehabilitate it. It is quite common for people to come away from philosophy, see its lack of ability to generate consensus and “true knowledge,’ and write it off as dead or a purely intellectual exercise with no hope of doing anything productive. But maybe that is not because our standards are too high, but that our standards are just plain wrong.

            Rather than see philosophy as a yielder of knowledge, it may be best to see it as a bestower of wisdom. Here’s how Taylor describes it:

What is the wisdom that philosophers, by their very name, are supposed to prize above every earthly honor or possession? It is, I think, what Aristotle referred to as the exercise of ‘theoria,’ which is a unique capacity of men and one which alas! more or less slumberes throughout the lives of most of these, including even some who are learned… Essentially it seems to me to be this, the power of seeing those things, great and small, needed for that kind of inner and outer life that Aristotle likened to the life of the gods, to which the eyes of most men seem closed. And philosophers, some of them, have certainly had this. It can, in fact, be claimed to be almost their unique possession, the one thing which they, more than any others, have really offered to the race of men” (625-626).

This elucidation is a bit vague, so let me come in behind it. When I personally think of philosophy as wisdom, I think of David Hume. Yes, Hume was part of the enlightenment, but I don’t read him as trying to offer knowledge. Rather, he tries to offer an appreciation of the human condition via an introspective ability that we second to none and an uncompromising reality in description that didn’t try to prove as much as share. If one reads Hume as an attempt to prove something, one comes away pessimistic, because all he seems to prove is that much that we don’t often think of as complex (ideas about causation, our moral landscape, the existence of god) is more bizarre and intricate than we thought.

            But maybe Hume is best read as not trying to offer a proof of anything, but trying to offer us a deep appreciation of our peculiar human condition. And to me, this is what the best philosophy does. Most of the philosophers I myself am most attracted to – Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, William James, David Hume – were the ones that often stopped short (deliberately so, often) of trying to give us knowledge. If anything, many of these thinkers succeed only in explaining to us why, in our human condition, knowledge about certain things may be impossible. But that doesn’t mean that their writing is meaningless; what it does (and this is where I think they bestow wisdom rather than knowledge) is get us  to appreciate the sheer complexity of the questions, talk us through some possible ways we can make sense of the questions, and offer up at least a few potential solutions to them that may stop short of finality, but at least get us thinking for ourselves.

            I know it sounds vague, but that is what I think Taylor means (or at least what I read into him). Of course, it is also this very idea, of philosophy as complexifier rather than solver of problems, that drive many people away from it. We all knew (or maybe were) the person who took a philosophy class only to walk away disappointed that it only made us more confused than when we came to it. But, at least to me, that is what makes philosophy both thrilling and qualitatively different than other disciplines. (I think it is also why many disciplines got their start as parts of philosophy; because,  like no other discipline, philosophy is good at highlighting the potential avenues for future research because of its sensitivity to what the problems are.) Yes, disciplines that strive to answer questions are important. But, the idea of wisdom as a heightening of sensitivity to problems, their nuances, and how to think about them even when no solution seems likely, is also necessary. And that is where I think philosophy is indispensable.

            And this is what I will try to impart to my students. In other classes, we might talk about problems only to find out what the solutions are. Philosophy will not be like that. Here, we will talk about some questions that may not appear to have ready solutions (what should you do in such-and-such an ethical dilemma where more than one possible course seem correct, etc?). Where in other classes, our goal is to simplify (as the entire reason for finding an answer is to reduce a problematic situation to an unproblematic resolution), in our class, we will consider things in all their complexity, even when doing so brings out the complexity of what once appeared simpler.

And I hope I will not lose them when I do this. Right or wrong, we live in a world where utility is largely measured by ability to resolve issues and solve problems, rather than ability to provide richness and call attention to nuance. No doubt, the ability to solve problems and resolve issues has indubitable merit. But, like Taylor, I think philosophy has made a mistake in trying to model itself after the scientific disciplines that actually do this, rather than maintaining and “selling” their unique ability to bestow wisdom.

Richard Taylor, “Dare to Be Wise,” The Review of Metaphysics 21, no. 4 (June 1, 1968): 615-629.

The question was posed on a Guardian Books Podcast (available from itunes) called “Life, Death, and Literary Critics” (2/4/2011). Toward the end of the discussion about what literary (and other) critics do and their importance, one listener comment asked what exactly gives someone the right to be a critic?

The answer one critic gave – the only answer given on the show, which is a shame as it seems wrong – was something like “knowledge of one’s subject.” Why does that seem wrong? To me, “knowledge of one’s subject” seems, at best, to be a necessary condition for being a critic, not a sufficient condition. In order to be a critic, it may be the case that ONE necessary trait to have is knowledge of the subject one is critiquing. But one may have knowledge of a subject, but not be a good writer, or not have very good taste, and it seems to me that many would be reluctant to call that person a critic. It also seems to me that knowledge of one’s subject isn’t ALWAYS a necessary condition for being a critic; one can have fair knowledge of one’s subject but have really good taste, instincts, and be a good writer, and be a critic, where someone with great knowledge of the subject, but lesser instincts or taste, would not.

To be honest, the obvious answer I recall practically blurting out during the podcast in response to “What gives someone the right to be a critic?” is…nothing – nothing except having the urge and follow-through to offer a critique. And if one is lucky (or offers a product that others find value in), one’s status as a critic will become stronger the more others appraise you to be a legitimate critic (using whatever criteria they want to use).

