I've been and continue to be too busy to blog, but this morning I received an email with a quotation attributed to Albert Einstein. I don't know if he actually said it (or many other of the famous Einstein quotes), but I think it's crucial to life and is, after all, the premise of my blogging. So, here it is:
"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
~ Albert Einstein
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
A Third Path
This morning I read the following:
Context matters. All theology and proclamation are done within times and places of human life, which is the reason skeptics and wags have such an easy time finding apparent contradictions in the Bible. A passage such as that quoted above comes readily from a time when Christians were hoping to “lead a quiet and peaceable life” and not come under suspicion and persecution from the Roman Empire. There could be no thought as yet of Christian dominance within the political and economic spheres, and there persisted, no doubt, the belief that Christ would soon return to bring the struggles of the current age to an end so that peace, justice, and love would reign forever.
Rome, however, seems to have tended toward the attitude that “those who are not for us are against us,” and for a variety of reasons Christians became useful as scapegoats for certain emperors, especially Nero and Domitian. The biblical book of Revelation offers a view of and attitude toward the empire extremely different from those expressed in First Timothy and Romans chapter 13 when peace from the tyranny of the empire still seemed possible.
These days, in the United States, we hear continuously about political figures and Christian preachers of certain theological stripes calling for a takeover of the nation and society by Christians (those of their stripe, to be sure). In short, they want to have or pretend to have a theocracy – not just an established religion (which is forbidden by the United States Constitution) – but a religious establishment, meaning a reign of tyranny under right-wing Christianity.
Is there no third path? Must Christianity either keep quiet, offend no one, and try to lead an undisturbed life in pious seclusion or else seek dominion over the institutions of society? Where is the prophetic spirit in quietism? Where is the passion for love and justice which flows from the gospel and is the logical outpouring from Christian belief that God loves the world and all its people, has special regard for the plight of the poor and unpopular, and hates injustices?
The third path is the way of neither compliance nor dominion. It is not the duty of Christianity to undergird the aspirations and institutions of the powerful; neither is it the right of Christianity to take over and dominate the society and its institutions, destroying democracy by majority might. Christians have been sent to serve, not to control and dictate. But neither have we been sent to keep quiet so we can stay safe and comfortable while the current empires of wealth and power grind the majority of earth’s people into the dust and wreck the planet itself.
This third path is really the first one. Jesus sacrificed himself for others. The politicians abusing his name to call for Christian dominion seem eager to sacrifice others to their ambitions and ideologies. They preach contempt for any who do not fall into line behind their aspirations to power, which means they speak as the Roman Empire came to speak – as one who puts on the appearance of a lamb but speaks with the voice of a dragon (Revelation 13:11).
Christians need to resist all temptation to support calls for Christian takeover of the United States. We must not surrender democracy, which safeguards the rights of unpopular minorities, to theocracy which uses God’s name for the purposes of tyranny. We are sent to persuade, not dictate. We are called to serve, not subjugate, others. If we must sacrifice anyone, it must be ourselves and not others who stand in our road to power. Tyranny in the name of Jesus Christ is like rape in the name of love or cheating in the name of integrity.
We need to think deeply about the nature, means, and goals of the prophetic spirit and of discipleship. The end never justifies the means. Real faith seeks faithful means and leaves the outcomes to the grace of God. Christians need to rethink what it means to be Christian in societies we no longer dominate even culturally.
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. (1Timothy 2:1-2 NRSV)
Context matters. All theology and proclamation are done within times and places of human life, which is the reason skeptics and wags have such an easy time finding apparent contradictions in the Bible. A passage such as that quoted above comes readily from a time when Christians were hoping to “lead a quiet and peaceable life” and not come under suspicion and persecution from the Roman Empire. There could be no thought as yet of Christian dominance within the political and economic spheres, and there persisted, no doubt, the belief that Christ would soon return to bring the struggles of the current age to an end so that peace, justice, and love would reign forever.
