Only non-digital natives can appreciate how deeply informatics has changed human life in the past 30 years. Digital computers, a byproduct of World War 2 cryptography efforts, have revolutionized human life as much as the internal combustion engine or the invention of agriculture. Thanks to digital devices, we now have sophisticated diagnostic techniques like MRI and CT scans. We send probes to the farthest reaches of the solar system. Only informatics can handle the enormous volume of data necessary to sequence genomes. Informatics is being used for such applications as telemedicine and hurricane prediction. On a more mundane scale, our homes, factories and vehicles are filled with digital devices that help us run almost every aspect of life.
Billions of humans carry smartphones and tablets, hand-held devices first envisioned in science fiction movies in the 1960s. These devices allow us to have video-telecommunications with people across the planet, find our precise location, image our environment, record our thoughts and access a nearly unlimited store of knowledge, all with a few clicks. Even non-digital natives could hardly conceive living without them. At the same time, a constant stream of data about our activities, our health, our preferences and our purchases are being collected, stored, analyzed and used to optimize marketing, health care, public transportation, law enforcement and countless other functions.
Like the internal combustion engine and agriculture, informatics has changed human life for the better. And just like those earlier revolutions, it has shown unforeseeable drawbacks.
When agriculture was invented, no one could have imagined that it would lead to wholesale environmental degradation, massive deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and a human population explosion that threatens the equilibrium of our habitat.
When the first automobiles sputtered around among ubiquitous horse-drawn carriages a century ago, no one could have envisioned that these noisy and unreliable contraptions would lead to the development of a whole suburban lifestyle, mass relocation of people, unprecedented mobility but also massive pollution and congestion.
Digital computers have opened a treasure trove of information to billions of humans. Countless books can be downloaded with a click and read on portable devices. News are updated with near-instantaneous speed and are made available to consumers worldwide. One might be forgiven for thinking, optimistically, that modern humans are the most informed in history, and thus the best equipped to make rational decisions.
Unfortunately, evidence supports a less optimistic view. Suddenly given the ability to exchange information with unprecedented ease, humans are using this Promethean tool to spread lies, hate and propaganda, to incite violence, to recruit volunteers for terrorist attacks and to repackage ancient superstitions about supernatural beings. Uninformed masses use digital devices to follow sly demagogues as readily as they followed high priests and dictators throughout human history, and digital media only amplify the reach of modern tyrants and charlatans.
What happened?
This is a textbook case of cultural evolution outstripping the limits of our biology. In evolutionary terms, we are not appreciably different from the prehistoric humans who invented agriculture. Technology is, to use a term coined by Richard Dawkins, an extended phenotype of humanity. But the genotype that produces these marvelous tools is essentially the same as that of the tribal hunters-gatherers who roamed the Old World 10,000 years ago.
We have not evolved to envision a global community. There was no natural selection for us to do so. Natural selection produced a social but intensely tribal species, which lived in small bands led by alpha males. These bands violently competed with each other for territory and resources. One of the oldest human bodies recovered, the 5,000 year-old Alpine prehistoric man dubbed Otzi, was apparently killed by other humans armed with bows and arrows. Human history has been an endless series of tribal conflicts for natural resources. We remain an intensely emotional species, and our basic drives are not different from those of other less technologically oriented animals: food (and its symbolic equivalent, money), sex, dominance, fear, submission and aggression. These drives have not changed in the human brain just because we invented new technologies. Civilization is a form of training that imposes constraints on these drives, but it doesn’t make them disappear. The recent revolt against “political correctness” is essentially a rejection of civilization in favor of a return to tribalism.
The biological hardware than runs complex thoughts and invents technological marvels is driven by deep programming that evolved under very different conditions from today. We are programmed to make quick judgements, not to ponder and critically examine the consequences of our actions. Such activities were a luxury for early humans, only made possible by civilization. Thinking shortcuts like stereotyping were evolutionarily helpful in a world where quickly identifying a danger may have saved an early human’s life. Seeing an elongated object dangling from a tree branch and fleeing it irrespective of whether it was a vine or a snake would have saved many early humans’ lives. Pondering whether it was unfair to stereotype all sinuous, elongated objects as snakes would have been a dangerous luxury for prehistoric humans. That is the environment in which our brains evolved by natural selection, and we have inherited the limitations selected in that fashion.
