Abe Lincoln the surveyor, or the essential role of strategy

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There’s a great scene in the movie Lincoln when the president tells Thaddeus Stevens:

A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it’ll—it’ll point you True North from where you’re standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what’s the use of knowing True North?

These are the words of Tony Kushner, not (as far as I know) of President Lincoln himself. But they make an important point. Knowing where we ought to end as a society tells us very little about our best next move. Sometimes a tactical retreat or a sidestep is well advised. Thus political philosophy does not address the question, “What should be done?” unless it is married to political strategy–and the division of disciplines and departments makes that combination rare.

I would actually push the point further. There is no end, no literal True North. As we move through time as a people, we keep deciding where we ought to go. Moving in the right direction is important, but so is holding ourselves together as a community so that we can keep deciding where to go. Sometimes, the imperative of maintaining our ability to govern ourselves is more important than forward motion.

In his fine book, Reconstructing the Commercial Republic: Constitutional Design After Madison (University of Chicago Press, 2007), Stephen Elkin introduces this metaphor:

Those who wish to constitute a republican regime are like shipbuilding sailors on a partly uncharted sea who know the direction in which they sail, since the kinds of ports they prefer lie that way. This much they can agree on. To attempt to agree on anything more specific will defeat them, their opinions on the matter differing significantly. They also know too little for substantive agreement to be possible. … It is clear that the relations among the shipbuilders are fundamental. Because they must build, rebuild, repair, and modify the vessel as they sail and learn–and because they must alter their course… — it matters whether the shipbuilders’ modes of association are such as to facilitate this learning and the decisions they must make. … These modes of association are then at least as important as the ports toward which the shipbuilders sail [pp. 107-108].

So it is with a republican regime, Elkin adds; the “essential problem is one of creating a design that provides the capabilities that are needed to keep the regime oriented in the right direction.”

Lincoln provides a rich example for thinking about this problem. He knew the North Star (in that case,  abolition) but he also strove to keep the ship of state together because abolition was not the only or final destination our ship could reach. Lincoln’s was the great case, but the same situation confronts every leader–and every citizen. For instance, our president named the North Star in his Second Inaugural: “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.” But how can a divided America move closer to that objective?

(see also “a real alternative to ideal theory on philosophy” and “beyond civic piety“

Millennials Civic Health Index released today

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Today, the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), CIRCLE, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, and Mobilize.org have released the Millennials Civic Health Index. It paints a comprehensive picture of young Americans 18 to 29 and describes the diverse ways in which Millennials are taking action in their communities beyond the voting booth, online and offline, across different regions of the United States.

Some headlines:

  • this generation of Americans represents a potent civic and political force – comprising a national voting bloc of 21.3% of eligible voters who are playing a critical role in our democracy and driving community action nationwide;
  • education is strongly connected to civic engagement—some indicators show a college graduate is four or five times more likely to engage than someone without a high school diploma;
  • Millennials are hard hit by the economic crisis—62.9% are currently working, of which 31.2% work on a part-time basis—with potential implications for civic engagement;
  • some surprising trends–while engagement typically increases with age, 22-25 year olds have lower levels of social cohesion and volunteerism than older or younger peers. And, while education predicts most forms of engagement, young people without a college education are more likely to help their neighbors on a regular basis.

The full study can be found here. To hear a press call on the release today at 10 am Eastern, please dial 866-889-3913  and enter password YOUTH.

using the full space of moral reasons

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I am certain about some of my moral ideas: genocide is definitely and unequivocally wrong. Some other moral ideas seem equally important, and I would be loath to abandon them, but I feel uncertain or equivocal about them. They capture moral truths, yet they are not fully or certainly right.

Some of my moral ideas are alive in me, informing and guiding the rest of my thoughts and my actual behavior. Other ideas are theoretical or inert: I assent to them but they don’t influence my mind or my actions. Yet (once again) I would be loath to abandon them because they may capture truths that should bind me in new circumstances. For example, if a tyrant arose, I hope I would recall my latent objections to tyranny.