Rome, however, seems to have tended toward the attitude that “those who are not for us are against us,” and for a variety of reasons Christians became useful as scapegoats for certain emperors, especially Nero and Domitian. The biblical book of Revelation offers a view of and attitude toward the empire extremely different from those expressed in First Timothy and Romans chapter 13 when peace from the tyranny of the empire still seemed possible.
These days, in the United States, we hear continuously about political figures and Christian preachers of certain theological stripes calling for a takeover of the nation and society by Christians (those of their stripe, to be sure). In short, they want to have or pretend to have a theocracy – not just an established religion (which is forbidden by the United States Constitution) – but a religious establishment, meaning a reign of tyranny under right-wing Christianity.
Is there no third path? Must Christianity either keep quiet, offend no one, and try to lead an undisturbed life in pious seclusion or else seek dominion over the institutions of society? Where is the prophetic spirit in quietism? Where is the passion for love and justice which flows from the gospel and is the logical outpouring from Christian belief that God loves the world and all its people, has special regard for the plight of the poor and unpopular, and hates injustices?
The third path is the way of neither compliance nor dominion. It is not the duty of Christianity to undergird the aspirations and institutions of the powerful; neither is it the right of Christianity to take over and dominate the society and its institutions, destroying democracy by majority might. Christians have been sent to serve, not to control and dictate. But neither have we been sent to keep quiet so we can stay safe and comfortable while the current empires of wealth and power grind the majority of earth’s people into the dust and wreck the planet itself.
This third path is really the first one. Jesus sacrificed himself for others. The politicians abusing his name to call for Christian dominion seem eager to sacrifice others to their ambitions and ideologies. They preach contempt for any who do not fall into line behind their aspirations to power, which means they speak as the Roman Empire came to speak – as one who puts on the appearance of a lamb but speaks with the voice of a dragon (Revelation 13:11).
Christians need to resist all temptation to support calls for Christian takeover of the United States. We must not surrender democracy, which safeguards the rights of unpopular minorities, to theocracy which uses God’s name for the purposes of tyranny. We are sent to persuade, not dictate. We are called to serve, not subjugate, others. If we must sacrifice anyone, it must be ourselves and not others who stand in our road to power. Tyranny in the name of Jesus Christ is like rape in the name of love or cheating in the name of integrity.
We need to think deeply about the nature, means, and goals of the prophetic spirit and of discipleship. The end never justifies the means. Real faith seeks faithful means and leaves the outcomes to the grace of God. Christians need to rethink what it means to be Christian in societies we no longer dominate even culturally.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Survivor's Pride
We’ve heard of “survivor’s guilt,” the pangs felt by people who have lived through horrors of war or natural disaster in which others, perhaps comrades, were killed. Hurricane Irene has brought us a recurrence of what I’m calling survivor’s pride, the kind that expresses itself as scorn for all the precautions and fears that preceded the storm. Survivor’s pride can be seen also in the chain emails about our wonderful childhoods in the best of all possible times when no one made us wear bike helmets or worried about where we were all day, and we shared from one coke bottle, drank from the hose, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
I’ve never been much moved by the nostalgia for the good old days when we could leave our doors unlocked and could go anywhere day or night without fear. Only by the quick thinking and immediate actions of my older sister was I spared being murdered at age four by a man trying to abduct her. No doubt, like Cedric in the Harry Potter novels, I would have been the “spare” who got killed. In what dangerous place were we? We were walking, ironically, along the top of “dead man’s hill,” on the grounds of my elementary school.
Was Hurricane Irene hyped by the television weather reporters? I would say it was, especially by the focus on the tornado warnings, but meteorologist Glenn “Hurricane” Schwartz did what I considered a fine job of putting those warnings into perspective and getting us back to the situation at hand, which was the hurricane.
Come Sunday afternoon, I was very thankful Irene had not been far worse in our area, but such thankfulness is always modified by the distress of those whose lives were disrupted or whose property was damaged or lost and, much more so, by the anguish of those who lost someone loved. That we stayed safe and did not even lose electrical power, that the church had just put a new roof on the manse in which we live, that we suffered no loss even of property – none of that eases the pain of those whose lives were changed by the hurricane. Yes, it could have been worse, much worse. For some, it was.
