Cardinal Social Problems-
Refutation of the Jensen Conclusions:
Note on Curricular Corrections for Bureaucratic Work
Emory L.Warrick, Sr
1985
It can be demonstrated statistically, and irrefutably, that
ninety five (95%) percent of all alcoholics and substance abusers
started out drinking milk. This statistical fact in no way
proves, or even implies, that milk drinking leads to
substance abuse and alcoholism. Much the same type of
specious generalization has been utilized in explaining the
decrease in traffic deaths since 1973 on the basis of reducing
the speed limit. Nothing has been said of the introduction of
Emergency Medical Technicians and their mobile emergency
rooms to American highways simultaneously with the decreased
speed limit, yet the decrease in the number of traffic deaths
almost exactly matches the number of people leaving wreck scenes
alive in ambulance/hearses and dead on arrival at the hospital as
opposed to the number of live accident victims surviving
the trip to the hospital in the mobile emergency rooms. No one
has studied carefully who caused those accidents involving
drinking drivers - the assumption simply is made that the acci-
dent was caused by the driver who happened to be drinking.
Good statistics can be used to draw very bad conclusions,
and bad conclusions form very poor foundations for solutions.
A great deal of public policy has been founded upon just such
poor conclusions drawn from irrefutable data. An equally great
amount of public policy has been founded upon the conceptions of
how things "ought to be" of persons in positions of political
power which are diametrically opposed to how things have been
irrefutably demonstrated by good research ACTUALLY TO BE. The
case of President Richard Nixon's "Presidential Commission on
Pornography" comes to mind. There was consensus of forty-nine
members of the Commission that research demonstrated
incontrovertibly that virtually no sex offenders in prison had
ever been exposed to pornography: Then President Nixon accepted
the statement of the fiftieth Commission member, an octagenarian
theologian, that pornography HAD to cause sex offenders
regardless of what any research showed. Public policy founded
upon the acceptance by President Nixon of such a minority concept
based upon affect rather than upon cognition could hardly be
expected to be successful. Behavior based upon uncritiqued
"ancient truths" which are to be affectively accepted without
question quite often yield extremely dysfunctional contemporary
social behavior.
It is hoped that this short consideration of just such a
situation will point up how an innocent ethnic group has suffered
calumny. A scholar who, it is to be hoped, is perfectly sincere
in his belief in his objectivity has apparently let his affective
beliefs interfere unconsciously with his cognitive perceptions.
His data is irrefutable; the conclusions he has drawn from this
data leave a great deal to be desired - there may be a Socratic
"third-man" causative factor leading to association of the
elements of his data rather than the implication which he has
drawn. It is to be hoped that such a "third-man" causative
factor will be explicated herein, and adequate corrective
rectification suggested. A number of mechanisms for dealing with
the conditions illuminated by the Jensen data will be found
outlined in various sections of this consideration, and some
possibly tenuously relevant observations. Let us now consider
Professor Arthur Jensen of Harvard University.
Lo!, these many years, we have heard the scandal of the Arthur
Jensen data. It seems self-evident that the data qua data is
incontrovertible. The scandal inheres in the interpretations and
conclusions reached by people reviewing that data. Reaction to
Dr. Jensen's conclusions has clouded public perceptions of the
raw data and has obstructed formulation of different conclusions
properly based upon, and supported by, that data. Given social
conditions, past and present, the socialization of different
ethnic groups has differed, resulting in cultural differences
between groups. It is possible that some elements of some ethnic
cultures and socialization may not cope functionally with
contemporary societal demands.
Such dysfunctionality would tend to appear in instrumental
assessment of skills necessary to cope with those contemporary
societal demands. For decades lamentation has been heard in the
land that such assessment instruments (i.e., W A I S, Stanford -
Benet, etc.) are culturally biased. Such lamentation seems
lucidly factual. Such lamentation also is totally irrelevant.
Such instruments measure skills minimally necessary to cope with
our bureaucratic/technological milieu. If one does not have
those cultural skills one does not cope successfully in our
contemporary milieu - it's that simple.
