As long as we remember that politics is about evoking emotions, education is not about teaching and learning, and responsibility in government workers is not about economic consequences linked to performance, many more things are understandable.
Today, I consider the various levels of activity in the social sciences. Only the last two are of a DOES variety, the others being all IS. The second last, prediction, is usually forgotten,such as Montreal’s mayor long ago (1976) prediction that, “The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.” The Olympics only lost $2,000,000,000, so he was close enough for government work.
from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
In science, the level of utility is layered like this, from least to most powerful:
Discussion
Description
Explanation Prediction Production
Discussion about problems in education, rehabilitation and psychotherapy provides the illusion of knowledge and solutions. These discussions are a staple of talk shows where "experts" speak knowledgeably about things they can’t do, but say they can, using Hollywood words, full of drama and empty of significance.
The equally irrelevant twin of discussion, interpretation, holds the same fascination for silver-tongued practitioners. They go on and on about the reasons for things. As in all areas, those who can’t produce do a lot of talking. Lindsley calls them "glib reponders" who dazzle with wit and obfuscate with rhetoric, but cannot produce anything useful.
Description
If the majority of applications in the social sciences were assessed on an evolutionary scale, they would not have emerged from the primordial slime of description. Psychiatry believes that description has utility and has a very thick book which catalogues behavior, a substantially useless exercise, especially since most of the categories were created by consensus or voting, based on "clinical intuition". They have not discovered mental diseases, but created them. Cataloguing provides the illusion of progress, but tells nothing about how to change and prevent self-destructive or immoral behavior. Cataloguing is destructive in all areas. In education, cataloguing permits educators to slip from under their teaching responsibility by pointing to deficiencies in their students as the cause of non-learning. One of the problems with cataloguing is that behavior is always contextual. A running man may be running for a train or training for a run, but not knowing the context makes it impossible to tell. As we shall see later, the set of consequences and contexts of behavior contain the most important factors in explanation, prediction and change. Those who profit from description use a change in labels as indication that progress is being made. For example, minimal brain damage morphed into learning disability which will change to another label and give the impression of progress in education. Although none of the labels has helped teach students better, a substantial industry centers around testing for these complex hypothetical entities, making pointless recommendations, and charging astounding amounts of money for reporting on the amount of imaginary qualities possessed by the examinee.
The frenzied unreality involved in this kind of activity reminds me of a field marshal who plans an attack and believes that the thickest arrow represents a successful advance before the battle. Or in theology where true believers make up hypothetical elements and then spend happy hours debating, with great fervor and authority, the true nature of their imaginary contrivances.
Explanation
Explanation, as you will see many times, gives an even stronger belief in progress. "Poverty causes crime", "poverty causes poor academic achievement", "post-traumatic stress causes crazy behavior", "low self-esteem causes poor grades" and etc. are pseudoexplanations which have little value in preventing or fixing problems. Explanation, in terms of hypothetical things going on in the "brain", "mind", "psyche", or other hypothetical places, is good for "explaining" other hypothetical things, but for nothing else. Changing hypothetical things is easy, and many people are paid fearsome amounts of money for talking about how easily they can change them. The brilliant patina of explanation is blinding.
Prediction
Prediction is the first order of usefulness to force reality on the practitioner. Predictions are either right or wrong or, since we’re dealing with probabilities, more or less useful. "Experts", with "decades of experience in (this blank is filled with the name of the area of "expertise" such as psychiatry, psychology, social work or, more specifically, "working with these kind of clients") predict behavior no better than the less exalted without "rich experience" and always do worse than statistically based prediction. One would have to work quite hard to construct a statistical prediction instrument that does worse than "clinical judgment". Confidence and length of experience should never be confused with ability.
There is a trap in good prediction. For example, we know that children from higher socioeconomic classes tend to do better in school. Fortunately, this correlation is strongest with really bad teaching, the kind we find in the vast majority of public schools. We can take this as an iron rule or provide such good teaching that the effect of class becomes considerably muted. "Which is better?", he asked, rhetorically.
Production
Those who are allowed to replace results with intentions will never produce anything useful.
Production is the hallmark of a successful program. Education is supposed to produce better academic performance. Drug rehabilitation is supposed to produce a decrease in drug use. Production separates the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats and the doers from the talkers. When you base your usefulness on production, you can run but you can’t hide, although the criteria for usefulness in the social sciences are so soft that running and hiding have always been easy.
Cheers and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
