jj@alice.UUCP (06/24/85)
> >I hardly claim that the world is perfect, but destroying people's > >self respect via AA(and via discrimination, sexism, and > >other forms of sheer stupidity) and expecting them to convey a good sense of > >self to their offspring is a ridiculous position. > > >There are many psychological studies of the results of Hopelessness > >and Helplessness, where the person learns that their situation and > >environment are independant of their behavior. Ghettos, > >racial crime <from minorities toward the "authority"> and many other > >things are clearly indicated as the results of hopelessness. > >In order to emiminate these things, one must remove the CAUSE. > > jj, are you saying AA is the CAUSE of ghettos and crime? That's what it > looks like, although I think(I certainly hope) you're only saying it's a > major factor. I doubt AA can be considered much of a factor compared to > the dual knowledge of ghetto blacks that I'm hardly saying that ghettos are caused by AA. In case you haven't noticed, ghettos far predate AA, Civil Rights acts, the Emancipation Proclimation, the Magna Charta, and so on... I AM saying that hopelessness (the feeling of the individual that no action by the individual can help that individual's standing) is an extremely strong impetus to remain in the ghetto. When I talk about education, I mean that people must learn that their own actions DO influence their situation. Furthermore, the necessary outside actions (by others) to ensure personal responsibility are required as well, so that the individual has everyday feedback, like most of us. A lot of individuals from "disadvantaged" backgrounds are indifferent (I DO NOT SAY predisposed) to criminal acts, because they see the law as only another power beyond their control that exists to keep them in their place. (I hope that even the most blase' of nutnews readers can see where anger is a simple outcome...) Those of you who haven't experienced the following situation, consider: You have little to eat, of low quality, and lower nutritional value. You cannot get a job because you're too skinny, unhappy, and unhealthy. <I include mental health...> You cannot enhance your health until you are employed. You point this out, and are told, "Tough, you're [black, irish, purple with red spots, etc], and that's the way that life is". What do you do? Futhermore, why should you care about the law, since the worst that will happen is that you will die, and you already know you will do that? My objections to AA are simple: 1) The person hired because of a quota, who knows it, is being reinforced in helpless behavior, NOT in positive behavior. 2) The person displaced is encouraged NOT to accept, rather to reject. The only advantage of AA, as Martin Taylor has pointed out, is the effect of a better life on the next generation. I can't shrug that off as of no account, if the next generation learns to be less hopeless, and more positive in approach, something HAS been gained. I think that such can be accomplished without AA, through education, counciling, etc. I don't say that it's fast, but I feel (perhaps incorrectly) that effects that are understood by those who are benefitted are much more long lasting, and less likely to be subverted. The ability to fight back on an even basis is essential to self-confidence. AA damages the employees, employers (also important, since they DO provide the work and product to keep your standard of living where it is, guys), and the public, in several important ways. Providing the employer with a healthy, effective, employee helps everyone, including the employee. How to decide who to help? I don't know. I think it's safe to say that nobody does. One thing that IS clear is that those who are helped must be given the tools to be able to help others. sigh, back to work, JJ. Life sucks, and then you die. -- TEDDY BEARS MAY BECOME EXTINCT! HELP AN ENDANGERED SPECIES! "...So many years have passed, though I'm older but a year, my mother's eyes, from your eyes, cry to me." (ihnp4/allegra)!alice!jj
tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) (06/27/85)
In article <3890@alice.UUCP>, jj@alice.UUCP writes: > My objections to AA are simple: > 1) The person hired because of a quota, who knows it, is > being reinforced in helpless behavior, NOT in positive behavior. > 2) The person displaced is encouraged NOT to accept, rather > to reject. > > The only advantage of AA, as Martin Taylor has pointed out, > is the effect of a better life on the next generation. I can't shrug that > off as of no account, if the next generation learns to be less hopeless, > and more positive in approach, something HAS been gained. > > I think that such can be accomplished without AA, through > education, counciling, etc. I don't say that it's fast, > but I feel (perhaps incorrectly) that effects that are understood > by those who are benefitted are much more long lasting, and less likely > to be subverted. The ability to fight back on an even basis is > essential to self-confidence. > > AA damages the employees, employers (also important, > since they DO provide the work and product to keep your > standard of living where it is, guys), and the public, in several > important ways. Providing the employer with a healthy, > effective, employee helps everyone, including the employee. > > How to decide who to help? I don't know. I think it's safe > to say that nobody does. One thing that IS clear is that those who > are helped must be given the tools to be able to help others. This article of jj!alice was a really nice article! It's clear and thoughtful. Worth following up. It illustrates a lot of the anti-AA arguments. Where we differ is in our sense of what the people helped and harmed by AA will "learn" from it, and whether what gets "learned" will stick. I would claim, first, that almost nothing is learned by those affected by AA except that social issues and their resolution can mean money in someone's pocket and money out of someone elses'. People should know that already. By the time one gets a job via AA, one's already a more-or-less well-formed adult, part of an intense adult universe of media and values. Unless your attention span