Harry

Via Legal Theory Bookworm I see that Samuel Freeman’s book Justice and the Social Contract is now out (the opportunity for immodesty is irresistible — my own book, On Education is, incredibly, on the same list as Freeman’s). A collection of his papers including at least 2 that are previously unpublished, this might qualify for Chris’s list of important books in political philosophy. (My only doubt is that, as a collection of papers, it might not meet his criteria, but I have a strong suspicion that reading them straight through will be a different experience from reading them one at a time). Looking forward, soon, to Freeman’s next book, Rawls which everyone will have to read.

After several months and an embarrrassing number of comments sometimes from strangers about the absence of a faculty page for me, I’ve finally entered the 21st century with a webpage of my own. It’s here. It contains a lot of the normal information, a page with links to some papers on the web (all but one of them by me), and a page with links to various of my journalistic pieces as well as my favourite CT pieces (again of my own). Each page has a not-completely-out-of-date photo of me (that was my wife’s idea, she being responsible for most of the layout and design). I can’t imagine I’ll update it for a while, but if anyone has useful suggestions (which have to be implementable by a Luddite with limited command of Dreamweaver) go ahead…

Sorry, I’m nearly a month late, but better late than never to have mourned his passing. A lovely Guardian obit here. A couple of nice letters here. Full text of Hungarian Tragedy here. I note that Chris Brooke has not yet added him to the DSW. A further note for Oxford-connected people — this Peter Fryer is no relation to the Pete Fryer who works for Unison (nor, interestingly, the late Bobby Fryer of Bobby Fryer Close. The Healyites just had lots of Fryers, I guess).

Belated congratulations to the janitors in Houston. The pattern of events is strangely familiar to some of us; but none the worse for that. Have a happy Thanksgiving. Brilliant.

A tribute to the wonderful, wonderful Linda Smith, by her friends. Here till Friday.

I recently posted Educational Equality and School Choice (pdf) at the Equality Exchange. The paper is supposed to be an example of the kind of work I called for in my recent article in Education Week, an evaluation of a school reform idea in the light of a theory of values. However, I very explicitly simplify the evaluation so that all I am considering is the likely effects of the wide variety of school choice schemes on educational equality, and not on other values. So it is, at best, a partial analysis. The basic argument is that however you conceive of educational equality, choice is likely to compromise it, but that this is not a sufficient reason to reject choice because the alternative is not a no-choice and egalitarian status quo, but a highly unequal status quo in which choice is realised through the housing market (to an extent which is hard to measure). So we have to look at the varieties of school choice on offer — and I suggest that some of these are likely to be worse, and others better, from the perspective of equality, than the status quo (giving reasons in each case). And, of course, in most English-speaking countries school choice is a fundamental part of the way schooling works, and is not going away any time soon, so I make some suggestions at the end of the paper (which I think I shall beef up a bit in the next version) about how to regulate and reform choice to give it a more egalitarian edge. I’d welcome suggestions for improvements.

I’ve been using Adam Swift’s Political Philosophy: An Beginner’s Guide for Students and Politicians (UK) in my Political Philosophy course this semester, and, having now had several students thank me for assigning it, I should probably recommend it more widely. The book is written at an angle to my course. The course goes through the main ideas of various important contemporary theorists of justice: Rawls, Sen, Nozick, Milton Friedman (ok, he’s the odd-one-out, but my view is that nobody should leave college without reading chapters 1,2 and 6 of Capitalism and Freedom, and I abuse my position as a professor to do my bit), Kymlicka, Okin, Fraser, and G.A. Cohen. The book is more conceptual; it consists of chapters on Social Justice, Equality, Freedom, Community and (in the new, second, edition) Democracy, which go through various distinctions and problems in thinking about those concepts, and it only refers to the work of particular philosophers insofar as it is relevant to the problem at hand. The book also includes a lovely discussion of the division of labour between political philosophers on the one hand and political activists and politicians on the other, and offers a semi-sympathetic diagnosis of the reasons that politicians often seem to be such uncareful thinkers about matters of value. It really is a superb piece of writing, accessible to anyone with an interest in these matters, but somehow achieving the accessibility without compromising the complexity of the issues in question.

