School Vouchers

There is a very poorly written op-ed by Walt Gardner in the Christian Science Monitor about Vouchers, called School Vouchers Leave too Many Behind. The argument seems to commit the Nirvana Fallacy, aka the Perfect Solution Fallacy, since Gardner seems to be simply arguing that because school vouchers are imperfect, they should be abandoned. This argument only makes sense if we assume there is some perfect alternative, which of course there isn't, and Russel Roberts succinctly criticizes Gardner for it. Nonetheless, I think there are some implicit arguments behind this op-ed that deserve consideration, even though this poorly written op-ed fails to argue them.

For one, Gardner seems to be saying at the end of his op-ed that the students left behind by vouchers are actually worse off with vouchers than without, writing,

Without anyone in their corner, children who remain in regular high schools have a graduation rate well below that in voucher high schools

...

voucher supporters believe these children constitute the unavoidable price that must be paid in the service of the principle of choice

He cites their poor graduation rates, but this evidence doesn't prove that point, since these students would probably do poorly with or without vouchers. I would imagine that these students would be better off with vouchers, since they would be attending smaller public schools, which could thereby serve their smaller student pool better. Also, since vouchers are considerably cheaper (saving 10-15 thousand, and even higher in DCs school district, PER student) then that frees up more money for these students, though, of course, more money per se, is not the route to better education ( though it can potentially open up more possibility for better education).

Gardner is also implicitly arguing that the kids who take advantage of the vouchers are not better off, evidenced by lack of improvement in test scores. This is also a weak argument, since test scores are a weak indicator of good education. Long term success is a better indicator. This is a doggedly difficult thing to measure since its ultimately impossible to tell how successful they would have been without the vouchers. Thus, that parents of voucher kids are happier with the program is probably the best indicator available, and it shows that the vouchers are good.

Thus, if Gardner is making an argument that doesn't fall into the Nirvana fallacy, it seems to be that vouchers don't help those who do take advantage of them and do hurt those who don't take advantage of them. I think both of these arguments are weak and are poorly supported.

Of course, Gardners primary argument is that people are wrong who claim politicians are being hypocritical by sending their kids to good private schools, and then trying to deny the vouchers that are the means of the less privileged going to good private schools. But this argument depends on showing that vouchers actually hurt the poor, which he fails to do.

In the end, I think vouchers are a good idea, mostly just on the grounds that they save oodles of money. I think an even better solution would be to eliminate public schools and vouchers. Behind vouchers are the threat of creating arbitrary and ineffective standards for schools to be eligible to receive vouchers. Without vouchers and public schools, education could serve students instead of governments. Poor youngsters would be better served since most likely this situation would create the existence of free charitable schools for the poor, which could serve those who couldn't afford even the most inexpensive private schools. And I think most likely such schools would be guided by a mission to actually recruit underprivileged and neglected children and try to bring them to their school. The problem is that when the government swoops in and takes responsibility for something, like educating the young, it lifts the burden of people to take personal responsibility for themselves and their community. You remove government and people will be trying to assure that the kids in their community are educated.

Update: Mike Smith, senior advisor to the Secretary of Education made a statement about whenever a decision is made about education curricula or standards, at the federal level, it will be inevitably guided by politics. The Cato Institute responds that whenever a decision is made at any level of government (federal, state, local) on education standards and curricula, it will inevitably be guided by politics. And they link to a paper Neal McCluskey published for Cato two years ago called Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict, that argues the only way to avoid conflict about curricula and standards is to let parents choose their schools.

Eubulides' Paradoxes

I love paradoxes, and have tried to collect a considerable number of them, in philosophy as well as in other intellectual disciplines. I define paradox rather broadly as any real or apparent contradiction or just something that seems to defy common sense. In many cases the paradoxes are in a sense superficial since the apparent contradiction can be resolved.

In the ancient world most of the interesting paradoxes are either from from Zeno of Elea or Eubulides of Miletus. I'll talk about Zeno later, but I want to talk about Eubulides right now.

He has seven paradoxes attributed to him, but many of them are redundant. Ultimately he really has four unique paradoxes: the Masked Man paradox, the Horn Paradox, the Liar paradox and the Sorites paradox

The Masked Man paradox basically goes: if there is a masked man who is your father then someone might ask you, "Do you know your father?" To which you say "yes." Then they ask: "Do you know that masked man over there?" To which you answer, "No." But since the masked man is your father, you seem to be saying that you both know and don't know your father. This is only an apparent contradiction resolved by either seeing it as an equivocation on the word "know" The first "know" means "is acquainted with," and the second "know" means "can identify." Or the apparent contradiction is resolved by recognizing that the second answer, "No, I don't know that masked man," was simply made in error. Namely, you could say, "I didn't realize that I knew the masked man, because I didn't realize he was my father."