only extends to your last job, the "reinforcement" of an AA job will be a drop in your life bucket. If you were industrious and believed in doing productive work before, you will not change just because you got one job through AA or any other political mechanism. I know people who've benefited from AA-like mechanisms in other countries, and they took their new jobs as opportunities and felt an obligation to overachieve, whether in gratitude or in worry that people would blackball them if they didn't prove themselves, I don't know. I also question the assumption that fewer qualifications for a job imply worse performance in the long run. In the short run, everyone needs training, and some always need more than others. Should we judge the performance of AA-rewardees by short-term results? People often adapt very quickly to new demands. I also don't agree that a sense of "fairness" in competition is a requirement for self-confidence. Just as I don't agree that a sense of "guilt" in losing out is a requirement for learning. People lose out in many avenues of life for reasons completely out of their control, ones whose arbitrariness pick them out as unfair. The same applies to winning. Strength and patience and self-confidence can come from recognizing that the world is arbitrary and unfair and dealing with the good and bad aspects of this "unfairness" as they come by -- looking for a lucky moment ready to take advantage of it should it come along, for instance. And not blaming oneself for unlucky times. As far as alternative routes avoiding AA are concerned -- I note, not pro or con, that most of the routes suggested by anti-AA people are passive, not affecting any employer's absolute right to choose whom to hire -- most of these routes were proposed at the opening of the Great Society. However, at the time of the Great Society, Congress also authorized a study of education and its effects on racial inequality (whether inequality of opportunity or results was left undefined), the Coleman report. Congress wanted to know if its policy of desegregating school systems would have positive results. That report led to AA precisely because its results suggested that the effect of education on career achievements, after taking out factors the most important of which was Father's occupation, was practically NIL. No effect, no program. Projections based on collected data indicate that improving education will not affect racial differences in life career paths AT ALL. Chris Jencks' book, "Who Gets Ahead", refines and fixes these statements some more, taking into account new data, but the predictions remain the same: improving education will have no effect on the US's racially unequal distribution of careers. Noting the strong effects of father's occupations through all this research, overwhelming any school effects, Jencks says that the way to redistribute careers is to redistribute careers. Makes sense. If father's occupation is most of what matters, then changing father's occupation will help the children. The other claim of Jencks' and others' work is that most factors social scientists pick out can explain only a very small amount of the variance in career achievements. The unexplained variance is just that, unexplained. No empirical analysis so far has given any reason to expect that most career achievement has resulted from any kind of pre-career characteristics of individuals at all, be they "hard work", "good morals", "intelligence", or anything else. And that's not for want of trying. The amount of bucks given for work in "status attainment" is enormous, corresponding to the myths most of us have about the process. How people got their sense of "merit" or "good performance leading to better jobs" is also a mystery, unless merit and good performance are myths passed along to quell rebellion in their absense. Theories of "rational myths" are currently a big fad among social scientists. So the alternative paths proposed by anti-AA people may not have been fully tried, but on the whole they have been considered and rejected as insufficient. AA was never the first choice of anybody, especially not politicians. But here the politicians and the civil rights movement decided to listen to the social scientists for once. Apologies to all those who were bored by this history. Tony Wuersch {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw "The more things stay the same, the more things change!" -- some capitalist political philosopher
tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL) (07/01/85)
> That report led to AA precisely because its results suggested that > the effect of education on career achievements, after taking out > factors the most important of which was Father's occupation, was > practically NIL. No effect, no program. > > Projections based on collected data indicate that improving education > will not affect racial differences in life career paths AT ALL. Chris > Jencks' book, "Who Gets Ahead", refines and fixes these statements some > more, taking into account new data, but the predictions remain the same: > improving education will have no effect on the US's racially unequal > distribution of careers. Noting the strong effects of father's > occupations through all this research, overwhelming any school effects, > Jencks says that the way to redistribute careers is to redistribute > careers. Makes sense. If father's occupation is most of what matters, > then changing father's occupation will help the children. > > > Tony Wuersch > {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw > So, education has no effect on career achievements. We sure could save a lot of money if we just closed all the schools.-) We could hold a lottery to see who gets what job. What could be more unbiased than that! Seriously, I would be curious if anyone on the net besides Mr. Wuersch believes this drivel. -- Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL ihnp4!ihlpg!tan
carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (07/02/85)
