Three posts back, I wrote about lawyers as gatekeepers. Fresh from reading Jane Mayer's excellent book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (2008), I see that the role of lawyers as gatekeepers is integral to this sad story. Responding to 9/11, our government decided that we would use any and all legal force to interrogate the alleged terrorists we captured.
What that meant was that whatever the lawyers said was legal would be done. It meant, quite precisely, that lawyers were the gatekeepers determining what forms of brutality we would use on our prisoners. Mayer makes precisely this point (in particular, at 231).
Not any lawyers, and not even many. Because of the special role of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), the opinions issued by that single, elite and quite small, office to a large extent (not completely, as I'll discuss below) determined whether the gate opened or shut.
If these same lawyers had been criminal defense counsel, representing people charged with the crime of torture, there would be no basis to challenge their offering the most narrow interpretation of the torture statute conceivable. No lawyer is permitted to make an argument that isn't in good faith, but in the context of criminal defense the boundaries of good faith are very, very wide.
It's incongruous to think of lawyers who are determining the law for the executive branch of the United States government doing so in the mode of criminal defense lawyers, but it is not a simple matter to explain why an interpretation that is in good faith when offered by one lawyer isn't still in good faith when offered by another, such as a member of the Office of Legal Counsel. I've been trying to answer this point, in a work now in progress, by arguing that the law itself provides reasons to limit the range of interpretations, when the interpretations are secret, when human rights are at stake, and especially when legal rules as crucial and firmly established as the prohibition on torture are being interpreted.
To these reasons I'm inclined to add the gatekeeper role the lawyers at the OLC played, and to say that the more the lawyer is placed in this position the greater his or her responsibilities are. Here, the policy decision by the Bush Administration -- to do whatever the law permitted -- made the OLC's gatekeeper role even more salient than it would normally have been, because it was no longer open to the lawyers to say that choices they viewed as legal might still be rejected on policy grounds; the law's obstacles, if there were any, were the only ones left.
But all this tells the story too abstractly. It seems clear that the Administration wanted to do whatever the law permitted, and that it wanted the law read to permit as much as possible. That by itself isn't extraordinary; while there probably are clients who say, "Tell me what the law really requires, and I'll do it," no doubt there are many others who say, "Find me a way to do what I want to do, and still stay within the law." So having that kind of client, and knowing it, probably doesn't make the OLC lawyers' ethical situation special (as I think others have pointed out).
A second abstraction is the idea that the OLC lawyers were simply stuck with the gatekeeper role. This does not seem to be correct. There are a lot of lawyers in the government, and many of them write memos; on a hotly contested matter, it takes effort to make one's interpretation of the law controlling in fact, even if it is already controlling in theory. As it happens, many of the memos written by the OLC weren't disseminated widely at all; for example, Mayer reports, the opinion determining that the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" at the National Security Agency was legal, despite its seeming breach of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was not made available to the lawyers for the NSA itself! (Mayer at 268.) Moreover, sharp bureaucratic maneuvers were made to generate legal decisions -- notably, in the Department of Defense, on the issue of interrogation tactics -- while keeping those who might object to harsh tactics out of the loop, even people with as obvious a say in the matter as the General Counsel of the Department of the Navy and perhaps the top Judge Advocate Generals of the armed services. (See Mayer at 213-237.) Evidently, John Addington (Vice President Cheney's counsel), John Yoo (not, as it happens, the most senior lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel), and three other lawyers became a self-constituted "War Council" (Mayer at 66)and pressed a very hard line on how much power the President could exercise, and what means he could order employed.
So a more precise account of the role of the lawyers is that a small group of lawyers worked to insure that a particular answer to the question of what the law permitted became the authoritative answer. They sought to monopolize the gatekeeper role, with the goal of opening the gate as wide as possible.