[click to continue…]

I shan’t be voting tomorrow (out of respect for the law, and my non-fellow citizens), but Russell Arben Fox will be pulling the Democratic Party lever. Russell thinks of himself as a left conservative, by which he means he is left-wing on economic issues but conservative on so-called “social” issues. As always with Russell, its long, and all well worth reading. But here’s an excerpt concerning his local choice:

I’ve got a choice before me for Kansas House District 95. On the one hand, an experienced Democrat, Tom Sawyer (yes, that is his name)–an accountant, responsible legislator, predictable Democratic supporter. On the other hand, a nice old fellow put up by the Republicans by the name of Benny Boman. In some ways, I much prefer his direct and hard-line approaches to abortion and casinos in Kansas (basically, “stop abortion” and “no casinos”) over Sawyer’s Democratic boilerplate…yet Boman, if elected, would surely go to Topeka and be lined up with the same evolution-obsessed, tax-bashing Republican machine which has run the state government for decades. Sawyer, besides all the obvious good things he’ll do (like promote decent educational standards), will be part of a minority, and thus will have to be creative, and maybe that’ll even mean he’ll have to be open-minded.

Comment there.

Education Week is currently hosting an open house; well worth visiting for anyone interested in ed policy issues in the US. It also gives me a chance to link directly to an essay of mine they published a few weeks ago, concerning the role of value considerations in evaluating educational reforms. The essay is a distillation of some of the points I made in a much longer talk I recently gave at the Spencer Foundation conference on Values and Evidence in School Reform, and I’m very interested in what other political and moral philosophers and applied ethicists (whom I’d like to encouage to do more work on education issues) think, especially about the analogy I make with the philosophy of health policy. When I talk to education scholars I often encounter a fair amount of resistance to the project of justifying objective moral values (as I do, with specific reference to education, in On Education). Some low-level variant of moral relativism or, perhaps to put it more fairly, a deep suspicion of moral realism, is quite entrenched among some education scholars, so my guess is there is a bit more resistance to the bigger project I suggest in the essay than philosophers would encounter in medical ethics and health policy.

We don’t usually do political endorsements at CT, in fact we don’t even have a line on anything (with one possible exception). So I should say that any endorsements we do are entirely the responsibility of the individual poster (in this case, me). But I did want to alert Wisconsin residents, and especially Racine residents, to a candidate who really deserves your support. Cory Mason is running for the state legislature in Racine, on the Democratic ticket. He should win, but there is no certainty in these matters, and his opponent, a local retired cop, is running a strong campaign, and is, absurdly, trying to portray Cory as a carpetbagger (absurdly because Cory grew up in Racine, and told me when I first got to know him that he intended to work in Madison for a while until he could figure out a way to move back to Racine).

I should say three things. I have never supported a Democrat in a partisan race before, and I think Cory was not sure I’d say yes when he initially asked for my support. Second, Cory is a friend and former student of mine, who I know very well, and that is what makes me so confident in him. He is very firmly committed to a progressive vision of social justice and at the same time understands, from working for many years in the legislature as an aide and a lobbyist (for the teacher’s union) that politics involves pragmatic compromise. His principles and character, though, ensure that where there are compromises they will not be shoddy, but borne from careful judgment about the best that can be done in the circumstances. Third, he is deeply thoughtful about what are the best means to achieve the end of social justice. I know this because when he first encountered my unorthodox views about school choice and vouchers, instead of being straightforwardly appalled, as most would be, he was appalled and intrigued, prompting a set of arguments and debates on education policy we’ve had over the past several years. There’s no-one I’d rather see win a race this Fall. If you are in Racine you should vote for him, but even if not he needs and thoroughly deserves your support (contributions welcome here).

spiked (my favourite) is sponsoring the Battle of Ideas conference next weekend at the Royal College of the Arts. My friend Adam Swift will be a panelist in the session on home-school relationships, Sending Parents Back to the Classroom (11-12.30 on Sunday morning). In the opening document Kevin Rooney says:

a profound change is taking place in the relationships between families, pupils and schools. What was once a relationship largely based on trust and informality is now being increasingly formalised into carefully regulated contracts and transactions. Parent-school contracts and homework contracts on the one side and inspection and auditing of teachers on the other are now the norm. At the extreme end of this spectrum are truanting orders, fines and the jailing of parents as well as a rise in litigation, with parents suing both schools and teachers.

