Monthly Archives: March 2014

W.H. Auden’s long journey

Articles entitled “The Secret X,” are usually exposés of X’s secret crimes and shames. But Edward Mendelson’s article “The Secret Auden” (New York Review, March 20) catalogs the many discreet acts of kindness, sensitivity, and self-sacrifice of W.H Auden. Auden sounds like one of the nicest famous people who ever lived–sleeping outside the door of an old woman’s apartment to help her with night terrors, befriending awkward teenagers at literary parties, helping convicts with their poetry.

What does this have to do with the man’s writing? Auden went on a long inward moral journey. After his early celebrity as a left-wing poet, he was suspicious of his own motives and the causes they had attached him to. His relentless self-criticism was not barren, self-destructive, or cynical; it gave him material for his best writing.

Mendelson offers an example. Isaiah Berlin was “Auden’s lifelong friend,” and on the surface it would appear that the two men held similar views: resistant to ideology and tolerant of human beings in all their crooked particularity. In his essay on Turgenev, Berlin wrote: “The dilemma of morally sensitive, honest, and intellectually responsible men at a time of acute polarization of opinion has, since [Turgenev’s] time, grown acute and world-wide.” Mendelson summarizes Auden’s response:

Whatever Berlin intended, a sentence like this encourages readers to count themselves among the sensitive, honest, and responsible, with the inevitable effect of blinding themselves to their own insensitivities, dishonesties, and irresponsibilities, and to the evils committed by a group, party, or nation that they support. Their “dilemma” is softened by the comforting thought of their merits.

This is an example of how far Auden’s journey had taken him: from ideology to the anti-ideological liberalism of Isaiah Berlin, and then beyond that to a stance of deep self-criticism in which even anti-ideology is an ideology. As Mendelson notes, Auden dedicated “The Lakes” (1952) to Berlin. This poem is about preferring homely lakes to the great ocean, and enjoying their diversity and particularity. Berlin might agree, but Auden inserts a warning (not quoted here by Mendelson): “Liking one’s Nature, as lake-lovers do, benign / Goes with a wish for savage dogs and man-traps.”

At a high-theoretical level, Auden explored the many ways in which we are tempted to adopt self-aggrandizing ideas. In his poems, Auden depicted those clashing ideas with irony and humor. And in his private life, he tried to act kindly and lovingly toward all. It seems he actually lived the life he (over-generously) attributed to Sigmund Freud:

Of course they called on God, but he went his way
down among the lost people like Dante, down
to the stinking fosse where the injured
lead the ugly life of the rejected,

and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,
deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
our dishonest mood of denial,
the concupiscence of the oppressor.

the civic one million versus the Lesters

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Lawrence Lessig makes the following argument in his TED Talk, his excellent stump speech (which he gave last week at Tufts), and his book The USA is Lesterland:

Members of Congress and candidates for Congress spend anywhere between 30% and 70% of their time raising money to get themselves elected or their party back in power. But they raise that money not from all of us. Instead, they raise that money from the tiniest fraction of the 1%. Less than 1/20th of 1% of America are the “relevant funders” of congressional campaigns. That means about 150,000 Americans, or about the same number who are named “Lester,” wield enormous power over this government. These “Lesters” determine this critical first election in every election cycle—the money election.

I could not agree more. I spent 1991-3 lobbying for campaign finance reform on behalf of Common Cause and have watched things deteriorate ever since. I admire Lessig’s extraordinary leadership and commitment, exemplified by his walking across New Hampshire recently to raise awareness. He has moved easily 1,000 times as many people as I have with my book The New Progressive Era and other writings about campaign finance.

Yet I am not that optimistic about the strategies he proposes. He is clear-eyed about the limitations of each strategy but leaves the audience wondering if anything can work. Here is where I would offer an alternative.

The “Lesters” are exceptionally powerful because their money buys communication. They do not literally purchase votes; they buy the ability to advertise and persuade. One reason that they raise so much money ($7 billion in 2012) is that mass communication has a low return on investment. Influencing elections is an expensive and uncertain proposition.

Meanwhile, in We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, I estimate that at least one million Americans are currently involved in demanding forms of civic work–projects and programs that involve strong elements of open-ended public deliberation. Collectively, they engage many millions of their fellow citizens. Their impact per dollar is much higher, because they have strong relationships with peers.

But they are so deeply invested in specific civic projects that they do not have the time to step back and ask why civic work is so frustrating and marginal in our society. A major reason is the corruption of our political institutions, and the Lesters are deeply implicated in that. The strategy I recommend is to organize the “Civic One Million” for political reform. They have vastly less money than the Lesters, but they may actually have more of what the Lesters try to buy: persuasiveness.

In practical terms, this means convening people who do civic work to ask why their efforts are so hard, to diagnose the barriers, and to develop collective strategies for political reform.

toward a technique for moral reflection

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My undergraduate students have identified their own most significant moral ideas and commitments and the important connections among them. The image above shows the networks that have resulted so far–with each student colored differently, and each idea shown as shared if two or more students held it. Today, students are pairing up to explain their moral networks and will adjust their own maps if their partners propose persuasive ideas (or remind them of any ideas they forgot). I anticipate that the class map will become a tighter network as a result.

