TWELVE BETTING MEN

There are some movies that I am glad I have seen, but if they pop up on TV, for example, on Turner Classic Movies, my initial reaction is to change the channel, because they are depressing or they just don’t meet my mood at that moment.  The thing is, though, that since I’m rather lazy, I don’t grab the remote quickly enough and, within a few lines, I’m hooked and I watch the rest of the movie.  One such film is 12 Angry Men[1] and the other night I viewed most of the film one more time.  I really like this film; I believe it should be “a must watch” for any person summoned to serve on a felony case jury.  For those who have not seen this film, the story concerns a murder case in which everyone on the jury has decided to find the defendant guilty, except for one juror.  This one “not guilty” juror begins questioning the evidence to the discomfort and even anger of the other jurors.  Slowly but surely he, and eventually other jurors, change minds so that by the end, the verdict is not guilty.  The conversations in the jury room generate reasonable doubt, for after all, to find the accused guilty, all the jurors have to be convinced as to guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  But what does “beyond a reasonable doubt mean?”

This is not such an easy concept for civics’ students to understand.  First, a student needs to understand that an accused does not, by this standard, have to prove his/her innocence.  Yet, despite this legal refrain, in real courtrooms often the accused who doesn’t prove he/she is innocent is convicted.  On today’s Terry Gross’ National Public Radio show, Fresh Air, her guest was a lawyer who defends people on death row.  Bryan Stevenson told of one case in which the individual was defended by very competent lawyers who presented a very viable argument as to the defendant’s innocence – or at least a case that more than adequately engendered reasonable doubt.  Yet, in Mr. Stevenson’s words, the jury was too disposed toward finding the defendant guilty.  Eventually, after the conviction, evidence was assembled that proved the man innocent.  After years behind bars awaiting execution, he was released.  Unfortunately, this is not a singular case; we, from time to time, hear of such cases and see that those falsely accused are released from prison after years of their lives having been sacrificed.  He also told us of how the experiences had lasting detrimental effects on these people’s lives.

I will not get into the usual array of definitions for “beyond a reasonable doubt.”  You can readily find these on the web.  What I want, instead, is to offer a mental exercise students can do.  A teacher could show students the film, 12 Angry Men, with a predetermined plan to stop the film in spots that are conducive to this exercise.  The students hear the evidence as presented in the plot.  The teacher stops and asks, by a show of hands, which students think the defendant is guilty, and how many think he is not guilty.  Early on, the teacher makes the point that no one “knows” whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty; you can only believe one way or the other.  So the question is:  how do you believe in this case?  But then I would add another dimension.  At each stop, I would have the students imagine that before them is an all-knowing being who actually knows the truth.  They can further imagine that whatever their vote is – guilty or not guilty – they are to consider how much they are willing to bet that they are right.  Since before them is someone who knows, we can be told whether a students’ beliefs are correct.  Are they willing to bet $10, $100, $10,000?  Of course, the meaningfulness of the bet is dependent on one’s wealth.  So let the teacher say, in our exercise, the student is to adopt the role of a median wealth type person.  For that person, $10,000 is meaningful.  Teacher asks:  Are you so sure of your belief that you are willing to bet $10,000?  If you are right, you at least keep your $10,000; if you are wrong, you lose your $10,000.  How sure are you?  As the film progresses and, I’m sure, votes will change as happens to the characters, the teacher can remind the students how they voted earlier and perhaps how poorer they might have been if they had voted guilty during the first few stops.

When one thinks of how jurors can find defendants guilty or not guilty, it is useful to consider that jurors, other than the investment in time the case is taking, have nothing to lose in their deliberations.  We assume that they will take on this responsibility as a civic obligation and do a good job.  One of the characters in the movie is upset because he is missing a ball game by spending all this extra time to reconsider the evidence.  He is even willing to change his vote just to get the whole thing over.  I am led to believe that by and large jurors accept their duty responsibly.  I certainly hope so.

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[1] This is a 1957 film starring Henry Fonda with a stellar cast.  The original version was a dramatic production written and produced for television.  The original script was written by Reginald Rose.  The film was directed by Sidney Lumet.