As we persist in our folly of cutting government spending to restore economic prosperity to the land – the economic equivalent of digging down deeper and deeper to get up out of a pit – we face the likelihood that in the future, our government will not be so well prepared to help the stricken and coordinate responses to natural disasters. Read here for Dana Milbank’s thoughts on this subject in the Washington Post.
What does survivor’s pride do for us? Does it make us feel strong? Superior? Does it feed our adolescent resistance to being told what to do for our own good? It seems quite popular these days with my Baby Boom generation as we look back and congratulate ourselves on our toughness and independence. Of course, we did take the polio vaccine (government interference?), and it is true that those who didn’t survive all those supposedly imaginary dangers of childhood are not doing chain emails from their perspective. But my sister thought fast and acted quickly. So I’m a survivor.
I’ve never been much moved by the nostalgia for the good old days when we could leave our doors unlocked and could go anywhere day or night without fear. Only by the quick thinking and immediate actions of my older sister was I spared being murdered at age four by a man trying to abduct her. No doubt, like Cedric in the Harry Potter novels, I would have been the “spare” who got killed. In what dangerous place were we? We were walking, ironically, along the top of “dead man’s hill,” on the grounds of my elementary school.
Was Hurricane Irene hyped by the television weather reporters? I would say it was, especially by the focus on the tornado warnings, but meteorologist Glenn “Hurricane” Schwartz did what I considered a fine job of putting those warnings into perspective and getting us back to the situation at hand, which was the hurricane.
Come Sunday afternoon, I was very thankful Irene had not been far worse in our area, but such thankfulness is always modified by the distress of those whose lives were disrupted or whose property was damaged or lost and, much more so, by the anguish of those who lost someone loved. That we stayed safe and did not even lose electrical power, that the church had just put a new roof on the manse in which we live, that we suffered no loss even of property – none of that eases the pain of those whose lives were changed by the hurricane. Yes, it could have been worse, much worse. For some, it was.
As we persist in our folly of cutting government spending to restore economic prosperity to the land – the economic equivalent of digging down deeper and deeper to get up out of a pit – we face the likelihood that in the future, our government will not be so well prepared to help the stricken and coordinate responses to natural disasters. Read here for Dana Milbank’s thoughts on this subject in the Washington Post.
What does survivor’s pride do for us? Does it make us feel strong? Superior? Does it feed our adolescent resistance to being told what to do for our own good? It seems quite popular these days with my Baby Boom generation as we look back and congratulate ourselves on our toughness and independence. Of course, we did take the polio vaccine (government interference?), and it is true that those who didn’t survive all those supposedly imaginary dangers of childhood are not doing chain emails from their perspective. But my sister thought fast and acted quickly. So I’m a survivor.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Are We Running the Wrong Way?
Former opponents Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier now write a blog together, both opposing No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the whole mess of business-driven educational "reforms" currently being inflicted upon our children and their teachers. In her latest post, Meier asks Ravitch questions about some "fact-lets" about education, and those contrasting educational reform in highly successful Finland with those in floundering America struck me as worth sharing.
Meier writes:
<< That Finland has consciously engaged in systematic reform now for less than 10 years, with amazing results. That suggests you can make rapid "revolutionary" change given ... what? A smaller geographic and more homogeneous population? For another—as you noted the other day—if a nation has a 2 percent child-poverty rate compared with the more than 20 percent we face. And I think that latter figure, Diane, is low.
The changes the Finns made, however, are exactly the opposite as those we are engaged in. Bizarrely so. Still I doubt if the presentation by Pasi Sahlberg of Finland's Ministry of Education at the Education Week conference this week converted many of the audience. Why not? What do you think?