Rooney’s piece is nicely provocative, and he raises most of the important issues. But I take issue with one thing he says in passing:

Most people over 40 struggle to remember their own parents spending any time helping them with homework.

Maybe, but perhaps that’s because most people over 40 think og helping the kids with their homework as doing it for them. My parents never, as far as I can remember, looked over my homework before I submitted it, or helped in any substantial way with the content. But they were helping me all the time. They made me go to bed early and get up in time for school, they encouraged me to listen to Radio 4 until I was addicted (at about age 6), they forbad homework in front of the TV, and provided space to do it without interruptions. They showed an interest in the work I did at school which resembled the interest my daughter now has in what I do at work — casual conversational interest, indicating that though it was no great concern of theirs they were genuinely interested. And, of course, at the limit I always knew that I could seek help. I can’t remember seeking substantive help from them, but the day I screwed up my first A/O Level paper in Additional Maths I called in a favour from the bloke down the street whom I trained in the nets for his annual work cricket match, and got him to run through how to do calculus with me. (Update — I should have added that he was bloody brilliant at it, and I salvaged a B, thanks to his incredibly clear explanations, in case anyone is considering taking a class from him, although the data is now 27 years old)

The difficulty with home/school agreements is not that they prevent parents from parenting, or encroach on their rights; by and large they don’t. The difficulty is, instead, the fact that this is a very blunt instrument for conveying to parents what really counts as helping kids with homework and giving them the means to do so. Basically, the help I needed was reinforcement of the message that this stuff was really really interesting and important for its own sake. That’s a very hard thing to get parents who don’t already know it, and feel that way, to do.

A magazine called Cognitive Dissidents came online several weeks ago, so its long past time that I link to it. The contributors include a core of philosophy grad students from UW Madison, plus other philosophers and intellectuals. It has a magazine rather than a blog format, and promises regular issues rather than the chaotic and teasing semi-regular updating of the blog format. The current issue has several interesting essays on topics ranging from ethical eating through fair trade, global responsibility for poverty and the distinction between war and terrorism to reflections on the relationship between philosophizing and political activism. Worth keeping an eye on.

About 23 years and 3 weeks ago You and Yours had one of those “off to University” shows, helping parents and about-to-be new undergraduates to understand what the first few weeks of University was going to be like. Although fitting in one of those categories, I only listened because at the time You and Yours was among my regular listening. One comment has stayed with me ever since then. A woman in her thirties, commenting on Fresher’s Weeks, said that “in that first week of college you meet people who will be your friends for the rest of your life”.

I was skeptical. And it turned out to be untrue for me. I’m in closer touch with several friends from secondary school than anyone from college (I did meet CB sometime in 1984, but only for a few minutes, and not again till Sept 12, 2001, so he doesn’t count). My first day was spent almost entirely with a girl who decided the next day to leave (not because she spent the first day with me, but because she was trying to escape her home town of Egham, to which my college suddenly announced it was moving). I’m still in touch with two other people I met that week, but I’ve seen them each only once in the past ten years, and have spoken to them only once or twice more.

But it was also that week that I met Adrian.

[click to continue…]

Welcome to Anton Rufus Green, born Sept 30th 2006. I hope I get to know you, and whether I do or not, I hope your life is filled with love, fun, and things of importance. And I hope that when you’re an adult, and move away from the town you went to college in, someone there misses you as much as I miss your dad. My best to your parents — don’t give them too hard a time. I’m sure they’re as lucky to have you as you are to have them.