In Favor of Long Views Over “Win” Cultures
posted by Deven Desai
Thinking a bit more about recent UVA events, I think that a deep problem with current approaches to education is not just market myopia but a distaste for any long-term project. We live in a quick-fix, I know the answer, will give results, and obtain a “win” culture. It has its arrogance just as academia has its arrogances. The “win” culture wants the rush of snark and deliverables already known. Whether they wish to admit it, some academics play into this model. Vaidhyanathan’s points about dwindling funding are dead on correct. Private and public funding is in peril. The world looks to the U.S. for models of public education while we eviscerate it. The business mentality and newspeak have no place for the work that plods, tests, fails, but in aggregate discovers new things, nurtures counter views, and happens to train people how to think beyond three bullet points. Recent works by Julie Cohen and Brett Frischmann lay the foundation to show how and why thinking beyond simplistic market models leads to outcomes we want. I think part of what they are reacting to is a failure to have a vocabulary beyond markets. In some cases it may be as simple as looking beyond one notion of the market. In others scholars are developing ways to understand what lies beyond our current thinking. In both cases, people are offering new metrics to evaluate and appreciate what is important for society and individuals but is not captured in market-speak.
A question that lurks here is why. Why are we having to remind people about the importance of education, how public institutions feed society at large, and the needs of humans as they develop? Saying that we are not getting what we want from current approaches is not a good answer. It tells us that something is broken. But turning to systems that may be excellent for some things but quite poor at others speaks of a desire to do anything for the sake of action without thinking through options. In business, the quick outcome and need for speed may be real (although there are many examples of rapid deployment that fall on their faces). In our public and personal lives, a little patience would help. There are many reasons to be suspicious about government, corporations, academia, and any group. That has been and is our world since at least the start of our country. For public institutions and a better civic life, we need to show people why truths we hold self-evident are ones others do too. Right now, a bunch of people lamenting and decrying failures does little to change things.
For example, all citizens who think that public education is something that should be free, need to explain who pays. And they need to realize that by voting to cut funds from education (yes mucking with taxes and not voting for increases means you failed to pay for your community goods), they drive to a world where they may not have access to the resources they need. Saying we will not fund until we get what we want is useless. Saying these are the hard outcomes and needs we see for education is a place where educators can and should engage. For those who think that education will undergo some mild re-tooling and continue as before, I direct you to this article “The Prospect of Western Europe Collapsing Like Eastern Europe.”
Put differently, I don’t think civic goods are a luxury. I think we are treating them that way. Society’s interest in self-congratulatory, near-term “wins” is part of and fuels the shift to business-style myopia. There is a literature from scenario planning that explains how that approach is not great for companies either. Yet, companies struggle with that information and research. I think most of us would prefer a society that has a shot at long-term success over short-term satisfaction. Then again it took some dreams and Joseph to have the ancients think about planning and cycles. As we are not in an age of dream interpretation, it is up to us to remember and to explain why should be planning for the long haul. As always, let the games begin.
June 22, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Posted in: Education
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Responses (5)
A.J. Sutter - June 22, 2012 at 1:31 pm
I generally agree with you (surprise!), but would point out that a possible explanation for the “failure to have a vocabulary beyond markets,” at least among scholars, is a failure to have a vocabulary beyond English. Anglo-American scholarship, especially in law though not at all exclusively, is a giant echo chamber of Anglophone sources (Bernard Harcourt, who went to a Francophone high school, being rather an exception). Markets still rule in European corridors of power, but there’s much more variety of opinion, especially in the Romance languages (somewhat less so, perhaps, in German).
Deven Desai - June 22, 2012 at 2:11 pm
A.J., to what time frame are you referring? Joyce Appleby’s book, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism, makes a strong case that when capitalism starts to have a chance in England, many rallied arguments, theories, and more to support the system as if it were a given. In that sense, I think I see what you are saying. But are you also saying something in English as a language means markets are the only way to understand the world?
A.J. Sutter - June 22, 2012 at 11:24 pm
Nothing so historical or language-determinative — something much simpler. What I’m saying is that there is a lot more discussion of alternatives to market capitalism today among thinkers writing in French or Italian, say. Only a small fraction of this discussion is translated into English, and even that material isn’t paid attention to. There are a couple of exceptions like Michel Foucault or Deleuze & Guattari or Jean Baudrillard, but these “critical studies” types are not whom I mean: I’m talking more about people more focused on down-to-earth economics and political economy, like André Gorz, Alain Caillé and the MAUSS group, Stefano & Vera Zamagni, Luigino Bruni, Jean Gadrey, Dominique Méda, Thomas Coutrot, Sahra Wagenknecht (who writes in German) and a host of others. These are folks who are neither Keynesean nor Marxist (though many may have been one or the other in the past). For that matter, there are also many Anglophone heterodox economists whose work doesn’t get noticed much. And there are even industrial examples who are forgotten — who today talks of Gerard Swope, the Socialist-Zionist president of General Electric (from 1922-1939 and again 1942-1944), who was recruited by FDR to design the NRA and the American unemployment insurance system?
American scholars rarely access this material, and prefer instead to cite almost exclusively to other Americans, and in matters economic almost exclusively to sources relying on neoclassical theory (Econ 101, L&E, etc.). A related symptom of this parochialism is that Anglophone authors, even ones who aren’t so orthodox, seem to think that “Adam Smith originalism” is a sufficient basis for clinching an economic argument, as if the Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations were the Old and New Testaments (though which is which may vary according to the author’s taste).
Robert Hacker - June 24, 2012 at 10:10 am
“The business mentality … have no place for the work that plods, tests, fails, but in aggregate discovers new things, nurtures counter views, and happens to train people how to think..” This description of a process sounds surprisingly like entrepreneurship, which has consistently demonstrated benefits to society.
If we consider the more recent model–social entrepreneurship–where greater value (social and economic) is transferred to the recipient in exchange for accepting lower monetization (cash) we have a model that can effectively address social issues such as education with a lesser reliance on government.
“Market myopia” may be a popular villain but the market will sooner find the models than academics or the government. I will grant that we academics will help the understanding of the new models but we will not be creating them.
A.J. Sutter - June 24, 2012 at 1:20 pm
@Robert: Actually, academics and government create lotsa things. E.g., Google was created by grad students. Nuclear power was created by a professor. Polio vaccine too. The government created the Internet. And given how long some problems have been around — malaria, for example — if it were really up to markets, wouldn’t they have found a solution already? Or maybe the malaria market just isn’t as attractive … as restless leg syndrome. There isn’t any foundation other than a certain kind of religious faith for a categorical statement such as “the market will sooner find the models than academics or the government.”
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