A glance at the political power analysis of Max Weber should be
instructive. In the Weber analysis were detailed three types of
political power. Charismatic power, the first, is based upon
personality; people obey the charismatic leader because they WANT
to obey him. Traditional power, the second type, derives from
custom and tradition; people obey the hereditary monarch because
custom and tradition demand obedience - they OUGHT to obey.
Legitimate power, the third type, derives from statutory law and
is accorded by consensus of the governed; people obey because the
law sets forth the power of the leader - and the limits of such
power. People accept "legitimate power" because they THINK a
reasonable interpretation of such applicable statute REQUIRES
such obedience.
Legitimate power eminently is bureaucratic in nature.
Bureaucracy can be defined as "the application of reason to the
affairs of men". By the Sixth Century B.C. Socrates, Pythagoras,
and Meno were applying deductive analysis to the measurement
practices produced by millennia of Egyptian culture, and
formularizing them while Confucius was doing the same deductive
analysis on the elements of political/governmental organization
(as was Lao-Tzu upon the social morality of men). The
bureaucratic organization of Confucius proved enormously
effective and successful. By the Eighth Century A.D. the Islamic
Caliphs Abd al-Malik, Hisham, al-Mansur, and al-Madhi had
established a like pyramidal bureaucratic structure for the
Islamic empire and brought rational control out of chaos. It is
cognitive skills that are essential to functioning competently
within any very large, complex organization of any type.
Discussion should begin with the capabilities and functioning of
deoxyriboneuclic acid (i.e., DNA). Genetic information is coded
into the double helix molecule of DNA. The location of every
pore of any human skin, and the arrangement of every human hair,
is determined by such coding. The memory pool also consists of
DNA. Every experience (be it tactile, visual, cognitive,
affective, or what have you) is coded into this DNA memory pool
in identical fashion as is genetic information. The codes may
differ, but the coding process is identical.
The DNA memory pool is capable of absorbing Five Hundred Trillion
(i.e., Five Hundred Millions of Millions) information bits. Even
Einstein apparently used less than two percent (.02) of his total
learning capacity. Given natural selection, nature does not
tolerate lacunae indefinitely. There is some natural usage for
that remaining ninty-eight percent of total learning capacity.
As early as the Sixth Century BC Socrates used the slave-boy of
Meno to demonstrate that fact. Part of this apparent difficulty
lies in failure to make a distinction between "memory" and
"recall".
A thorough familiarity with Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan
english, combined with a passing familiarity with ancient,
archaic languages, has created an awareness of archaic
implications in word usage by people who could not possibly have
experiential contact with such usage. This, and other relevant
phenomena, gave rise to the conclusion that knowledge and
experience of past generations could be genetically transmitted
through coding of the DNA in the memory pool. Even though this
conclusion seemed self-evident twenty years ago, it has only been
recently that information concerning current research on just
this phenomenon at Berkeley and M I T was passed on by Prof. Ron
Barnette (Head, Department of Philosophy, Valdosta State
College). This "unconscious memory" would only be available for
"conscious recall" under stress or necessity. Genetic
transmittal of such coded information in that volume would help
to explain the natural selection of such apparently unused
lacunae of memory capacity. Many other questionable phenomena
might also find scientific explication given such transmittal of
past experiences.
It is to be understood that information coded into the memory
pool at the unconscious (memory) level by genetic process does
not control the individual. This coded (i.e., filed) information
does, however, have varying degrees of influence upon the
organism - depending upon the demands levied upon it. Intense
stress can bring into the field of "recall" information coded at
the "unconscious memory" level. This "recalled" information
both informs and influences (i.e., triggers production of
chemicals by the amagdala which create moods in the human
psyche). The bulk of information "filed" in this way can impel
(not compel) along particular courses of action. In a very real
sense humans conform to their sociological heritage.
