Globalisation: In The Field

By now it should come as no surprise to anybody that my research area is within that widely-dispersed and contestable phenomenon (or, to the hardcore, 'presumed phenomenon') known as globalisation. It is indeed a fiercely contested phenomenon, because many heavyweights have attempted to define, counter-define, or redefine it; some have sought to rubbish it as just a convenient term to cover many other phenomena that just happen to interact across the globe.

But something from a recent paper by Susan Robertson resonated within me. And, as a former communications specialist, I realised how appropriate that metaphor was.

You see, globalisation is indeed a field. Like the many fields we encounter in physics, defining it is often based on empirical research concerning how it acts upon (or otherwise interacts with) other entities. In the case of a modulated radio-wave field, it induces a variable current in a conductor (or antenna), which we can convert to audible sound waves.

Similarly, globalisation is a field with many components. Some components can be measured by effects on entities (such as 'education sectors' or 'markets') and sub-entities thereof (such as 'schools' or 'businesses'). Some can be measured by less quantitative effects and other debateable phenomena such as human well-being and quality of life.

The lessons we learn from investigating the field of globalisation therefore depend very much on which instruments we use and what entities we observe interacting with that field. Since the primary observers, investigators and participants are all human, globalisation field theory is thus a human science, and can be treated as a multi-disciplinary area of expertise much as complexity theory.

But is globalisation a real phenomenon? Undoubtedly it is. It is real in the sense that it is not ideal, but actual; it is also real in the sense that discussing it as a phenomenon allows us to say it is one, since it is a human phenomenon. After all, we have no doubt that 'love' is a real phenomenon even though some people say it all boils down to oxytocin levels.

Parrot Island

Parrot Island is a former protectorate of West Iberia. According to the morris-man, it is characterised by extreme conflict-avoiding and self-protective behaviour when it comes to providing information to educational researchers. This, he puts down to Sinical tendencies, that curious oriental blend of the sinister and the cynical.

It is an interesting case-study and factor analysis he carried out nigh on five years ago. It is quite applicable to the case of Atlantis, and he would find the same things — on a tiny island, everyone knows everyone or everyone's everyone. This makes it impractical to hew to the ethical ideals of anonymity, untraceability and confidentiality. Sooner or later, if X is doing research in Y, it will be figured out exactly what X is doing and how dangerous it is to the institutions involved.

To prevent all hell from breaking loose, it is therefore necessary for all to indulge in face-saving, face-hiding, and face-gaining behaviours. And likewise, the interrogator or researcher should allow for these behaviours when doing legitimate research. It is all very interesting, although it is also a great pain.

Faithlight

More than a decade ago, I submitted my Master's thesis on a mission school. At that time, the scope of my study was small, and it was possible to anonymise the data enough to avoid criticism. Since then, as my investigations have grown, the detail has reached such a level that anonymity is impossible to maintain.

Hence, returning to Faithlight, the pseudonymous school of my earlier endeavour, has been a perilous undertaking. Many have asked questions about it, and I have answered. As the answers accumulate, so do the questions. And investigation has been made even more difficult by the usual foes of investigations.

At times like this, I always have absurdly colonialist images and sounds passing through my head. In this case, for some reason, it's A. E. Housman, with his grand poem 1887 being read out loud by Ted Hughes. The last verse of that poem reads:

Oh, God will save her, fear you not:
Be you the men you've been,
Get you the sons your fathers got,
And God will save the Queen.

I've quoted this poem in this blog before, but for very different reasons, I think.

The Wyvern Integrated Master Plan (WIMP)

After a five-year study of the curriculum being taught at the Citadel of the Wyverns, the following points were clearly supported by a conservative interpretation of the evidence.

1. Content. There is nothing new under the sun. Except perhaps that the old GEP curriculum has been a) extended, and b) diluted. The original IP has been drowned in the blood of innocents. Content has been altered slightly, but the textbooks are 95% identical to the kind used in non-IP institutions.

2. Methodology. Same old teaching methods. No power, no point. A few more radical people teaching in unusual ways, which is to be expected since the staff was doubled in size. In fact, they seem to have become even more boring, overall.

3. Results. Well within the expected outcomes for a random cohort at the percentile intake. There is no significant value added.

4. Conclusion. They spent all that money on what, exactly?

Responses 002 (2011-2012)

Looking at the new list began to be interesting in a whole new way with Question 2: "Compare and contrast knowledge which can be expressed in words/symbols with knowledge that cannot be expressed in this way. Consider CAS and one or more areas of knowledge."

It's the first question I've seen that would be partly incomprehensible except to a student of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. That's because it has the term 'CAS' in it — an acronym for 'Creativity, Action, Service'. This core element of the Diploma is supposed to act as a counterbalance to academic work, and consists largely of activities one might think of as 'experiential learning'.

And that immediately supplies us with one possible key. To participate in CAS is to design a course of study for yourself, but one which acts as a counterpoint to traditional academic studies — all of which consist largely of knowledge expressed and assessed by words/symbols. Evaluation in CAS consists of documenting your reflections on what you have done and how that has affected your outlook and perception of life; it's more about knowledge that can be described but not expressed fully without going through similar experiences.