The digital world is not a library, with books neatly stacked and indexed and helpful librarians to point us in the right direction. It resembles a jungle, where every colorful fruit is just as likely to be poisonous as it is to be edible. There are guides, but not all of them are trustworthy. And most people browse this information jungle quickly and superficially because of our fast-moving, multitasking lifestyles. Most people make quick decisions about what to believe, and they do so mostly based on emotions, unless they are trained to do otherwise and have strong self-control. Rather than critically examining information fed to us by digital media, most people simply select information that pleases them emotionally and reject information that makes them uncomfortable. As a result, propaganda can spread like wildfire by connecting with humans at a subcortical level through instant digital communication, taking advantage of our innate confirmation bias. Cunning demagogues from Islamic extremists to Western populists have noticed this trend, and are using digital media to spread a torrent of falsehoods and conspiracy theories meant specifically to reinforce the prejudices of their followers, stoke their emotions and prevent them from thinking critically.
Digital computers have democratized access to information, but they have also put extremely powerful tools in the hands of many people who do not possess sufficient critical thinking skills to handle them. In the absence of training, humans process information with the basic skills evolution handed down to us. Just like other intelligent animals, humans can be trained to be rational and control their emotions, but without extensive training under the form of education, we remain a largely emotionally driven species. We only think rationally when we have to.
Paradoxically, informatics has allowed us to think less, by outsourcing many of our higher cognitive functions. Ancient orators memorized the Iliad, the Odyssey and other long texts and could recite them at will. We no longer need to memorize much of anything, because we store information in our handheld devices. We don’t need to find our way around, because a network of satellites in low Earth orbit can locate us from the electromagnetic signals emanating from our digital devices and tell us where to go. We don’t need to write complex sentences, because we can talk into our devices or compose short text messages that dispense with grammar and syntax. Informatics is allowing enormous masses of largely clueless people to navigate life by relying on the intellect of few scientists and engineers. As long as some of us are smart enough to build and maintain the digital world, the rest of us can simply enjoy the convenience of not having to make mental efforts. Ironically, those of us who use the products of science and technology without understanding them have grown to resent the few who do as bothersome “elitists”.
The processed food industry has allowed most of us to eat whenever we like without even knowing how to prepare a meal. However, processed food is filled with sugar, salt and preservatives, and is highly unhealthy for our bodies. Informatics is feeding the masses processed information that is equally unhealthy to our civilization.
One of the most serious drawbacks of informatics is digital tribalism. The innate tribalism of Homo sapiens is leading us to form online tribes that listen to different digital prophets, watch different versions of “news” containing large amounts of falsehoods and hold highly irrational opinions with unwavering certainty. These digital tribes may physically reside next to each other, but they live in vastly different artificial realities. They do not communicate well and they see each other with increasing hostility. Recently, we have been exposed to the spectacle of a political minion publicly making the absurd statement that “there are no such things as facts”.
In other words, informatics is having the paradoxical effect of feeding irrationalism, paranoia, conspiracy theories, magical thinking and tribalism. Disinformatics, the dark side of informatics, has become a means to degrade the very civilization that gave birth to it.
Is there an end to this downward spiral? Time will tell. Digital natives, especially highly educated ones, are spontaneously skeptical of disinformatics, as they expect much of what they see online to be false. However, this expectation of falsehood also feeds the perception that nothing is “true” anymore, and everything is subject to debate. This is a profoundly dangerous notion if it confuses the virtual world with the real one.
