[FRIAM] "certain codes of conduct"

Thu Jul 30 15:01:41 EDT 2020

Come on Nick... outside new disciplines emerging, those who will change a
discipline over the next 20 years are typically well embedded within the
discipline now. That's kind of how cumulative knowledge construction works.
But... to emphasize it a bit more bluntly.... The primary purpose of
college isn't to reproduce the professoriate, or produce the next
generation of innovators within the professorate: It is to provide a
general set of skills (sometimes called the "hidden curriculum"), which
provides a baseline of things a person with a college degree can reasonably
be expected to be able to do. College is justified by the assertion that
you can't really get those skills outside of trying to do something
intellectual with some seriousness; what you are trying to be
intellectually serious about doesn't matter nearly so much, though
obviously some skills will be emphasized more in some areas.

Most jobs most people want require "a college degree". They don't require a
college degree in anything in particular. That makes sense, IF college
degrees are reasonably well correlated with having some set of skills most
general employers value in most of their employees. It generally helps to
have employees who can read, write, and math at a certain level, who can
present things in standard forms orally, graphically, and in writing. It
generally helps to have employees who can integrate ideas and come up with
solutions, who can balance various priorities, who can adapt to arbitrary
requirements that a boss or company might impose. It generally helps to
have employees who can work productively on team projects, as leaders or
followers. Etc., etc. The less college degrees reliably indicate those
skills, the less valuable they are (on average).

There is a quirky college that revamped it's curriculum a few decades ago
to focus on "8 Abilities": Communication, Problem Solving, Social
Interaction, Effective Citizenship, Analysis, Valuing, Aesthetic
Engagement, and Developing a Global Perspective. It looks like they've gone
back a bit towards traditional majors, but still all classes, in all
majors, have to explicitly focus on developing at least one of those
abilities in the students. (https://www.alverno.edu/Undergraduate)

Most colleges are not doing anything so dramatic, but many are still making
great strides in helping students figure out skills that
others arrive with, so they can at least start from a more even place. See
examples here:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/08/04/book-argues-mentoring-programs-should-try-unveil-colleges-hidden-curriculum

http://thehub.georgetown.domains/realhub/experience/mastering-the-hidden-curriculum-1-2/

https://college.lclark.edu/live/events/297173-the-hidden-curriculum
<echarles at american.edu>