That's not to say that none of it can be expressed in words and symbols. If you've learnt how to make pots or have been digging latrines in Peru, the physical and material aspects can be communicated — e.g. 'How to Dig a Latrine in 5 Easy Steps', or 'How to Make a Basic Pot' — in words and diagrams. But what you've learnt about cameraderie, teamwork and working in an alien environment — these are much less easy to convey.

This is a difficult question, though, because of at least one philosophical position. If your brain is a machine, then its inputs and outputs can theoretically be completely described in words and symbols. All your sensory perceptions, emotional changes, communication abilities and reasoning processes can be converted to symbolic form. It's a big 'if', but a discussion of its 'iffiness' is crucial to the discussion of this question.

So... what exactly is knowledge that CANNOT be expressed in words or symbols? Is there such a thing? Or does it only exist in a way because some people are just not articulate enough to express their knowledge by such means? A famous researcher is rumoured to have said, "There is no such thing as qualitative research, just quantitative research that hasn't been adequately defined." Ho ho.

Barricades

Ah, the barricades are going up at the Citadel of the Wyverns on the white cliffs. The aasvogel which runs the place is denying researchers, investigators, and other interested parties the opportunity to examine how exactly it is being run.

I am, however, happy to share the fruit of five years of interviews and data collection. It is illuminating. Some areas are excellently run indeed, and they can be used to cover for other areas of somewhat dubious quality.

We shall storm the barricades! When the new administration is deployed, there will be much bloodshed. All of it will be in red ink, though, not real blood. Ho ho ho. Education is a wonderful thing; educational research, even more so.

Fire and Forget

After a long period of data-gathering and analysis, we sat by the River and wept, because we remembered Zion. Or something like that.

The results of the seven-year long study showed that the two big problems of the otherwise extremely successful institution were these:

1. Academic success based more on quality of intake (and adjustment of internal assessment) than on staff quality and developmental processes (no matter what certain spurious quality-control awards might have implied).
   
2. Inability or lack of desire to supply proper aftercare and upgrading of product offerings.

Frankly, one would not attach too much credence to such assertions, except that these findings were vetted by the very highest echelons of the body controlling this institution and its fellow subsidiaries. In all, an end-run for the research team and a can of worms for the searched team.

Also, a sad moment as we sat by the River. The eldest of us turned around and looked at the rest, and he said, This must not continue. It must not be seen that this nest specialises in kicking the fledglings out and measuring their success based on how great the kick is and not on whether the fledglings have been taught to fly. The counter-argument, of course, is that if the fledglings can fly, why bother about how they learn it? Well, it's all about integrity. This isn't nature; this is an institution of public character (as my tax accountant assured me). The point is to take in fledglings who would not normally learn how to fly and teach them to use their wings.

Ah well, I suppose that one can always hope for a better age.

Synthesis

Today one of my professional colleagues paid me the compliment of saying that I was a 'real pro at synthesizing'. Coming from this person, I took it in the spirit intended; that is to say, 'a professional at reconciling multiple viewpoints and presenting them as a seamless tapestry'.

Yes, at the very least, I have become an essayist with historical tendencies. That's not so bad. I stand in good company with many who I would otherwise not qualify to stand with by virtue of quality. But like Newton, I suppose I can say that if I have seen further, it has been by standing on the shoulders of giants.

I've had two of my papers enter the final pre-publication phase in one week. I've come to realise that if I string all the beads together in the right way, I will be able to make the big deadline soon. The problem is that there are so many beads.

Well, maybe I'll be able to put them together like the facets of an insect's eye and produce, miraculously, some sort of coherent vision. When that happens, I shall have won this war. I shall feel most Maccabaean.

Analysing Development Fail (Negative Perspective)

So what should you do if you really wanted a proper integrated system of education, without the 'development fail' that afflicts so many? Clearly, you should begin with a vision (what you hope to achieve in the long run), a mission (what it is you're supposed to be doing), and a philosophy (the principles which decide how you do it and why — and how you won't do it).

But that also reveals what the three main errors are in the world of education planning: myopia, mission creep and missing principles. There are ways to reduce these errors or attempt to eliminate them, but in order to do so you first have to identify them.

Myopia strikes first. You can tell myopia is present when you ask this question: "How does what we are doing actually help to make our vision come about in the long run?"

For example, if the vision is 'all our students will be global citizens' then you should ask two versions of the question: i) 'What is the causal link between activities such as overseas awareness/service programmes and becoming a global citizen?' and ii) 'Would the students we have become global citizens without our intervention?'

The former, if it can be shown, would show a true positive or negative in terms of having a functional theory of achieving the vision; the latter would show the danger of false positives or false negatives — i.e. students achieving or failing to achieve but not as the result of the education delivered.

Mission creep, the distortion of a pre-existing mission, is more insidious. For a start, it is very likely that if the students can't say what the mission is, mission creep has already occurred. It's also easy to detect mission creep by linguistic analysis — if the mission statement contains complex arguments or long sentences then it's quite likely not a good mission statement, or mission creep has seeped in.