Next there is the horn paradox, which basically goes: If we assume that you have whatever you haven't lost, then from the observation that you've never lost horns, you therefore must have horns, but of course you don't have horns. This is also an only apparent paradox. It is just the result of a bad initial premise. No, we can't say that you have whatever you haven't lost. We can say, you have whatever how previously had and haven't lost."

The next paradox is the liar paradox, which has a few variations. For example, if I were to say, "Everything I say is a lie," or "This statement is false." Both variations are probably best explained as arising from some of the artificialities of language. It does appear to present some problems for logic, so a number of attempts have been made to resolve it. I think I'll return to it in more detail later.

Finally, there is the Sorites paradox ("sorites" means "heap"), another difficult paradox and I think Eubulides' most interesting paradox. The idea here is that if I have a heap of grains of sand, and I take away one grain of sand then it is still a heap. And if I take away another grain, it is still heap. And if I extend this logic, then at some point it will be too small to be a heap. But I can't make a heap into a non-heap by simply taking away one grain of sand. So, how did it become too small to be a heap?

Mostly this paradox is built on the vagueness of language, since "heap" and "non-heap" are not concretely defined terms. But when used in logical argument they are treated as a precise bivalent, black and white distinction.

Another way to think of it: If a million grains of a sand is a heap then certainly 999,999 is a heap, so is 999,998 and 999,997, etc. From this we infer that if x number of grains is a heap, then x-1 grains is a heap. If we iterate this reasoning again and again, we eventually can conclude that 1 grain of sand is a heap, as is 0 grains of sand. I would classify this as a vertical argument: an argument where each new premise is dependent on a previous conclusion. Vertical arguments grow weaker as one increases the steps since one increases the likelihood that there is a weak or fallible argument somewhere along the chain. Vertical arguments depend on an unbroken chain of infallible arguments to work (doable in math, but less so in philosophy). To conclude that 1 grain of sand is a heap requires a vertical argument of many thousands of steps, Any fallibility in the assumption that "if x number of grains is a heap, then x-1 grains is a heap" is amplified by the number of steps. The argument becomes rephrased "if x number of grains is a heap, then x-1 grains is a heap, and if x-1 grains is a heap then x-2 grains is a heap, and x-3 grains is a heap, and x-4 grains is a heap ... and x-999,999 grains of sand is a heap." We get an argument that grows weaker each step, just as correlatively the heap of grains of sand grows less likely to be called a "heap" the more grains of sand are removed, until we are left with a remaining bunch of grains that no one would call a heap and a vertical argument that has been stacked so high that it topples over.

Grade Inflation

George Leef has an interesting recent article about grade inflation titled, "A is for Average, B is for Being There." He presents some sensible explanations for the cause of grade inflation. The first is the desire of administrators to prop up reputation and revenue by preventing dropouts. When students get Fs or even Ds, they are apt to leave college, which both translates into loss tuition, but also a reduction in their rating due to high dropout rate. This leads to policies, such as making it difficult for professors to fail students. My school, for one, requires us to fill out paperwork justifying any F.

Of course, this paperwork could just be a preemptive defense against the second problem: students complaining about grades. If a student files a complaint about a grade it can create a lot of trouble for a professor. So, a sensible professor, in order to avoid the trouble, eventually learns to give better grades just to be safe. Also, the obvious upward bias of the complaints (students will only complain to have their grades raised; students will never complain if they think their grade is unfairly high) may also contribute to grade inflation.

Secondly, students who receive higher grades rank their teachers higher. Many schools put great stock in these student evaluations, and may use them to determine pay raises and tenure. A sensible professor will give higher grades to students in order to get better ratings and help their career.

After noting these causes, though, Leef recommends simply that professors take moral courage to give their students more accurate grades, as if the causes of the problem, which he mentioned, were merely incidental. Leef quotes Lee Gutkind

Educators must lead the way to take responsibility for the morals and ethics of students by taking a deep look inside themselves and their own actions, drawing their moral and ethical boundaries and honoring the mission with which they have been entrusted. It begins with honesty in grading—rewarding excellence and valuing achievement.

