Monthly Archives: May 2006

the age of reason?

Does it make any sense to call the 18th century the Age of Reason? The primacy of reason had been argued long before then and would be defended later. Most (if not all) of the main techniques of rational analysis had been discovered earlier. And many of the era’s leading thinkers held mixed or even negative views about reason. For instance, Hume: “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

Nevertheless, the Age of Reason seems an apt title, as long as we define “reason” in a certain way. It strikes me that 1689-1788 was a time of judicious selectiveness, a period when the intellectual options were deliberately narrowed according to certain rational criteria.

In the seventeenth century, alternatives had proliferated. There were countless Protestant sects as well as new strains of Catholicism. The Scientific Revolution occurred, yet alchemy and astrology also flourished. Vital political ideologies ranged from royal absolutism to the communism of the Diggers, by way of constitutionalism, the Mayflower Compact, and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. Scholars had unearthed a great variety of ancient texts–not only the ones that we view today as “classics,” but also various Hellenistic, late-Roman, and early-Christian books that few people read any more. More Western scholars could manage Greek than at any time since the fall of the Roman Empire; some also learned Aramaic and Coptic. They not only admired Plato and Aristotle, but also Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysus the Psuedo-Areopagite and Zoroaster. Jesuit missionaries and others brought back the earliest reliable information about China, Japan, and India. See the Wikipedia entry on Athanasius Kircher for a sample of what an intellectually omniverous man could know ca. 1660.

To people of education and discretion a century later, it appeared that men like Kircher knew too much. Some of their erudition had been wasted on fruitless topics. The Age of Reason, if we can generalize about it at all, was a time for sorting out the heritage of early-modern Europe, distinguishing science from the occult, the literary canon from the rest of the library, mainstream religion from various radical sects, civilized people from barbarians, and reasonable political options from crazy ones.

Such consolidation was perhaps inevitable, but gradually a desire built up for broader and less temperate options. A rough definition of Romanticism could be: Views and ideas that would have been dismissed as “irrational” between the Glorious Revolution and the storming of the Bastille.

Congress vs. Facebook

Any American between the ages of 15 and 25 (or any parent or teacher thereof) has probably heard of Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace, the social networking services. Users create webpages with their pictures and self-descriptive information. Visitors can also leave notes and see links to the owners’ friends’ pages.

Such services are hugely popular; in fact my college students use Facebook instead of email. The general idea has lots of potential for other applications. For example, e-ssembly is a new social networking service explicitly designed to facilitate political discussion and organization.

However, via Mobilizing America’s Youth, I learned about HR 5319, the “Deleting Online Predators Act” of 2006. This bill would require schools that accept federal discounts for Internet service to:

prohibit access by minors without parental authorization to a commercial social networking website or chat room through which minors may easily access or be presented with obscene or indecent material; may easily be subject to unlawful sexual advances, unlawful requests for sexual favors, or repeated offensive comments of a sexual nature from adults; or may easily access other material that is harmful to minors.

I can’t imagine a way to block all “harmful” material on a social network. That means that the bill would force high schools to ban social networking software. Granted, the expansion of Facebook to high schools has provoked criticisms. Among other problems, there is some potential for stalkers to create accounts. However, young people have First Amendment rights and need to be able to use new modes of communication. For example, almost everyone agrees that teenagers should be allowed to use email and the web, even though both contain much harmful material. When it comes to social network software, schools can set their own rules and don’t need to be babysat by the federal government. Surely there must be a better way to prevent stalking than by banning social software in all the high schools of America.

the “silent disease” of technocracy: an illustration

Last week, Harry Boyte wrote on this blog: “Technocracy, spreading through society like a silent disease, presents itself as an objective set of truths, practices, and procedures. But it turns people into abstract categories. It decontextualizes problems from civic life. It privatizes the world and creates a pervasive sense of scarcity. It profoundly erodes a culture of equal respect.”

These are strong words, but I’d like to support and elucidate his position with an example. Today, powerful institutions and constituencies are concerned about high school dropouts. They address the dropout problem by trying to isolate discrete underlying causes. Consultants tell them that “reading proficiency in third grade [as measured by test scores] is the single strongest predictor of high-school dropout rate.” When the Business Roundtable and others notice this correlation, they increase the already intense pressure to improve third-grade reading scores. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools are required to make “adequate yearly progress” toward uniform success on reading exams. At the third grade, reading tests emphasize phonics and decoding skills. Therefore, teachers–encouraged by consultants and companies that sell tools for diagnosis and instruction–spend a great deal of instructional time teaching decoding skills, often using meaningless text for practice.

This is a perfect example of viewing students as bundles of problems, isolating discrete causes, and applying interventions developed by experts. However, pure phonics instruction probably does not work, even for the advertised purpose of raising reading scores at third grade. Learning to read also requires motivation, cultural knowledge, and comprehension skills. Even if current strategies did produce higher reading scores at age eight, they probably would not mitigate the high-school dropout problem. Although literacy at third grade and completion of high-school are correlated right now, that does not mean that the former causes the latter. Recent evidence finds that many high school students who drop out can manage the academic curriculum but are profoundly bored or alienated in school.

In a technocratic age, people are prone to identify pathologies and provide expert-driven remediation. However, in dealing with the high school dropout problem, we have a clear alternative. Proponents of “positive youth development” hold that adolescents are not incomplete adults who are prone to various pathologies (such as illiteracy and dropping out). Instead, by virtue of their energy, enthusiasm, and fresh outlook, adolescents have special contributions to make: aesthetic, spiritual, athletic, intellectual, and civic. By giving them opportunities to contribute, we actually reduce their odds of getting into trouble more than we would through prevention, surveillance, and discipline.

The research on positive youth development is not yet as strong as we might like. However, assume (on the basis of numerous impressive examples) that it would work better than the technocratic approach described above. Positive youth development would need experts: researchers, consultants, and others who would share accumulated knowledge. But it couldn’t be dominated by specialists. That’s because providing youth with positive opportunities requires local knowledge and voluntary support from across a community, including from youth themselves. No “off-the-shelf” package for community-engagement could possibly be sufficient.

a mild protest

At the University of Maryland, we have a Coalition for Civic Engagement and Leadership. I serve on it, along with many administrators and a few professors and students. A group of undergraduates recently learned of our coalition. Critical of Maryland for failing to encourage activism and engagement, they decided to show up uninvited at our meeting and make a statement–whether we liked it or not.

Of course, we were excited and delighted. What are we but a bunch of ex-student activists who long for the scent of tear gas in the groves of academe? (Or at least a good anti-apartheid rally.) We planned to rush through our official business an hour early so that we could turn our attention to the students when they showed up. Some of my colleagues even helped the protesters to locate the room. They dutifully filed in, exactly on time, and took their seats: some in dreadlocks and tie-dyed shirts. Extremely nice, cautious, and a little diffident, they began to speak about their goal of making the campus, like, more engaged?

My colleagues and I listed politely and then probed the students for more ideas and opinions. At the end, various members of the Coalition complimented the students for their political act, saying that they had already changed the campus for the better. On his way out, one of the young men asked me about admission to the School of Public Policy.

I hardly know how to explore the comic possibilities here.

leadership

At a meeting yesterday, I said, “Leadership is choosing which pressure to cave to.” I’ve had this thought for several years, although I’m not sure whether I made it up or borrowed it from someone. In either case, it was received as a scrap of wisdom, so I pass it on here.

The corollary: To get what you want, organize people to put pressure on you that you want to cave to.