Missing principles, which render a philosophy of education hollow in the sense that key axioms are lacking, are harder to detect. For religious mission schools, this is easy — if core principles are taken by quoting scriptural verses, it's quite likely that principles are missing. Why? Because Christians, for example, believe in something much more complex than running an entire endeavour based on one or two verses from their Bible. For secular schools, this is not so easy, since it requires line by line analysis to determine if there are missing ideas or not.

There is however a much easier way to detect 'development fail'. After reading about 3500 papers on the subject, I can with some assurance say that if the word 'holistic' crops up anywhere in the documentation, 'development fail' is 100% likely to occur. This is because 'holistic' is a nice ideal, but nobody can define it, and because they can't, they can't work towards it or have a philosophy based on it — not without being terribly dishonest.

Some argue that their holism is limited to things like 'developing multiple intelligences' and they proceed to list them. But if something is really 'holistic' then it surely cannot mean 'limited' or 'listable in a finite list'. Some say that they mean 'developing the whole person'. This is a cute evasion, but if it doesn't mean things like 'teaching people how to groom their fingernails' or 'teaching them how to cook a decent meal' — which are obviously good things — then obviously the system doesn't mean the WHOLE person, but really 'all the parts of the person that we think are good parts, and forget the rest.'

The most rational way to limit holism that I've seen is the 'honest admission' trick: "We would like to provide a truly holistic education but we are limited by material, funds and time." Well, yes, that's true — but then you shouldn't tout 'holistic' should you? Naughty, naughty.

The sad part is that most people are easily taken in. It is like Hitler's big lie — if you say holistic, and genuinely provide a lot more opportunities (the educational equivalent of Lebensraum) than most people would otherwise be exposed to, people will believe that it is holistic, as if you could have 'relatively more holistic' as a meaningful phrase.

But this is what analysis means: we break things apart to see what really is there, and not just have a quick look and give some award for Quality or Class or Something Bigger Than We Thought We'd See.

Truth or Dare?

Today, I had the opportunity to catch up on some reading and I read these immortal lines: "In a free society, independent journalists and scholars will invariably emerge to write stories and accounts they honestly believe."

The problem is that, as in other free societies, there are morons who honestly believe that aliens are cloning Elvis up a kangaroo's arse, and so on. Thus we get stories and accounts they honestly believe but which we shouldn't.

I find this typical of many 'truth in journalism' and 'open society' publications and websites. 10% sycophancy or whatever becomes 100% untruth on the principle that unless something is completely truth, it is all falsehood. The problem has always been at least twofold in journalism:

1) Since total objectivity and completeness of knowledge are impossible, how objective and complete is the account? (And if you go for 100%, then it's ALL lies no matter what, no matter where.)

2) How qualified is the interpretation of data? And what is the significance of any particular datum?

The questions that the public should ask of ALL sides are: Does any of this drive society forward or is it just manure stirring/spreading to prove one's anti-/pro- establishment or academic scholar/shrewd man-in-the-street credentials?

In my own research on educational reform and globalization, my intention is clear, as is the intention of some others toiling in the same field: if we can figure out what works and duplicate it with the least cost, perhaps educational practice will improve; if we can figure out what is just window-dressing and rah-rah circuses, perhaps we can reduce costs and still get as useful an education or better. We will never know all the truth, because there are too many filters, too many facts, too many opinions and perspectives. But we can make some pretty good guesses based on criteria which we can present openly for other people to think about.

And subsequently, we can stand before an open and rationally-directed assault on our conclusions and attempt to answer the assault with rational defence, or admit that we were wrong.

That's not to say that the field of educational research is always being turned over and dug into with honest intentions. Sometimes, as in ALL human endeavours, there is a political aim that is being concealed. In mine, to be fair, the political aim is to show that we can get a better education without a lot of things that people say are needed but which aren't. For me, I sometimes think that modern education is still like an alchemical approach to science — we carry out activities that aren't relevant (along with the necessary processes) on the way to producing the desired outcomes, and sometimes we produce serendipitous outcomes that we claim we were aiming at all along (but weren't really).

In the end, truth in matters concerning human societies is as much a matter of conscience, ethics, and hard work as anything else. We don't get the pure 'truth' (i.e. axiomatic consistency) of mathematics, but the messy constructions of literature. What we need to do is educate people to figure out how honest we were, whether a more reasonable and honest account can be justified, and to write the upgrade version themselves instead of berating the original writers for not being so good. I for one would be only too happy to have any of my writings corrected after a fair reading.

Elitism in Atlantis

Atlantis, socioculturally speaking, is metaphorically a lot like Australia. It is a huge island with civilisation on its margins and a vast desert inland. Occasionally, in that vast desert, you come across desert-adapted humans and animals.

This is what leads people to look at Atlantis and say, pseudo-knowingly, "Ah, I know what makes Atlantis tick! Its governance proceeds entirely from two kinds of elite cultures — the green and black edge of civilisation inherited from a colonial past, and the aboriginal desert in shades of brown. After all, these places are where all their most powerful officials come from, and there is nothing else."