Science, the very discipline that produced informatics, is predicated on the notion that facts do exist, and can be measured with an acceptably low degree of uncertainty. Science consists in sorting out opinions (hypotheses) supported by facts from opinions (hypotheses) not supported by facts. While science rejects dogma, it does not consider all theories to be equivalent. Each theory is given a weight proportionate to the amount of concrete evidence supporting it. As evidence accumulates, knowledge grows. Lost in the virtual world, we risk forgetting that the tangible, concrete world doesn’t care what we think, or what we tweet online, but it does determine our survival.
Scientific literacy is more important than ever. What we need to democratize is not so much easy access to unreliable information, but the knowledge of how reliable information about the world is gathered, critically examined and used. Those of us who have the training, skill and disposition to do so have an obligation to add as much unbiased, user-friendly information on science and the scientific method to the online jungle. We are badly outnumbered, and facts are not as fun as conspiracy theories, but the voice of reason must not be silenced. Those of us with a talent for didactics may want to try to sneak reason into emotionally appealing storylines.
Billions of humans carry smartphones and tablets, hand-held devices first envisioned in science fiction movies in the 1960s. These devices allow us to have video-telecommunications with people across the planet, find our precise location, image our environment, record our thoughts and access a nearly unlimited store of knowledge, all with a few clicks. Even non-digital natives could hardly conceive living without them. At the same time, a constant stream of data about our activities, our health, our preferences and our purchases are being collected, stored, analyzed and used to optimize marketing, health care, public transportation, law enforcement and countless other functions.
Like the internal combustion engine and agriculture, informatics has changed human life for the better. And just like those earlier revolutions, it has shown unforeseeable drawbacks.
When agriculture was invented, no one could have imagined that it would lead to wholesale environmental degradation, massive deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and a human population explosion that threatens the equilibrium of our habitat.
When the first automobiles sputtered around among ubiquitous horse-drawn carriages a century ago, no one could have envisioned that these noisy and unreliable contraptions would lead to the development of a whole suburban lifestyle, mass relocation of people, unprecedented mobility but also massive pollution and congestion.
Digital computers have opened a treasure trove of information to billions of humans. Countless books can be downloaded with a click and read on portable devices. News are updated with near-instantaneous speed and are made available to consumers worldwide. One might be forgiven for thinking, optimistically, that modern humans are the most informed in history, and thus the best equipped to make rational decisions.
Unfortunately, evidence supports a less optimistic view. Suddenly given the ability to exchange information with unprecedented ease, humans are using this Promethean tool to spread lies, hate and propaganda, to incite violence, to recruit volunteers for terrorist attacks and to repackage ancient superstitions about supernatural beings. Uninformed masses use digital devices to follow sly demagogues as readily as they followed high priests and dictators throughout human history, and digital media only amplify the reach of modern tyrants and charlatans.
What happened?
This is a textbook case of cultural evolution outstripping the limits of our biology. In evolutionary terms, we are not appreciably different from the prehistoric humans who invented agriculture. Technology is, to use a term coined by Richard Dawkins, an extended phenotype of humanity. But the genotype that produces these marvelous tools is essentially the same as that of the tribal hunters-gatherers who roamed the Old World 10,000 years ago.
We have not evolved to envision a global community. There was no natural selection for us to do so. Natural selection produced a social but intensely tribal species, which lived in small bands led by alpha males. These bands violently competed with each other for territory and resources. One of the oldest human bodies recovered, the 5,000 year-old Alpine prehistoric man dubbed Otzi, was apparently killed by other humans armed with bows and arrows. Human history has been an endless series of tribal conflicts for natural resources. We remain an intensely emotional species, and our basic drives are not different from those of other less technologically oriented animals: food (and its symbolic equivalent, money), sex, dominance, fear, submission and aggression. These drives have not changed in the human brain just because we invented new technologies. Civilization is a form of training that imposes constraints on these drives, but it doesn’t make them disappear. The recent revolt against “political correctness” is essentially a rejection of civilization in favor of a return to tribalism.