As I briefly explained in class, a network is a model that can be used to describe anyone’s moral thought. The nodes are ideas; the links are various kinds of connections. That people have moral networks is not a theory that could be found true or false. Rather, a network is a tool for visualizing how anyone thinks.

Often, when we try to improve our moral thought, we seek a systematic philosophy or theology. At any rate, systems (such as Kantianism, utilitarianism, or the classical Hinduism of the Bhagavad Gita) are what we most often teach in courses on philosophy and religion.

Any system organizes the whole network in some way. For instance, the system may assert that there is one highest good (very general and abstract) that should imply all the other ideas on our map. Or the system may offer an algorithm for determining which ideas belong and which ones trump other ones.

If a moral system is valid, then an individual can relate directly to it. You can adopt it as your network. You don’t need other people to help apply the system to your own life.

If you can make a moral system work, that’s fine. But I find that almost all reflective people are not systematic; they have lots of related ideas without a coherent structure. (The same has also been found by some psychologists and sociologists.) This is even true of very religious people. They may assert that God knows one organized structure or even the God holds just one idea. But we can’t know it. We humans must hold lots of different beliefs, values, stories, heroes, etc.–closely connected but not reducible to a system.

If we can’t adopt a system, the other way to improve is constantly to reflect on and revise our own networks. This is more like gardening than architecture. You start with what’s already growing, and you trim, weed, and plant one idea at a time. That process requires other people because we need their perspectives and experiences to provide ideas and to check our own biases. We can expect that our moral network will be dynamic and somewhat situational. (We’ll have different ideas in different contexts.)

At times in the history of thought, systematic moral theories have been dominant. But those moments have alternated with times when many of the leading thinkers just can’t assent to the available systems. They instead offer techniques for moral reflection and self-improvement (a.k.a. moral therapy, or moral hygiene). For instance, the systematic moment of Plato and Aristotle gave way to Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism, which are all about techniques of self-improvement. The high point of medieval Catholic systematic theology gave way to Renaissance essayists like Montaigne. The era of Kant and Hegel gave way to Emerson and Nietzsche. I think the same alternation has occurred in Eastern thought as well.

The thinkers who teach methods of continuous moral improvement vary a great deal, but I find a very frequent return to three fundamental criteria, each in tension with the other two: 1) truth, or at least the avoidance of error; 2) community or justice; and 3) happiness or inner peace. For instance, those are the three criteria in Greco-Roman thought after Aristotle. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, a rabbi of about the same time, is supposed to have said: “On three things the world stands: justice, truth, and peace.” In Buddhism, the Three Jewels are Buddha (freedom from suffering), dharma (law—but in Buddhism, it often means truth), and sangha (community).

And that is why I am interested in putting people into dialogue with each other about their moral networks and asking them to reflect on whether their networks are compatible with truth, community, and happiness.

civics projects are good for AP scores (and what that means more generally)

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University of Washington Professor Walter Parker and colleagues are running experiments in which some classes take AP US Government as it’s typically taught (textbooks, lectures, and some discussion), and others experience a curriculum based on mock trials and other projects. All the kids take the same AP standardized test. The project-based curriculum evolves from year to year, because Parker and colleagues didn’t have a perfect model all ready to adopt. But, as they have run the experiment, the kids in the project-based courses have performed at least as well on the AP test as their peers, while also demonstrating higher scores on civic engagement.

All this is well described in a Seattle Times piece by Linda Shaw. The project is important as a rigorous test of the theory that people learn better when they are engaged and interested. Here, the outcome measure (an AP test) is artificial and isolating. Each kid answers the questions privately, to demonstrate her knowledge of relatively abstract material. The kids’ creativity and interaction with each other are not assessed. And yet, learning the material through experience yields equal or better test scores.

The project is also important as a model of collaboration between teachers and university-based scholars. It isn’t a randomized study of a prepackaged intervention (although we do those, and I would defend them), but rather a collaborative process of design and redesign that is then measured very rigorously.

Finally, this project suggests a partial solution to a deep problem. Contrary to popular belief, we have not really cut civic education from our schools. But we have transformed it from a set of discussions and projects into a bunch of academic courses that mimic the social sciences in college–of which AP US Government is a prominent example.

In 1928-9, according to federal statistics, more than half of all American ninth-graders took “civics.” This was the tail end of the Progressive Era, and “civics” meant learning about one’s own community and, often, doing group projects outside of the school.* Enrollment in courses called “civics” had fallen to 13.4 by the early 1970s.

In 1948-9, 41.5 percent of American high school students took “problems of democracy,” which typically involved reading and debating stories from the daily newspaper. By the early 1970s, that percentage was down to 8.9.** But the percentage of high school students who have taken any government course has been basically steady since 1915-1916, and AP US Government is the fastest growing AP course.