The Finns start formal schooling later (at age 7) while we keep starting younger. They have no standardized tests; we keep adding more. They rely on teachers and local schools to design curriculum and assessment. They depend on getting teachers out of education schools and manage to recruit highly qualified teachers that way. They are 100 percent unionized. They have both a shorter instructional day and fewer school days a year. For students, that is. Teachers have lots of time, therefore, when they are "at work" for planning learning, preparing, reviewing, and meeting together and with families. >>
The blog, Bridging Differences, is here.
Meier writes:
<< That Finland has consciously engaged in systematic reform now for less than 10 years, with amazing results. That suggests you can make rapid "revolutionary" change given ... what? A smaller geographic and more homogeneous population? For another—as you noted the other day—if a nation has a 2 percent child-poverty rate compared with the more than 20 percent we face. And I think that latter figure, Diane, is low.
The changes the Finns made, however, are exactly the opposite as those we are engaged in. Bizarrely so. Still I doubt if the presentation by Pasi Sahlberg of Finland's Ministry of Education at the Education Week conference this week converted many of the audience. Why not? What do you think?
The Finns start formal schooling later (at age 7) while we keep starting younger. They have no standardized tests; we keep adding more. They rely on teachers and local schools to design curriculum and assessment. They depend on getting teachers out of education schools and manage to recruit highly qualified teachers that way. They are 100 percent unionized. They have both a shorter instructional day and fewer school days a year. For students, that is. Teachers have lots of time, therefore, when they are "at work" for planning learning, preparing, reviewing, and meeting together and with families. >>
The blog, Bridging Differences, is here.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Delight in a Killing
Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD,
and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?
. . .
For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord GOD.
Turn, then, and live. ~Ezekiel 18:23,32 (NRSV)
I see that much is being written about celebrating the killing of the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. The seriousness and solemn demeanor of President Barack Obama who declared justice done has been countered by the jubilation of some of our people declaring joyously that revenge has been achieved.
Throughout the history of humanity, revenge has been the unfaithful satisfaction of our pride and the manifestation of our estrangement in sin. Revenge supports the cycles of violence that terrorists seek. Osama bin Laden built his career as a terrorist upon shame’s desire to restore pride through revenge. To the extent he has succeeded in making us think as he did and take pride where he sought it in killing his enemies, he has won by re-creating us in his image and likeness. Our President has chosen a better path. No, Barack Obama is not a pacifist. He gave the order to find and kill Osama bin Laden, and that order has been fulfilled, but whatever satisfaction President Obama may have felt at the success of the mission (combined with relief that no Americans were killed), he has exhibited no jubilation, no delight in the killing.
It is one matter to be relieved that a terrorist leader is no longer at work and that the retributive form of justice has been done in his case where it seemed beyond human possibility that there was any credible hope for the better form of justice which is restorative. Osama bin Ladin was highly unlikely to have a change a heart. He was ruthless and relentless, and he certainly seems to have been thoroughly convinced of his rightness and so devoid of remorse for the lives he had taken and those he would joyfully have taken in the future had he not been stopped. His death is a relief to the world.
It is another matter to be jubilant about the killing of a human being, which is a further grief to God and to any people who once loved that person and had hopes he would grow into a far better man than he did. Osama bin Laden’s life was grievous to all who believe humanity is created in the image and likeness of God, who believe God has hopes for all of us and is grieved by what our evils do to us as well as to each other. His death ends his career in murder, for which only the fanatical who share his views can be sorry. But delight in revenge serves only to make us a little more like him and to carry on humanity's seemingly endless cycles of violence.
and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?
. . .
For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord GOD.
Turn, then, and live. ~Ezekiel 18:23,32 (NRSV)
I see that much is being written about celebrating the killing of the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. The seriousness and solemn demeanor of President Barack Obama who declared justice done has been countered by the jubilation of some of our people declaring joyously that revenge has been achieved.