Various ethnic groupings have brought various historical
experiences to their present existence. Over the millennia there
has been, historically, much more inter-cultural warfare in the
northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere;
specifically, there has been much more such "culture shock" in
Europe than there has been in Africa. Wave after wave of
conquerors has rocked Europe. In THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN
THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND Julian Jaynes is clear that
while intra-cultural relationships can be conducted adequately
through use of right-brain affect, left-brain cognition is
required to conduct inter-cultural relationships in a socially
heterogeneous milieu. One cannot simply do what "feels" right
when dealing with those socialized into other cultures; one must
think out how this is going to affect the others, given their
cultural imperatives. Reactions to strong negative culture shock
can be quite violent.
Jaynes postulates that "revelation" ceased when the discovery of
agriculture and consequent trading brought about the birth of
urban settlement. The Prophet will nearly always seek
"revelation" while fasting in the wilderness. The inner voice
tells one how to deal, morally, with members of one's own
culturally homogeneous group. Dealing with multiple groups with
diverse value systems in a heterogeneous social milieu is quite a
different matter. This places demands upon the left brain for
greatly increased cognitive functioning. Morality is
dysfunctional for an urban milieu; ethicality is a necessity.
This necessity for ethicality, for security while dealing with a
heterogeneous society, and for understanding how other groups
think, greatly fostered the primacy of left brain cognitive
skills over right brain affective skills. This primacy of left
brain cognitive skills made possible the development of much more
complex and centralized social organizations in the northern
hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere. This complex and
centralized social organization both created the opportunity for,
and required, development of "legitimate power" and of
bureaucratic governing structures. Out of these social conditions
was created a "feedback loop" both requiring and developing much
more functional left-brain cognitive skills. The cumulative
effect of all these social conditions probably provoked the
Renaissance, created conditions favorable for the economic,
political, and educational organization of Europe, and fomented
the explosive development of technology, science, invention,
manufacturing, and humanistic democratic ideals. At the core of
all these developments and conditions lay the awesome power of
highly functional left-brain cognitive skills to create and fuel
social change.
In the southern hemisphere, particularly Africa, the social
structure and organization was tribal. Conflict tended more to
be intra-cultural than inter-cultural, probably because of
environmental and geographical conditions. In this sedentary,
rural, agrarian culture there tended to be consensus and
homogeneity of values. Since morality is culture based upon
folk-ways arising out of the demands of social conditions, and
conscience is based upon doing what "feels right", then
relationships within homogeneous tribal cultures can be
affectively based. Because affective skills were adequate for
social functioning, there was primacy of right-brain affective
skills over left-brain cognitive skills. The overwhelming
experiential knowledge/cultural heritage coded into the DNA over
millennia was that of right-brain affective functioning, and the
predominance of right-brain functioning "filed" in the DNA memory
pool created a propensity to use right-brain skills in
functioning in (and coping with) society.
This brings us precisely to the Jensen data with which we
started. A standardized intelligence test (e.g., the W A I S)
measures the capacity of an individual to deal with a
novel/strange situation in a minimum length to time.
Specifically, an I. Q. test assesses functionality of left-brain
cognitive skills. I. Q. can be increased dramatically through
reading and study of great quantities of particular types of
literature - because this fosters activity of the mind and
provides more and better tools for cognitive functioning. There
was no genetic selectivity involved in the congregation of people
involved in the space program at Cape Canaveral, Houston, and the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Berkeley. Nonetheless, schools at
those locations produced certain classes in which ninety (90%)
percent of the students had I. Q.s of 180 or better.
This highly skewed I. Q. distribution seems to have resulted from
a social milieu in which intellectual excellence was viewed as an
extremely desirable social good. In that unique set of social
conditions students of every ethnic derivation responded by
massive I. Q. development. The genetic heritage of knowledge
from past generations coded into the DNA "memory pool" did not,
under those circumstances, hinder development of very high I. Q.,
but the data still stands. The concept still stands that
knowledge/experience coded into the "memory pool" influences, but
does not compel. The Jensen data, none-the-less, must be dealt
with. Let us consider an actual case.
