Author Archives: Peter Levine

coming of age in your thirties

She gives a short, mirthless laugh. “It’s no wonder we’re all in such a mess, is it? We’re like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it. And it’s much worse in a real life, because it’s not just snogging and bunk beds, is it? There’s all this as well.” She gestures though the windscreen at the field and the bus stop and a man walking his dog, but I know what she means.

That’s from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, a very entertaining and well-constructed novel that I just finished reading. It belongs to the genre of coming-of-age stories in which the appealing male hero realizes that other people also matter and that happiness will require commitment. Compare and contrast James Atlas’ The Great Pretender, Martin Amis’ The Rachel Papers, or all the early Phillip Roth.

What struck me, though, was the age of Hornby’s protagonists. These people are turning into adults in their mid-thirties, not their early twenties like Portnoy. Come to think of it, that’s not a surprising phenomenon. We’re living longer, women can safely bear children later, and there are impressive returns to education–including not only school and college, but also such educative experiences as internships, living abroad, and experimenting with jobs. Under these circumstances, people who can delay do delay all the irreversible markers of adulthood.

Laura says to Rob in High Fidelity, “You’ll keep your options open for the rest of your life, if you could. You’d be lying on your deathbed, dying of some smoking-related disease, and you’d be thinking, well, at least I’ve kept my options open. At least I never ended up doing something I couldn’t back out of.” She’s describing Rob’s amusing character flaw, but it’s more than that–not just a personal trait, but a consequence of investing in people’s “human capital” for the first four decades of their lives so that they can produce economic goods and children for the next three decades before comfortably retiring.

Overall, I think this is progress. People are developing their own rational autonomies by learning and experimenting before they make critical decisions about work and family. One drawback, obviously, is inequality. While some take a decade after college to explore their options, others have left school at 16 and have few choices at all. Hornby’s novel is not really about inequality, but it is about the ethical dimension of delaying adulthood. What makes it time to start the real business of life? How should one treat other people during the period of exploration? (I’d say that no 16-year-old owes any friend or romantic partner a lifelong commitment, but I feel differently about a 30-year-old. Why?) What are the appropriate purposes of exploring one’s options?

motives and incentives in the Iraq war

I’m generally against imputing motives to political leaders. I don’t think we can know what they want; there are too many screens and interpreters between them and us. Motives don’t necessarily matter, because a leader can do the right thing for bad reasons, or the wrong thing with good intentions. Finally, looking for motives encourages us to rely on the wrong criteria of judgment. For instance, a change of position looks like a “flip-flop,” suggesting that the politician’s motive is to attract votes. Consistency over time looks like evidence of sincerity. But we should want leaders to change their minds as circumstances evolve, not show that foolish consistency which is the hobgoblin of small minds.

Although I generally resist inferring motives, it is a different matter to analyze the incentives that apply in a given situation. Once we understand the incentives, we may be able to change them. And changing the incentives is worthwhile, because over time, on average, all else being equal, institutions will act in accord with the incentives.

It has been widely noted that the Bush Administration has an incentive to prolong the Iraq war until the next administration, which will then take the heat for the withdrawal. This does not prove that George W. Bush wants to “run out the clock.” He may want to win and he may believe that some kind of victory is either possible or probable if we stay in Iraq. But the incentive structure probably influences and distorts administration policy in favor of staying the course.

Likewise, several commentators (e.g., Tom Friedman) argue that the United States should consistently and loudly denounce each major terrorist attack that kills Muslims, thereby contesting the false notion that we kill Muslim populations whom terrorists defend. But the incentive for the Bush Administration is to minimize all mass killings in Iraq, in order to argue that our troops are keeping the peace. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) says that civilians in Washington, D.C. are at “far greater risk” of violent death than “average civilian[s] in Iraq.” I don’t know why he and his colleagues say such things–maybe because they believe them. But the incentive for the administration and its allies is certainly to downplay mass killings in Iraq, even if the result is a lost opportunity for public relations.

Of course, the Democrats in Congress face incentives, too. If they do not shorten the war, there will be considerable disillusionment in the country, especially among new voters on the progressive side. But disillusionment by itself doesn’t cost incumbents elections. Prolonged war will be much worse for Republicans than for Democrats. Democrats will have an antiwar presidential ticket, and in most of their districts, their candidates (incumbents or challengers) will be less hawkish than the opponents. If the war continues unabated, turnout may be low because of disillusionment, but I suspect that the Democratic margin will be enormous–a landslide. On the other hand, seriously challenging the president and shortening the war carries all sorts of political risks for the Democrats, who then become responsible for what unfolds in Iraq.