A HUNCH IS IT’S GOING TO BE SOMETHING

A few postings ago, I reported that our conscious mind can handle about forty bits of information while our subconscious can handle, according to one estimate, eleven million.  I found that hard to believe, but then I started thinking:  what about our subconscious taking in all the information from our body, for example?  We are not conscious of that until one of those bits of information indicates a problem.  That’s not to say that even our subconscious can detect all our bodily information; we hear of cases in which, without them knowing, a person is carrying a disease for significant amount of time till the condition is really bad.  But I have also heard of cases where, while the illness is not detected per se, a person has a “feeling” that something is wrong.  Of course, hypochondriacs have this feeling a lot, but they are mistaken. 

I bring up the subconscious because I believe a great deal of what polls are picking up now as to who is leading in the respective contests within the two major parties’ races for the White House is just initial takes on the candidates – not a lot of reflection has taken place.  Pollsters are hearing gut reactions to what voters have heard and how they see and feel about how the state of things generally is.  They are supposed to be angry, the media tells them they should be, and so, whoever comes across most genuinely angry, that’s the guy or gal the voter will tell a pollster he/she is likely to support come election day.  Donald Trump’s appeal, I think, has a lot to do with his language and tone, not his substance.  This is not new.  Review early favorites in the past and see that many did not make it even past the first few months of the campaign season, and did not last past a primary election or two.  By the way, the first two real selection process dates are January 1, 2016, for the beginning of the Iowa caucus process, and February 9 for the New Hampshire primary – four and five months away, respectively.  While that’s around the corner in those states, for most of the rest of us, we have many months to go.  Summer is in full bloom, although some areas’ schools have already begun.  The point is, a lot is tugging on the conscious minds of many Americans and interest and thinking as to whom to vote for are still in the future.

Within this context, I found a study Malcolm Gladwell reports in his book, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, interesting.  Let me tell you about it my own way:  Suppose I put you in a room with four decks of cards in front of you – the cards are face down.  There are two red decks and two blue decks.  You are to pick up a card at a time, from whatever deck you wish, and see what it is and, depending on what you pick up, you either win money or you lose money (I assume the money you lose was from an initial amount you were given or from money you had already won).  The amounts can be significant or not.  The trick to a winning strategy is to pick from the blue decks which results, in any given pick, to a modest amount of winnings if you win or a minimal amount of loss if you lose.  “Red” cards do pay off bigger amounts, but they also penalize you heavily.  The question in the experiment was:  how fast can you detect the formula to maximize your winnings?  Most figured it out by the eightieth card, although the subjects reported having a hunch by the fiftieth card; interesting finding, but that was not the most telling part.  The subjects were also hooked up to sensors in the palms of their hands to pick up any increase in sweating, a sign of anxiety.  Those sensors usually picked up problems with the “red” choice after only ten picks, a subconscious reaction.  Wow.

I would have been interested to find out if the subjects could see the cards on a computer monitor where the experimenters could change the likelihood of winning and losing picks at any time during the experiment.  Experimenters could then see if subconscious reactions would have been affected according to changes in the programmed schedule of winning and losing; maybe the experimenters did this, but Gladwell doesn’t report it.

In any event, in terms of the early phases of this election season and taking into account how much information the subconscious detects, it is interesting to ask:  what all is happening in people’s minds as they hear and see what the candidates initially have to say?   One of my concerns is that hunches are often correct.  Our subconscious’ ability to take in the information and determine some phenomena correctly is uncanny.  But usually that’s on the part of people who deal with the particular type of phenomena over large amounts of time.  Even they, though, cannot tell you why their hunches are what they are.  Gladwell tells of a tennis coach who could predict by the way a player tossed a ball up for a serve whether the serve was going to be a good one or not, even when the coach could not tell you what was wrong with the toss.  The coach’s predictions were highly accurate.  Most voters vote infrequently and they pay little or no attention to the political process other than during that time immediately prior to voting day.  In low turnout elections – and primaries tend to be that kind of election – two types of people show up:  ideologues and angry people.  Perhaps with a high profile figure like Trump, the numbers will be higher come primary day, attracting less informed people.  If so, how will that affect the process, especially on the Republican side?  It promises to be an interesting election season – hold on!

