Harry

Update: please feel free to use the exercise below, or any adaptation thereof, with or without attribution, if you find it useful. (Prompted to post this by a conversation at Laura’s).

One of the first times I taught about the gendered division of labour in my Contemporary Moral Issues course, a student articulately challenged the relevance of the issue to her. I had assigned the key chapter of Susan Okin’s classic Justice, Gender, And The Family, which argues that the gender system is in violation of fair equality of opportunity, because girls are socialized to be carers (and boys aren’t), therefore end up disproportionately in caring (and therefore lower paid) labour, and, because they take the lion’s share of the burden of caring labour in the home, end up lower paid than their spouses; and yet face a high probability of a divorce after which they will not be able to share in their spouse’s greater earning power (I disagree with Okin about Rawls, but agree with her that if the mechanisms she identifies are at work there is a social injustice — more on that another time). For her empirical case, she relies heavily on Lenore Weitzman’s study of divorce. My student said this research was not relevant to her generation. Putting aside the methodological worries about Weitzman’s study, I was rather unnerved to figure out on the spot that the women she studied were in the generation of my students’ grandparents. I wouldn’t want to draw conclusions about my own life course from studies of my grandparent’s generation either, especially if I had had it drummed into me both by parents and teachers that my own circumstances were entirely different from those of my grandparents, and even more if I were aware (as some of the girls are) that so soon after admitting girls as equal participants universities now have to practice affirmative action for boys in admissions to get close to equal sex-ratios. I pointed this out, and then, again on the spot, tried to figure out a way of showing that the issues, if not the figures, probably are relevant to my students nevertheless. I was pretty happy that in 5 minutes I had them convinced that at least it might be relevant. Here is a slightly refined version of the exercise.

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My colleague Sara Goldrick-Rab has a piece at Brookings arguing that the education money in the stimulus package should double funding for community colleges (from $6b to $12b) and should simultaneously add an accountability system, gather necessary data, and foster innovation. Here’s a quote, but read the whole thing:

Since 1974, only 149 new community colleges have been built, and many campuses today are bursting at the seams. While community college students tend to enroll part-time, even these students require space in which to learn. In the first two years, this spending would amount to just 1.4 percent of the proposed costs of the recovery package, and would support infrastructure upgrades that truly stimulate the economy. Over the longer term, it would add modestly to federal higher education expenditures, but would ensure that our nation realizes an economic payoff from increasing enrollments.

The federal government should not simply expand funding, but use these new resources explicitly to promote greater success for community college students. Colleges receiving enhanced funds would be required to track and report student results, such as completion of a minimum number of credits, earning a degree, and landing a good-paying job. Over time, a majority of federal dollars would be awarded based not on enrollment, but on colleges’ performance on these critical measures.

When I picked my wife up from work the other day, she told me about a (teenage, black) kid in afterschool. He was trying to do his homework on the computer, and she sat with him as he worked. She pointed out that his sentences were very good, and asked some questions, eliciting further sentences. He wouldn’t look at her, and didn’t believe that his sentences were good. He mumbled “I’d be doing it on my own”. “What”. “At my house. I’d be doing it on my own. No help in my crib”. She understood that he was thanking her.

Now, Lemuel and Righteous kindly alert me to a wonderful and old passage from Dinesh D’Souza:

Equal opportunity seems like a logical fulfillment of the equality principle in the Declaration of Independence. Yet it is an ideal that cannot and should not be realized through the actions of the government. Indeed, for the state to enforce equal opportunity would be to contravene the true meaning of the Declaration and to subvert the principle of a free society. Let me illustrate. I have a five-year-old daughter. Since she was born–actually, since she was conceived–my wife and I have gone to great lengths in the Great Yuppie Parenting Race. At one time we even played classical music while she was in the womb. Crazy us. Currently the little rogue is taking ballet lessons and swim lessons. My wife goes over her workbooks. I am teaching her chess.

Why are we doing these things? We are, of course, trying to develop her abilities so that she can get the most out of life. The practical effect of our actions, however, is that we are working to give our daughter an edge–that is, a better chance to succeed than everybody else’s children. Even though we might be embarrassed to think of it this way, we are doing our utmost to undermine equal opportunity. So are all the other parents who are trying to get their children into the best schools, the best colleges, and in general give them the best possible upbringing and education. None of them believes in equal opportunity either!