A black former student was very bright, and was being considered
for State Highway Patrolman; he had passed the security
screening, the character investigation, and the personal
interviews, but had failed the standardized test. Passing grade
for black applicants was seventy, while passing grade for white
applicants was ninety five, and he had not made even seventy - he
had failed. The Highway Patrol Captain told me that he - the
Captain - had to have the former student, and that I was to
prepare this black applicant to pass the test (I had thirty days
to accomplish this). The applicant was given preparatory manuals
(ponies) for Civil Service, Georgia Merit System, and Highway
Patrol Tests, along with scan sheets; he was to take every test,
grade them from the answers in the backs of the books, and bring
the books and scan sheets (upon which the wrong answers were
marked) back for tutorials. The reasoning and logic behind each
correct answer for each "missed question" was carefully explained
and covered in semi-weekly tutorials for the next thirty days.
When another form of the test was administered to him on test day
he exceeded the "white cut-off score" of ninety-five on the test
and for years has been a superlative State Patrolman.
The point is that the black former student had the innate ability
to do tremendously well on the standardized test; he simply had
not adequately been prepared for the demands of such a test while
attending school. The mass of "information bits" filed in his
"memory pool" influenced him to operate on a right-brain
affective basis in his problem solving efforts when the nature of
the test (and of the social milieu) demanded left-brain cognitive
skills. The Jensen data predicted his difficulty with the
standardized test, but did not posit any inability - genetic or
otherwise - to master the necessary cultural test-taking skills.
The problem then becomes a curricular problem of dealing
adequately with educating those in similar cultural milieux and
circumstances so as to insure competence in those necessary
left-brain cognitive skills. Test results countrywide, and the
loss of our competitive technological edge, illustrate vividly
our failure so to educate students in our school systems that
they can cope with the demands contemporary social conditions
levy upon them. Elegantly stated, the fact is our American
school system is a failure.
The solution to such a problem seems so simple: Educate students
in such a way as to stimulate and foster usage of left-brain
cognitive skills. The matter is, unfortunately, not so simple.
The contemporary basic problem in the social institution of
education involves a decision as to whether to educate the young,
or rather simply to train them. Training enhances and involves
usage of right-brain affective skills leading to uncritical
acceptance of givens and drill in techniques of performance
providing competency skills for doing one (and only one) job well
(e.g., plumbing, medicine, BBA/MBA, theology) without carryover
or penumbra. Education enhances and involves usage of left-brain
cognitive skills leading to unrestricted questioning of
EVERYTHING (including ALL givens) and exercising abilities to
apply principles to problem solving in all manner of novel and
strange situations, as well as strengthening ability to cope with
"future shock" (e.g., mathematics, science, philosophy,
sociology, etc.) with minimal concomitant stress. There are many
in our society who consider education to be a dangerous
innovation, and see schools solely as loci for moral
indoctrination.
Unfortunately the curricular problem carries implications
involving other social aspects. A popular prayer begs strength
to change the changeable, courage to bear the unchangeable, and
wisdom to discriminate; such analysis seems in order here.
Difficulties abound: (1) The religious community does not want
to educate the young to question givens (Oh! Ye of little faith!
God created brains, also); (2) There is no consensual social
uninimity that intellectual excellence is a highly desirable
social good; (3) The pool of educated people adequate to serve as
such teachers is sorely limited - very few current teachers would
qualify since the Certification process screens out educated
people; (4) Family literacy of a high order is virtually
essential to such achievement, and such literacy is not endemic
to our society. Rapid social change, radical improvement of
literacy, and religious tolerance of education are unchangeables
we must have wisdom to recognize and courage to bear. Curricula
and (possibly) teachers could be changeables upon which we can
focus. These factors offer potential for development.
The ability to abstract is a left-brain cognitive skill. A quick
informal method of testing abstractive skills is having your
subject attempt to solve word problems. This method assumes the
subject literate. The speed with which the subject abstracts and
manipulates relevant data embedded in such a mass of data will
correlate very closely with measured I. Q.. The area of a table
top is a function of length and width independently of whether
the table happens to be made of cherry or walnut in Chippendale
or Queen Anne style and mayhap 31.783 inches in clearance for
legs. The "culture bias" resides in the ability to abstract
relevant data, not in experience of middle-class WASP aesthetics.