On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 5:54 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Eric,
>
>
>
> Thanks for laying this out.  I think some of it’s wrong, but it’s clear
> and provocative.  I apologize to non-academics on the list for my focus on
> academia.  I suppose one might argue that the best thing that might happen
> to Massachusetts is the dismemberment of Harvard and the distribution of
> its buildings for housing and it’s endowment for income equalization.  But
> I don’t think so.  Not yet, any way.
>
>
>
> To the extent that psychology and White Psychology and Rich psychology and
> poor psychology are all the same, and if they all should be or will be the
> same 20 years from now as they are now, your analysis makes sense.  But,
> while I would like to think that psychology is like physics in that regard,
> I think I have to admit that it isn’t.  So, teaching everybody who comes
> to, say, the Harvard Psychology Department, the skills of  contemporary
> (mostly white) psychologists, precludes the learning not only of what
> non-privileged psychologists know, given the drift of things
> demographically and ideologically, it precludes the learning of what
> Psychology will be in 20 years.
>
>
>
> I don’t know what the solution is.  Every once in a while a student in my
> evolution classes would remonstrate with me for not giving equal time to
> biblical creation theories.  I would say, in response, “Because everything
> I know tells me that they are wrong.  Furthermore, I cannot teach what I do
> not know, and I don’t know those theories.  I am not the person to be your
> teacher if that is what you want to learn.”  Now of course, that’s a pretty
> lame response, but it has the marginal benefit of being honest.
>
>
>
> But what if we knew, for sure, that the country was going to be run by
> Baptists in 20 years.  Under those conditions, wouldn’t my best response
> be, “I can’t; you’re right; I resign.”
>
>
>
> I am sure the metaphor is creepy in some way, but it’s the best I can come
> up with.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Merle Lefkoff
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 29, 2020 3:02 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] "certain codes of conduct"
>
>
>
> Eric, thank you for your reply.  Forgive me for suggesting a larger
> systemic problem, connected for me to the problems in our democratic
> system, our global economic system, and our international governance
> system--and also ultimately related to the existential threat of the
> collapse of the living systems that nurture our species.
>
>
>
> The democracy and Constitution our founders gave us at the end of the 18th
> century has structural flaws we have tried to overcome.  The global
> economic system that the victors of WWII gave us at Bretton Woods in 1944
> has similar structural flaws that we have also tried (not very hard) to
> overcome.  The United Nations that emerged a year later in 1945 to convene
> a new international order shares similar structural problems.  There is a
> pattern here. At its core is domination and exclusivity.
>
>
>
> The present hesitant shifts in the old narratives--and relationships--
> that created our major social, economic and political systems are the
> result of gladiators and dragon-slayers finally targeting the positive
> feedback loops that keep reinforcing historic institutional design errors.
>
>
>
> I'll stop here, because I'm even boring myself.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 9:49 PM Eric Charles <
> eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Nick, the "ire" is perfectly fine. I didn't need to couch my statement in
> that way, and doing so obviously opened me to Merle's response.
>
>
>
> Merle,
>
> I think the social criticism is generally valid, but as a critique of
> college in particular it is feeds a general confusion about what college
> should be about, which ultimately speeds the fall of the system it seeks to
> reform.
>
>
>
> One of the obvious legitimate functions of college is indoctrination into
> a profession. If you don't want to be indoctrinated into a profession that
> college indoctrinates people into, then college probably isn't for you.  If
> you get out of college not-indoctrinated-into-a-profession, something has
> gone wrong. For example, if you want to get a degree in psychology, you
> need to learn to write in some reasonable semblance of APA style. That
> includes its own horribly arbitrary set of grammar rules, formatting and
> the like. It is screwed up, in some sense, but it isn't imperialist
> oppression aimed at minorities. Arbitrary norms are found in all
> professions, and conforming to them is part of being "professional". Also,
> if you got a degree in psychology, without anyone forcing you to learn how
> to approach problems, write reports, criticize articles, etc., in the
> manner that professional psychologists tend to do those things, something
> has gone wrong. If you want to think about psychology-related stuff in the
> way you already think about those things, then don't go to college. If you
> want to learn to think about them in the way the professional community
> does, then college might make senes. (Note, I'm *not *saying you have to *agree
> *with how the professional community does things, just that you should be
> able to replicate, with some reasonable accuracy, the standard professional
> approach.) Where you start from doesn't really matter; though the curricula *should
> *be more adaptive to the starting place of the various students, by the
> end you should be professional indoctrinated, that's the whole point.
>
>
>
> In addition, college functions to indoctrinate people into a certain part
> of society... or at least it used to. Because, traditionally, most college
> graduates don't get work in exactly the thing they studied, this "hidden
> curriculum" has often been more important than the obvious curriculum.
> College graduates should be able to read, write, and math at a certain
> level, generally think through problems at a certain level, be able to
> present ideas to an audience in spoken or written form, be able to adapt to
> arbitrary assignments with a certain level of comfort, be a team leader, be
> a pro-active follower, etc.  Here again, colleges *should *be more
> adaptive to the starting place of the various students, but that doesn't
> mean their end point should be abandoned. Here you see big differences
> between colleges, based on what they are preparing you for. A college like
> Swathmore or Bucknell is preparing you to be able to do those things for
> different audiences than Oberlin or Penn State. If you are at a school that
> is well designed to prepare you for something you don't want to be prepared
> for... that's not imperialist oppression, that's your having made an
> unfortunate choice of  where to go.
>
>
>
> Frankly, most colleges currently suck at those two goals, and most other
> functions you might want them to have.  It is easy to find studies showing
> that lots of people graduate college without high school level reading,
> writing, and math abilities. It is also easy to find students who graduate
> with almost no indoctrination into the field of study they were purportedly
> pursuing.
>
>
>
> Under those conditions, it is not surprising that people view a college
> degree as largely symbolic marker, required for entry into the job market
> or some such nonsense. However, the solution shouldn't be to make college
> degrees even less indicative of having attained particular skills. The less
> a college degree indicates having a certain variety of skills, the less
> value is provided to employers to select based on the presence of a degree,
> and the less value it gives a college graduate to have a degree. Returning
> to the indoctrination thing, we can see the (potential) flaw in the
> criticism of the curriculum. It doesn't make a lot of sense to say, "I
> really want a degree from Rutgers, because employers value degrees from
> Rutgers, but I also think Rutgers should change its curriculum to not be so
> strict in only letting people graduate if they actually have the skills
> employers value." The value of the degree, particularly to a person trying
> to get out of a bad situation, is entirely based on its reliably indicating
> some set of skills, and the ability to write in a semi-formal manner is one
> of those skills (to return to the more narrow original context).
>
>
>
> If you formed a solid college curriculum around mastering skills other
> than those traditionally trained in college, that would be fine (and I
> think that is what Nick is struggling to get at). And if those skills were
> valued (economically, or merely for personal growth) then a degree from
> that college would be a reliable indicator of that specific valuable
> achievement. But that is very different than allowing students to get
> through college with whatever skills they arrived with, just because you
> are afraid that enforcing *any *strict requirements might make you an
> imperialist monster. The former creates a marketplace for students to
> choose from, while the latter just guarantees that college degrees continue
> to become less and less valuable, particularly to the people who most seek
> to benefit by getting them.
>
>
> (Sorry, that ended up longer than intended.... but it's late... I don't
> think I can get it tighter right now... and your question deserves a
> reply.)
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 11:21 PM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> And why, O Eric of a deep understanding, are you not a fan?
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 8:17 PM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Clearly the implicit bias is that all of these reading requirements were
> written by White men.  In an attempt to redress this problem I have noticed
> lately that the NY Times book review seems to be bending over backwards to
> review books written by women of color.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 7:03 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I'm trying to remember my freshman English class.  Every other Friday we
> had to submit a five hundred word essay on the class readings. On alternate
> Fridays we had to write an in-class paragraph or two on those readings.
> The readings included the following:
>
>
>
> Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
>
> Victory by Conrad
>
> The Republic by Plato
>
> All the King's Men by Warren
>
> Brave New World by Huxley
>
>
>
> Numerous essays on personal integrity by various authors.
>
>
>
> I don't see that any of those had to do with unconscious racism or
> implicit bias unless the personal integrity essays did.  I think I had to
> read The Invisible Man by Ellison but that may have been in a later year in
> a political science or US history class at Berkeley.
>
>
>
> All this was 54 years ago.
>
>
>
> Frank
>
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
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>
> --
>
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
>
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
>
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
>
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>
>
> --
>
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
>
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
>
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
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