Now, to enforce equal opportunity, the government could do one of two things: it could try to pull my daughter down, or it could work to raise other people’s children up. The first is clearly destructive and immoral, but the second is also unfair. The government is obliged to treat all citizens equally. Why should it work to undo the benefits that my wife and I have labored so hard to provide? Why should it offer more to children whose parents have not taken the trouble?

There are numerous errors here, some, but not all, of which Timothy Noah’s comments briefly point out. Here are a few. First, it is entirely possible to believe in equal opportunity while pursuing maximal advantage for one’s own kid. For example, one might not make the mistake of believing that when two values conflict in a particular circumstance, the one that should give way has no value at all. Or one might believe that one’s own actions are morally suspect. Second, it does not follow from the fact that parents should have some freedom to pursue the good of their children, that they should be free to do whatever they want to pursue the good of their children. Would D’Souza be justified in bribing a jury to get his (innocent) daughter off a drug charge? Third, there are numerous reasons why the government should offer more to “the children whose parents have not taken the trouble”. For example, the fact the equality of opportunity is valuable. Or the fact that it is wrong to allow misery to persist that one can relatively easily, and costlessly alleviate. What freedom of D’Souza’s or his child’s, exactly, was the government undermining when it paid my wife to sit with that kid the other day? Fish in a barrel? Sure, but while almost no-one makes all of D’Souza’s mistakes at once, many people make one or another of them. [1]

Anyway, this is mainly an excuse for some shameless self-and-other promotion. Swift and I, regrettably ignorant of D’Souza, nevertheless point out his errors at great length in a paper we have just published legitimate parental partiality. It seems not to require a sub, or registration. I’m rather proud of it, more so than I would dare to be of anything I had done on my own. But then, of course, it’s much better than if I’d been doing it on my own.

[1] Note that I have refrained from worrying about his daughter’s well being on the grounds that with parents like that one might become very materially successful but an emotional cripple. That’s because I imagine he’s exaggerating the repulsiveness of his behaviour for effect, and if I’m wrong at least she’ll have funds to pay for therapy.

In the fall of 1981, while living in a squat in Kentish Town and working at some disused church in Hampstead making an absurd number of placards for the upcoming CND demonstration in order to distract attention from the ubiquitous SWP banners, I listened to Solid Air nearly every day. My much older friends all said that it was best listened to while stoned but they may just have been teasing me for my notorious abstemiousness. A couple of years later I rode my rickety old bike from Oxford to Aylesbury (and back) to watch him (one of the few musicians I’ve bothered to see live). He was exquisite. Seeing that documentary about him a couple of years ago, it was clear he didn’t have long to live. BBC obit here. The youtube clips of his recent performances, though badly recorded, make it seem that he remained a great performer till the end. But this is the one:

A friend sent me a link to this Chronicle story about women choosing not to go into academia for family-related reasons. Leiter linked to it last week and invited a discussion (which is very heavily Philosophy-focussed, for obvious reasons) specifically about whether to have children during Graduate School. The men in the thread are generally very positive about starting a family in graduate school, but that is consistent with the findings that there is a correlation between male career success in academia and their having children, whereas the reverse is true for women. My friend also pointed out that many of the men in the discussion have wives who started out in graduate school and left (reasons not usually given).

There’s a follow-up article by Mary Ann Mason today at the Chronicle. She says that:

The number of young women who want to pursue careers in academic research declines by 30 percent over the course of their doctoral study, and the number of men by 20 percent. In explaining their decision, men are more likely to report that they do not like unrelenting work hours. One male student in the survey complained that he was “fed up with the narrow-mindedness of supposedly intelligent people who are largely workaholic and expect others to be so as well.” But most women give up on academic-research careers for family concerns. As one woman in the survey said, “I could not have come to graduate school more motivated to be a research-oriented professor. Now I feel that can only be a career possibility if I am willing to sacrifice having children.”