The U S Air Force has realized the implications of this fact. In
combat the tactical squadron or wing commander is faced with an
overwhelming mass of chaotic data; the speed with which he
abstracts relevant data from that chaotic mass, and is able to
organize action properly based upon that relevant data,
determines his success or failure in battle. Testing in Air
Command and Staff College (and Air War College) may manifest
serious deficiencies in test-construction skills, but the
motivating concept is clearly limned in the relationship between
question structure and answer. The same motivating concept holds
when the tactical fighter wing undergoes Phase II of the
Operational Readiness Inspection. In the more common scenario
the wing and base are attacked by land, sea, and air in every
possible permutation in an everchanging kaleidoscope of thrust,
feint, deception, pincers, and Kamikaze attack. As the
Inspectors General arbitrarily change the scenario the
abstractive abilities and cognitive organizing skills of the
commander are tested to the maximum degree.
The clear relationship between phenomenology and Operational
Readiness comes as a surprise mayhap; none-the-less, the
effective battle response must come from pure phenomenological
observation. Successful political responses from higher echelons
of government, as well as commerical/business responses from
higher corporate echelons, are (and must be) arrived at in the
same patterns. The operative cognitive mechanism is pure,
rigorous analysis of the entire mass of data without ANY
preconceived structural perceptions of how things OUGHT to be.
It is at this point that "culture bias" enters; one's cultural
norms and values operate to distort one's perceptions and tend to
structure perceptions so as to organize reality as it OUGHT to
be, and operate to cloud, distort, and conceal reality as it IS.
Philosophy is the supremely practical discipline in which the
young must be exercised rigorously; it was the Greeks who
analyzed the normative measurement practices developed through
millennia of Egyptian and other cultures, abstracted relevant
patterns, and formularized the essential principles in
universally applicable form. The study of philosophy, for value
analysis and familiarity with logical fallacy, is the
quintessential antidote for the epidemic malady of the modern
world - "future shock".
The major obstacle to the teaching of philosophy and symbolic
logic in grammar school is inability to read. Given proper
circumstances any child (not physically brain-damaged) can be
reading at freshman-college-level by age 5; this writer was
reading Elizabethan english fluently at age 5, and knew the
multiplication tables to 20 by age six. The credit for this goes
to a loving grandmother aged 66 (with a third (3rd) grade
education) who, between the child's third and fifth birthdays,
read the King James' Bible completely through to him three times,
at least twenty books on the Bible, and the complete Shakespeare
more than once. The Bible would approximate 100 million
information bits, the complete Shakespeare perhaps 150 million,
and the twenty books on the Bible possibly 250 million more; this
totals some 500 million information bits, being just one
millionth the capacity of the DNA "memory pool". It does not
appear that school would tax the capacity of the young (the child
AAW had a 200,000 word vocabulary and was writing short stories
and poetry prior to Kindergarten). There is a very high
probability, however, that a vital element was lying hidden in
all this.
There were two vital elements influencing the learning described
above; (1) there was loving affectionate approval displayed for
success in learning, and (2) both children were held on a lap and
read to for thousands of hours from birth to five or six years of
age. It is important, also, that neither child was exposed to
television; the parents in both cases were avid and enthusiastic
readers; the literature read was not contemporary children's
literature - GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES, the nursery rhymes and stories
of MY BOOK HOUSE, AESOP'S FABLES, Bullfinch's MYTHOLOGY,
Shakespeare, and other works of such ilk were established fare;
neither child was ever asked to read aloud, so no conscious-level
"feedback-mechanism" was ever built in; and absolutely NO
censorship of reading material was ever practiced (Charleston,
West Virginia, having more censorship of books than any other
place in our country, produced both Charles Manson and Jane Moore
- attempted assassin of President Ford). Children can learn what
they are expected to learn when vigorous, enthusiastic,
affectionate approval is given for success. The educational
establishment has grossly understated our children's capacities
for learning because in that way the educational establishment
could be made to appear indispensible. Most truly bright people
became bright in spite of school, not because of it. It is highly
probable that Certification procedures would screen out any
gifted individual before they got a chance to corrupt the minds
of gifted students with analytic thought.