Part of the problem, I think, is that when we ask “What gives y the right to x?” we are really asking something like “Why is x entitled to y?” Indeed, that is the sense in which the listener seemed to be asking “What gives x the right to be a critic?” So, if the question is whether anyone can be called entitled to be a critic, I think the answer is a pretty obvious “no.” Now, we can ask why James is entitled to be a teacher in the state of Maryland, or why Josephine is entitled to practice psychiatry in the state of Wisconsin, but in those cases, the answer is largely because they have jumped through the (justified or not) hoops that gave them the license which thereby “entitles” them to be a teacher or doctor. In fact, the word “entitle” is pretty much a legalistic term that means roughly “to have been given the title,” and that is precisely what a certification is  – a title that grants and “entitlement.”

But a critic? There is no certification for that. One can be an English major, or a political science major, but whether one is entitled to be a critic doesn’t seem to be dependent on whether one has gotten a certain title as much as whether one’s writing performs the role of giving a critique (and whether others who read the work concur that the writing does that). So, no one is entitled to be a critic; one must earn the title in the way one earns the title “recording artist” or “poet.” One earns the title by performing the role that people in those categories perform.

But, we can object, not everyone who scrapes together the money to record their songs in a basement studio REALLY is a recording artist. Well, in a way that is correct and, in a way, incorrect. In a literal sense, they are a recording artist because they have recorded artistry; just like anyone who has collected baseball cards was, at that time, a baseball card collector. But if the question is whether the basement-studio singer is a SUCCESSFUL recording artist or is acknowledge to listeners to be a good recording artist is another question – related but different.

Now is where I’ll suggest that maybe the listener’s question was phrased wrong: rather than “What gives someone the right to be a critic?” maybe the better asked question is: “What conditions must someone meet to be considered a critic by others?” Not, “What gives someone the right to be a recording artist?” (answer: enough money to record artistry) but “What conditions must someone meet to be considered a critic by others? (answer: talent, good material, a product others want to listen to).

This is where I think it simply comes down to consensus. You are a critic if you offer a critique, and you are a critic to others when others consider your critiques worthy of being read and acknowledged as good critiques. I am sure this might drive many batty, as it is very relativistic beauty-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder kind of stuff. And many will object that x may be considered a critic because they have a blog that is read by others, but they really don’t have a good grasp of what they critique, have poor taste, etc. So, am I saying they are REALLY a critic? Well, yes. Objections like this generally come down to saying “Well, I judge their work to be unworthy and wish others would do the same. To me they are not a critic. I wish they were not held as a legitimate critic in others’ eyes either. And if they saw it may way, used the critieria I used, or had the knowledge I have, they wouldn’t see that person as a critic. Therefore, they are wrong to see that person as a critic, and the person would not be seen as a critic but for the fans’ mistakes.”

But it doesn’t erase the fact that if we asked of this blogosphere critic ‘What gives them the right to be a critic?” The answer would basically be that the fact that they offer a critique that some people find useful makes them a critic to those people.

And honestly, I think that is the best we can do… unless we can find some really good sufficient conditions that are strong enough to trump my subjectivistic theory. If we can find an instance where, say, someone has millions of fans who view that person’s work as good criticism, but we came up with a theory of sufficient conditions for criticism strong enough to really show that, despite being called a critic by millions, they are really not a critic at all, then the theory would be disproved. (But in reality, I think any such theory could be reduced to the theory’s inventor coming up with THEIR OWN standard for how they judge who is a worthy critic arguing that everyone else should just adapt that same theory also, and that anyone who doesn’t is wrong.)

So, I think it was a shame that the question “What gives someone the right to be a critic? was badly answered. I think the answer given may have been intuitive to some critics, who really do not want their status as critics to be wholly dependent on a market process, and their work as something more than products that depend on appealing to consumers even before imparting a superior knowledge. But, I just think my answer is more convincing.

Instead of either praising or bemoaning the trend, I want to think about the benefits and costs of this new emerging breed of popular science writer. First, it should be noted that while the trend of writing science books for the lay public is not new, it has tended to be done by that rare breed of scientist who has a knack for distilling complex concepts into simple and readable prose: Gary Becker in economics, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins in biology – all of these writers are bonafide experts in their field as well as popular writers devoted to explaining their science to the masses.

Not man y will argue that this is not a useful or necessary endeavor. Well, correct that: it is not necessary that the general public understand genetics or supply-side economics, but it is certainly good to provide the option to interested members of the lay public. After all, no one wants to see a world where only scientists understand what scientists do, and only economists can understand economics.

But these new journlsits – Gladwell and the like – are just that: journalists. They are often writing about areas they have not gotten degrees in, reading journal articles aimed at a technical audience, and (often without technical acumen) are interpreting data for us.  So, it begs a question: in what ways is this a good thing and in what ways is it a bad thing?

To attempt an answer, it is necessary to understand that all of this is being done on account of the division of labor (or, we might say, the division of knowledge).  The sciences, and most other fields we see nowadays, have advanced to a point where careers are devoted to them. That is a good thing in that it means we are advancing a great deal (because the more advanced the field and its knowledge, the more time initiates must spend mastering that field and its knowledge). But there is a downside here: it kinda leaves the general public – those whose careers are not devoted to that particular science – behind. (Even professionals in other closely related fields often don’t know the ‘inside’ information of fields around them because each sub-discipline now often rests on knowledge exclusive to those in that sub-discipline.)

So, the obvious good of having journalists writing books distilling these often heady and complex fields for the lay public is that it, to the degree possible, disburses previously monopolized information. In a sense, it lessens the barrier between disciplines and between the technician and the expert. True, I don’t exactly need to understand molecular biology or chaos theory, but at least I can, in theory, get it if I want it. Going along with the American (and European) tradition of egalitarianism, these journalists make sure that everyone’s got a shot at this information.