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Did your kids watch the inauguration at school today? My eldest did (middle school). I’m pretty sure the same school did not have them watch either of the previous two inaugurations. I’m fine with that, not because I am an enthusiast for the new President, but because the inauguration of a black President has a rather different meaning. By “fine with that” I mean something like, it seems ok to me in a non-ideal context; I’d much sooner that they spent their time studying. But, my daughter relayed to me the comments of one of my fellow soccer moms, “If they watched Brett Favre retire, they’d better let them watch Barak Obama become President”. Brett Favre’s “retirement” was, apparently, shown in every single classroom in the school except my daughter’s (her teacher suddenly rocketed in my estimation).

Patrick McGoohan is dead. Guardian obit here.

Toward the end of the Miner’s Strike in 1985 I was accompanying some student march to County Hall, shaking a collecting tin, when I was confronted by a balding middle aged man in, I kid you not, a bowler hat and pin stripe suit:
(Angrily) “What are you complaining about now? I’m not going to give money to bloody students, the state already pays for you”
(Cheerfully) “Oh no, I’m not complaining about anything.” (I didn’t go into what I suspected was our agreement on the immorality of the state subsidizing the passage of the most privileged children in society into its elite, but I conveyed that complex message with a grin). “I’m collecting for the striking miners”.
(Surprised) “Oh”. He looked me straight in the eye, with genuine sympathy. “They can’t win you know. But..” he produced a 20 quid note and placed it in my tin “at least they might give this bloody shower in charge a run for their money”. (One of the lessons of collecting for the miners was never to judge a person by the way they dressed.)

Memory triggered by:

from Randy Newman’s wonderful Harps & Angels. You have just a few days left to hear it in its proper context. I hope.

Unless there’s some heroic parenting, on the other hand, my daughters have their entire lives to hear this in its proper context (particularly recommended for Laura).

I’m not going to pretend that I understand the details behind the crisis in English cricket. But it has prompted a South African friend of mine to email asking me what I knew/thought about Pietersen, and that in turn has prompted a bit of a mea culpa. I have found it impossible to enjoy Pietersen as a player since he qualified for England because, at some point around the time he qualified I heard him say something incredibly stupid and unpleasant about the racial quota system in South African cricket — something to the effect that he, himself, couldn’t thrive in a system which gave systematic preference to non-whites. Wikipedia bears out that he did indeed make such comments, and suggests that he believed he was dropped from the Natal team for quota reasons.

Why a mea culpa? Because I’m sure that numerous sport stars, some of whom I am sure I enjoy and perhaps even revere, have obnoxious political opinions, and wrongheaded views of the source of their own superior capabilities. Big money sport, and the attention lavished on the very successful, encourage vanity, and make it hard to see the role of luck in differentiating between one’s own, and others’ level of success. KP was just in a position in which it is natural for him to air these views because, unlike most sportsmen, he had to explain why he was changing his nationality.

There are brilliant exceptions both to the politics (Mike Brearley, David Sheppard, bizarrely enough Brian Clough) and to the vanity (the extraordinary Flintoff, as it often appeared most of the Australians under Waugh), and I’m not suggesting that all or even most stars are anything like the one of the great white hopes of English tennis (I had a schoolfriend who hated tennis, but used to watch Wimbledon just for the joy of watching a fascist lose), but KP is, I imagine, rather unexceptional. So my initial hint of pleasure in his downfall gave way to a sense of guilt that I had singled him out for dislike.

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I tried to run away from home once, when I was 7. I was not at all unhappy, I had just spent a lot of time reading Alison Uttley’s Little Grey Rabbit books, in which one character wandered around with all his belongings wrapped in a hanky on the end of a stick that he carried over his shoulder. I wanted to be like that. My mother, remarkably, helped me wrap up the belongings. It now occurs to me that she was probably reasonably confident that, in the middle of a massive thunderstorm, I wouldn’t get very far. I spend a very cheerful hour eating whatever she’d packed while sitting in a stream of water under a rather large table in the playground of the school, the schoolhouse of which we inhabited at the time. Then I returned home, defeated, cold, sodden, but full and happy.

But I never thought of eloping.