The biological hardware than runs complex thoughts and invents technological marvels is driven by deep programming that evolved under very different conditions from today. We are programmed to make quick judgements, not to ponder and critically examine the consequences of our actions. Such activities were a luxury for early humans, only made possible by civilization. Thinking shortcuts like stereotyping were evolutionarily helpful in a world where quickly identifying a danger may have saved an early human’s life. Seeing an elongated object dangling from a tree branch and fleeing it irrespective of whether it was a vine or a snake would have saved many early humans’ lives. Pondering whether it was unfair to stereotype all sinuous, elongated objects as snakes would have been a dangerous luxury for prehistoric humans. That is the environment in which our brains evolved by natural selection, and we have inherited the limitations selected in that fashion.
The digital world is not a library, with books neatly stacked and indexed and helpful librarians to point us in the right direction. It resembles a jungle, where every colorful fruit is just as likely to be poisonous as it is to be edible. There are guides, but not all of them are trustworthy. And most people browse this information jungle quickly and superficially because of our fast-moving, multitasking lifestyles. Most people make quick decisions about what to believe, and they do so mostly based on emotions, unless they are trained to do otherwise and have strong self-control. Rather than critically examining information fed to us by digital media, most people simply select information that pleases them emotionally and reject information that makes them uncomfortable. As a result, propaganda can spread like wildfire by connecting with humans at a subcortical level through instant digital communication, taking advantage of our innate confirmation bias. Cunning demagogues from Islamic extremists to Western populists have noticed this trend, and are using digital media to spread a torrent of falsehoods and conspiracy theories meant specifically to reinforce the prejudices of their followers, stoke their emotions and prevent them from thinking critically.
Digital computers have democratized access to information, but they have also put extremely powerful tools in the hands of many people who do not possess sufficient critical thinking skills to handle them. In the absence of training, humans process information with the basic skills evolution handed down to us. Just like other intelligent animals, humans can be trained to be rational and control their emotions, but without extensive training under the form of education, we remain a largely emotionally driven species. We only think rationally when we have to.
Paradoxically, informatics has allowed us to think less, by outsourcing many of our higher cognitive functions. Ancient orators memorized the Iliad, the Odyssey and other long texts and could recite them at will. We no longer need to memorize much of anything, because we store information in our handheld devices. We don’t need to find our way around, because a network of satellites in low Earth orbit can locate us from the electromagnetic signals emanating from our digital devices and tell us where to go. We don’t need to write complex sentences, because we can talk into our devices or compose short text messages that dispense with grammar and syntax. Informatics is allowing enormous masses of largely clueless people to navigate life by relying on the intellect of few scientists and engineers. As long as some of us are smart enough to build and maintain the digital world, the rest of us can simply enjoy the convenience of not having to make mental efforts. Ironically, those of us who use the products of science and technology without understanding them have grown to resent the few who do as bothersome “elitists”.
The processed food industry has allowed most of us to eat whenever we like without even knowing how to prepare a meal. However, processed food is filled with sugar, salt and preservatives, and is highly unhealthy for our bodies. Informatics is feeding the masses processed information that is equally unhealthy to our civilization.
One of the most serious drawbacks of informatics is digital tribalism. The innate tribalism of Homo sapiens is leading us to form online tribes that listen to different digital prophets, watch different versions of “news” containing large amounts of falsehoods and hold highly irrational opinions with unwavering certainty. These digital tribes may physically reside next to each other, but they live in vastly different artificial realities. They do not communicate well and they see each other with increasing hostility. Recently, we have been exposed to the spectacle of a political minion publicly making the absurd statement that “there are no such things as facts”.
In other words, informatics is having the paradoxical effect of feeding irrationalism, paranoia, conspiracy theories, magical thinking and tribalism. Disinformatics, the dark side of informatics, has become a means to degrade the very civilization that gave birth to it.
Is there an end to this downward spiral? Time will tell. Digital natives, especially highly educated ones, are spontaneously skeptical of disinformatics, as they expect much of what they see online to be false. However, this expectation of falsehood also feeds the perception that nothing is “true” anymore, and everything is subject to debate. This is a profoundly dangerous notion if it confuses the virtual world with the real one.