But here is where I see a subtle downside. While this egalitarianism is a nice ideal, it is all too easy to fall into the empowering illusion that the wall between expert and layperson can be broken down by these journalists, or at very least, that the wall is unjustified. Let me explain.

Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers was a runaway bestseller. Those in the halls of academia disdain this trend because Gladwell is sensational, highly anecdotal, and in some sense, is motivated primarily by a desire to entertain and intrigue rather than (as a scientist might) put out a falsifiable theory and mount (generally unsexily unanecdotal) data to support it.

And the laypublic response to this? Outrage against the academics. And in a sense, they have a point. The laypublic isn’t about to, and shouldn’t be expected to, read the scholarly literature in scholarly journals. They don’t have time for the nuanced and technical writings and theorizings that academics do. So, to disdain public attempts to understand science by saying that they are not going far enough is a tad elitist.

On the other hand, the academics have a point. One is simply in error to think that Gladwell’s book is anything more than an extended Newsweek article. He is a journalist who is not trained in science. His job, as a journalist, is to distill information in a way that gets and keeps reader interest. It is not beyond the realm of possibility, and could be in the realm of probability, that his and books like his would gladly settle for a simple and interesting “fudging” of the data than a complex and arcane accurate telling of the data.

Here is a related downside: we can never, but often do, forget that these authors are not experts on the subject and reading their works is not sufficient to enable one to render an expert judgment. For this, I will use my own ignorance as an example. I am profoundly ignorant, and always will be, on the matter of global climate change. Is it occurring? Is it human caused?

The truth: I have no idea and often hate to discuss the subject with others because, despite seeing Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and reading Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist (as well as hearing many authors give talks on the subject), I am acutely aware of my own ignorance. But many I have talked to are not aware of their own ignorance: they cite newspaper stories they have read, Gore’s film, Lomborg’s book, etc., and gladly say they are quite sure that they know whether global climate change is occurring.

But here is the thing: we are not climatologists and do not have the background necessary to really judge arguments against climatological evidence. To me, Gore says it one way and Lomborg says it another. But how am I to evaluate who is right? I can always listen to author talks, television talking heads, newspaper articles, and anything short of climatological articles that are impossible for me to understand. But then what do I have? Just one more distilled opinion that I STILL have no means of evaluating!

This is, quite simply, a problem that occurs with the division of intellectual labor: try as the outsider might, the technical stuff will always be over their head. And that is okay, because we have areas we are knowledgeable on and others have areas they are knowledgeable on. We can’t all be experts on everything because none of us have the time and most of us don’t have the inclination. (I really don’t WANT to understand too much climatology; it is, to me, a dry field that I will gladly leave to experts. Of course, the upshot is that I can’t really render much of an opinion on global climate change save for believing whatever the majority of experts seem to agree on. And in American, with our egalitarian ideals, we HATE to do this!)

So, the problem with journalists like Gladwell et al., is that they can subtly lull us into forgetting the intractability of this divide. When one reads Matt Ridley, one feels like one really understands biology. When one reads Gladwell, one really feels like one understands psychology. When one reads Gore, one really feels like one understands climatology. Of course, all these authors do is give us a glimpse into the field in a way that is entertaining enough for those of us who don’t make that particular field our lives and may come with only a passing interest.

Yes, what they do is a good, good thing. Without them,  the divide between expert and layperson would be total, with the layperson always at the complete mercy of the expert. But we cannot let our egalitarian excitement fool us into seeing these folks for more than they are: journalists who are not experts in their fields, but laypersons who happen to get paid to devote their time to understanding (or trying to) these big ideas. I have watched Gore’s film, and am under no illusion that I understand the ins and outs of the climate change debate. I have read Dubner and Levitt and am not under the impression that their book even gets at the complexities of academic economics.

the final message: read, but read responsibly.

I am a PhD student in education, but also a classical liberal. As an education student, I am often confronted with research on ethnic identity as it relates to pedagogy and scholastic achievement. It is not uncommon to hear folks talk about why teachers should take ‘multiculturalism’ classes to learn how to be responsive to students of different ethnic backgrounds. As a classical liberal, on the other hand, I firmly believe that ethnicity, while existent, is an irrelevant category for deciding how to treat others.

So, I hope by now one can understand my confusion. I have political and social beliefs that prohibit me from seeing ethnicity (and sometimes “culture”) as relevant grounds for differential treatment, but also hear so many colleagues devoting research to showing the large extent that ethnicity does differentiate. I am hesitant to say that my colleagues are wrong in their conclusions, as they are the ones who have studied the matter. But I am also hesitant to let go of a large conviction that I have that all people are people first, individuals second, and ethnicities at a distant third.

There have been, of course, many critics of liberalism (John Gray, for instance) who criticize exactly this trend amongst liberals to “decontextualize” people and ignore things like cultural practices and ethnicity as trivial differences. John Rawls work is a great illustration of this tendency: for him, liberal policies are best arrived at by groups of people who decide behind a “veil of ignorance”  where they are not a member of an ethnicity, culture, religion, social or economic class, etc. This is to ensure that, true to liberal form, people decide on policies without any regard to how they will affect themselves or any other particular people.  If we decide from behind this “veil of ignorance,” we can be neutral in our creation of policies.

Rawls, though, has rightly been critizied for writing as if people actually could decontextualize themselves this much: that we actually could look at things from a, if you will, viewpoint neutral way. As the postmodernists are always fond of saying, everything is done within a context and to attempt neutrality is simply to attempt the kind of decontextualization that is, literally, an impossibility.