David Velleman (NYU, Philosophy) observes (in an email to me) that CNN is describing the Israeli killing of civilians in Gaza as “unintentional” (he didn’t give me a link, but I believe him, and no doubt one of you will supply it). He continues:

As a philosopher of action, I say that this description
is false.

The Israelis knew that they would would cause civilian casualties vastly
disproportionate to the Israeli civilian casualties that they are trying
to prevent. They have accepted those Palestinian deaths as a cost of
pursuing their ends, and hence as part of a “package deal,” all of which
is intentional on their part.

I know that the Catholic doctrine of “double effect” would excuse these
killings as unintentional. But the doctrine of double effect is bad
philosophy.

Look at it this way. The Israeli authorities are not trying to get their
own soldiers killed; they are trying to minimize harm to Israeli forces.
But should it turn out (god forbid) that their incursion results in
disproportionate Israeli losses, and that they antecedently knew it
would, they will rightly be held responsible for having struck a bad
bargain, intentionally incurring costs too great for the anticipated
benefits. In such a case, they would not dare to plead “double effect”.

So it is with killing of Gazan civilians, which is clearly intentional.

I’m not a philosopher of action, and I’m also not the kind of philosopher that gives common sense much weight in trying to discern the philosophical truth. But the doctrine of double effect has always seemed to me to be one of those things which is deeply counterintuitive to common sense, for reasons illustrated in Velleman’s email, and is a case where philosophers ignore that unease that common sense suggests at their peril.

US taxpayers might remember that today is the last day to donate to Oxfam and still get a 2008 tax-deduction. It’s simple. Figure out what you can afford to give, guess what your tax rate will be, add that percentage to what you can afford, and then double it.

Donate here.

Odd business, the honours system. In some fields, it seems that who gets offered an honour, and when, is not far from random: Cliff and Elton before Paul; Mick at all. Mike Brearley not a knight, still? Then there are the laggards: Cyril Washbrook getting a CBE in his 70s when almost everyone else had forgotten him except for the new Prime Minister of the time whose presumed intervention on Washbrook’s behalf is one of many reasons why I admire him more than anyone else I know does. And then there are the fields where you are bound to be offered something by a certain age unless you have done something very odd. Lead a party, get a peerage. Almost all significant cabinet ministers seem to be offered them eventually, so of those who don’t have them you pretty much know they have turned them down (Michael Foot has, apparently, turned everything down; Ted Heath must have turned down a peerage, though accepted other things). I presume that no-one has had a sufficiently surreal sense of humour to offer Tony Benn anything, but I also presume that’s the only reason he hasn’t been offered anything (or, maybe I’m wrong, and he has). I was told the other day that Nigella Lawson turned something down, which I find very surprising. But what could have been offered to her and why?

Anyway, no doubt the honours system is outdated, somewhat corrupt and faintly ludicrous. I just hope that its mostly harmless. Congratulations, Dad. Thank goodness they’re not hereditary.

(Explanation of title here. Key quote: ‘Professor Brighouse, a Labour Party supporter, used money he won in a libel action against John Patten, a former Conservative education secretary, for one of his most innovative reforms – setting up a University of the First Age at Aston University so youngsters from deprived backgrounds could get a taste of university life and seize the chance to go on to higher education. Mr Patten had described Professor Brighouse as a “nutter” who roamed the streets frightening little children.‘)

Fans of Dorothy L Sayers might be interested that BBC7 is repeating the 1975 version of The Man Born To Be King. It started on Christmas Day. I can’t exactly recommend it (except that Gabriel Woolf is in it, so it has to be good) because I’m taping every part before listening to them all in a row. (It occurs to me, writing this, that it is possible that I listened to the 1975 version in 1975, but I’ve no memory of it). Sayers regarded it as the pinnacle of her literary achievement; if she is even half right it is brilliant. The BBC appears to have lost the original recording (bloody typical) but the 1970s really were the heyday of radio drama, and it’s hard to believe that the 1940s version was as good.

And if Christianity is not to your taste, here are dramatisations of Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife (next week), which I can recommend from having heard them. They made me wish, as the best dramatisations do, that I’d not already read the books.