CUBA, SI O NO

This new development with Cuba has led me to consider some thoughts about moral thinking.  Those who are opposing the establishment of diplomatic relations with the island nation cite the human rights abuses the Castro government has been guilty of for so many years.  These have included, according to our government, the killing of dissidents, the intolerance of dissent, the expropriation of private property, the jailing of those who have acted against the regime, and the list goes on.  Whether the extent of these abuses is as draconian as those opposing the Castro government would have us believe is open for debate.  I am sure that a great deal of it is true.  The opponents of recognizing the Cuban government couch their opposition in moral terms – good enough. 

Those who have argued in favor of reestablishing relations seem to base their position on several factors, not the least being that relations were suspended back in January, 1961, fifty-four years ago.  A lot has happened in those years.  We have established relations with other “sinful” regimes; China and Vietnam come to mind.  And yet the policy toward Cuba has remained and has included a strict embargo against trading with that communist nation.  The goal, ostensibly, has been to cause enough pain and weakness in Cuba so that the Castro brothers would be forced to change their policies or be overthrown.  It has not worked.  Even the opponents of the new policy argue that that regime is as oppressive as ever.  So the Obama administration says:  let’s try a new way; let’s establish relations; trade with them and try to influence them into making the desired changes.  That’s their argument.  So I ask:  is it immoral to deal with such a regime?  For conservatives, this is quite a difficult question.

Earlier in this blog, I reviewed the difference between thinking about moral questions from a categorical approach versus a utilitarian approach.  To quickly review that difference:  categorical approaches see moral positions as fairly uncompromising.  Acts are either moral or immoral by the mere fact that they abide by a moral value or they transgress a moral value.  In order to determine the morality of a value, a question is asked of it:  what would happen if everyone behaved in accordance with the value; could a society sustain such behavior?  For example, what if you valued lying?  If everyone lied, there would be no trust and a society would not be sustainable.  Therefore, lying is immoral and any value that supported it would be immoral.  On the other hand, truth telling, as a value or a behavior, does not threaten a society and, therefore, is moral.  Once this type of review is made of any value and its resulting behavior, one can determine which values and behaviors are moral.

Utilitarian reasoning is quite different.  With this approach, the question is one in which a person calculates how many people find a behavior and its corresponding value useful.  That is, does the behavior accrue some result which a person wants?  A moral choice is one that provides more usefulness than what’s otherwise available.  For example, if choice X satisfies 51% of the population and choice Y satisfies 49%, then choice X is the moral choice.  Each person is free to determine what constitutes usefulness or satisfaction for him or herself.  As can be seen, this approach is significantly different from the categorical approach.

Now let’s apply this to Cuba.  I believe the Cuban situation provides us with an interesting dilemma.  Categorically, a believer in democratic values would tend to see any relations with a dictatorial regime as immoral.  The policies of the Castro government have been immoral by the standards democrats hold.  Now, of course, this becomes a bit complex; one needs to justify democratic values, but that’s not my aim in this posting.  Let us just accept the morality of democratic values.  Conservatives, those who might oppose opening relations with Cuba, might take the posture, and many do, that this change in US policy is immoral.  But a central problem with categorical thinking is its tendency to not compromise.  There are times, though, when moral values come into conflict.  While conservatives might hold uncompromising democratic values, they also might very well value profits.  After all, profits provide the necessary motivation for us to engage in entrepreneurial activities.  Without those activities, democratic societies cannot function, since they count on individuals to freely decide to engage in economic activities.  By doing so, they create the goods and services people need and want and also the employment that provides the wages used to buy those goods and services.  The only other option is to abandon democratic values and structures and force people to engage in economic activity – the very type of policy many conservatives accuse the Castro government of enforcing.