But on the other hand, how wrong is it to take someone’s race into account when making decisions about how to treat them? Isn’t this exactly what we’ve worked so hard against? And to complicate matters, those who talk about the importance of ethnicity and culture are generally members of the same academic left that decries studies purporting a link between ethnicity and IQ. So, how does ethnicity matter enough to warrant teachers learning, via multiculturalism classes, how to teach black students as opposed to white students, but become taboo when we bring up ethnicity as a possible correlate of IQ?

So, I am writing out of extreme frustration. On one hand, I am angry about all of those I think are making too much ado about ethnicity. But on the other hand, I cannot simply dismiss the qualitative research done by colleagues that purport to show how big a piece of identity construction ethnicity is and that often advocate differentiated approaches to educating different ethnicities (which the liberal in me twinges at).

If you didn’t donate all you could, if you didn’t volunteer for the Republican party or its candidates, if you didn’t get your friends out to vote – the blood for this is on your hands.

This was on an acquaintance’s blog and is typical of arguments that we third party voters hear quite often. The argument can be generalized thus:

If x and y are political candidates and you voted for z, you (in effect) are helping the front-running candidate win and are, indirectly, responsible for that candidate winning.

To make matters worse, the libertarian party (who often “takes” votes from the republican party more than the democratic party, for its Reagan-esque  belief in small government) is often accused of tacitly helping democrats win office. This is similar to those who vote with the green or socialist party being accused of tacitly helping republicans win seats (because green and socialist candidates often ‘take’ votes from disaffected democrats more than disaffected republicans).

So, am I throwing my vote away by voting for the libertarian party (who, as much as I would like otherwise, is almost always the losing horse)? Am I to blame for handing the democrats victories by ‘taking’ my vote away from the republican candidate?

I confess that, try as I might, I don’t see the logic in this charge. The above argument assumes that the republican candidate is somehow a better representative of my small-government beliefs than the democratic candidate is. In my early days, I must admit to having this idea: I always looked on republicans more favorably than democrats and even though they were the “lesser of two evils” they were always the lesser evil.
Then George W. Bush happened.

By that point, I had already let go of most of the illusion that republicans could represent my small-government beliefs. But the USA PATRIOT act, two wars and the spending to go with them, the move to create a new amendment denying gays the right to marry in any state, huge deficit spending, and the first round of economic bailouts, obliterated any last hope I had that republicans were somehow closer to my small-government values than their democrat opposition. And the failure of the republicans to push fiscal conservative Ron Paul to win even one state primary cemented it.

So,  here is the fallacy: accusations that libertarians should vote republican to prevent democrats from winning office assumes what is, to me, the incorrect idea that republicans are any closer to small government principles than democrats. I’m sure it is true in theory, but it is not in practice. So, why should I vote for one party over the other even though both are equidistant from my political wordview?!

Now, let me defend why voting libertarian is the only way to avoid throwing away my vote. Yes, I am quite aware that libertarians do not tend to win state or federal elections. But here is the thing: voting is not the same as betting on a horse-race. We are not out to predict the winner and place bets accordingly; we are there to choose the politician we think best represents us. If I vote libertarian, I will likely lose the chance to “pick the winner.” (But I don’t gamble, so that wasn’t my objective.) But if I pick republican or democratic candidates, I lose just as much because I picked a candidate whom I do not want to attain office. If I’d have voted for John McCain, it would have been the same to me as if I’d voted for Barrack Obama: I’d have elected a candidate I don’t want.

But, I would have picked the winning horse (and I can just as easily go to the horse racing track if that was my agenda)!

So, if I am likely going to lose by voting libertarian, republican, or democrat, I might as well get something out of my vote: I can at least send a message to the vote counters and to the parties that one more person didn’t vote for republicans or democrats.  I can at least use my vote to try and increase the chances that, in the future, libertarians will win office; the more votes they get today increases their visibility and viability in future elections.

The fact is, if I vote for a republican defensively (to avoid a democrat win), the republicans will consider this a sign that I like their candidates, the democrats will take it as a sign that they should be more like republicans, and the libertarians will take it as a sign that yet one more person does not agree with their message.

Now, that would be throwing away my vote.

And what a question it is! Too often, we use words like ‘elitist’ as synonyms for ‘bad’ without thinking about what is bad about them. What argument is there that elitism – the view which glorifies elites over those ‘below’ them – a bad thing?

Here is my attempt at an answer. In so many words, the thing I find most objectionable about elitism is not (as many would say) its seeming endorsement of meritocracy, but its myopia. Elitism, in glorifying the way of the ‘elite,’ often makes assumptions that everyone should behave the way elites behave and value the things that elites value. To put it a bit differently if bluntly, the problem with elitists is that they assume that their lives are the way lives should be, rather than one way that lives could be.

As well meaning as E.D. Hirsch is, he falls into this error with his program for Cultural Literacy, which suggests that there are certain facts all students should come out of school knowing in order to be culturally literate.  In other words, there are ideas or facts that are either necessary conditions to having ‘cultural literacy’ and not having these will be deemed sufficient to make one ‘culturally illiterate.’

What’s wrong with this? First, it assumes a very static view of culture. Culture, of course, is a very fluid and changing thing, and the knowledge one must have to be a part of a culture wholly depends on the people one is conversing with in that culture. (All of this assumes for the sake of argument that there is even a coherent definition of what is a culture.) In other words, the things I would need to know to get in with a group of twenty-somethings in rural Nebraska may be wholly different than what I would need to know to get in with PhDed professors at Princeton University. And the problem with the Hirsch approach is that it seems to assume that my knowledge about Jay Z which may help me get in with the twenty-something crowd simply isn’t as important culturally as my knowledge of Wolfgang Mozart that helps me get in with the professors.