None of this says that any of these lawyers sought to violate the law. Nor does it say that the Administration sought to violate the law -- though it's hard not to think that if you believed harsh treatment was necessary to save American lives, as the leaders of the Administration thought, you might also feel that violating laws that forbade such harsh treatment was also necessary, and justified. (Mayer reports, at 305, the shock that one participant in a meeting felt when he heard "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, say of the CIA's secret program of detention and interrogation of high-value terrorist suspects that "Ninety-nine percent of what we do is legal" -- a statement which might mean that Libby, and others, knew that one percent was not.) If you felt that, you might also feel that you needed fig leaf legal opinions, which you'd then keep locked up; meanwhile, you would assure those in the field that their actions were legal, based on these secret opinions. Doing that is just plain illegal, and for a lawyer to help the client do that would also be just plain illegal. But as I say I'm not assuming that anyone acted with the intention to violate the law.
I'm not even saying that the torture statute is altogether easy to interpret. Unfortunately, in some respects -- not all -- it just isn't; that's a subject of the work-in-progress I mentioned a little earlier in this post.
But what seems to have happened, even if everyone acted within their conception of the law, is that a small group of lawyers maneuvered to impose their very extreme view of the law, with full knowledge that the government would use every inch of the space at the gate they had opened. Very possibly the lawyers also agreed with that government policy, though I don't think that fundamentally changes the issues of legal ethics; it is surely no more wrong to open a gate which you feel should be entered than to open one that you believe should not be used. (Of course, your preferences may affect your interpretations, and so there is reason to be cautious about endorsing as correct a legal reading that also happens to be the one you want.)
But this extreme view of the law was also mistaken; at least some of what was authorized actually was torture, and a great deal of it was unbearably cruel and inhumane. So I say; and one might respond, but what proves that I am right? And the answer is that nothing absolutely proves it; it is necessary to judge what legal provisions mean. But the impossibility of absolute certainty doesn't mean judgment is impossible; quite the contrary, it means judgment is essential.
It seems to me that these lawyers misunderstood their responsibilities, in particular their gatekeeping responsibilities, and that those responsibilities were especially acute because the lawyers had maneuvered so intensely to secure them. I'm not contending that as a result these lawyers violated any rule of legal ethics or of the criminal law, or of the Nuremberg principles. What seems most important is simply to say that these errors were yet another of our country's profound overreactions to national security crises, and to repudiate them. It is very hard to avoid such overreactions, but important to try to learn after each failure, as fully as possible, what the failure was. The United States has conducted an experiment with torture, an experiment from which we ourselves will suffer for a long time to come. It is very important not to repeat it.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The paths of our lives -- marked in seventh grade?
Also in the Science Times for June 8, 2010, John Tierney discusses the possible differences between men's and women's ability in science. He argues that although men and women on average may have equal capabilities, the crucial issue for their contributions to science, and in particular for their representation on academic science faculties, may be that more men than women are exceptionally good at science. Tierney cites a forthcoming study finding this inequality in “gifted seventh graders,” and it will certainly be interesting to see what future studies show or suggest on this score.
Even if this asserted difference between men and women (or boys and girls) exists, and is actually the product of something innate, it wouldn’t automatically follow that it was the source of the underrepresentation of women among top scientists – unless such fine distinctions in ability do shape later achievement. But perhaps they do: Tierney says that in fact “[o]ther studies have shown that these differences in extreme test scores correlate with later achievements in science and academia.”
The particular studies he refers to are studies of cohorts of "intellectually precocious youths" who were identified in the 1970s and early 1980s and have been followed since. It does indeed appear that boys whose SAT – Math scores were in the top quarter of this highly talented group are, for example, between 3 and 11 times as likely to have subsequently earned tenure at a top-50 university as are their counterparts with SAT – Math scores in the bottom quarter of the group. (Interestingly, among women the effects are less clear.)