Of course, wagging your finger at professors and ask them to risk their careers just to combat such a problem is unlikely to produce results.

More sensibly, the problem should be attacked at its root. The main issues are really that students can cause trouble by complaining about grades, schools can lose enrollees, and professors need good student evaluations for career advancement. Schools should put the burden of proof much more on the student to prove unfair grading practices. To address enrollment, perhaps schools should encourage teachers to withdraw rather than fail substandard students (some schools already encourage this). And the schools should also improve teacher evaluations.

Evaluations definitely serve a valuable formative role, helping teachers get feedback and improve their teaching. But in their role of ranking teachers (their summative function) they're a bit more problematic. In addition to contributing to grade inflation, they also don't seem to correlate with actual content learned, and seemed to be based on more affective impressions. It's also been suggested student evaluations restrict academic freedom, by discouraging professors from defending controversial opinions. Professors can be evaluated poorly simply because the students don't like some controversial opinion the professor expresses.

Students evalutations tend to strongly correlate with evaluations by other teachers and by administrators, which suggests that they are valid measures of teacher performance. But this also suggests that evaluations for the purpose of advancement can be just as well done by these other teachers and administrators, and without the risk of grade inflation.

Schools might also take a direct assault on grade inflation by simply setting mandatory class averages for professors. A school could say that each professor has to reward grades of an average of 80% or 75% (or B- or C+ or C) for all students they teach per semester or per academic year. They wouldn't have to give identical averages for every class, but on average for all classes over an academic year is reasonable. Professors probably wouldn't like this, but it would very simply solve the problem.

I think grade inflation is a serious issue since it diminishes the value of the degree. Instead of an academic degree indicating hard work and an ability to learn, it simply indicates an ability to pay the tuition costs and show up to class. And so schools should address it in order to retain their reputation.

Originalism and regime uncertainty

Originalism is the legal doctrine that the meaning of legal texts, especially the US constitution, is determined by the original meaning and intent of the document. It's a generally unpopular position nowadays. I prefer it because, more strictly adhered to, it would severely limit the size and scope of the federal government, which would have numerous benefits. But besides this ends-based reasoning, I think there are better theoretical justifications. For one, we might justify it on contractual grounds. Namely, the constitution was a contract between the federal government and the states, ratified over 200 years ago, and that to adhere to that contract is to go back to the meaning at the time of ratification. We can change that contract, but that requires both participation from the state and federal governments, which is done through the amendment process. To reinterpret the constitution at the federal level is to effectively change the contract without the states' permission.

Another more pragmatic, ends-based, justification that I've been thinking about recently is on the grounds of Regime Uncertainty. This is a concept from the work of Robert Higgs, that the uncertainty created by political action hampers economic development. The idea is simple: people are less likely to invest in the future when there is uncertainty. When legislators or regulators are empowered to make decisions that will have decisive impact on people's fortunes, it increases uncertainty. People will take less risk, for fear of being thwarted by the whim of politicians and regulators.

This also includes the whim of judges and justices. It doesn't just matter what laws are passed, but also how those laws are interpreted. When laws are vague, or clear rules have not yet been established, then companies will take a more conservative attitude, sometimes becoming excessively protective to avoid legal action. One can think of the all too obvious warning that one finds on food packaging: a nut container that says "this product may contain nuts" or a coffee lid that says, "contents may be hot." One is led to think, "Are we growing stupider that we need to be told these things." The answer is, no. It's just companies have grown excessively cautious to avoid litigation.

I can also think of the sexual harassment training that I went through in order to work at my school here. You'd think, by what they were telling us, that I could never speak to or even make eye contact with any of my co-workers without risking sexual harassment. It seems scary when you think of how easily you could potentially misstep, but the reality is that it is extremely unlikely for a sensible person who is considerate of others to be accused of sexual harassment. The people who design these courses are intentionally excessive--again, in order to avoid any risk of litigation. They don't know what ludicrous things someone might get offended at, and they want to avoid the legal fees, and they don't want to face an unpredictably judge or jury. The precedent on sexual harassment is unfortunately vague and rather generous to the victim, defining it as whatever the victim thinks is harassment. The concept of a "Rational Person" has been put in place to try to tame it. The idea here it is sexual harassment if a reasonable person would think it is sexual harassment. But in practice this just means that the judge or jury will determine whether they think it's sexual harassment, since most people will generally view themselves as a standard for a "rational person." This admittedly would exclude the most ludicrous sexual harassment suits, but it doesn't help too much in creating some certainty about what is prohibited and what forbidden.