This is the consequence of not drilling deeper into the history and sociocultural underpinnings of a particular society. The elite cultures (or sources of the elite, just as bacterial cultures are sources of bacteria) of Atlantis actually are three in number, for things do tend to come in threes. It is something many academic observers overlook, even while they are mouthing their reasonable and extensive conjectures about what makes Atlantis run.

You see, like Australia, the land (whether the green and black edge or the brown desert vastness) is illuminated and made magical by blue sea and sky, golden sunlight, and the rich and peculiar red rocks of the depths. It is a foolhardy academic who looks only at the land, and not at what makes that land come alive.

Why am I saying all this? Well, over the weekend, I was re-reading a few books written by some Australian academics (or journalists, or other people with a propensity for writing). They looked at the statistics on Atlantean scholarhoods (no, one should not abuse the word 'scholarships') and came to the conclusion that 95% or so of the ruling elite came from either the green and black edge or the brown desert. They then raised examples of the ruling elite, especially in the areas of education, culture and finance, the administrative service, the military, and so on.

At which point, I keeled over laughing, because the only persons they mentioned who were actually from those two large kinds of elites were the Thunderer and his get; the rest either were immigrants (well, one was) or were proud children of the blue, gold and red. (And even the Thunderer's brothers and some of his descendants fall into this group.) These researchers had used a statistical probability to assume (incorrectly) that there was a 95% chance that all these examples should come from the two 'main' elites'.

What they hadn't taken into account was that the true elite in this huge Atlantean population are very rare: they are occur with a statistical frequency of about 1 in 20,000. And the most powerful network within this true elite, the source of what makes this whole place sing with life, is from the third elite source. All you have to do is open the Scroll of the Priesthood, whose every edition lists the places of power (about 500-600) and who controls them (about 250-300), and you will see that this is true.

So how does one develop that kind of rare but extremely powerful influence? It is quite simple, like most things of this kind. You are born to it, you buy into it (increasingly popular and not to be denigrated), or you serve faithfully for a while until you become eligible for membership (easier than you think). You can also study really hard and try not to be tempted by the sheer quantitative dominance of the other elites.

Qualitative and Quantitative

Recently, I've had to speak with various students on the subject of what 'qualitative' and 'quantitative' mean, in the sense of qualitative or quantitative data or research methodology. It's interesting how oversimplication (the subject of my previous post) creeps in.

For instance, one of them said, "Quantitative means you can put a number on it."

I replied, "Well, you can put a number on a marathon runner and it doesn't make her quantitative data. You can have a school survey with ratings on items (a 'Likert scale') from 1 to 5, and that doesn't make it quantitative research either."

Quantitative data is actually data that can be gathered and placed within a scale of measurement, and can legitimately be subjected to mathematical operations. Sometimes this definition works to confuse people.

Take for example the idea of 'an average age'. Suppose that we ask your class how old they are in years (number of birthdays passed), and your class replies "17!" (40%) and "18!" (60%). Does this mean that the average age of the class is (0.4 x 17 + 0.6 x 18) = 17.6? That would make the average member of the class roughly 17 years, 7 months and 6 days old. What do you think? I suspect not. But the problem here is one of insufficient resolution and definition, not one of illegitimacy. Age can indeed be used as quantitative data in some contexts.

Qualitative data is actually data that specifies a kind or a class of property without being subject to scalar manipulation. It cannot be subjected legitimately to mathematical operation, although it is possible to try. This also confuses people.

Take for example the idea of 'colour'. Suppose we ask your class what their favourite colours are, and your class replies "Blue!" (50%) and "Gold!" (50%). Does this mean that the average favourite colour is metallic green? What do you think? I suspect not. The problem here is not numerical, but conceptual. You can't find an 'average' of favourite colours, since the average is unlikely to be anybody's favourite in this context.

The thing about this colour example is that it can be treated both quantitatively and qualitatively, with different kinds of results. A person can say, "My favourite colour can be expressed as that produced by a photon source in which all the radiation has the wavelength 530 nm. It's a kind of green."

Well, the wavelength is a manipulatable scalar, as is the intensity of the source and so on. But the greenness of the colour is what we call an example of the qualia, those sensory occurrences which we find difficult to think about, and which are almost by definition the basis of qualitative data. It is extremely unlikely that any two people will see exactly the same shade of green when exposed to a light source at 530 nm. This can be due to biology, biography or biasedness of some unknown kind. In fact, it is even less likely that the colour will affect them in exactly the same way.

This is why the methodologies that handle quantitative and qualitative data tend to be, respectively, mathematical and social. The former manipulates numbers of the kind that can be manipulated (vectors, scalars, cardinals — but not most ordinals); if any explanatory power resides in numbers, it is of the statistical and correlative kind. The latter tries to come to humanly acceptable consensus on what qualia could possibly have been observed and what kinds of explanation would be sufficient to account for them.

Of course, books have been written on guidelines for research in both kinds of methodologies and their deployment in many different areas of knowledge. I myself used mixed methodologies when doing my 1999 Master's thesis on Why Teachers Quit Teacher Development in Atlantis. Most of it was qualitative though; qualitative data is a lot better at explaining social phenomena and general insanity than quantitative data is. You can find my research online if you know where to look. Enjoy!