More incentives: To borrow $1 trillion to fight the war and let our children pay it off later with interest. To push our volunteer forces to the limit without expanding their numbers with any kind of draft. To remain in a state of high fear and antagonism toward several foreign countries, justifying all kinds of expansions in federal power and spending. To import carbon fuels from some of those same countries to burn in the atmosphere.

In short, the incentives line up to promote disaster. Even if one imputes somewhat decent motives to some of our leaders, we are in trouble.

Flanagan on “Second Life”

Connie Flanagan, who is one of the very best developmental psychologists who studies civic and political development, has opened a discussion about virtual worlds over at the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning blog. She writes, “our material world is sorely lacking in [free] spaces, especially for young people. … The political potential of free spaces is that they allow us to imagine what our worlds COULD be, what our institutions could look like, and what values we want to bind us together.” Any comments belong with Connie’s post.

the rust belt

I spent Tuesday in Dayton, a city that I have visited several times each year since 1987. I go there to work with the Kettering Foundation, but the city reminds me of my hometown of Syracuse, NY–also a former manufacturing city that once depended on automotive plants. As we drove past the big GM plant in Moraine, OH (where shifts have recently been cut), the driver of my shuttle told me that he had worked for decades at Dayco, an auto parts manufacturer. Dayco was bought out and, according to my driver, the new owners got rid of everyone over 50. So now he drives a shuttle bus for $7/hour plus tips but no benefits. He works seven days a week and sometimes has to sleep in the airport if a late flight is badly delayed. He looked at least 60 years old.

It’s not an unusual story, but it’s a story worth telling and retelling. (By the way, tip your driver.)

the Education Trust and the narrowing of the curriculum

When the Education Trust speaks, newspapers listen. Recently, I wrote to celebrate the new draft of legislation by Rep. George Miller that would broaden the way schools can demonstrate satisfactory progress. Mr. Miller, the leader of the House Democrats on education policy, would allow schools to measure outcomes in subjects like civics, not just reading and math. There are strong opponents of this reform. Kati Haycock, President of the Education Trust, writes:

No federal education law has been more misunderstood than No Child Left Behind. But despite all the complaints, no federal law has accomplished more for the poor and minority children historically shortchanged by our education system.

While we continue to press for closing the achievement gap and preparing all students for the real-world challenges of college and career, the federal law must maintain a laser-like focus on ensuring that all students are proficient in reading and math. Congress should resist calls to add more measures to the current accountability system that would provide “extra credit” for schools failing to meet the needs of their students in these two fundamental subject areas.

The “adequate yearly progress” standard was designed to be easily understood by parents, educators and policymakers. The clarity of the accountability system shouldn’t be muddied by variables that let schools off the hook for poor performance in reading and math, even for just one group of students. Instead, Congress should provide funding for the additional supports and resources that research has identified as critical to academic success — strong, effective teachers empowered by rich curricula tied to high-quality assessments of student learning — and target those resources to the schools that need the most help.

The Washington Post masthead editorial echoes her, whether intentionally or not. So does Fred Hiatt in his Post column, and the New York Times in two masthead editorials. The first:

The country’s largest teachers’ union, the politically powerful National Education Association, would like to see the law gutted. Fortunately, the chairman of the House education committee, George Miller, Democrat of California, has resisted those pressures. Even so, his proposed changes in the law’s crucial accountability provisions, put forth in a draft version of the House bill, may need to be recast to prevent states from backing away from the central mission of the law.

Some critics warn that one provision might allow schools to mask failures in bedrock subjects like reading and math by giving them credit for student performance in other subjects or on so-called alternate indicators.

And the Times repeats these points today, citing the President of the Business Roundtable, John Castellani, who testified against “troubling provisions in a draft reauthorization bill that would allow schools to mask failure in teaching crucial subjects like reading and math by giving them credit for student performance in other subjects or on alternate measures of performances.”

The position of the The Education Trust and Business Roundtable has a legitimate place in the debate. But there is certainly another side, which the Times and Post ought to consider. Considerable evidence now shows that: (a) schools are cutting important subjects to meet the federal testing requirements in reading and math; and (b) students aren’t really reading or understanding math better when they perform better on the required tests. In fact, the more a state improves its scores on the NCLB-required tests, the more its scores fall on other, independent assessments of literacy and math. Students would actually read better if they knew some history and civics and had a sense of why it is important to be able to read the news and write about social issues.