Let’s look at an example from E.D. Hirsch’s own mouth, from a roundtable discussion he participated in on NewsHour, where he gives his rationale for including, as part of cultural literacy,  knowledge about Don Quixote and its author, Miguel Cervantes.

MacNEIL: Let me ask you one final question about content. What isn’t clear to me in your argument is how much

content — for instance, Don Quixote is on your list. Now, what need a person know about that to be culturally literate — to know that it’s a character in a novel? Or to know something about him? To have read the book?

Mr. HIRSCH: No. I think there are too many educated people around who have not read Don Quixote to say you have to have read the book. But those same people know a couple of things about Don Quixote, that he tilted at windmills, for example. That he was by somebody named Cervantes. And most of us don’t know that Cervantes’ first name was Miguel. But — so actually, the way we’ve put Cervantes’ name down is as Cervantes, because that’s the way most people know it. But even though it may seem that that information is superficial, it’s all important, because it orients you to what you’re reading, and not only what you’re reading, but to a program like this one that assumes, I think, a great deal of information on the part of its viewers, as any serious newspaper does, any serious magazine article does.

So, here is a question: why in the world does knowledge about Cervantes and Don Quixote help one to be culturally literate in any way that is not highly Dependant on who you are trying to get in with? If I were trying to get in with the group of twenty-somethings in the above example, I am quite certain that knowledge of Cervantes or Don Quixote would not help me a single bit (unless they were literature students, proving again that the knowledge one needs depends on what groups one is conversing with).

To bring us back to our main question of elitism’s myopia, the very idea that knowledge of Cervantes is more important than knowledge of Jay Z makes a very implicit assumption about which of the above groups is more important to join. And I think that this assumption stems from a tendency amongst the intellectually inclined to see their own group as more worthy than others (in a general sense) and also to assume that folks who are not like them are not like them by chance, not by choice. (“If only we educated everyone with knowledge of Cervantes, Mozart, and John Locke, their lives would surely be enriched! After all, how can you NOT love these three?!”)

To put it broadly, any idea that there are certain things that someone has to learn in order to be culturally literate, successful human beings, good citizens, etc, seem invariably to be accompanied by value judgments about what the ideal human being/citizen/culturally-informed-person is. And that means that one is privileging one way of being above above others. While it is not always wrong to do this (we can all recognize, say, that those endowed with the knowledge that murder is wrong are better citizens than those who aren’t), these value judgments can get dicey and run the risk of being myopic. In the case of ‘cultural literacy’ and the elitist assumptions that accompany it, this myopia is very evident. It assumes what information is and is not part of the ‘culture,’ what vision of ‘culture’ is better (at least for the moment) than others, and, ultimately, what way of life is better than others.

Maybe I exaggerated; I do get it. I get that we are living in a time where we simply assume that the larger the scale, the better the result. After all, one of the key arguments against allowing states to set their own standards for their own schools is that…well… states can’t be trusted. (Of course, the idea that decision makers on the federal level can be trusted where state decision makers can’t is never argued for; it is just assumed.) William Bennett and Rod Paige took this line several years ago:

But there’s a problem. Out of respect for federalism and mistrust of Washington, much of the GOP has expected individual states to set their own academic standards and devise their own tests and accountability systems. That was the approach of the No Child Left Behind Act — which moved as boldly as it could while still achieving bipartisan support. It sounds good, but it is working badly.

Tennessee, they cite as an example, reports that only 47 percent of its fourth graders are “proficient” in reading. They also cite Oklahoma,  where the reason their number of “needs improvement” schools have decreased is because of changes in their standards, not performance.

All of this may well be true. But is there anything in this argument that suggests that nationalization will tackle this problem and get better results? Just as many arguments for national standards do, Paige’s and Bennett’s argument points to state flaws and ASSUMES that those flaws would be ameliorated at the national level.

Now, here, it could be responded that there is nothing to lose by trying. We have let the localities and states think for themselves for far too long, and it is time to let the fed try their hand. There are several reasons I see  AGAINST doing this. Not only are there things to lose, there are reasons that localities are simply better governments than nations.

First, anyone who has faith that, as far as schools go, the cure to bad localisms is nationalism might read CATO Institute scholar Neal McClusky’s Feds in the Classroom, which should remind us that bigger government has never led to better schools. The opposite, in fact, seems to be the rule.

Secondly, there are good arguments why, theoretically, localities will function better than nations at responsive governing. Before the founding of the United States, several of the founders – Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, etc. – became persuaded of localism’s preferability via a book written by Baron de Montesquieu called Spirit of the Laws. Throughout the book (and particularly book 23)  Montesquieu notes that the fewer inhabitants and lesser the radius, the more responsive the government is. This should be absolutely no surprise if we think about the fact that a person or group wishing to to affect change in their city (say, Chicago) will have an easier time of it than those who want to affect change in their state (Illinois), and both will have a much harder time affecting change than those who wish to affect change to their country’s laws (US). The more local the policy and the policymakers, the more access one has to them, the more knowledge they have of their specific constituency, and the more people can keep an eye on them.

So, picture it: let’s say citizens in Tennessee are concerned about their standards and believe that the standards should be different. Now, either the standards are set by the state (or localities) in which case the citizens will have less far to go to get their voices heard. Or, the standards can be set by an unelected board (which the current board is) appointed in Washington, in which case it is doubtful that this group could do much of anything to change the standards. (Of course, it can be argued that some parents – working class, inner-city – may not have the social capital to get their voices heard either way, but the question remains: under which scenario do they stand more of a shot?!)