Throughout the history of humanity, revenge has been the unfaithful satisfaction of our pride and the manifestation of our estrangement in sin. Revenge supports the cycles of violence that terrorists seek. Osama bin Laden built his career as a terrorist upon shame’s desire to restore pride through revenge. To the extent he has succeeded in making us think as he did and take pride where he sought it in killing his enemies, he has won by re-creating us in his image and likeness. Our President has chosen a better path. No, Barack Obama is not a pacifist. He gave the order to find and kill Osama bin Laden, and that order has been fulfilled, but whatever satisfaction President Obama may have felt at the success of the mission (combined with relief that no Americans were killed), he has exhibited no jubilation, no delight in the killing.
It is one matter to be relieved that a terrorist leader is no longer at work and that the retributive form of justice has been done in his case where it seemed beyond human possibility that there was any credible hope for the better form of justice which is restorative. Osama bin Ladin was highly unlikely to have a change a heart. He was ruthless and relentless, and he certainly seems to have been thoroughly convinced of his rightness and so devoid of remorse for the lives he had taken and those he would joyfully have taken in the future had he not been stopped. His death is a relief to the world.
It is another matter to be jubilant about the killing of a human being, which is a further grief to God and to any people who once loved that person and had hopes he would grow into a far better man than he did. Osama bin Laden’s life was grievous to all who believe humanity is created in the image and likeness of God, who believe God has hopes for all of us and is grieved by what our evils do to us as well as to each other. His death ends his career in murder, for which only the fanatical who share his views can be sorry. But delight in revenge serves only to make us a little more like him and to carry on humanity's seemingly endless cycles of violence.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Does Torture Work? It Doesn't Matter
Now that Osama bin Laden has been found and killed, people from the former administration of George W. Bush are claiming their methods of interrogation by torture (a word they avoid) worked and helped provide valuable information. People who know about effective interrogation are countering these claims, giving the impression that even if some valuable information was gained while water-boarding certain captives, that exception to the rule would fail to establish the value of torture because it has been demonstrated to be ineffective and other methods of interrogation produce better results.
While I’m thankful these experts in interrogation are speaking out to counter the self-defensive claims of former Bush administration people, the more profound matter is not that of effectiveness. Torture is evil, and evil cannot be justified by any claim to effectiveness. It seems we have yet to realize what we do when we command our young men and women to torture people, even the worst of our enemies. We break their souls – that is, their very selves. By “soul” I mean, not some immortal entity somehow encapsulated within mortal flesh, but the essential self of the person. In biblical and theological terms, the soul is the person in the deepest sense, the person created by God to have life that is responsive to God’s love and justice.
The person who tortures others must be broken by what s/he has done or become callous to it or come to enjoy it. Any of those three outcomes reveals a broken soul, although the first is probably the best of a horrible lot because the torturer is still able to suffer from the wrongness of what he or she is doing. Look at what happened to our own young people at Abu Ghraib. Look at how debased they became. Then, there is the horror of what torture does to its victims. Consider the Canadian man subjected to “extreme rendition” and broken by it.
A nation that makes torture a policy, an affirmed action to be carried out by its representatives in pursuit of any goal whatsoever, breaks its own national soul. Such a nation crosses over into radical evil and can no longer rightly claim any moral or other virtue for its national life.
The favorite appeal of the pro-torture people is to the ticking bomb scenario. What would you do if the only way you could prevent the bomb from exploding and killing hundreds or thousands of people was to get information from a person who was refusing to give it to you? Would you not resort to torture? The scenario is generally a ruse exploited to justify policies of torture to be put into routine practice when there is no ticking bomb whatsoever, but let’s take it seriously for a moment. Suppose one does go to the extreme in hope of saving many lives. Suppose one takes it upon himself or herself to torture the captive for the crucial information. Whether that extreme action succeeds or fails at preventing a mass killing, the person who tortures has decided the situation required the desperate move of breaking the law, in which case torture remains outside the law and the person accepts the consequences of having broken the law. If I decide the urgency of an extreme situation makes it necessary that I break so vital a law, am I not thereby deciding it is also necessary for me to accept the consequences? That’s a terrible decision to have to make, but in no way does it justify changing the law itself. The German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the agonized decision to participate in the plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler, but he certainly did not lobby for worldwide acceptance of assassination as a policy.