Originalism has the advantage that one can actually know what the law is and says. One can know what a law means--what it limits, what it forbids, what it permits, and so on--with a high degree of certainty. If the law says, "interstate commerce" then you can say: "Interstate, that means between the states. And commerce means trade, perhaps also travel." Then, in light of the tenth amendment, you can say, "Thus, congress can't regulate intrastate commerce. Thus, the FDA can't regulate intrastate food and drug sale, the federal government can't prohibit medical marijuana that is entirely intrastate, the FCC can't regulate local radio station," and so on.

Admittedly, even adhering to a more originalist interpretation of the constitution, not all of it is completely transparent, but there is high level of confidence and a greater degree of certainty. And originalism will provide long term certainty. You know that the courts will not suddenly decide that certain forms of commerce are so important (or the judges dislike so strongly) that they can't possibly be intrastate.

This increased certainty will have economic benefits. It will adhere closer to rule of law, rather than rule of men.

The Problem of Complexity

I've been thinking about complexity while contemplating the question, which I asked my students, of what type of government Socrates would prefer. It's not obvious from what know (or at least think we know) of what Socrates thought. The obvious answer, I think, is that Socrates would favor something like Plato's Beautiful City, a fairly totalitarian communism run by the best and the brightest. But with Socrates' ready acknowledgment of his own ignorance and his statement that he is the wisest because he knows his own ignorance, Socrates might not prefer such a government.

Running even just a moderate size Ancient Greek city, even for a very smart and enlightened ruler would be a difficult task. Obviously no ruler can possibly micro-manage everything, and thus is going to have to let the city run itself to a degree, only intervening in important matters. But the temptation is to try to run and fix everything. Leaders can be tempted to think that things would be better if they had more control. But what they fail to see is the sometimes elusive complexity of even a small city. There will be thousands of individuals with their own actions, plans, desires, capacities,habits, and so on. Ultimately, a leader can see very little of this complexity, and thus can intelligently do very little to manage it. Many a leader though fails to see this complexity. Even worse, sometimes their smarts can get in the way. If they are really intelligent, they might begin to be over-confident in their ability. If they were wiser, as Socrates reminds us, they would be aware of their ignorance, and would not try to do more than they could handle. This leads me to think that, though Socrates would prefer a leader who is very specialized and expert in their particular job, a Socratic leader would be ultimately very hands off.

The problem is even more exaggerated when we talk about running an entire country with hundreds of million of people and a vast economy with billions of economic transactions daily. Not even a super genius can understand what's going on in this economy. Leaders are often made over-confident by their statistics and numbers by their expert advisors, and by their own intelligence and success. This can blind them to their ignorance. What we often fail to realize is, for example, is that these statistics and numbers only give us the vaguest outline of what's going on. Trying to fix the economy by means of this limited information is like a doctor trying to perform surgery with only a patients shadow--or even worse, like trying to manipulate a marionette doll to perform surgery from a thousand feet away.

Ultimately, a person aware of their own ignorance, is going to favor a more limited government.

Anti-Recession Legislation

Reason.com has an interesting chart about the the timing of anti-recession legislation and the end of recessions.



The pattern is that every recession from 1948 to 1991 has involved legislation designed to combat the recession passed either right as the recession is ending or after the recessions is over. Recessions aren't officially declared until considerable time has elapsed. The current recession began in January of 2008, but wasn't declared until December. And similarly we probably won't know when this recession is officially over until many months after. This is one of the big problems with anti-recession legislation to begin with--knowing whether there's a recession going on while it's going on.

Nick Gillespie whimsically quips that this could indicate that our current recession must be over, now that the stimulus bill is passed. Perhaps so, but I think the big lesson to learn from this is that the economy has recovered time and time again without help. You could add to that list basically every recession and depression prior to 1929, at which time government intervention in such affairs was still quite restricted by constitutional considerations. And the Congressional Budget Office already predicted that the current recession will end in the latter half of this year without the stimulus package. In fact the only two exceptions are the Great Depression and the 2001 recession (if you consider the last year's tax rebates stimulus, you could count this recession too). The Great Depression is by far the recession characterized by the greatest and swiftest stimulus of all. Hoover initiated stimulus in 1930, immediately after the stock market crash, and continued through 1931. When Roosevelt entered office, he continued with the New Deal in 1933 and then again in 1935-36. It leads one to think that perhaps eight years of economic stimulus may have made the thing worse, since all the other recessions and depression were much shorter and less severe. Looking at the data overall, the sensible conclusion would be that if Hoover had been as sluggish as Harding was in 1920 during that recession, then there would have only been a 1929-30 recession, and that if the governments of all those other recessions had been more swift from 1948 to 1990, then we may have had some really bad depressions.