Thus we have basically transformed civic education from guided experience of citizenship*** into a dispassionate study of the US government. On philosophical grounds, I object. But as long as that trend continues, Walter Parker’s research is enormously helpful. He shows that by using some of the old techniques of “civics” and “problems of democracy,” we can actually achieve higher scores on a what amounts to a poli. sci. exam–presumably because kids are more engaged and challenged.

*Meira Levinson and Peter Levine, “Taking Informed Action to Engage Students in Civic Life,” Social Education, vol. 77 no 6 (Nov Dec 2013), pp. 339-341

**Richard G. Niemi and Julia Smith, “Enrollments in High School Government Classes: Are We Short-Changing Both Citizenship and Political Science Training?” PS: Political Science and Politics, vol. 34, no. 2 (June 2001), p. 282.

***”Guided experiential education” is Levinson’s term.

the benefits of service for low-income youth

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Here are five key points for anyone who promotes service as a means to improve the success of low-income young people.

1. Teenagers who participate in community service have much better academic and psycho-social outcomes than their peers.

Sources: Alberto Dávila and Marie T. Mora, “An Assessment of Civic Engagement and Educational Attainment” (Medford, MA: Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, 2007); Christopher Spera, Robin Ghertner, Anthony Nerino, and Adrienne DiTommaso, Volunteering as a Pathway to Employment: Does Volunteering Increase Odds of Finding a Job for the Out of Work? (Washington, DC: Corporation for National and Community Service, Office of Research and Evaluation, 2013); Dawn Anderson-Butcher, W. Sean Newsome, Theresa M. Ferrari, “Participation in Boys & Girls Clubs and Relationships to Youth Outcomes,” Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 31, No. 1 (2003), pp. 39–55; Jennifer A. Fredericks and Jacquelynne S. Eccles, “Is Extracurricular Participation Associated with Beneficial Outcomes? Concurrent and Longitudinal Relations,” Developmental Psychology, vol. 42, no. 4 (2006), pp. 698-713.

Caveat: These correlations do not prove causation. Teenagers who serve may have personality traits or positive influences from peers, families, institutions, and communities that also explain why they succeed academically. Besides, service clubs and programs have other features (apart from service) that may explain their benefits.

2. At risk-youth enrolled in certain programs that involve service see substantial improvements in academic and economic outcomes

Sources: CIRCLE, “Pathways into Leadership: A Study of YouthBuild Graduates” (Medford: MA, CIRCLE, 2012); Megan Millenky, Dan Bloom, Sara Muller-Ravett, and Joseph Broadus, Staying on Course: Three-Year Results of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Evaluation (New York: MDRC, 2011); Constance Flanagan & Peter Levine, “Youth Civic Engagement During the Transition to Adulthood,” in Mary Waters, Gordon Berlin, and Frank Furstenberg (eds.), Transition to Adulthood (Princeton/Brookings: The Future of Children), vol. 20, no. 1, Spring 2010, pp. 159-180.

Caveats: These programs always have other aspects besides service (e.g., caring adults; academic coursework, sometimes residential living). Also, the evaluation methods leave some uncertainty about causation.

3. Service programs have characteristics that resemble the 21st Century workplace. Therefore, they should prepare students for success in the job market.

Sources: Reed W. Larson and Rachel M. Angus, “Adolescents’ Development of Skills for Agency in Youth Programs: Learning to Think Strategically,” Child Development, vol. 82, issue 1, pp. 277–294; Peter Levine, “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: The Economic Impact of Public Work in America’s Colleges and Universities,” in Harry C. Boyte (ed.), Democracy’s Education: A Symposium on Power, Public Work, and the Meaning of Citizenship (Vanderbilt University Press, in press)

Caveats: Service programs vary in the degree to which they impart valuable skills and habits. Other factors besides skills and habits affect success in the job market. Students may actually obtain valuable skills but not be able to demonstrate those skills to potential employers.

4. There is some evidence that hiring managers see volunteering as relevant experience to consider when making employment decisions.

Sources: CareerBuilder Study Reveals Surprising Factors that Play a Part in Determining Who Gets Hired,” August 28, 2013; Deloitte, “2013 Volunteer IMPACT Survey.”

Caveats: These are based on surveys of managers, who may say they want to hire volunteers even though volunteering does not actually matter.

5. Communities with more civic engagement have much better economic, educational, and social outcomes than similar communities with less engagement.

Sources: Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Chaeyoon Lim & Peter Levine, “Civic Health and Unemployment II: The Case Builds,” National Conference on Citizenship: Washington, DC, 2012; Robert D. Putnam, “Community-Based Social Capital and Educational Performance,” in Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti (eds.), Making Good Citizens: Education and Civil Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 58-95; Robert J. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Sean Safford, Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009); Peter Levine, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)

Caveats: In these studies, volunteering per se does not predict economic success. Other civic engagement variables–e.g., the number of nonprofits per capita; the density of civic networks; or “collective efficacy”–are the predictors. Also, we do not know whether increasing the civic engagement of (some) youth would boost their communities’ civic engagement in a lasting way.