If we decide that expediency in pursuit of our interests justifies all actions we believe might prove effective, then we have decided, consciously or unconsciously, that we matter and other people do not, that we are somehow more human than others. When that happens, we invariably sacrifice our own humanity on the altar of our egotism, and we become less human, not more.
I am thankful for the people who are countering the self-serving claims to justification for torture. We need to go further and see what torture really does to its victims, to the torturers themselves, and to the nation that decides its own security and self-interest rise above all ethical, moral, and religious standards so that it may do whatever it pleases in pursuit of whatever it decides works to its own benefit.
To torture, we first dehumanize the person who is to be our victim, but we tend to go even further and dehumanize and perhaps demonize some group to which the person belongs or is presumed to belong. In this way, we cover ourselves in case the victim of our torture turns out to be innocent; it doesn’t matter (to us) because the victim is still a member of that group we have dehumanized. So, torture becomes an extreme expression of prejudice, in which we see ourselves as the people who matter, and our will becomes the measure of good and evil, which is the biblical understanding of the condition we call sin.
Was valuable information gained by torture? It does not matter. What matters is that we move decisively to make sure torture is removed as an option in our national policies. Permanently.
While I’m thankful these experts in interrogation are speaking out to counter the self-defensive claims of former Bush administration people, the more profound matter is not that of effectiveness. Torture is evil, and evil cannot be justified by any claim to effectiveness. It seems we have yet to realize what we do when we command our young men and women to torture people, even the worst of our enemies. We break their souls – that is, their very selves. By “soul” I mean, not some immortal entity somehow encapsulated within mortal flesh, but the essential self of the person. In biblical and theological terms, the soul is the person in the deepest sense, the person created by God to have life that is responsive to God’s love and justice.
The person who tortures others must be broken by what s/he has done or become callous to it or come to enjoy it. Any of those three outcomes reveals a broken soul, although the first is probably the best of a horrible lot because the torturer is still able to suffer from the wrongness of what he or she is doing. Look at what happened to our own young people at Abu Ghraib. Look at how debased they became. Then, there is the horror of what torture does to its victims. Consider the Canadian man subjected to “extreme rendition” and broken by it.
A nation that makes torture a policy, an affirmed action to be carried out by its representatives in pursuit of any goal whatsoever, breaks its own national soul. Such a nation crosses over into radical evil and can no longer rightly claim any moral or other virtue for its national life.
The favorite appeal of the pro-torture people is to the ticking bomb scenario. What would you do if the only way you could prevent the bomb from exploding and killing hundreds or thousands of people was to get information from a person who was refusing to give it to you? Would you not resort to torture? The scenario is generally a ruse exploited to justify policies of torture to be put into routine practice when there is no ticking bomb whatsoever, but let’s take it seriously for a moment. Suppose one does go to the extreme in hope of saving many lives. Suppose one takes it upon himself or herself to torture the captive for the crucial information. Whether that extreme action succeeds or fails at preventing a mass killing, the person who tortures has decided the situation required the desperate move of breaking the law, in which case torture remains outside the law and the person accepts the consequences of having broken the law. If I decide the urgency of an extreme situation makes it necessary that I break so vital a law, am I not thereby deciding it is also necessary for me to accept the consequences? That’s a terrible decision to have to make, but in no way does it justify changing the law itself. The German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the agonized decision to participate in the plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler, but he certainly did not lobby for worldwide acceptance of assassination as a policy.
If we decide that expediency in pursuit of our interests justifies all actions we believe might prove effective, then we have decided, consciously or unconsciously, that we matter and other people do not, that we are somehow more human than others. When that happens, we invariably sacrifice our own humanity on the altar of our egotism, and we become less human, not more.