Doctoral Inquisition

Yesterday I attended one of these events; they are quite common and come in several varieties and flavours. By variety, I imply a difference in intent ranging from exploration to confirmation of candidature to defence of thesis. By flavour, I imply a difference in the nature of the panel applying the instruments of inquisition.

Yesterday's was a confirmation of candidature, in which some slightly nervous or incompletely prepared proto-candidate is subjected to the intellectual equivalent of a gentle grilling and racking (which makes me think of lamb, somehow). I and my neighbour enjoyed it quite a bit, probably because I've already gone through that stage and was looking for points of interest applicable to my end-stage; my neighbour was interested because of the nature of the evolving dissertation.

The real problem wasn't that everything seemed to be anchored to the überzeitgeist of Foucault and his merry sociology, or Fullan and his equally merry 'change is simple, look you can break it down into eight bullet points' approach. The problem was that there seemed to be some sort of empty space between ground-level micro analysis and global-level macro analysis. The scope was too great in range; it was analogous to doing research with one eye on an electron microscope and the other on a radio telescope.

As an aside I am so glad that the inquisitors panel pointed out that you couldn't take for granted that any old innovation (say 'Understanding by Design', for example) was necessarily innovative, useful, successful or educationally good just because a bunch of people spent a lot of time on it.

On a smaller scale, I've noticed this in TOK presentations and other kinds of presentations. Some candidate will zero in on two minor Scandinavian authors like Ibsen and Strindberg, call it 'World Literature' and generalise the findings to include literature in general. And the worst part is that the examiner will merrily (I'm using that a lot today, aren't I?) accept it.

It is like some sort of stream of consciousness robin hoodwink with one eye up and the other down in the dirt where the dead men have their bones and good is oft interdiction is important because without it Rome was not built in a day in the life I miss the Beatles. Heh.

The Unbearable Lightness of Quality Awards (Part I): Unwise and Misplaced

A lot of young people I've been meeting these days (and some older ones) seem totally confused by what one of them referred to as the 'SQuAre Award'. That's just the local manifestation of the typical business quality award conferred by some local agency on some local business which has shown a high level of self-defined excellence.

What? No! Really? What do I mean by 'self-defined excellence'?

What I mean is that the organisation to be assessed for such an award has to define what its key performance indicators (KPIs) are and show that its principles, planning and process (in that order) lead inexorably to high-level achievement. By 'high-level', we mean 'in comparison with competitors and also in an absolute sense' — but as asserted and defined by the organisation being appraised.

It's interesting, because as an insider I can testify as to the validity and reliability of such awards. Validity low, reliability high, would be a fair summary when applied to certain institutions. The problem is that such awards depend on three things, really. The three things are a) establishment of rules and compliance with those rules; b) establishment of incentives as a benchmark for approved excesses (or successes, or whatever is above the rule-established norm); and c) honesty in declaring the exact processes by which the rules are established, complied with, and related to incentives.

This was what was in my head when my Inbox beeped. I received an interesting and terribly relevant email from my friend the Exchemist. Exchemist and his wife are both high-class taxi-drivers (students of the roads) and brilliant at what they do. Exchemist hardly ever emails me; mostly it's a short message suggesting breakfast or lunch. The link that he sent to me was to a talk by Barry Schwartz on our loss of wisdom.

It boggled my mind to hear my ideas so much more clearly and cleanly presented. The studies I'd been looking at, the ways I'd tried to describe the College of Wyverns in sensible form, all this had been summarised in a short talk by this sharp and kindly old man. He says things like, "A wise person learns to... serve other people and not manipulate other people."

Essentially, his entire talk (in 20 minutes) condensed for me the idea of how wisdom is more important than quality awards when it comes to the provision of a proper education. It is the common storehouse of humanity, unlike the business/management paradigms which are essentially ways to pillage that common storehouse for short-term gains and long-term ills.

Knowing what I know (and which I'll discuss in a subsequent post), I wouldn't say a school with a fleet of quality awards was necessarily a better school. I have produced (and helped to produce) documents which allow a school to receive such awards, and I know how much of such stuff is real and how much is window-dressing. As Umberto Eco once described it in 1975, humans quite often have 'faith in fakes'. It makes them happy, if not wise; this misplaced faith creates mediocrity and leads to a loss of gifts through disuse and misuse.

Belief (in) Systems (Part I)

Over the last few weeks, I've had to review what I know about belief systems while cobbling together a model for systems of educational change. The two kinds of systems run headlong into a third phenomenon known as 'systems engineering'; all three are vastly different and yet tangentially related.

Without doubt, one of the most unusual and perturbing phenomena in the modern globalised world is that of the synchronous and inexplicable (except in retrospect, in which direction everyone sees more clearly) disruption of an otherwise semi-stable and relatively prosperous range of institutions. This disruption (and in some cases, near-fatal immolation) is often glossed over with a few familiar phrases: 'tipping point', 'domino theory', 'pyramid scheme', 'inevitable meltdown', and so on. It is like sticking tiny plasters (Band-Aids) over a huge and ugly fracture that has torn a hole in the overlying muscle and skin—these terms don't quite cover it, and they don't help in the analytical or physical reduction of the problem.