This is the exact opposite, of course, of the way the country’s attitude has been over the last century, where the rule of thumb seems to be “if it isn’t working locally, it will be sure to work nationally.” And this time is even worse, because the assumption seems to be that if the first federal policy (No Child Left Behind) didn’t work, it must be because it was not federal enough. (I predict that 1o years hence, when this policy fails to have its intended effects, we will hear arguments that its failure was due to the fact that we are still allowing states to write their own curriculum and that the feds should take this over as well.)

There is another reason to oppose national standards, and this one really befuddles me. So many folks rightly decry ‘standardization’ but then cheer federalization without pausing to realize that the two invariably accompany each other. When one nationalizes something, one is attempting to make what was once plural standard.  And when one thinks about it, the proliferation of standardized tests has correlated with…well… larger and larger government control of education. (Correlation of course doesn’t prove causation, but we c an at least see reason to suspect here.)

Here it is said very explitly by Bennett and Paige:

The remedy? As both of us have long argued, Washington should set sound national academic standards and administer a high-quality national test. Publicize everybody’s results, right down to the school level. Then Washington should butt out.

Of course, this shocked no one: republicans coming out in favor of standardized tests? Hardly surprising and easy to write off. That is why this new strategy will try to sneak the same conclusion through the back door.

Am I just paranoid here? Well, no. It is quite logical that nationalizing standards in attempt to make sure all kids are learning the same ideas will invariably beg assessments to assess whether students are learning the same thing. And assessing whether students are learning the same thing is called…standardization. Disliking “one size fits all” and championing national standards is simply incompatible: nationalizing means equalizing and equalizing means standardizing.

And here is another thing standardization is incompatible with: pluralism. Whether it is the byproduct of cultural, demographic, or just personal differences, one thing that has always made this country strong is the diversity of thought and knowledge. As such a large country, it is invariable that pluralism is a fact of life, and that different folks will…well… be different. National standards, by definition, undoes pluralism for the sake of keeping everyone, to some degree, the same. And the worst part is that this push for standardization seems motivated out of a fear of pluralism: that allowing localities to set different sets of rules will mean that some localities will make choices that other localities – and the federal government – will find distasteful. I cannot dispute that, but I can certainly lament the sentiment of disdain implicit in it.

So, while others are celebrating national standards in education, I will not. I see nothing to celebrate about the triumph of one group of people to decide that they should make the decisions for everyone else. Some will call that progress but I call it contempt. And while some will celebrate the idea that “change” is happening at the national level, I will remind them that change at the national level means usurpation from the local level which, as we’ve seen, results in less flexibility and plurality. And while some scoff at Texas’s audacity in suggesting that “only Texans should decide what children there learn,” I will cheer this statement as the negation of “only an unelected board of federal experts will decide what all US children should learn.”

The fundamental principle of school reform, in the Age of Bush and Obama, is measure and punish. If students don’t get high enough scores, then someone must be punished! If the graduation rate hovers around 50%, then someone must be punished. This is known as “accountability.”

Far be it from me to say many nice things about NCLB. It is a federal program that is the equivalent to: “Okay, states. Figure out a way to set standards and meet them. Oh, and figure out how to pay for it.” There are many, many problems with this, none the least of which is the idea of having the folks charged with meeting standards of facing consequences be the VERY SAME FOLKS who set the standards they will be penalized for not meeting. This basically ensures that the standards will be low (at least, in a non-market system where performance record is irrelevant to profits).

But my disagreement with Ravitch has to do with a larger problem: Ravitch seems very opposed to ‘accountability’ measures that would result in under-performing schools having to close, teachers being fired, etc. And since she doesn’t offer any competing vision of accountability, it is difficult to see what type of accountability she’d be happy with. (I will be reading her newest book soon and maybe she offers answers there.)

This strategy of closing schools and firing the teachers is mean and punitive. And it is ultimately pointless. It solves no problem. It opens up a host of new problems. It satisfies the urge to purge. But it does nothing at all for the students.

I am well aware of the apparent reasons that schools are not like businesses. So, I will use an anaology cautiously, making it as close to the school model as I possibly can: if I own several tutoring centers, and one of them repeatedly fails to meet quality control standards, how is it of no benefit to shut down the center and fire the workers? By doing this, I prevent future customers from wasting time and money on a product that fails to meet promised results, and open up a ‘blank canvas’ on which I can start over. In fact, if I were to continue offering subpar services knowingly, one would be fair to accuse me of running a scam that actively DOES NOT BENEFIT anyone (except for myself and my staff, who continue to collect money for subpar work).

Now, here is the question: how does Ravitch’s outrage over closing a school that year-after-year fails to meet standards NOT translate to my example? Only one way I can think of : students are forced to attend the failing school (unless they can drum up private tuition or move to a different district) but they are not forced to attend my failing tutoring system. But this makes the situation worse! Children are COMPELLED to go to a school where many hours a day are spent without resulting in proportionate educational gains. It makes me feel worse for the kids, not better.

So, why NOT shut the school down? If kids aren’t going to learn much there, then why are they a whole lot worse off for not being able to attend because the school is shut down? I can’t think of a good answer, and here is Ravitch’s best attempt:

Will it be replaced by a better school? Who knows? Will excellent teachers flock to Central Falls to replace their fired colleagues? Or will it be staffed by inexperienced young college graduates who commit to stay at the school for two years? Will non-English-speaking students start speaking English because their teachers were fired? Will children come to school ready to learn because their teachers were fired?

If the best reason not to shut down a failing school is to state – via rhetorical questions – that shutting down the school does not guarantee that the next one will be any better, then I am not sure how much of an answer it is. Is the best objection to me shutting down a failing tutoring center is that there is no guarantee that the next tutoring center the students go to will not be worse? Does anyone take that as a serious argument against shutting a failing business? (Toyota could have not recalled their faulty cars by arguing that there is no guarantee that the new parts would work better.)