Television can be an asset as well as a liability. If one should
use a split screen format with story/pictures on the left and
printed page on the right, with a dot or point of light
indicating the word being read, and have a truly challenging
literary selection being read by a great actor/speaker (e.g.,
Burton reading Shakespeare comes to mind), then by showing that
tape multiple times over a period of years interspersed with
hundreds of other tapes of like quality one could teach reading
painlessly. These tapes should be shown from earliest infancy to
infants and children being held in the laps of loving people.
This process would code the words and sounds directly into the
DNA "memory pool" in their proper relation to each other; the
process of reading would trigger recall of this coded information
when necessary and literacy would be almost automatic. Proper
reading aloud of good literature would attract and hold the
attention of the very young as does any superlative music. The
greater functionality of this videocassette format is that the
tape can be used at home while the child is being held in
someone's lap; mayhap even some illiterate parents might become
literate (the use of illiterate surrogate-grandparents, who might
become literate, from the Retired Senior Volunteer Program - RSVP
- comes to mind).
Not only would this videocassette format be functional for the
creation of literacy in American english, but it also would be an
efficient tool for the teaching of other languages. One could,
for instance, stage very short, very simple plays on the
"picture" side with printed dialogue shown on the other side, the
spoken dialogue being denominated in print with our moving point
of light. A virtually infinite series of plays of increasing
complexity of both plot and language could be prepared and
presented serially in whatever language it was desired to teach.
It is particularly desirable that both latin and greek be well
taught at the elementary school level, and such plays could be
presented in these languages as well as in contemporary
languages. In advanced language study words could be parsed and
sources of derivation shown with pictures as well as root parts
demonstrated as component parts of the complex word. Elementary
students in Russia read Shakespeare, Bunyan, Donne, Whitman,
Sandburg, and Twain in english; why cannot our own elementary
students learn these skills as well?
If, with the help of video technology and superlative human
communication skills, we begin to utilize and develop some of the
potential of the very young, then we may reach the point of
challenging that development in elementary school. It was only
while taking symbolic logic in graduate school that the
understanding dawned: "Math is a game played according to
rules"; Lobechevsky formularized the data of counting and
computation practices arising out of millennia of human culture
into the "Lobechevskian Theorems". I should have been made
clearly to understand that math is a game played according to
rules while in grammar school; unfortunately, State Certification
procedures successfully screened out every teacher who understood
that fact (or understood any math for that matter). So much
potential is wasted because student teachers are taught in
Schools of Education that children are incompetent and lacking
in brains; any really good teacher knows the totally opposite
reality. The place to begin the teaching of philosophy, symbolic
logic, sociology, scientific curiosity, and reasoning, is
elementary school. When that is done properly then the
stimulation of left-brain cognitive activity will yield amazing
results.
Analysis and decision making require enormous amounts of cathexis
(e.g., personality energy). It is for this reason that
stereotyping and prejudice are so prevalent; it is much less
taxing to utilize pre-made judgements based upon sensate
characteristics than to assess a stranger as an individual.
Norms are behavioral expectations that are culture based, and the
more normal one's behavior the fewer analyses and decisions are
required, and therefore the less cathexis expended. It is for
this reason humans resist behavioral change with so much
tenacity; to change behavior would require expenditure of
enormous amounts of cathexis during the period of adaptation to
the new behavior. Radical behavior change requires massive
social support from the social milieu to encourage such change.
Normal behavior is, by definition, totally affectively based.
Popular television programming and advertisements contribute
heavily to this primacy of, and dependency upon, right-brain
affective functioning. To foster left-brain cognitive
functioning one must resolve the addiction to television of those
young who most need to have their cognitive faculties stimulated.
In AIMS OF EDUCATION Whitehead is very clear that one learns
through contrast; one learns by comparing elements of chaotic
experience and noting similiarities and differences. Causes for
"television addiction" are very clear - ANYONE can learn
successfully from network television in contrast to failure to
learn in school. If, while teaching philosophy in elementary
school, one can teach logic well - especially the ten most common
logical fallacies - then one might begin to resolve this
addiction by provoking and fostering awareness of the logical
fallacies endemic to all popular television. If one can destroy
the faith of the young in the validity of what is presented on
television, one has made a very large first step toward
education.