>> Projections based on collected data indicate that improving education >> will not affect racial differences in life career paths AT ALL. Chris >> Jencks' book, "Who Gets Ahead", refines and fixes these statements some >> more, taking into account new data, but the predictions remain the same: >> improving education will have no effect on the US's racially unequal >> distribution of careers. Noting the strong effects of father's >> occupations through all this research, overwhelming any school effects, >> Jencks says that the way to redistribute careers is to redistribute >> careers. Makes sense. If father's occupation is most of what matters, >> then changing father's occupation will help the children. [T. WUERSCH] > >So, education has no effect on career achievements. We sure could save >a lot of money if we just closed all the schools.-) We could hold a >lottery to see who gets what job. What could be more unbiased than that! >Seriously, I would be curious if anyone on the net besides Mr. Wuersch >believes this drivel. [B. TANENBAUM] Let's beware of setting up straw men in this very complex area. First, what did the Coleman Report (1965) conclude? (quoting C. Jencks): -- The physical facilities, the formal curriculums, and most of the measurable characteristics of teachers in black and white schools were quite similar. -- Measured differences in schools' physical facilities, formal curriculums, and teacher characteristics had very little effect on either black or white students' performance on standardized tests. -- The one school characteristic that showed a consistent relationship to test performance was the one school characteristic to which most poor black children had been denied access: classmates from affluent homes. In effect, the report supported the Supreme Court's judgment in *Brown* (1954) against "separate but equal": separate is inherently unequal. What do Jencks et al. conclude in *Who Gets Ahead?*? Among other findings: "Our results suggest that the apparent advantages enjoyed by high school graduates derive to a significant extent from their prior characteristics, not from their schooling. Unless high school attendance is followed by a college education, its economic value appears quite modest. [p. 189] "We initially asked "Who gets the most desirable jobs?" Our first answer was that background exerts a larger influence on economic outcomes than past research had suggested, accounting for something like 48% of the variance in occupational status and 15 - 30% of the variance in annual earnings. This is as strong an association as that between education and economic success. If our aim is to reduce the impact of being born to one set of parents rather than another, we still have a long way to go.... "The best readily observable predictor of a young man's eventual status or earnings is the amount of schooling he has had.... We did find, however, that the first and last years of high school and college are usually worth more than intervening years. This fact, along with the substantial reduction in the apparent effect of schooling when we control causally prior traits, suggests that only part of the association between schooling and success can be due to what students actually learn from year to year in school. [pp. 229-30] "*Inequality* [by Jencks] argued that trying to equalize men's personal characteristics was an unpromising way of equalizing their incomes. This argument had two parts. *Inequality* first argued that even if personal characteristics were equalized, this would have very marginal effects on the distribution of income.... *Inequality* also argued that past efforts at equalizing the personal characteristics known to affect income had been relatively ineffective. This assertion, sad to say, remains as true as ever. Thus, if we want to redistribute income [i.e., change the statistical distribution], the most effective strategy is probably still to redistribute income." [p. 311] Let me remind Bill that if one wishes to call someone's conclusions "drivel," whether Tony's or those of a distinguished researcher like Jencks, it's good form to provide some arguments in rebuttal. Not-terribly-relevant digression on Jencks vs. social myths: An article of faith of conservatives these days, that government spending on welfare has largely hurt the poor, has received support from Charles Murray's recent book *Losing Ground*. Jencks's review in the *New York Review* (5/9/85) is a good deal more than a book review: it is a first-rate essay on the pitfalls of antipoverty programs. Jencks argues that the evidence does not support Murray's claim that the programs have done more harm than good to the poor, but he praises the book for focusing on important questions that are mostly neglected; Jencks's essay isn't by any means a knee-jerk liberal reaction to Murray. Well worth looking up, if your library gets the NYR. Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (07/05/85)
> >> [Gobs of discussion on improving education] > [T. WUERSCH] > > > > [Amusing, but not terribly relevant comments on above] > > [B. TANENBAUM] > > Let's beware of setting up straw men in this very complex area. > First, what did the Coleman Report (1965) conclude? (quoting C. > Jencks): > > -- The physical facilities, the formal curriculums, and most of > the measurable characteristics of teachers in black and white > schools were quite similar. > > -- Measured differences in schools' physical facilities, formal > curriculums, and teacher characteristics had very little > effect on either black or white students' performance on > standardized tests. > > -- The one school characteristic that showed a consistent > relationship to test performance was the one school > characteristic to which most poor black children had been > denied access: classmates from affluent homes. > > > Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes I have since read that Coleman, the guy largely responsible for the Coleman report, has backed away from support for busing to provide the sort of access discussed above, largely because his more recent studies seem to suggest that putting poor black kids into white middle class schools hasn't been terribly effective at improving the performance of the black kids on standardized tests. While not an authoritative statement of Truth on this matter, I thought this minor detail might be of interest.
tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) (07/10/85)
In article <726@ihlpg.UUCP>, tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL) writes: > > That report led to AA precisely because its results suggested that > > the effect of education on career achievements, after taking out > > factors the most important of which was Father's occupation, was > > practically NIL. No effect, no program. > > > > Projections based on collected data indicate that improving education > > will not affect racial differences in life career paths AT ALL. Chris > > Jencks' book, "Who Gets Ahead", refines and fixes these statements some > > more, taking into account new data, but the predictions remain the same: > > improving education will have no effect on the US's racially unequal > > distribution of careers. Noting the strong effects of father's > > occupations through all this research, overwhelming any school effects, > > Jencks says that the way to redistribute careers is to redistribute > > careers. Makes sense. If father's occupation is most of what matters, > > then changing father's occupation will help the children. > > > > > > Tony Wuersch > > {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw > > > So, education has no effect on career achievements. We sure could save > a lot of money if we just closed all the schools.-) We could hold a > lottery to see who gets what job. What could be more unbiased than that! > Seriously, I would be curious if anyone on the net besides Mr. Wuersch > believes this drivel. > -- > Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL ihnp4!ihlpg!tan I think what I said was that improving education (i.e. giving everyone a better education) would not change who gets the good careers and who gets the bad ones. This is because better parental background reflects itself as more educational success which translates into better careers. Education, in effect, legitimates prior advantages in the job market -- mostly because inherited environmental advantages tend to tell people (and others) how far they think they (and others) can go in the educational system, hence what careers they (and others) imagine they (and others) could possibly pursue. It's the incredible convergence on an aggregate level between what people expect are the rules of life and what others expect are the rules of life that lead more social scientists today to write in terms of social myths. Holding a lottery for jobs would violate too many social myths to expect that anyone who won such a lottery could do their job without disruption (getting lynched, perhaps). Tony Wuersch {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw "And if you don't believe all the things I say I'm certified prime by the USDA!"
franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) (07/15/85)
In article <243@ubvax.UUCP> tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) writes: >I think what I said was that improving education (i.e. giving everyone >a better education) would not change who gets the good careers and >who gets the bad ones. This is because better parental background >reflects itself as more educational success which translates into >better careers. I find it interesting that no one has seen fit to examine what seems to me to be the fundamental underlying problem with this argument. That is the assumption that the parents' JOB is the relevant factor. It seems to me that the parents' attitudes and culture are the more relevant variable. Those brought up in families where the parents read books, hold intelligent conversations, and regard school work as important can be expected to do better than those that don't. And those families are (I don't, of course, have any statistics; how do you measure this?) by and large precisely those where the parents have good jobs -- because they have these attitudes. What is not clear is that giving a person a good job will change these attitudes. Maybe it will, at least in some cases. But it does not look to me like a direct attack on the cycle of poverty. The only way to break the cycle of poverty is to change attitudes.
fred@mnetor.UUCP (Fred Williams) (07/22/85)
In article <489@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes: > >In article <243@ubvax.UUCP> tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) writes: > >>I think what I said was that improving education (i.e. giving everyone >>a better education) would not change who gets the good careers and >>who gets the bad ones. This is because better parental background >>reflects itself as more educational success which translates into >>better careers. > >I find it interesting that no one has seen fit to examine what seems to >me to be the fundamental underlying problem with this argument. That is >the assumption that the parents' JOB is the relevant factor. It seems >to me that the parents' attitudes and culture are the more relevant >variable. It may or may not be relevant, but J. Molloy writes in his book, "Live for Success", that people who give off upper-middle-class body signals & use the appropriate speech pattern are much more likely to get a job offer than those who don't. The background of the person making the decision has little or no influence on the outcome. I have no connection with Mr. Molloy, or his book, other than having bought two of the books. Cheers, Fred Williams