Now, as a former teacher I reject the simplistic idea some journalists and pundits have us believe that teachers are slackers who like avoiding accountability for anything. Teachers are varied and like any profession, there are good and bad. But I can understand the public’s mis-perception in this direction every time I read yet another article by a defender of education who is railing against accountability as damaging and dangerous.

What we need from Ravitch and others is not polemics against testing, accountability, or any other quality control measure. What we need is suggestions at quality control measures that will be better than those they argue against. Otherwise, we get articles like this which can too easily be read as advocating against ANY accountability rather than arguments for a different kind of accountability. As economist Thomas Sowell has said many times, it never ceases to amaze me at how many folks devote their lives to pointing out imperfections in things, as opposed to how few devote themselves to constructively formulating new solutions that can overcome those imperfections.

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The first thing that must be said about Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto” is that it a very intricate book, full of several different arguments and lines of thought. It might be best to say that it is a manifesto containing several submanifestos. His arguments against the current directions in “web 2.0” technology are many and multifaceted, taking us through  questions of the effectiveness of capitalism, how culture evolves, whether there can really be “wisdom in crowds,” and even the nature of what “human” is.

If we have to sum up the book into an overall point or argument, here’s how I’d do it: web technology, which was hoped to lead to vigorous innovation and individualization, has done precisely the opposite. On the consumption side, the idea of the “wisdom of crowds” has made the group (Lanier says “hive mind”) more important and more “real” than voices of individuals. On the production side, the internet has led less to innovative production than to the recycling of old ideas in new forms, while making it hard for inventors/pioneers to make a living being creative. (Yes, I know I am missing some things in this description but, as mentioned, Lanier’s work is very hard to sum up with concision.)

Lanier believes that there are two big reasons for this. First, we are not using our conception of humanity to drive how we shape technology so much as we are allowing technology to shape how we define humanity. A shining example is our faith in the “wisdom of crowds” as exemplified by our increasing obsession with all things wiki. Lanier reminds us that, in reality, there is no such “wisdom in crowds” because crowds are simply collections of individuals making individual decisions. (I would also add that “wisdom of crowds” is a literal impossibility as wisdom can only happen embodied in a point-of-view, of which a crowd has none.)

Secondly, Lanier believes that innovation may be lagging behind expectations because of our belief in the “information wants to be free” model. Yes, this has benefits, like offering information in a way that is accessible to…well…most. But it has the disadvantage of removing the incentives provided by markets out of a market. Lanier often uses the example of music and art: it was thought that the internet would allow more artists to make livings off of their art by removing the middle-men and allowing artists direct access to consumers. But with so much free content and exponentially increased competition, it is becoming even harder for artists to (a) get noticed in the milieu and (b) make a living off of their creativity.

While Lanier does not directly champion capitalism (he does contemplate its goods and bads), I think it is fair to argue that Lanier is championing a market system as the surest spur to innovation. Here, I must quote him directly: “”Why are so many of the more sophisticated examples of code in the online world – like the page-rank algorithm in the top search engines or like Adobe’s Flash – the results of proprietary development? Why did the adored iphone come out of what many regarded as the most closed, tyrannically managed software – development shop on earth? An honest empiricist must conclude that while the open approach has been able to create lovely, polished copies, it hasn’t been so good at creating notable originals.” Lanier is not against the open source movement (think Youtube) altogether, but does present good pragmatic arguments as to why it is severely limited.

I agree AND DISAGREE (shocking to those who know me). On the one hand, one of Lanier’s strongest points is that, economically, the problem with putting music or art on the internet is that one does away with scarcity and, hence, one does away with the market.  And, economically, the problem with taking away the market is that you take away the vehicle by which creators receive compensation and, thus, at least some of their incentive to create. Take music as an example: it used to be that record companies only put out x copies of an artists work at one press, and this was what gave the work monetary value. (That is, copies were limited which is why people paid.) But now, whether through legal or illegal channels, unlimited copies can be made of a digital music file which has the potential to render the work (in money terms) valueless. And if work has the potential to be valueless, why do it?

But, I must first point out that industries – most notably books and music – have figured out a way around this (at least without breaking the law): ebooks and mp3s that have been purchased are most often DRM’ed (Digital Rights Management) which bars the number of copies that can be made, if not copying altogether. Lanier doesn’t bring this up in his book (though I am positive he is aware of it). This oversight makes his cynicism about the market’s ability to graft (or adapt) the old market model onto the new internet model a little bit falsified.

But what about open source platforms like Youtube and the like? Won’t the fact that people can post videos, music, news, etc, for free online diminish or put a halt to their for-profit counterparts? While Lanier writes as if it does, I am not at all convinced that folks’ ability to watch free amateur videos will dent their desires to pay for movies of infinitely higher quality! First, those who post videos for free are not trying to make livings off of the videos and, as such, probably would not invest the time, money, and thought into their productions of the type which make the for-profit productions charge-worthy in the first place! We will pay money to see Avatar but not “funny video of kid doing x” precisely because the former is captivating while the latter is (maybe) midly amusing. The idea that the existence of the freebie (the blog post?) will render people unwilling to pay for the consumer good (the book) somewhat of a stretch requiring more argument than what Lanier brings to the table.