Science, the very discipline that produced informatics, is predicated on the notion that facts do exist, and can be measured with an acceptably low degree of uncertainty. Science consists in sorting out opinions (hypotheses) supported by facts from opinions (hypotheses) not supported by facts. While science rejects dogma, it does not consider all theories to be equivalent. Each theory is given a weight proportionate to the amount of concrete evidence supporting it. As evidence accumulates, knowledge grows. Lost in the virtual world, we risk forgetting that the tangible, concrete world doesn’t care what we think, or what we tweet online, but it does determine our survival.
Scientific literacy is more important than ever. What we need to democratize is not so much easy access to unreliable information, but the knowledge of how reliable information about the world is gathered, critically examined and used. Those of us who have the training, skill and disposition to do so have an obligation to add as much unbiased, user-friendly information on science and the scientific method to the online jungle. We are badly outnumbered, and facts are not as fun as conspiracy theories, but the voice of reason must not be silenced. Those of us with a talent for didactics may want to try to sneak reason into emotionally appealing storylines.
Again, I largely agree with what you are saying here, with just a few exceptions. The disagreements are more interesting to talk about, so that's what I'll do.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I think I am more optimistic about the effect of digital media on our intellectual lives. It is true that a lot of misinformation is spread through the internet, but on balance I think it has done far more good. Global GDP continues to accelerate, extreme poverty has dropped precipitously, and violence at almost every scale is falling. We are doing something right.
This is anecdotal evidence, but I've found that generally, the younger someone is, the more skeptical they are of their sources. And once that culture of skepticism sets in, untruths have a way of dropping out of the meme pool.
It is true that the internet helps bad actors spread their ideas, but it is also true that the internet helps spread truth just as quickly. And the truth has a habit of winning in the long run. In my view, anything that helps more people communicate with each other faster is a good thing.
I think I'm also a little less judgmental of people who do not understand the devices they use (admittedly this may be because I am one of them). There are so many things to know, and so little time to know them, that we have to make choices. If you care more about civil rights law than about how synapses work or how best to combat viruses, that's fine with me. Couldn't I argue that the world is populated by the enlightened people, like theologians and philosophers, and then a bunch of clueless people who don't think about the nature of their existence? Or maybe that the world is populated by people who understand how to grow food, and then a bunch of leeches who rely on their expertise? At the end of the day, who cares how my smartphone works, as long as I can talk to my spouse with it, find a cool restaurant to eat at, or book my next trip to another country? As it happens, I am interested in how things work, but not everyone has a brain like mine, and there may be aspects of their experience that I am missing out on. Perhaps I enjoy social interaction less than they do. We enjoy what we enjoy, and hopefully we find some meaning in using our talents and predispositions to make life better for other people.
The other point here is that you don't need to understand how a smartphone works to be an informed citizen. You just need to trust the scientists. Of course, it would be better if everyone tried to be as informed as possible on the science. However, given that many people just aren't that curious about science, I think I could settle for a much more modest goal. Simply listen to the scientists. If they say climate change is a problem, or GMOs aren't a problem, take their word for it; and if you don't want to take their word for it, then learn the science and make an argument.
I try to learn all the science I can, but I am still young and I didn't study it in college very much, so I am still quite ignorant. But I trust that scientific consensus matters because I know that scientists take pride in admitting they were wrong when the evidence goes against them. There is a process there to enforce honesty, and so putting your faith in scientists is not like putting your faith in politicians, or priests, or whatever. A simple recognition that scientists know what they are talking about would do a world of good.
I actually have another disagreement on "political correctness." I believe you misunderstand where many conservatives are coming from on this. Many of them are actually racist, or homophobic, or Islamaphobic, etc., but at least some of them, in my opinion, are correct in denouncing political correctness on the left.