The problem really is that people are greedy and self-serving; that is all there is to it. The degree to which people are greedy and self-serving varies, but wherever there are quantitative (or to be a little bit more accurate, point-scoring) mechanisms in place for benchmarking or rewards, these will override other considerations. The overriding may be subtle or immense, but it will be there.

This is not just idle theorising; some examples are found in places like Ivan Png's 2008 paper on how giving more incentives for blood donation actually reduces the amount of voluntary blood donation. The relevant theory is summarised here; essentially, it is a phenomenon in which competing drives (for altruistic behaviour and for engaging in a reward-based system) crowd each other, to nobody's optimal benefit.

This is why you cannot actually say that rewarding ministers or teachers financially will make them better people. At a certain point, the vocation becomes a job simply because you are being paid for it. No matter what, the reward system makes you want to evaluate your performance in terms of 'whether it is worth the points', and not 'whether it is good regardless of points'. There is a difference there, and anyone who can't see it will confuse the good/evil axis of with the profit/loss axis of socio-economic behaviour.

What the research seems to say is that the human animal still believes in the unknown, in the complexity of the world, in doing good for others despite the lack of reward. At the same time, since the Age of Enlightenment began, the human animal is being educated to think in a logical, and then a mathematical/statistical, and then a point-scoring way. The two kinds of belief systems clash and tangle each other up; this makes people think that by creating dubious financial instruments and channeling wealth to the top 1% of the population at the expense of the bottom 55%, they are honouring God or their own altruistic principles.

It is the same thing which makes powerful CEOs (or those who think they are powerful) put their own well-being first while honestly believing that it is for the good of all. I saw this in the media the other day: some unbelievable jerk was saying that CEOs should receive much larger compensation and benefit packages than President Obama was willing to give. His argument was that if the financial sector didn't provide these things, the CEO types would go elsewhere for their goodies and the people would benefit less in the long run. It is the most amazing kind of self-delusion.

It happens in altruistic institutions too—hospitals and schools are not immune. The politics in the antiseptic and academic corridors are just as rife with germs and miasmas as the corridors of political and financial power. Since hospitals and schools pay less than other institutions, they used to have more professional courage and altruistic tendencies. Nowadays, however, the hospital superintendent has been replaced by a CEO; the school principal likewise. These birds have hardly or never treated a patient nor taught a student in the way and settings that the true doctors and teachers have.

So how did they get to be in charge? Simple: point-scoring systems. You make such a person boss because he has proven that he can deliver numbers which you like. You never employ a CEO for the stuff he can produce which you either a) don't want or never knew you wanted to know about, or b) cannot define clearly enough to write an unequivocal job description. Or at least, you aren't supposed to, going by modern conventions in most systems.

If you hire a CEO to execute policy and set clearly defined, time-based benchmarks and all the rest of it, you can count on it that any altruism he may once have professed will drain away within five years or so. He might still think he has it, but the quantitative data parasites will have eaten it away and replaced it with their own RNA or DNA, much like some sort of memetic virus.

The only way out that I can see, after reviewing a wide range of papers, is that you can actually make the CEO so rich that money becomes a sort of gaseous fluid. He breathes it, lives it, and has no more idea of counting it than a fish has of counting water molecules. At this point, the top 5 richest people on earth begin to give it away in well-considered and altruistic chunks. They probably will never be able to give it all away personally and still be responsible human beings, so they set up funds and trusts and other institutions. And so the cycle begins again.

This is not to say that paying your CEO $2m a year or $30k a month or (like certain football players) £130k a week will make him regain his altruism. Firstly, you need much more than that—perhaps $1b a year or something. Secondly, it's not so much altruism regained as quantitative perception lost. When you can't count the loot, it becomes meaningless. Thirdly, there are other proxies which may be more alluring: the £130k a week football player might only find life meaningful if he is also made team captain, for example.

Which leads us back to institutions such as hospitals and schools. I've realised that the #1 corrupter of senior doctors is the type of incentive scheme known as the 'points system'. Doctors get points for doing procedures. The more points, the more bonuses. See where that goes? Meanwhile, the #1 corrupter of senior teachers is either administrative power (or tenure, in some systems) or giving them results-based bonuses. I have a ton of research to show that this is true, sadly.

The outcome of such corruption is that the altruistic institution declines. Its vigour has been turned to a quantitative purpose. While such an institution might still have the trappings of its vocation and its hallowed past (like having murals with the Hippocratic Oath in them, or mottos extolling the benefits of holistic education and the primacy of holiness) all over the place, it is a whited sepulchre as far as its original mission is concerned.

Diktat

And so it came to pass that in the year of the Earthen Cow, a proclamation went out from the throne at the Estuary of Dour, that a census should be taken for the sake of the Imperial Health. For those whose names were not written in the Book of Doom, they should be cast out into the ways of the world to find their own sustenance.

=====

Well, it wasn't quite like that. But as part of my very deep research into the lives and times of the rich and infamous, I have come to realise that some people are dangerous because they are venal, corrupt and incompetent. Actually, it only takes one of these things to make someone an angry and/or frightened person whose sole aim in life then becomes the intimidation and exaction of tributary sycophancy from all who will hear.

