Is Education the Solution to All the Evils? by Matias Bulnes, NYC

Education is the footing for a better society. So at least goes the cliché. And though clichés lack originality by definition, some are nonetheless true. This one, in particular, seems to me to be one of those. So many of the evils of modern society seem to stem from our chronic ignorance of each other’s motives and concerns, ignorance of what society consists in, ignorance of what we are, ignorance of other countries and cultures, ignorance of this, ignorance of that. If ignorance is, as it seems, the root of all evils, then the remedy is education. Economists usually recommend poor countries to strongly invest in education as the best means to strive. At the more local level, people oftentimes blame it on education when faulting somebody for some bad. So if everybody knows what the problem is, and moreover their diagnosis seems plausible, why are so many people uneducated? Why the evils go on? Why don’t we perfect the Enlightenment’s project and educate the whole world—or, to be a bit more modest, the whole US?

Maybe the problem is that Capitalism needs uneducated people. This is reminiscent of conspiracy theories mounted by leftist adolescents who imagine some Machiavellian businessmen complotting against the whole world. However, setting aside the conspiracy part, it may well be true that the market is like an orchestra and in such an organized setting not everybody can play the piano; someone has to hit the drum. And, of course, the problem is that drummers need not be so educated, nor would a mere drum satisfy them if they were. True, education works as a virtuous circle: education ensues innovation, innovation ensues technology and the need for more educated people. But even innovators have to eat and somebody has to take care of at least food production. So there will always be a need for uneducated labor in a Capitalist society.

However, in all fairness this isn’t a problem for Capitalist societies only, for even under a Socialist model some drummers would be needed. Even if, as in a Socialist model, the rewards for labor are not proportional to the sophistication of the job, some people will have to do the unsophisticated work that doesn’t require too much formal education. It seems as though education inevitably has to be distributed unequally no matter which model one prefers. So again, what does it mean to say that education is “the solution”?


There are at least 3 types of answer for this question. The first one is that education is the solution to the extent that it can be carried out given the constrains imposed by the market. Since poor countries have not come near developing their “market potential,” education is what they need to take advantage of the existing technology and thus defeat poverty. In countries with a more comfortable economy, more education may not do any good for they may have exhausted their potential. So, according to this line, education is not “the solution” but rather a solution depending on the country.

Even though I don’t think this is all people mean when they demand better education, I find myself moved by the premises of this view. This is perhaps due to my teaching experience. It is not so rare that I have students whom, in the light of their work, do not seem prepared or even suited for the challenges of college (see this magnificent anonymous article for interesting discussion). This feeling is unpleasant in extreme, and perhaps even remorseful, but anyone who has taught students like these will most likely arrive at the conclusion that high-level education is not for everyone, whatever other utopias are true. Sad as it is, not everybody can play the piano. This much seems out of question.

A second type of answer is that education is “the solution” in certain sense of the term “education.” Not technical but moral education is what we need to solve our problems—so the line goes. And in fact this is probably closer to what most people mean when they explain others’ misbehaviors by their lack of education. The idea is that quite aside from whatever formal knowledge people may have, moral knowledge is what accounts for their moral defects. As a result of this view, moral knowledge is independent of other knowledge one may have about the world. This seems reasonable to me in so far as moral knowledge is understood as knowledge about moral norms independently of their justification. When justification is needed, moral knowledge becomes pervasive and, I believe, continuous with other knowledge. Whether or not I’m right about this latter point, it seems plausible that people learn most moral norms as dogmas, without the justification attached to them. Hence the explanation that somebody’s misbehavior is due to lack of moral knowledge makes sense since it points to the fact that the person in question was not educated into, or in any case, did not learn (if only in the Skinnerian sense of stimulus/response), the moral rules. The only problem is that “moral rules” here has to be understood as a conventional set of norms people take to encompass the right but not the right itself. But life is short, let alone this post, so let’s put this to the side.

The third type of answer recasts the problem for which education is the solution as a political rather than moral problem. Education isn’t so much the solution to all the evils of society as it is a necessary condition for a society to be just. However, this view usually stresses justice as an extremely important political value and failure to attain it as one important source of political evil. The idea is most notably inherent in Rawls’ work, more specifically, in his Difference Principle. Setting aside technical details, the idea is roughly that a just society must guarantee its members that they will be able to attain whatever position in society their natural assets permit regardless of the social class in which they were born, their race, accent, or other consideration irrelevant from the moral point of view—to use Rawls’ own expression. This is known in everyday jargon as “equality of opportunities.” A society can only guarantee its members equality of opportunities if it provides them with high-quality education. According to this line, we need education not to solve all the evils of society but to solve one in particular which is extremely important: social injustice.

This is, I think, the best way of making sense of the value of education and the importance people in the ivory tower as well as in the street place on it. This view also accounts for the remorseful feeling we professors have on occasion that some of our students are just not cut out for college. Everybody should have the right to develop her natural talents; but of course not everybody’s talents are equal. Hence, only some people should receive high-level education. What’s important is that who does or doesn’t, does not depend on their social class, race, accent, or other considerations irrelevant from the moral point of view. And this much we haven’t achieved nor are we any close to achieving.