ReplyDeleteFor example, Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan, and many other people on the left have called people like Sam Harris and Ayan Hirsi Ali bigots and Islamaphobes. Ali was literally born in East Africa and lived the first part of her life in a Muslim society as a woman, so if it is really Islamaphobic for her to criticize Islam, is it ever NOT Islamaphobic to criticize Islam? Notice the double standard. Leftists can denigrate evangelical Christians all they want, but as soon as someone says that Muslims are a potential threat because of their religion, then they are called bigots. I think this is a kind of reverse racism, where we say to Muslims: "we don't expect you to rise to our high standards of moral decency, so we won't criticize you for it." Also, it is mostly liberals who will dismiss female genital mutilation and other gross injustices by saying "it's their culture."
I think Obama is right to minimize anti-Muslim rhetoric, because most Muslims in the Middle East will get the message that he hates all Muslims, no matter how hard he tries to make his argument nuanced. But those of us who can speak freely should be able to say that Islam is simply a terrible set of ideas. Of course, I think almost every religion is basically a set of superstitious and harmful beliefs, but some are worse than others. Islam, perhaps because Muhammad was a political leader and a warrior in addition to being a prophet, has not accepted the idea of a separation of mosque and state, and that has had horrendous consequences.
Islam is not an existential threat (or even much of a threat at all to the continental United States), and terrorism is close to a non-problem. We should be more willing to accept more Syrian refugees, and we should work harder to empower women in the Muslim world. But let's not mince words: Islam is the most destructive religion in the world today. And liberals who refuse to acknowledge that out of fear of being called bigots or Islamaphobes are, justly, condemned by conservatives for being "politically correct."
Another bugaboo is affirmative action. If you do not think affirmative action is a good idea, as it is currently implemented, then most liberals will call you a racist. This has shut down debate on the topic and I think actually perpetuates a more racist system.
When a talented black person gets into a good school, he is looked upon with suspicion by his white peers because they (with good reason) know that he might have gotten in based on the color of his skin. He has to work hard to convince them that he deserves to be there. Meanwhile, other black people get accepted when a white person of equal talent would have been rejected. When these less talented black people fail, students at the school might incorrectly take that as an indication that the truly talented black people are not as talented as they seem.
Our education and justice systems are tilted against black people in various ways. I think we should work to reform those so that all races have equal opportunities to succeed and get into good schools. That is going to take a long time and a lot of energy and brainpower, but it can be done. Accepting students who are not qualified into top schools simply because you want different colors of skin in your classrooms is not a good idea unless you have reason to believe that having students from different backgrounds contributes to how well everyone overall is learning. In something like math or science, I am very skeptical that such a consideration should make a very big difference. Can you do the math? Can you design a good experiment? That is all that should matter. In an anthropology or sociology department, there might be a better reason for accepting some affirmative action so that students get first hand experience with people unlike themselves.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, to even broach the topic invites accusations of racism, and that is another thing that conservatives are right to criticize.
Finally, microaggressions. I referred earlier to white people clutching their purses a little closer when a black person walks by. Some people really do think that black people are genetically more violent than white people, and that is the basis for their often racist behavior. However, while there isn't any good evidence that black people are genetically more violent than white people, there IS good evidence that they are over-represented in the criminal population in the United States. Much of that is because our justice system administers justice unevenly, but that does not explain the extent of the difference. Due to a variety of factors, many of which have roots in Jim Crowe laws and slavery, the criminal percentage of the black population is higher than the criminal percentage of the white population. Most liberals are unwilling to admit this because it makes them seem racist, but we should be honest about it or we'll have a harder time fixing it.
By the way, it is POSSIBLE that scientists could map the genomes of every person in America and discover that, say 20% of the white population has violent genes and 25% of the black population has violent genes, or vice versa. That wouldn't change how we administer justice or setup our institutions. Stereotypes are useful and they often accurately reflect reality, but we should always make sure that we do not automatically attribute stereotypical characteristics to individuals that we meet. Stereotypes are based upon statistical averages; they should not be used to immediately judge individual people that happen to belong to a particular group.