With opening relations with China and Vietnam, we opened markets.  Conservatives of the more libertarian persuasion might see such actions as providing more usefulness than a categorical posture that would disallow such relations.  With more markets, business activity increases and more people will benefit and that goes for people in all of the countries involved.  Conservatives who rely on a more utilitarian moral view will tend to favor opening relations and would probably extend such reasoning to Cuban relations.  As I said above, this turn in Cuban relations provide us with an interesting dilemma for many, but especially for conservatives.

YOU WANT TO MEET MY BOSS?

Congress is currently considering foreign trade rules.  The President is asking for authority to extend free trade relations with a broader array of nations, particularly with those of the Far East.  I will not pretend to understand the ins and outs of such legislation; I dare say most Americans don’t either.  But what Americans do understand are the results of past deals such as NAFTA.  Thanks to a columnist in the Indianapolis area, Esther Cepeda,[1] I can report some of the most current consequences of that legislation in that area of the country.

When I think of Indiana, I think of corn, not a bad thing.  I also think of friends and in-laws.  But what I should also think of is a former industrial area, especially related to the car industry.  As a matter of fact, my wife’s dad was a retiree of General Motors.  While alive, he was proud of that fact.  He oversaw the development of technical manuals and presentations.  But the Indiana and Mid-West he knew is very different today and the process by which those changes took place is still going on in large measure due to trade agreements such as those being considered in Congress.

Cepeda reports the following:

·        Goodyear, in Akron, Ohio, is building a $550 million manufacturing plant in Mexico.  With that move, the result is fewer jobs in Ohio and more of them south of the border.  There, workers will be paid “a pittance;” that is, on average, $200 a month.

·        Mondelez International, producers of snacks (chips, cookies, and the like) will lay off half its workers from its Chicago production plant, taking advantage of the $46 million cost difference between Chicago and Mexico.

·        Ford Motor Company is planning to move its small car production to Mexico in the near future (2018), again resulting in significant job losses in the US.

She also points out that this type of moves is beyond blaming unions, as differentials outstrip reasonable cost savings and cross over to what observers might call oppressive.  Her point is that the benefits to Mexican workers, in our examples, provide almost subsistence wages to Mexican workers.  Let me quote her about how typical defenders term such developments:

During a visit this past June to Juarez, Mexico, I saw firsthand the marvel of these mega-manufacturing facilities, known as maquiladoras as a lifeline to workers.  They said they offer not only steady work at competitive wages but also health insurance (including onsite medical care), on-site K-12 education, professional development, bonuses and transportation to and from work. …

[Despite this] [f]or many in Juarez, the cost of living far exceeds their pay.[2]

She then quotes a policy researcher who points out that wage gaps have not closed between Mexican workers and those of the US.  He says that Mexicans are making starvation wages and that such treatment of those workers reflects what he terms class attitudes – that lower class people deserve no better.  This is far from the image the US wants to project in foreign lands.

Two postings ago, I wrote of “minimum dignity.”  Such reported moves by American business interests negate any image our nation might want to broadcast to our workers and the workers of the world:  that we, as a people, holding cultural beliefs and a policy bias, have a concern for minimum dignity.  The political, economic, and cultural elites of our federalist union have long demonstrated they have little concern for such dignity.  But we the people, maybe because of our innate understanding that our own long term interests are affected, or maybe because we feel a federalist partnership with our fellow citizens, have pushed and passed legislation that at least addresses the issue such as is the case with minimum wage laws.  We seem to be in the afterglow of the Reagan, neoliberal, libertarian era in which the strength of the natural rights bias for individualism seems to have dominated our public policy choices, but is beginning to be challenged – see the Bernie Sanders phenomenon.  But, there is still quite a bit of strength in that view which dictates such moves as reported above, yet another reason for our schools to change their curricular choices, especially when it comes to social studies and civics.

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[1] Cepeda, E.  (2015).  Factory moves hurt both U. S., Mexico.  The Indianapolis Star, August 10, p. 13A.

[2] Ibid.  Italics added.

MITIGATING INFLUENCES

Note:  Due to technical problems beyond my control, this posting is a day late.