Tierney goes on to say that “of course, a high score on a test is hardly the only factor important for a successful career in science, and no one claims that the right-tail disparity [the disparity between boys and girls at the far-right, or highest-achieving, end of the math test spectrum] is the sole reason for the relatively low number of female professors in math-oriented sciences.” Certainly the present ratio of men to women on science faculties must also reflect past discrimination, both conscious and unconscious, the effects of which are locked in by tenure for a generation or more.
But when those effects are someday put to one side, how far will these fine differences among the very talented explain any gender disparities in outcome that persist? Tierney says that “Even when you consider only members of an elite group like the top percentile of the seventh graders on the SAT Math test, someone at the 99.9 level is more likely than someone at the 99.1 level to get a doctorate in science or to win tenure at a top university.”
But if this is true for precocious seventh graders, is it also true for the population in general? Perhaps – but it may also be the case that many of the talented adults we respect were not people who showed “precocious” talent in seventh grade. For these talented later bloomers, the relationship between any of their test scores and their later achievements may be quite different than it is for the identifiably precocious.
The studies Tierney cites appear to show that some people begin their progress on the path to adult achievement early and advance steadily along it. In one sense, that’s self-evident, but it is striking to realize that seventh-grade SAT scores can capture clear signs of this progress. But these studies don’t show what might be called the converse: that people who ultimately attained great achievements as adults predominantly began as high achievers in those very areas as children. Until that’s shown, the significance of early test scores, and of the difference between the highest and the high among those early test scores, won’t be fully known.
I hope that our progress through life will not be fully predictable – but it’s hard to deny that studies like this are making the course of our lives more predictable than once was the case. As individuals, most of us see the progress of only a few lives, and the folk wisdom we evolve from what we see is likely far from perfect. As systematic data are accumulated, however, the saving uncertainties in our knowledge may become fewer and fewer.
Even if this asserted difference between men and women (or boys and girls) exists, and is actually the product of something innate, it wouldn’t automatically follow that it was the source of the underrepresentation of women among top scientists – unless such fine distinctions in ability do shape later achievement. But perhaps they do: Tierney says that in fact “[o]ther studies have shown that these differences in extreme test scores correlate with later achievements in science and academia.”
The particular studies he refers to are studies of cohorts of "intellectually precocious youths" who were identified in the 1970s and early 1980s and have been followed since. It does indeed appear that boys whose SAT – Math scores were in the top quarter of this highly talented group are, for example, between 3 and 11 times as likely to have subsequently earned tenure at a top-50 university as are their counterparts with SAT – Math scores in the bottom quarter of the group. (Interestingly, among women the effects are less clear.)
Tierney goes on to say that “of course, a high score on a test is hardly the only factor important for a successful career in science, and no one claims that the right-tail disparity [the disparity between boys and girls at the far-right, or highest-achieving, end of the math test spectrum] is the sole reason for the relatively low number of female professors in math-oriented sciences.” Certainly the present ratio of men to women on science faculties must also reflect past discrimination, both conscious and unconscious, the effects of which are locked in by tenure for a generation or more.
But when those effects are someday put to one side, how far will these fine differences among the very talented explain any gender disparities in outcome that persist? Tierney says that “Even when you consider only members of an elite group like the top percentile of the seventh graders on the SAT Math test, someone at the 99.9 level is more likely than someone at the 99.1 level to get a doctorate in science or to win tenure at a top university.”
But if this is true for precocious seventh graders, is it also true for the population in general? Perhaps – but it may also be the case that many of the talented adults we respect were not people who showed “precocious” talent in seventh grade. For these talented later bloomers, the relationship between any of their test scores and their later achievements may be quite different than it is for the identifiably precocious.
The studies Tierney cites appear to show that some people begin their progress on the path to adult achievement early and advance steadily along it. In one sense, that’s self-evident, but it is striking to realize that seventh-grade SAT scores can capture clear signs of this progress. But these studies don’t show what might be called the converse: that people who ultimately attained great achievements as adults predominantly began as high achievers in those very areas as children. Until that’s shown, the significance of early test scores, and of the difference between the highest and the high among those early test scores, won’t be fully known.