I am thankful for the people who are countering the self-serving claims to justification for torture. We need to go further and see what torture really does to its victims, to the torturers themselves, and to the nation that decides its own security and self-interest rise above all ethical, moral, and religious standards so that it may do whatever it pleases in pursuit of whatever it decides works to its own benefit.
To torture, we first dehumanize the person who is to be our victim, but we tend to go even further and dehumanize and perhaps demonize some group to which the person belongs or is presumed to belong. In this way, we cover ourselves in case the victim of our torture turns out to be innocent; it doesn’t matter (to us) because the victim is still a member of that group we have dehumanized. So, torture becomes an extreme expression of prejudice, in which we see ourselves as the people who matter, and our will becomes the measure of good and evil, which is the biblical understanding of the condition we call sin.
Was valuable information gained by torture? It does not matter. What matters is that we move decisively to make sure torture is removed as an option in our national policies. Permanently.
Friday, February 11, 2011
By the Number
The manager wants a number – just one number that will tell in an arithmetic snapshot how far along the manufacturing process is and how well it is going. So, the expediter wants that number, that single number which supposedly represents the current state of a complex manufacturing process. Don’t give me details. Don’t trouble my mind and complicate my report with a variety of factors which, understood, make the single number so absurd as to be laughable. Just give me the number. The almighty number that makes me sound as though I have control of the process and all the knowledge I need to make decisions. Never mind that those decisions may damage people’s lives as well as mislead and possibly mess up in expensive ways the very manufacturing process I am supposed to be managing or expediting. Just give me the number that gives me control without knowledge or insight.
You’ve got to be kidding! He wants all of this reduced to one number? It will tell him exactly nothing. And we have to waste our time generating that number, trying to make it at least approximate something real that he won’t understand anyway so he can then use the number we give him each week to judge everybody’s work without even knowing what it is they do? What an ignoramus!
Numbers are so wonderful. They can be plotted and displayed prettily in meetings to give the appearance of factual truth. Don’t say that plotting meaningless numbers yields meaningless graphs. Those graphs are proof. Proof of what? Proof of my authority and control over processes I don’t begin to comprehend and don’t care to. Proof of my power over people's lives. With the numbers and charts, I become a grownup He-Man: “I have the power!” That my underlings know I and my knowledge are really as cartoon-ish as the cartoon He-Man is something I work hard not to realize and will never admit. That they must still try to make the process work somehow despite my incompetent management is the truth they know but dare not speak except in whispers and curses to each other.
If the one-number to give me power and control is a sham in manufacturing, imagine how absurd it becomes in education. The complexities of design and production are nothing compared with those of leading young humans to the state of being educated enough to keep learning, growing, inventing, and benefiting society throughout their lives. And if authoritarian mismanagement can spoil a manufactured product, think of how damaging it can be to children. And it is.
You’ve got to be kidding! He wants all of this reduced to one number? It will tell him exactly nothing. And we have to waste our time generating that number, trying to make it at least approximate something real that he won’t understand anyway so he can then use the number we give him each week to judge everybody’s work without even knowing what it is they do? What an ignoramus!
Numbers are so wonderful. They can be plotted and displayed prettily in meetings to give the appearance of factual truth. Don’t say that plotting meaningless numbers yields meaningless graphs. Those graphs are proof. Proof of what? Proof of my authority and control over processes I don’t begin to comprehend and don’t care to. Proof of my power over people's lives. With the numbers and charts, I become a grownup He-Man: “I have the power!” That my underlings know I and my knowledge are really as cartoon-ish as the cartoon He-Man is something I work hard not to realize and will never admit. That they must still try to make the process work somehow despite my incompetent management is the truth they know but dare not speak except in whispers and curses to each other.
If the one-number to give me power and control is a sham in manufacturing, imagine how absurd it becomes in education. The complexities of design and production are nothing compared with those of leading young humans to the state of being educated enough to keep learning, growing, inventing, and benefiting society throughout their lives. And if authoritarian mismanagement can spoil a manufactured product, think of how damaging it can be to children. And it is.
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