A former colleague and current friend, Dr. Alejandro Gallard, writes of the contextual realities that affect the effectiveness of classroom efforts.  I have shared many times in this blog the complex nature of the typical classroom and this is the case in even the most “simplified” situations:  a mono-cultural setting.  But when you add to the mix students who vary in ethnicity and cultural backgrounds, linguistic diversity, even varying ages, possible levels of poverty, long term unemployment and so forth, things can and do get scrambled and difficult for a teacher who is trying to implement a curriculum that is set by district officials sufficiently removed from that classroom.  And today, in many areas of the country, curricular writing has become a political football with varying agendas being played out.  Don’t get me wrong; I do recognize that setting curricula is a political exercise – it’s unavoidable and this is especially the case in times like ours when there is such partisan rancor all about.

Gallard introduces a concept that I believe is helpful.  He mentions contextual mitigating factors.  This is a term that encapsulates the complexities of which I refer to above.  His area of interest is science education and even in a subject area more prone to objectified content, these factors do not stay outside the classroom door.  They impede there just as much as in the more politically oriented material one deals with in civics.  One just has to mention such issues as evolution to be reminded of how political biology can be.  Then there is sex education and other family issues based on physically related concerns – e. g., vaccination – and one can see that controversy is not so far removed from science education.

Gallard’s main concerns revolve around contextual mitigating factors that influence the success rate of various ethnic populations in the field of science.  Specifically, he has been studying the factors that are at play with the relatively unsuccessful rates among Latinas.  But whatever or wherever the results are short of what is desired, I believe Gallard’s sentiments should be kept in mind:

Nothing ever happens in a classroom that doesn’t have mitigating factors that teachers need to deal with … [s]omething from the outside is always going to influence what the teacher wants to do inside the classroom.  It can be poverty; it can be contrasting belief systems or all sorts of things.  I am a strong believer that education needs to be looked at through multiple contextual lenses in which all teaching and learning takes place.  These influencing factors or contextual mitigating factors must be made explicit and dealt with before one can expect meaningful education reform to take place.[1]

For those of you who have been readers of this blog from its early days, this type of rationale might sound familiar.  Gallard can be judged to be a critical educator of the reconceptualism school of thought.  As I wrote back in those days, critical educators have interesting and useful things to tell us and we should give them our collective ear.

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[1] Bennett, S. (2015).  Closing gaps:  Meet Georgia Southern’s Goizueta distinguished chair of education.  Georgia Southern Magazine, Spring, 17(2), p. 24.

MINIMUM DIGNITY

Here’s a civics lesson.  It has to do with the issue of the minimum wage.  The Obama administration has been advocating a raise in the minimum wage:  “It’s time to give America a raise.”  Of course, business friendly conservatives oppose such a move – not surprising.  What’s a federalist’s take?

Well, here is mine.  I believe that central to federalist thinking is the value of collective members having as much as possible – that is, as much as possible within reasonable parameters – equal standing, equal consent.  That is, further, that each member of the collective is not coerced into either belonging or doing his/her expected roles within the collective, any collective.  That goes for a family, a church, a community organization, a labor union, a city, a state, a nation.  When we speak of the larger collectives, such as cities or nations, more abstract means of membership, stake commitments, and coercion are involved.  By more abstraction, a commensurable use of numbers comes into play as trends and averages are used to determine to what degree interactions are based on federated notions of membership and participation.  And with this context, such an issue as the minimum wage takes on importance.

One’s work, in a federated union, is more than just an economic activity.  For most, work takes up significant portions of one’s life; it provides sustenance both psychological and physical.  It is a communitive statement of belonging, contributing, and a source of relative importance within the collective.  To maintain the federalist character of a collective, to the extent possible, each job or career should provide certain assets:  enough remuneration so as to secure survival needs for one’s family, enough education to stay true to the value of equal opportunity, enough entertainment to support mental health, and enough time with fellow family members so that the required time away from them does not become a cause of family dysfunction.  In short, what one makes in terms of pay becomes not just a number on a ledger in some business accounting book, but a statement of human dignity.