The educationally and culturally disadvantaged, and those of more
rural milieu, seek the excitement and action of Fairs and
Circuses as contrast to the drabness of their normal lives. In
like fashion the plantation field hands of the Mississippi delta
flocked to the tiny delta towns on Saturday nights (increasing
the size of the town 200 fold to 300 fold on Saturday nights)
drinking and fighting and philandering and creating riot and
mayhem, all the while seeking contrast and surcease from normal
lives of semi- slavery. The "television addiction" of the young
stems from essentially identical causes; boredom, failure,
drabness, and lack of any type of challenge. It should be
possible to make education challenging and exciting enough to
lessen or eliminate the need for the "television tranquilizer".
Technology has provided us manifold tools while the greatness and
creativity of the human spirit has provided bounteous resources
for the task. It is our job to integrate tools and resources,
and apply the meld to the quality of human life.
In a conversation at Yale University with Stewart Alsop it was
agreed by John Hershey (Master of Pierson College and novelist)
and Professor William Kesen (Psychology; Yale): "Today's young
(1970) have an odd sense of futurelessness - they never seem to
want to talk about their own future at all"; they seem to suffer
from a sense of crowding - the feeling of too many elbows. This
would tend to reinforce what appears to be objective behavioral
data from our young in schools that they have lost their sense of
purpose - they do not know who they are or where they are going,
and feel totally impotent and at the mercy of a capricious
destiny. If one is at the mercy of a capricious destiny then one
cannot create one's own achievement and success, and so effort
and hard work have no purpose since what will be will be. If
one's effort and work are to no purpose then what purpose does
one's true self have? The only antidote to this depressive
reaction was prescribed by both Socrates and Christ: "Know
Thyself!". Many of our contemporary young have responded to this
challenge by inundation in amplified "music" so loud as to blot
out contact with reality, and engulfment in drugs to the extent
that reality no longer exists for them.
One of the most debilitating psychic/emotional conditions for any
human is a sense of absolute impotence. Because those people
born prior to 1940 had such a vivid experience of the American
depression of the thirties they strove heroically to make sure
their progeny suffered no such deprivation and frustration. As a
consequence two full generations have come to maturity without
ever earning anything for themselves or accomplishing anything
they considered to be of lasting importance. These two
generations have, de facto, grown up with this sense of absolute
impotence and neither the schools nor the society at large have
provided adequate challenges or opportunities to earn that vital
sense of potency. Again, the question arises; of what import is
a sense of purpose if one is absolutely impotent? One is
defeated by affective depression.
In 1973 Valdosta State College was sued by the parents of a
student; these parents wanted the courts to direct the Valdosta
State College administration to give a "letter-grade" to their
daughter who had completed a "Pass-Fail" course. The hidden
agenda for the educational establishment is to act as a
stratification mechanism to determine who gets what access to the
scarcer rewards of society. This is part and parcel of the
negative orientation of western society growing out of their
calvinistic tradition. Perfection is expected; it is only lack of
perfection to which reaction and sanction are appropriate. This
negative orientation permeates the educational establishment like
a pernicious miasma. B. F. Skinner made it clear: "Positive
feedback functions as a stabilizer of behavior patterns; negative
feedback functions as a change agent" - and students affectively
rewarded for cognitive successes continue to strive harder for
cognitive successes.
The two generations born since 1940 carry an additional burden;
they carry the burden of a potential nuclear holocaust.