I want to take this a tad further. Since I am posting this review on a blog and understand that users will not be giving me money to read it, one more thing must be said. First, those who create web content for free (blogs, youtube videos, free music) are, by definition, amateurs that are not doing it for money. They may be doing it out of vanity, desire to share something with someone, or even out of conviction that their content is not worth charging for. Whatever the reason, Lanier is indirectly suggesting that users should not be the ones in charge of setting the terms of the transaction. But I don’t WANT to charge readers to read this post! My compensation is (a) the validation of knowing that someone read my work, (b) the gratification of knowing that I can express my views in a forum where others can read them, and (c) a bit of vanity. Who is Lanier to tell me that these terms of exchange are invalid because my posting for free may damage someone else’s ability to make a profit?

Another criticism I have of Lanier’s viewpoint is this: arguing that the internet has failed to reach expectations can either be an argument against the state of the internet (as Lanier has it) OR the loftiness of the expectations! I have a feeling that some of Lanier’s criticisms have more to do with the latter. Here’s an example: while he bemoans the fact that much music created in the past 15 years (with technology) hasn’t been wholly innovative, I would remind him that such whole-cloth innovation has always been rare. Jazz, he says, was innovative, as were the Bealtes experiments with multi-track recording. Why nothing like that now? Well, Jazz used the same musical forms and concepts of Dixieland before it and ragtime before that. And the Beatles multitrack experiments didn’t sound THAT different from the rock and roll which preceded it. Similarly, Lanier bemoans the fact that Wikipedia is simply the combination of the existing ideas of the encyclopedia and usenet. Okay, but couldn’t it just be that the encyclopedia and usenet were such good ideas, that combining them is better than scrapping them and inventing from whole-cloth? Long and short, Lanier expected the type of whole-cloth invention out of the internet that never really existed before the internet. So, is it really the internet’s fault that whole-cloth creativity of the type Lanier (wrongly) thinks was plentiful before the internet never materialized? Or Lanier’s expectations that they would?

I also want to criticize Lanier on another, related, point. Lanier argues that, in various ways, ignores or marginalizes the fullness of humanity. My counter is that ANY medium of communication – television, the written word, an audio recording, a telephone call – will fail to grasp the fullness of humanity. To use Lanier’s own beautiful words: “What makes something fully real is that it is impossible to represent it fully to completion.” That means that encapsulating an image in words (or audio, or files, or pictures) ignores some elements of the thing represented. So, yes, when I am on facebook, I am an avatar, a profile, some pictures, and some comments. And yes, this is not sufficient to encapsulate me. But if Lanier is arguing against current internet technology because it reduces us in some way, then I think his standard of what the internet is supposed to do is something that NO technology could ever meet. (After all, what is impossible to represent FULLY to completion is not fully real.)

There are several other areas where I think Lanier’s arguments are weak (and several places where I think he argues against “straw man” positions held by only a few). But that is enough for now.  What I will say is that I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. Even though I am sure everyone will find areas of agreement AND disagreement with Lanier, every reader will think very deeply as a result of what he writes. He is neither a luddite nor a techno-utopian, neither a reductionist or a mysterian, and neither a techno-anarchist or techno-Maoist. But he is a challenging thinker who deserves to be thought about.

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The question is: who is to decide whether intelligent design or evolution (or both or neither) should be taught in schools. Of all the readings assigned for this week, my views allign most closely with McClusky. The problem is that we live in a society that is simulteneously liberal and democratic, while also talking about an institution (schools) that, in some sense, has as its role something neither liberal or democratic. As long as these three ideals are in conflict – and I think they are – one must simply choose which authorty they thinks trumps the other two: experts (nondemocratic and nonliberal), the majority (non-liberal and non-authoritarian) or each individual/family (non-democratic and non-authoritarian). I believe the best way to decide the issue is to leave the decisions in the hands of each individual/ family.

But let me first explain why I believe we are dealing with three incompatible ideals. As a liberal society, we are committed to the idea that individuals have a right to conscience. As a democratic republic, we are committed to the idea that disputes are to be settled by appeal to the vote (at least to vote in representatives whose own votes will reflect that of the majority). And, in the case of schools, we are also committed to the idea that there are certain things which SHOULD be conveyed to children regardless of whether they, their parents, or the majority concur. (In other words, we believe that curriculum is too valuable a subject to be left to non-experts.)

These three ideas, then, are in conflict and, I believe, irreducibly so. That is because recognizing the one negates the other two. (By example, leaving curricular matters up to majority vote abridges individuals liberty to decide educational issues for themselves, and also takes a stand against unelected experts deciding them.) Why do I choose liberalism over the other competing values as curricular guides?

First, I believe that, all being equal, parents have more vested interest in their offspring than do majorities or experts. As such, parents tend to be in the best position to gauge their children’s’ best interest and are the ones who most clearly have to deal with the ramifications of choices about that interest. Secondly, I wholly subscribe to a social vision that sees the state’s appropriate role as existing for citizens, rather than dictating to citizens. As such, I find it hard to justify a compulsory education while leaving the contents of that education up to state authority rather than parental control.

Thus, as far as science (or any subject) goes, I support the ability of parents to choose what school, and what curricula, they support. This view is not without its problems – what do we do, for instance, if parents simply choose to forgo educating their children? – but the goods outweigh the costs. Most objections center on a belief that they (or experts they agree with) simply know best how to educate all children, which rests on the further assumption that there is a ‘best way’ to educate children and that the experts (or majority) know it.

As a final word, a system where parents can choose their children’s education does not in any way preclude them relying on experts or majority opinions on curricular decisions. (They could choose schools experts endorse or that resemble the most popular schools.) Rather, allowing parental choice simply doesn’t DEMAND that parents need not accept any one authority in making educational decisions. Where the authoritarian or democratic method of curricular decisions limits all students to the dictates of either the authority or majority, the liberal method leaves all free to follow whichever authority they choose.