I eagerly await the unfolding events of the next 15 months. If they unfold as predicted, my fortune is made; if not, then in the spirit of true research, I will have to adjust my hypothesis... heh.

Examiner (Part III)

There I am, minding my own business at yet another Family gathering, when Cousin #1 comes up to me. "Eh, how have you been?"

I say the usual things, all of them true. I am happy, I am productive, I have actually gained a lot from my sabbatical.

He says, "So when are you giving us that report?"

My first thought is, "What report?" My second thought is, "Oh no, you weren't serious!" My third thought is, "Well, I actually do have a lot of data."

I say to him, "Surely you don't expect me to cough up so soon? Rome wasn't built in a day!"

He gives me that I-am-one-of-the-few-surviving-great-bankers-in-town look and says, "Well, you can set Rome up in a few years, it seems. Have you examined the whole thing yet?"

Examine? Examine?! "No, of course not. I don't have direct access anyway."

"You're a qualitative researcher, and you're smart. We actually know a lot more because of you. So hurry up!"

Later in the evening, the men in dark suits come round. It is funny to think that one day I might very well be one of those.

Soothing Stories

Over the last ten years, during the period that I completed my Master's degree in Education and began on my doctoral campaign, I have come to realise a few interesting things about the world of research in this field. Here are some brief notes, not designed for completeness but as a sort of quick overview.

Firstly, method. A lot of discourse in the social sciences is neither particularly social nor scientific. It's all about competing narratives, often constructed 'bass-ackward' — that is, you see all that you can see and work backwards to find a reason for why things turned out the way they did. In the realm of qualitative methodology, you can adopt social explanations by questioning participants, on the assumption that if all the witnesses saw the same thing or felt the same thing, it is likely to have been a real phenomenon. But this is only true if you assume that what may be illusory is also vulnerable to mortal discernment. The fact is that if everyone saw or felt the same thing, it might only prove that the illusion was impenetrable. Mere numbers cannot overcome that, even though some people say the probability of being deceived drops as you increase the sample size. Once you start thinking in terms of numbers, you may no longer be a qualitative researcher; besides, all this assumes that the normal distribution is of use to research aimed at detecting anomalies and useful outliers.

Secondly, material. A lot of the discussion in education is oriented heavily around the United States. They probably have more researchers per square mile than anywhere else in the world, and it shows. They do have many distinct threads of research, some diversity and a high rate of growth, but there is a clear narrative bias. While the Asia-Pacific region is probably growing more quickly, the research fraternity on the Asian end is a lot more constrained in terms of information flow, disclosure and accountability. This doesn't make for an excellent research environment in the social sciences either. I know that many will point to the increasing rate of research paper generation in East and Southeast Asia (ESEA), but as far as I can see, a lot of these papers explain little and break little ground in ideas or methodology — just as in other parts of the world, most of it is padding. I actually have documentation proving that some people submit the same paper for different conferences with minor amendments and updates; it's like the undead monster that refuses to die.

Thirdly, message. In ESEA, a lot of social research is government-funded and/or government-approved. A lot of governments have an agenda to push, and the longer that government has been in power, the more it knows what it wants to push. (Alternatively, its lengthy dominance might be a result of knowing the right things to push before the opposition figures it out, or of being able to control the information flow, or of manufacturing a superior narrative from available components.) I have observed that governmental agencies sometimes ignore local research (unless it's their own and favourable) while pointing to irrelevant foreign research on completely different milieux. This can be true for agencies worldwide, but there do tend to be more checks and balances elsewhere — or at least, more independent commentary on social issues. That said, ESEA is changing and has been changing in more information-friendly ways for a while. The fact is that the sociopolitical and sociocultural environment is always complex; simple messages aren't so simple.

All this is not to say that the research is producing bad outcomes. Unlike some areas of knowledge (e.g. engineering) where an hypothesis can be tested by construction of a working prototype that showcases the principle underlying the hypothesis, it is more difficult for the social sciences. Education theory varies over a wide range, from the personal to the political, and sometimes the conclusions at opposite ends of the spectrum come to a practical impasse. It is a bit like the difference between quantum mechanics and astrophysics; two ends of physics with not much rapport.

Rather, what I am saying is that the whole idea of educational research seems to be to replicate successes which by their nature are unique. In the end, it all devolves down into simple bullet points like 'Teach Better' or 'Spend More Money' or something. Not many (although there are some) will write a paper with the point, 'All is Chaos' or 'Learning is not Random but too Diverse to Pin Down'.

This is because we all want to know that the story will turn out right in the end. We all want our nursery narratives, our soothing stories, our 'once upon a time' that leads to 'happily ever after'. But life isn't always like that; it is a messy narrative with no end, and no clear beginning, with key characters which aren't always identifiable as such until their chapter is far in the past. And of course, fairy tales can be rather Grimm.

Writings

For those of you who are wondering, I'm happily busy digging into the wonderful ethnographic world of education. As with many areas of the humanities and social sciences, the data obtained are subject to a wide range of interpretations. The trick is to try to see what really is there (a construct which is very elusive) and what is not (which is sometimes easier). The problem is when there are contested or contestable interpretations.