Ironically, this burden is heavier for those with a propensity
for right-brain affective functioning than for those who tend
primarily toward left-brain cognitive functioning. Those with
adequate cognitive functioning can rationalize the balance of
terror and realize that there is a high probability no nuclear
holocaust will occur because of the certainty of universal
annihilation. For those primarily affectively functional people
there is the sense of imminent doom pervasive at the unconscious
level acting continuously to depress and undercut any positive
optimistic outlook which might arise - acting to provoke and
create a morbid depressive Weltanshauung. If the school is going
adequately to prepare ALL students for the future then the milieu
of the school and the curricular structuring of the school must
operate to transform this depressive Weltanshauung to a positive
optimistic Weltanshauung which conduces to that vital sense of
purpose which underlies any significant achievement. The eternal
dilemma of the educational institution - whether affectively to
train or cognitively to educate - arises again in another guise.
All this leaves for the school, and the society, a reasonably
clear mandate: (1) Educate the young to read exceeding well; (2)
In some way provide opportunities and challenges to foster and
create a sense of potency in each individual; (3) Structure the
school milieu in such a way as to foster and provoke development
of the primacy of left-brain cognitive functioning; (4) Provide
such a positive milieu in the schools that ego-enhancement of all
students can take place; (5) In some way so redefine the
social/political milieu of world civilization as to enable the
young to rationalize the potential for nuclear conflict and
neutralize that cloud of impending doom which afflicts them at
the unconscious psychic level; and (6) In some way create a
perception of social desirability of intellectual excellence that
can neutralize and overwhelm the prevailing consensual social
contempt for the need for intellectual excellence that is endemic
to, and pervasive in, our society. The mechanics of, and the
tools for, accomplishing this mandate are not self-evidently
obvious. Aids for enhancing reading skills and literacy have
been mentioned. The introduction of reflective thinking and
logic, as well as ethics, and wide exposure to scientific
reasoning and observation, have been sugggested under the rubric
of philosophy and science; ancient languages were also suggested
for elementary school teaching. Dr. John Dinan (Education;
Georgia) posits subjective perception of reality as the
distinguishing characteristic of "losers", and objective
perception of reality as the distinguishing characteristic of
"winners"; philosophy and science conduce to objective perception
of reality as a function of left- brain cognition. This is,
again, relevant to our original problem posited by the Jensen
Data, and so poorly handled by the Jensen conclusions.
The learning process must, at a minimum, accomplish certain
behavioral objectives. The student must learn how to organize
input into his memory pool in such a way as to enhance "recall"
of that data. This entails the creation of an attitude of
universal critique so as to create a boundless pool of questions
- as input answers those questions it is sorted and "filed" in
such a way as to enhance "recall". Relevant information is much
more accessible than the uncoordinated and meaningless bits of
information heaped upon recalcitrant heads; the information may
be meaningful to the teacher, but until the teacher makes it live
for the students it is dead and meaningless information "soon
forgot". Questioning EVERYTHING, answering those questions,
organizing and structuring information, learning how languages
work and how our language was built - of such is the substance
and essence of education. Children of elementary age love to
play games, and so much of this suggested activity can be made
into games.
The ability of children to learn these things at such an early
age constitutes no difficulty - they can do it. The basic
problem lies in finding people who can aid the child in this
process. The educational establishment has made every possible
effort to screen such individuals out of the educational process
through such mechanisms as required educational courses and
Certification procedures. Certainly every one of the nine (9)
education courses taken by this writer functioned in precisely
such a way - one feels very lucky to have escaped elimination.
Nearly two decades of teaching Band and Chorus in the public
schools demonstrated clearly which teachers would be retained and
which terminated. Those who truly educated students were
terminated, and those who tried to train students and maintained
"order in the classroom" (the clods) were retained.
On the basis of the Jensen Data some policy decisions should have
been made long ago. If this country expects an ethnic group
having trouble coping with its bureaucratic/technological milieu
to cope successfully then the country has the obligation to
provide the educational process necessary to prepare that group
to cope. Some suggestions thought to be effective have herein
been presented. Intensive research would probably develop
others. This much is certain - no group qua group is genetically
inferior to any other group. There is a special obligation for a
society to forsake its allegiance to affective traditions when
those traditional givens discriminate against those who need
assistance in coping with changed social conditions for which
they have not been socialized; now is the time for cognitive
effort to solve those problems.
I say that we, as a society call for reform. I say we choose to make the schools different through any means necessary.
