I’m traveling to SUNY Geneseo in the western Finger Lakes region of New York State to give a seminar and a talk. I’ll be back in the blogging business tomorrow.
Author Archives: Peter Levine
video from the Service Nation summit
I continue to be very impressed that our colleagues from the service movement managed to get both national presidential candidates to endorse a service agenda on 9/11 in New York City, as a centerpiece of their “truce” on that auspicious day. CNN has lots of interesting video clips from their interviews.
Here is Barack Obama talking about “active citizenship” (that’s exactly what we call it at Tufts) in thoughtful ways and then summarizing his policy agenda for civilian service and service-learning:
The clip entitled “A Reminder of the American Spirit” is longish but it’s interesting at the end when Obama starts talking about concrete ways that citizens and government could work together on key national challenges.
And here is John McCain making two fair points–the climate of the campaign would have been better if Obama had agreed to meet him in frequent town meetings; and he does respect community organizing:
PS: I just read this denunciation of McCain’s claim about town-hall meetings. As a clarification, let me say that I do not believe those meetings would have improved the climate because the candidates would have gotten to know each other better. Personal dynamics would have had nothing to do with it. Forums would have improved the climate because they would have attracted a lot of attention and thereby made other forms of media somewhat less important. During the forums themselves, the candidates would have been rewarded for relatively substantive and respectful discourse.
This is a nonpartisan blog. From my nonpartisan, civic perspective, I will argue that both campaigns could behave better (and that both have been helpful at times–as shown above). My nonpartisan stance will not, however, prevent me from opining that the McCain campaign has deliberately taken the low road in deeply disappointing ways that will damage both the civic climate and the candidate’s own reputation for honorable leadership.
value-judgments in testing
It would be possible to create a valid and reliable test of the 10 greatest virtues of Saddam Hussein. Those virtues could even be facts about him: for example, that he was unafraid to die. Such a test would be morally worse–really worse, not just worse in my opinion–than a test of students’ understanding of the First Amendment.
I write this to try to shake people’s confidence in a prevalent theory about research, evaluation, assessment, testing, and accountability. This theory holds that measurement should be scientific. Everyone knows that evaluators always hold opinions and make value-judgments. But their values are often treated as problematic, as evidence of bias or subjectivity or political agendas. Values should be disclosed, investigated, and minimized: the hold of that positivist theory is strong even decades after it was rejected in philosophy.
The alternative, of course, is to say that when we evaluate, we make value judgments. Some judgments are better than others. Our most important responsibility is to hold good values. Since our value-judgments differ, we’d better discuss them–not just to disclose them and acknowledge our differences, but to reason together about what is right.
I currently serve on a federal test committee. We receive “items” (test questions) written by consultants. We reject some proposed questions on scientific grounds. For instance, when tested in a lab, some items prove to be confusing for reasons unexpected by the writers. That is an empirical finding that should matter. We also rely on scientific expertise to tell us how many questions we need to obtain a reliable measure, how many kids need to be tested to make estimates about populations, and so on.
But ultimately the item-writers choose questions because of their beliefs about what kids should know. They are guided by written standards, which are themselves statements of moral value, albeit rather vague ones. When we on the committee reject questions, it is usually because of our values. For instance, we may say that a topic is trivial. We have expertise, but that really means that we have clawed our way into jobs that allow us to express opinions about what is important. We also decide how difficult each question is. That depends somewhat on empirical evidence about what average kids actually know. But it also essentially depends on what we think they should know.
I don’t believe that the irreducibly moral nature of testing and evaluation is a problem. It reflects the irreducibly moral nature of everything that matters in life. Nor is it necessarily a mistake to hire experts and consultants to write tests. We need reasonably independent, experienced, committed referees who can focus intensely on the task of evaluating kids. What is a mistake is to interpret the results of a test as “scientific” or to regard the intrusion of values as “bias” or as “politics.” The only alternatives to “politics” are boring homogeneity, spurious objectivity, utter thoughtlessness, or a dictatorship.
my stump speech
Within the next few weeks, I will be speaking to students and faculty at SUNY Geneseo and Bates College, high school teachers in Wisconsin, and assorted leaders in DC. I’m working today on my generic talk, which I will customize for the various audiences. I call it somewhat jokingly my “stump speech.” I realize that the outline looks more like a lecture than a speech, although I do mix it up with stories and rhetorical asides when I’m actually on the podium. (The whole key to effective speaking, as the ancients knew and the better speakers at this year’s conventions demonstrated, is variatio: shifting from anecdote and low-key information to passionate exhortation, to keep people interested.) Anyway, if by any chance you plan to attend one of my live talks, read no further; I don’t want you to be bored. If not, you can click below to see the draft speech.
“love” as a family-resemblance word
This is one of several recent posts in which I struggle with definitions of the word “love” as a way of thinking about how we define moral concepts, generally. Here I borrow the idea of “family-resemblance” from the later Wittgenstein. Sometimes, we recognize that people belong to a family, not because they all have one feature in common, but because each individual looks like many of his or her relatives in many ways. Maybe eight out of twelve family members have similar noses; a different six out of the twelve have the same color hair; and a yet another seven have the same chin. Then they all resemble each other, although there is no (non-trivial) common denominator. Wittgenstein argued that some–although not all–perfectly useful words are like this. They name sets of objects that resemble one another; but members of each set do not share any defining feature. Their resemblance is a statistical clustering, a greater-than-random tendency to share multiple traits.
A good example is “curry,” which the dictionary defines as a dish flavored with several ground spices. The word “curry” thus describes innumerable individual cases, where each one resembles many of the rest, but there is no single ingredient or other characteristic that they all share. Nor is there a clear boundary between curry and other dishes. Is bouillabaisse a curry? Clearly not, although the dictionary’s definition applies to it. Indeed, any definition will prove inadequate, yet we can learn to recognize a curry and distinguish it from other kinds of food. If we want to teach someone how to use the word “curry,” we will serve several particular examples and also perhaps some dishes that are not curries. If the student draws the conclusion that a curry must always contain coriander, or must be soupy, or must be served over rice, then we can serve another curry that meets none of these criteria. Gradually, he will learn to use the word. Even sophisticates will debate about borderline cases, but that is the nature of such concepts. Their lack of definition does not make them useless.
It seems to me that “love” is also a family-resemblance word, because there is no common denominator to love for ice cream, love for a newborn baby, love of country, brotherly love for humanity, self-love, tough love, Platonic love, making love, amor fati, philately, etc. Some (but not all) of these forms of “love” involve a high regard for the object. Some (but not all) imply a commitment to care for the object. Some (but not all) signify an intense emotional state. Dictionaries cope by providing numerous definitions of love, thus suggesting that “love” means “lust” or “enthusiasm” or “adoration” or “agape” or “loyalty.” But “love” never quite means the same as any of these other words, because we faintly recognize all of its other meanings whenever it is used in a particular way. For instance, “love” is always different from “lust,” just because the former word can mean loyal adoration as well as sexual desire.
The experience of love is complex because one has usually loved before in several different ways and has seen, heard, or read many descriptions of other loves; and these past examples and descriptions become part of one’s present experience. “Love” is a family-resemblance word that brings its family along when it visits.
When we read a literary work that vividly describes an example of love, it changes our experience of the concept. Any philosophical discussion of “love” must be a discussion of the experience; and therefore what we conclude philosophically must depend (in part) on how love has been portrayed for us in the arts. (Cf. Tzachi Zamir, Double Vision: Moral Philosophy and Shakespearean Drama, p. 127).