Yet this perspective is not shared by all.  If it were, I would say the minimum wage would have, in real terms, kept up with increases in productivity.  Attempts to study this question in terms of “keeping up with inflation” can be tricky.  I prefer my above approach.  Students should be exposed to every which way it is measured – and the internet very easily can help students with that.  But a class can use my “federalist” approach and then can be exposed to an array of conservative arguments against raising the rate.  Below, I offer four such arguments derived from a book review of Arthur C. Brooks’ book, The Conservative Heart:  How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Productive America.[1]

Arguments against raising the minimum wage:

·        The main argument is that if you raise the price of anything, you lower the amount of it being purchased.  That goes for fruit, furniture, or workers’ time and labor.  So, and this is the main offense, it limits the number of people who can “earn success” – the basis of true happiness.

·        Raising the minimum wage will raise the costs of production that will be only passed on to consumers.  So, for example, an industry hard hit by this move will be the fast-food restaurant chains that are frequented heavily by low income customers.  It is, therefore, low income people who will be paying these increased costs.

·        Minimum wage increase will not hit, to a large measure, those who are meant to be benefited.  This is because a raise in the minimum wage will go to individuals above the poverty line.  Half of the beneficiaries live in family households that make over $35,000 a year and a quarter go to families that make over $75,000 a year.  A mandated raise in the minimum wage is ill targeted, missing, to a significant level, the low income population it is meant to help.

·        Last (at least in terms of this book’s offering), raising the minimum wage is not as good a policy in helping the working poor as providing earned-income tax credits which will increase the take-home pay of such workers.  Credits do this by finely targeting the benefit to those who need it.  I find this curious in that a lot of conservative rhetoric is geared toward that portion of the work force who “don’t pay taxes.”

Students can review the literature about measuring the minimum wage over time, discuss the various ways of evaluating government policy concerning the minimum wage, and then review, discuss, and evaluate the conservative arguments against raising the minimum wage using a federalist criterion I provide above.

By and by, can conservatives come up with one policy position that does not equate to higher profits for businesses?  Just asking.

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[1] Mankiw, N. G.  (2015).  Compassionate conservative.  The New York Times, Book Review section, August 2, p. 10.

DOUBLING DOWN

In a previous posting, I gave out some advice; it was:  don’t give any donations to a charitable or non-profit organization unless that organization has opened up its books.  My main concern in that posting was the history of secrecy surrounding the workings of the Vatican Bank and all the questionable dealings that secrecy enabled on the part of Roman Catholic Church officials.  Apparently, US non-profits do, by law, have to open up their financial statements.  More specifically, they have to submit Form 990 to the IRS and these forms are not confidential.  On that form, they have to divulge quite a bit of information.  They have to give their tax related finances, salaries of their key officials, and the names of key employees.  But, according to an article about the Koch brothers, The New York Times reports that non-profits do not have to report who their contributors are.[1]  These sources of information are far from being completely open and forthcoming.  This has become an issue with donors to the Clinton Initiative, for example, and questions about potential influence such donors might have on Hillary Clinton, a current presidential candidate, have been discussed.  Of course, this type of issue becomes important in a democracy:  how much is the voice of the people compromised when a relatively few can, by various means, buy public policy?  One such means can very well be donations to non-profit organizations.  Other nefarious aims can include the use of non-profit donations to instigate or hide illegal activities such as laundering money.  Again, such activities harm the quality of a democracy and the spirit of a federalist ethos.

So again, let me advise:  if you have the time – it wouldn’t take many of you – only give to non-profit organizations and charities that are completely transparent in their dealings and records.  There’s enough public secrecy plaguing our public discourse and interaction.  Here is one area in which we can affect how business is being done.  And encouraging a disposition to be so proactive can begin by informing civics students of the problem and even assigning investigative projects that might look into local non-profits that operate in the communities where they reside.

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[1] Confessore, N.  (2015).  Koch brothers brave spotlight to alter image.  The New York Times, July 31, pp. 1A & 17A.