Let me finish with a bold contention: achieving equality of opportunities should result in dispensing with private education altogether. In effect, it seems plausible that it is a necessary condition for achieving this political ideal that the state levels public with private education, for otherwise economic power would determine one’s chances of developing one’s natural talents. But this in turn seems impossible for any time public education approaches the quality levels of private education, the private students or their parents will have incentives to toss in more money and lift the best teachers from public schools or else switch to public schools altogether. Or to put it more simply, if public and private education are equal, private education is pointless. The reason why private education exists at all is that it gives those who can afford it an advantage. This obviously conflicts with equality of opportunities, but oh well, those who can realize this are precisely the educated, hence, the same ones who take advantage of this defect of our society. No wonder they find it more convenient to look the other way.

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Just marking a few pages worth reading.

1. Today, the Times editorial page notes the disturbing trend in Obama's rhetoric and positions: endorsing the evisceration of FISA, lauding the public financing of religious organizations, and the endorsement of SCOTUS's recent decision on the 2nd amendment. We could add the 'newly' thought out position on Iraq withdrawal (in short the Bush-style nonsense: "I'll listen to my generals"; didn't Clinton rightly say that generals listen to her, if she were president, and not the other way around?). Yikes. Change we can believe in--if we were ostriches.

2. A must read: McClatchy's five-part blockbuster on 'war on terror' detainees, based on an 8-month long investigation.

Some highlights:

--"The McClatchy investigation found that top Bush administration officials knew within months of opening the Guantanamo detention center that many of the prisoners there weren't "the worst of the worst."

--"But the extent of the mistreatment, and that it [abuse detention center at Bagram, Afghanistan--mn] eclipsed the alleged abuse at Guantanamo, hasn't previously been revealed.

Guards said they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al Qaida's 9-11 attacks, unaware that the vast majority of the detainees had little or no connection to al Qaida."

--"The soldier who faced the most serious charges, Spc. Willie Brand, admitted that he hit Dilawar about 37 times, including some 30 times in the flesh around the knees during one session in an isolation cell.

Brand, who faced up to 11 years in prison, was reduced in rank to private — his only punishment — after he was found guilty of assaulting and maiming Dilawar."

--"'Really, nobody was in charge ... the leadership did nothing to help us. If we had any questions, it was pretty much 'figure it out on your own,' " Cammack [a former specialist with the 377th Military Police Company--mn] said. 'When you asked about protocol they said it's a work in progress.'"

--"Sen. Carl Levin, who's leading an investigation into the origins of the harsh interrogation techniques, said at a hearing Tuesday that the abuse wasn't the result of 'a few bad apples' within the military, as the White House has claimed. 'The truth is that senior officials in the United States government sought information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees,' said Levin, a Michigan Democrat."

--"The quintet [senior Bush administration lawyers responsible for detainee policy, including Addington and Gonzales--mn] did more than condone harsh treatment, however. It created an environment in which it was nearly impossible to prosecute soldiers or officials for alleged crimes committed in U.S. detention facilities."

--"Trust between the uniformed military lawyers and the Bush administration collapsed in the months after 9-11."

--"'John Yoo wanted to use military commissions in the manner they were used in the Indian wars," Romig said. 'I looked at him and said, 'You know, that was 100-and-something years ago. You're out of your mind; we're talking about the law.'"

The military commissions that the U.S. used against Native Americans during the mid-19th century were often ad hoc and frequently resulted in natives being hanged or shot.

'As they viewed it, due process is legal mumbo jumbo,' said Romig, who's now the dean of Washburn University's law school. 'They wanted to get them, get the facts and convict them. ... If you're caught as a terrorist, you're presumed guilty and you have to prove you're innocent. It was crazy.'"

Caution: read the rest at your own risk; it will cause nausea and moral disgust.


3. Seymour Hersh's article on secret ops missions into Iran. Bush demanded and (Democratic) Congress approved. Despite appearances, the Democrats are just as willing to subvert democracy as Bush is.

UPDATE:

4. Democracy, Mugabe-style. The Washington Post gets inside Mugabe's (and his military henchmen's) means of maintaining power.

"In the three months between the March 29 vote and the June 27 runoff election, ruling-party militias under the guidance of 200 senior army officers battered the Movement for Democratic Change, bringing the opposition party's network of activists to the verge of oblivion. By election day, more than 80 opposition supporters were dead, hundreds were missing, thousands were injured and hundreds of thousands were homeless. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's leader, dropped out of the contest and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy."

According to the report, after the initial vote, which Mugabe lost, he was planning on relinquishing power. The military "convinced" him that "the choice was not Mugabe's alone to make." This is a well-known problem for leading in an unstable country. Even with the best of intentions and plans (not that this describes Mugabe), the leader of an unstable country needs to keep the wolves at bay in order to stay in power. The reasoning is that it would be worse to let the wolves have total power. However, there comes a point at which it becomes difficult to distinguish the solution from the problem, as the case of Zimbabwe demonstrates.

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