There may be theoretical reasons to reject this conclusion, but that would require one to assume that the typical examples are in fact the exceptions and the exceptions are in fact typical.

Popularizing Philosophy

In class as we’ve been discussing Karl Reinhold’s Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie (Letters on Kantian Philosophy), the issue cam up about popularizing philosophy. Reinhold’s whole purpose in this series of articles is precisely to popularize Kantian philosophy, to bring Kant to a wider audience. In many ways he succeeded. The Briefe are a collection of articles that were published serially in 1786, and subsequently collected together to form this book. They were pretty widely read and established Reinhold’s name enough that he was given the newly created chair of Kantian philosophy in 1787 at the University of Jena. On the other hand, we are reading them in a philosophy class not as a secondary source to understand Kant, but as an independent thinker on his own, since Reinhold in a way created a new philosophy in the process of what he thought was merely explaining Kant in a more readable and digestible form.

In other words, Reinhold’s writing brings up the question of whether popularizing a sophisticated and difficult philosopher is something that scholars and philosophers should attempt to do, and yet it also brings up the warning that you won’t be able to popularize without in some way corrupting the original in the process.

There’s nothing wrong with corrupting the original per se, unless we assume that the philosopher in question is some sort of prophet spewing truth at every syllable. Really getting at what a philosopher is trying to say in every detail is always a hard bargain. But, presumably, there are aspects of the original philosopher that make them great and make them worthy of study, and the threat is that these will be lost in the translation to the popular audience. Are the most insightful and brilliant aspects of Kant reflected in Reinhold? It seems that some are and some aren't.

Presumably if you’re going to do a good job of popularizing a philosopher, then you are going to be able to present their most interesting an insightful ideas, and you're gong to be able to do it in a clear and consistent way.

But, in class, objections were raised to the project of popularizing. One complaint was that if you only get the most important ideas without the supporting details then you aren’t going to get the real philosophy; e.g. Reinhold can’t present the real Kant. Another objection was that these ideas cannot be presented out of context without corrupting them—i.e. the ideas only make sense in the context of other supporting details. In short, both were saying that popularizing a philosopher inherently corrupts the ideas of that philosopher, and that you really need to study the original to get the ideas.

I made a very pragmatic objection here, that it’s unrealistic to expect that average persons are going to have time to study these philosophers in great detail. People have jobs to do and other concerns in their life, and we philosophy students are rather fortunate to have the leisure to study these thinkers. Your average Joe can’t afford to spend years studying Kant in detail, and thus reading Reinhold is the only practical option for most people. And at least to get this brief introduction will benefit most people intellectually by introducing them to profound and unique ideas that could stir up new thoughts.

The objection then was raised that in fact being introduced to new ideas is corrupting if you don’t have the right disposition. Confirmation bias leads people to seek idea that confirm their presuppositions. Being introduced to ideas that have the imprimatur of a great philosopher gives them the aura of authority, and thus it will make some people more arrogant in ther convictions. In other words, new authoritative ideas can corrupt people by making them more over-confident in their presuppositions.

This argument I don’t like. The main problem of course is that it doesn’t really bear on the original discussion about whether it’s good to popularize sophisticated philosophy, since confirmation bias applies equally to trained philosophers as much as the overall population. One can become arrogant in one’s presuppositions if one read Kant through Reinhold or Kant directly. The argument is ultimately saying it's not a good idea to be exposed to new authoritative ideas at all. This would only make sense if we assumed that only philosophers or philosophy scholars can handle these ideas, whereas others are in danger of being corrupted by them, which itself is incredibly arrogant for a philosopher to say (though some philosophers have). But also I think we’re talking more about individuals who are the exception. Most of us are going to be stimulated to think when we learn of new ideas, and even if we seldom will question our presuppositions, our thoughts will be affected. There are few people that are really afflicted with such arrogant myopia, and there’s nothing to prevent these people from getting PhDs in philosophy and become philosophy professors.

Thus, I can say that for me, it is a good thing to popularize sophisticated philosophers, since I will have value to people who really aren’t able, for whatever reason, to go to the primary source.