Actually, the contesting of interpretations or narratives is a good problem. It tends to allow for clarification of definitions, positions, and theories. The outcome may be polarised (for example, two diametrically opposed camps) or it may be reduced to some sort of compromise or consensus. All of these things can be dealt with in reasonable manner, although the debate may get heated at times.

The more serious problem occurs when the interpretation of data or a constructed narrative is not openly engaged. Suppose I say, "State A began life with more privileges than State B and that is the cause of A's later success." If we can define privilege satisfactorily and build a case, we can engage in a debate on the side that agrees or the side that disagrees with that statement. However, if we do not attempt this engagement, State B may feel victimised (or rarely, State A may feel its accomplishments are underestimated). These feelings may lead to bad blood.

It is the responsibility of the researcher to hedge some kinds of declarations with some form of reader guidance. For example, if something is said to be a metaphor, it can be assumed that the reader should know that metaphors are imperfect and should not have more read into them than necessary. On the other hand, the researcher can explain the metaphor and where it fails. The problem, of course, is that the strength of a metaphor is greater than mere explication; likewise, its weaknesses can be assumed but are not so easy to determine. After all, it is a metaphor and not an explicit statement of fact.

Even after a researcher has spent (for example) decades of researching the same environment and taking down notes on everything that was said and done, the fact remains that there will still be lacunae, gaps in understanding and knowledge. The honest researcher will state what these lacunae are and why they exist, wherever possible.

Similarly, in this blog, you will find things that are clearly stories, narratives, fragments of poetry, songs. There are tags, keywords, and conventions of usage that will allow the reader to understand whether something is meant to be taken literally, whether it is some undirected rambling through the corridors of my mind, or whatever. I have feelings in response to what I hear, what I read, what people tell me. Sometimes, I write about those feelings.

It is somewhat disingenuous to assume that I write for publicity. I am quite certain that on average, a handful of people read this, and even fewer are driven to interact (link, comment etc) with this blog (although of late that number seems to have risen). People who go to Google looking for odd snatches of poetry tend to end up here, people who wonder what odd Latin phrases mean end up here. I write here because over the years, the paradigm of handwritten journals has been replaced to a large extent by the paradigm of self-published text. The thing is that the former has extremely small circulation while the latter has potentially unlimited circulation. This can be a dangerous thing.

Particularly dangerous is the fact that I cannot reply to responses which are false but which I do not know about. For example, in January, I wrote this piece on an old Latin saying. I think I was looking at something that happened on CNN, but I cannot remember what it was. But I can imagine someone reading this and saying, "Huh, this must be about XYZ, what an evil thing to write about XYZ."

Then again, there are also the problems of parallelism. I am occasionally exercised by the parallels I see between some of the excesses of the present US administration and some of the behaviours of the former Soviet Union. This is because I see the US as continuing to be a big player in the world where I live, and it can't be good (in principle) for certain things to happen. So people ask me, "Why do you bother what Senator McCain or President Bush say or do? Why do you blog about them?" Well, I do have a distant concern; these men's deeds can affect my life, my work, my finances. I am more concerned with what the US President says about monitoring information than I am about most other people.

But what if some other people think I am referring to them when I refer to a parallel case? I have no good answer for that. Literature shows us that certain symbols, tropes, patterns work themselves out across eras and across lands. Sometimes, it is tempting even to me to draw parallels or leave them to be drawn. It is a temptation to be resisted. Quite often, at a certain point, the parallelism, analogy or metaphor breaks down. Then it is obvious that the relationship is false. Sometimes, it is harder to see if this is true or not.

I think that there is some recourse to truth in the blogosphere. You can see it on any major newsblog. Any user can reply with a comment. Only certain kinds of abusive and/or obscene comments are deleted. The rest are given face time. The writer can respond in particular or in general. The writer can correct his post. This is how a civilised community behaves. Let me put it more bluntly. If in any of my posts I have made factual errors or unjustly maligned specific persons, I will take down that post and issue an apology. In public. On this blog.

50: Previews

It dawned on me a few moments ago that I've been writing previews of 50, the moment in your life when you say, "Half-century!" and immediately wonder why you thought, "Gold!" A lot of the angst-ridden moments in this blog are '50 Previews'. I would probably have looked at 52 as well, except that DC Comics had already got there.

But within a couple of months, this particular blog will probably have reached its 500th post. It would have got there much sooner, except that there were intermittent disruptions along the route. When I first started blogging, it was an odd experience. The blogosphere was tiny and we didn't know it was called blogging. That was a long time ago. Then I started this one. I was amazed to find how different the experience of the 21st century was compared to the 20th. And a lot of people are uncomfortable with it. Hence, intermittent disruptions.

I've decided, however, to reveal a small secret. I've been keeping very detailed observations about the microcosm in which I operate. That's in keeping with my background as a qualitative researcher. But I think that it would be appropriate for me to (in my usual shadowy way) give 50 little pen-sketches of the bloggers and other personalities of this microcosm who have made these last few years so memorable. It should be a great 500th post. Heh.

And I promise to try not to persecute those who have already suffered from my observations thus far.