So to return to the person clutching her purse. She is, in a sense, justified in doing this, because the chances really ARE a little higher that, if this guy passing her is black, he will grab it. But we should be aware that in a case like this (depending on where you are), the increase in probability is so slight that it may as well be zero, and if you clutch your purse in a way that is visible to the suspect, then he may feel justifiably angry that you have lumped him in with other people unfairly and, given enough repeat instances of this sort of thing happening, he may finally lash out in anger at being treated unfairly for so long.
I'm curious what you think about political correctness when expressed in these terms. Do you disagree with my assessments here or are you willing to condemn political correctness in these circumstances along with me?
Actually I agree with your arguments. I don't believe one needs to be an engineer to use informatics. But they do have to trust that science works. The more they know about it the more comfortable they will be with it, but it's not a requirement. I took programming classes, but I couldn't build a computer myself. The fact that I use it so much makes me more comfortable than most non-digital natives, but I can understand the plight of those who aren't. I also agree that political correctness can get out of hand. If one is in dangerous neighborhood, clutching one's purse is a justifiable reaction, and not always racist. Where I came from, bad neighborhoods exist. Except the bad guys, who behave very much like the gangs we have here, are white. So, I learned that that sort of behavior isn't linked to a race but to low socioeconomics status, lack of education and opportunities etc. That said, this understanding won't protect me from getting mugged in bad neighborhood in the US by a person who may happen to be nonwhite, and it's OK for me to protect myself and I wouldn't see that as automatically racist. It's a matter of statistics.
ReplyDeleteAs for affirmative action, I think it should be based on socioeconomics rather than race. As long as we have a highly expensive and profit-driven higher education system, poor people and people with disadvantaged backgrounds are not going to have the same opportunities as people who selected their parents carefully. It's OK to try and level the playing field for them, if for no other reason because we risk losing a talent pool. Not every great thinker or artist was born rich. In this country, blacks are more likely to be socioeconomically disadvantaged simply because they have been shut out of opportunities for 300 years, and only in my lifetime have they had access to desegregated schools. White flight immediately deprived those schools of resources. So, the playing field has not been level for them for so long that the effects will be felt for generations. That said, if someone is of equally disadvantaged background and happen to be white, they too deserve a hand. White underprivileged groups are bound to grow, because the demand for work by persons without a college education is dropping. It's dropping because of informatics and increased efficiency. So, folks who hoped to have a comfortable middle class life with a high school diploma are going to be out of lack no matter who the president is. These folks need access to quality education. I am a product of nearly free, high quality public education, and I am living proof that it can and does work. I liked the Sanders platform on education, for that reason.
I really enjoy the debate!!!
I think I agree with that view of racial preferences in school admissions. The focus should be on helping the most talented people get into the best schools, period. That means that schooling is ideally of high quality everywhere, and if to get to that point we happen to pour more money into neighborhoods that happen to be black, then that's appropriate.
ReplyDeleteThere is one problem I see with that, though. Is there any place at all for private schooling? Because even if we manage to bring every single public school up to a certain standard, there will probably be private schools that are even better, and those will be mostly attended by the richest students. Are we willing to force prestigious private schools to close and send those students to a public school system that we know is worse? One way out of this is to get every public school to the level of the best private schools, but that seems to me like an impossible goal to reach even in the next couple centuries.
I know almost nothing about education policy, so I'm also interested in what measures actually make schools better. Is a voucher system really so bad? Wouldn't this force schools to compete for students and drive innovation, cost-cutting, and so on? The schools would also compete for the best teachers by paying them higher wages, so it's not like wages for teachers would plummet in the absence of federal subsidies.
I think one problem with the vouchers is that, if you give the same amount to everyone, a market will emerge for very prestigious, very expensive schools that only the richest people can pay for. This would exacerbate the inequality between the richest and poorest students. But what if the government gave out vouchers to everybody AND funded scholarships for the poor talented students, to an extent that would ensure that every socioeconomic background was represented by students of roughly equal talent? This all presupposes that the public high schools are of high enough quality that talented poor students can demonstrate their talent well enough to earn scholarships.
ReplyDelete