Some of my moral ideas are very general; for instance, Do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself. And some are very particular: make sure that we honor our own organization’s mission statement. My particular ideas do not seem to be mere applications of my general principles, nor are my principles mere abstractions from the particulars. They are different and not fully connected. Again, I would not want to do without any of them.

You could think of these as three dimensions; that would create a space of moral reasons. Each idea can then be placed at a point in the space. I believe that we (because of the kinds of creatures we are) need the full expanse.

Alexis de Tocqueville once remarked that God “stands in no need of general ideas” because He “does not regard the human race collectively. He surveys at one glance and severally all the beings of whom mankind is composed; and he discerns in each man the resemblances that assimilate him to all his fellows, and the differences that distinguish him from them.” Thus God would need no abstractions. God would also have the capacity to act on all of His moral principles, all of the time. He would be fully certain about each of them; and they would all be mutually consistent.

The same is not true for us. Although influential philosophers typically hold subtle and complex views about moral certainty, generality, and the application of moral ideas, I am not sure that we explore–or value, or teach our students to consider–enough of the moral space. We tend to assume that we’d be better off if all our moral ideas could be certain, general, and directly applicable to a broad range of issues and actions. We imagine that the ideal moral agent would fully assent to something resembling a Categorical Imperative (even if not the Kantian version) that would link straightforwardly to the rest of her or his ideas and actions. Nothing like a spiritual exercise (processes for making ideas live in the soul) need intervene between the principles and their application.

The simple view also encourages us to clean things up, getting rid of the ideas that seem partly good and partly bad, or mostly true but not perfectly so, or good under limited circumstances but liable to switch their meanings in different contexts. But the cleanup just deletes some of the the rich experience stored in the full space of our moral reasons.

soft skills for the 21st century workplace: empowered teamwork or emotional labor?

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In the New Republic, Timothy Noah describes how the restaurant chain Pret a Manger forces its workers to be cheerful:

Pret keeps its sales clerks in a state of enforced rapture through policies vaguely reminiscent of the old East German Stasi. A “mystery shopper” visits every Pret outlet once a week. If the employee who rings up the sale is appropriately ebullient, then everyone in the shop gets a bonus. If not, nobody does. This system turns peers into enthusiasm cops, further constricting any space for a reserved and private self.

Noah cites Arlie Hochschild’s notion of “emotional labor.” Whereas factory owners merely purchase their workers’ labor, managers of nursing homes, boutiques, and even fast-food franchises now buy their employees’ moods and attitudes. This is a creepy idea, easily bringing to mind the Stasi. In fact, the East German secret police probably tolerated a certain amount of grouchiness that would get you fired at Pret a Manger.

Meanwhile, we read that 21st century employers need more advanced and challenging interpersonal skills than factory-owners once required. Today’s employees work in diverse groups to analyze problems and invent original solutions. They are no longer assigned to durable and hierarchical teams, but navigate and build shifting networks. This may be stressful, but it is also empowering and challenging. During work-hours, the traditional firm was a dictatorship, but the post-industrial workplace is more democratic–even a “directly deliberative polyarchy” in the words of Michael C. Dorf and Charles F. Sabel.

Which is the more pervasive trend? There is evidence that “soft skills,” “interpersonal skills,” or “people skills” are worth more now, and hard skills are worth less. The boss can teach you the latest hardware and software on the job, but good employees must be able to work together. Thus Borghans et al. (2006) find that the labor-market value of “people skills” has increased rapidly in Britain, Germany and the US since 1970. Their measures of “people skills” include, for example, a preference for work that requires contact with people and a “preference for working for the presumed good of people.”

The tricky part is that these “people skills” include capabilities that are part of a good and rewarding life (such as deliberating about goals, or genuinely caring for other people) as well as creepy invasions of private life (such as always smiling at clients and coworkers).

