Rational Philosophy

Education Issues: On the dangers of paying for improved test performance. The psychology of value.

“An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all”
– Socrates

Researchers at Duke have determined that a high-price tag placebo works better than a low-price tag placebo, even though the two pills have the same active ingredient (i.e., no active ingredient). The perceived price of the pill increases the psychological expectation of positive results. “If it costs more, it must be better,” our brain tells us.

Schools across the country have begun to experiment with programs that reward schools, teachers and children for good test scores. The Times paints a somewhat anecdotal picture of the enthusiasm children have for this approach, but it is not hard to imagine that the picture is largely accurate.

When first read this story, I had a strong and immediate negative reaction to the idea of paying children to do well on tests. As I read about the apparent promise of the programs, I tried to put my negative reaction to one side. But it lingered.

Psychologically, I think, I am reacting to the idea that children are being paid to learn. There is, it seems, a placebo effect at work. With good intentions the program architects and educators want to achieve better scores by paying more for them. But do better test scores reflect a perceived improvement or an actual improvement? Test scores, after all, measure the ability to score well on tests. Scoring well on tests is symptomatic of a good education, but not the same as a good education.

Just as a placebo makes the perception of pain go away. So, too, improved test scores make the perception of subpar education go away.

I don’t want to overstretch the analogy. The other profound misgiving I have also relates to the psychology of value.

Once you pay a child to study, in the child’s mind studying and learning become fused with reward or compensation. (And the research on the perceived value of placebos demonstrates just how powerfully our minds connect value and reward.) What happens when that child finds himself in a situation in which he won’t receive any immediate reward for studying or learning or growing? Will he be in a worse position than a child who hasn’t been paid to do well? Quite likely.

And, as adults, while what we do to improve our understanding comes with reward in the workplace, that’s not true in life generally. Will these children grow up to be less likely to apply themselves when there’s nothing to be gained from it?

Education is a long term investment. It’s very easy for legislators, professors, administrators and educators to get caught up in the need to improve school performance, to get children’s test grades up. But ultimately this is not the goal of education. Education aims to foster the acquisition of knowledge. If we turn our schools into factories that churn out paid learners, we are creating a generation of adults who will be confused about the real value of knowledge and learning. And that is a worrying thought.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On the philosophy of accountability in our schools, government, banks, and life in general…

I love this quote from George Bush, speaking yesterday at an elementary school in Chicago. “Look, I recognize some people don’t like accountability, [...] accountability says if you’re failing, we’re going to expose that and expect you to change. Accountability also says that when you’re succeeding you’ll get plenty of praise.” Ah, and they said he’d never learn.

Bush was talking about the grandly ill-conceived free-market assault on education — the “No Child Left Behind” act. Again in Bush’s words: “The philosophy behind No Child Left Behind was in return for money there ought to be results.”

Bush seems to have a very personal feeling for this philosophy. It speaks to him. After all, he came to power under the same diktat from big business and wealthy donors. ‘We’ll fund your campaign and support you in your bid for the presidency, but we expect results.’ And he delivered by cutting taxes, protecting and facilitating industry and big business interests, and handing down spectacularly rewarding contracts in the defense and reconstruction industries.

Unfortunately, the presidency shouldn’t be founded on that kind of accountability. Bush should have felt accountable to the people of the country before big business, because they invested their trust in him, not because they invested money in him. When we conceive of Bush’s presidency in this way it is no surprise that he has seemed to feel no real accountability for his most grievous failures as president — taking us into a war under false pretenses, endorsing illegal and cruel detention and torture, carrying out secret surveillance programs, reacting with lamentable indifference to the flooding after Katrina, and denying, deriding and tampering with the scientific evidence for global warming.

Likewise, the most important thing we invest in our schools is our trust in them to educate our children as well as they can and as well as we wish. When they fail, we should hold them accountable by finding ways to improve their performance. In some schools this will demand smaller classrooms, in others, new teachers, or a different school leader, in others perhaps a different teaching method or catchment approach. But when does it ever make sense to hold them accountable by removing funds? How does that help the children?

Which brings me to think that accountability and trust may be inextricably related from a philosophical perspective. We might test this theory with an example from the world of finance. Bear Stearns CEO, James Cayne stepped down today, the latest in a string of departures from the top spots of financial institutions embattled by the sub-prime loan crisis. My question is this: Have these corporate leaders felt compelled to step down because they squandered investors’ money or because they betrayed their trust?

The answer seems to be that whether Cayne and others felt a sense of personal and direct responsibility for the losses (some didn’t), they all felt a responsibility for the lost trust as evidenced by that financial mismanagement.

Similarly, we want our teaching establishments to feel responsible for educating our children, not for investing education funds. And we want our government to feel responsible for serving our common interests, not repaying campaign contributions.