If employers want the former, then work skills converge with democratic or civic skills. Education can become empowering and experiential; we can teach children to be ethical problem-solvers in all aspects of their lives. But if employers want workers to perform Hoschschild’s “emotional labor” (cheering up their clients or patients by always displaying a sunny attitude), then work skills sharply diverge from civic skills. Then education becomes a matter of disciplining kids to be “positive,” and the boss can grab a bigger part of your soul.

By the way, it’s not so easy to tell when it’s bad for workers to display positive attitudes. Noah writes, “Emotional labor is not itself new. Prostitutes have faked orgasms for millennia. With greater sincerity (one hopes), undertakers calm the grieving, nurses comfort the sick, and migrant nannies lavish on other people’s children the love they aren’t present to furnish back home.” He argues that what is different about Pret a Manger is the absence of valid emotional needs in a fast-food restaurant. “The only imperatives typically addressed in a Pret shop are hunger and thirst. Why must the person who sells me a cheddar and tomato sandwich have ‘presence’ and ‘create a sense of fun?”

I don’t think that’s how to draw the distinction between acceptable and creepy forms of “emotional labor.” People seem to want smiles along with their sandwiches. Why is that desire illegitimate when it’s fine to prefer a sympathetic undertaker? We used to prefer the jolly grocer or miller to the grouchy one, and for similar reasons, we may like to shop at Pret more than McDonalds because of the smiles. In my view, the important question is the underlying power dynamic. If you own your own funeral home and you adopt a posture of sympathy toward your grieving clients, that’s both commendable behavior and good for business. If you’re a famous actor and you feign joy or love, that deserves applause. But if you work for a hospital, a nanny service, a pimp, or an upscale sandwich chain and you have to act cheerful to keep your job, that represents a loss of freedom.

I’ll end with the implications for education, although education is certainly not the only tool we can use to address the problems of 21st century work. Schools should not just teach people to be good employees; instead, they should develop those interpersonal skills that are both intrinsically worthy and valuable in the marketplace. Let employers figure out what to do if their workers have “bad attitudes.” The job of schools is to make people free, although in ways that are compatible with their earning a living. In other words, there is an overlap between what 21st century employers want and what good educators should teach, but their objectives are not identical.

See: Borghans, L., ter Weel, B., & Weinberg, B. A. “People people: Social capital and the labor-market outcomes of underrepresented groups (2006); Dorf, M.C. and Sabel, C.F. “A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism,” Columbia Law Review, vol. 98, no. 2 (March 1998);  Hochschild, A.R., The Managed heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, 20th anniversary edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

decoding the college tuition sticker price

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(Washington, DC) Tuition at Stanford is $41,000/year. But Keith Humphries notes that Stanford offers substantial financial aid, so that families that earn $100,000 per year pay no tuition. After mentioning that Stanford’s endowment is $17 billion, he says, “There are many ways for a wealthy university to allocate its resources … I am proud to say [Stanford] has chosen to spend heavily on ensuring that anyone who is admitted can afford to attend.”

I don’t think the implication is correct. It sounds as if undergraduate education costs Stanford $41,000/student, but it deploys its endowment income to defray those costs for middle-class applicants. But the price tag is the same at many private institutions that have far smaller endowments, that seem to have similar costs per student, and that also provide quite a bit of financial aid. Their aid packages for a family with 6-figure income may not match Stanford’s, but they often come close.

I’m pretty sure this is what is going on: There are thousands of families in the top 10% of the income distribution whose kids are highly qualified for college and who want to get into name-brand institutions. It is easy for those families to spend $41,000/year on tuition; their concern is whether their children will be admitted. To charge them anything less than $41,000 is just leaving money on the table–money that can be used for a variety of worthy educational purposes, including scholarships. But if you charge everyone $41,000, you will end up with a much more homogeneous and less talented student body than you want. So you plan to discount in pursuit of both excellence and diversity. As long as the real cost of education is well under $41,000, you can discount tuition for many students without using any endowment income. In fact, I figure that the real cost per student of an excellent college education is more like $15,000. Setting the base price much higher than that generates resources that can be used for good purposes. The problem, however, is that many families see the sticker price and assume that college is not for them.