I hope that our progress through life will not be fully predictable – but it’s hard to deny that studies like this are making the course of our lives more predictable than once was the case. As individuals, most of us see the progress of only a few lives, and the folk wisdom we evolve from what we see is likely far from perfect. As systematic data are accumulated, however, the saving uncertainties in our knowledge may become fewer and fewer.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The web and the classics -- a bit of a jeremiad
If everybody has 15 minutes of fame, does that mean nobody gets 30? Well, no. But does it mean that there will no longer be "classics" or a "canon"? Of course, these ideas have come in for a lot of challenge over several decades, in part on the ground that they were merely lists of the works of dead white males. But in principle the idea of classics could accommodate that critique -- once we became a more inclusive culture, our lists of classics would evolve accordingly.
But in a world of 15 minutes of fame, these lists may take another kind of hit. They won't disappear, of course. In fact, they'll be (they no doubt already are) instantly available on the web. There'll be a lot of competing lists, but for a somewhat unsettling reason that competition probably won’t be distracting. The reason is the nature of knowledge networks -- in which, so I'm told, a small number of nodes become the focus of a great deal of connection, while many other items go almost or completely unattended (e.g., and most painfully for scholars, unread). That disparity of attention will enable search engines to smoothly take us to the most well- or widely-regarded.
So the lists will remain, and they'll be better -- at least, more inclusive -- than the older versions they replace. But will people care about the items on them in the way they once did?
Some people certainly will. The web lets every enthusiast pursue his or her passion. And really it's never been remotely the case that everyone shared a passion, or even an attraction, to the classics. So here's my question, better phrased: will the degree of attention our culture has paid to the classics decline?
I think the answer has to be yes. Human attention is finite. Multitaskers may be expanding the size of that finite quantity, but they aren't making it infinite. And the point of multitasking seems to be to carry out multiple activities simultaneously by giving each less attention. That’s a workable strategy up to some point, but the news reports (the "papers") are full of stories of people who quickly exceed their own true capacities, such as cellphone-using drivers and even pedestrians.
Another way to put this is to ask why all our screens are so attractive. The answer is partly that they're full of interesting stuff. (I'll come back to this in a moment.) But another answer is that we're the sort of beings who are easily distracted by whatever we find interesting. Being so responsive to changes in our environment must be useful to survival, though I also suspect that the brains we're equipped with are so powerful that they just need more stimulation than many of our actual environments provide. Either way, we – or at least many of us -- are easily distracted. So the more stuff there is to distract us, the more we'll be distracted. What else is the information age but a galaxy of potential distractions? And if we're distracted, then we're not paying as much attention to some short list of important matters -- like "the classics."
Perhaps it’s also important to think about what particular stuff interests us. Obviously we’ve known for a long time that we are mostly not that interested, that much of the time, in the purest abstractions of philosophy. Sex and violence are more up our alley. But the web provides a particularly supple way to learn more about what interests us. So, for example, we now not only know that many people like to watch appalling YouTube videos, but we also know that many people like to watch videos of other people watching the first set of videos – and many people make videos of themselves watching these appalling videos. Whether this behavior is an expression of empathy or of schadenfreude doesn’t much matter for now; my point is just that whatever actually grabs us, the web is remarkably well suited to deliver (virtually, to be sure), and that a whole lot of what actually grabs us is a long ways from the classics. I don’t mean to equate the classics with philosophical exploration either; the classics are classics because they too speak to what actually grabs us. But they generally speak to it in a more complicated and less accessible way, and in a way that inevitably becomes less accessible over time as the worlds of the creator and the audience diverge. Meanwhile, we now have very good and quick fixes available for a click.
So the classics won’t disappear, but I think it is fair to say they will fade. Perhaps that’s not ultimately a bad thing. The existence of “classics” was itself the result of a world in which information and the ability to access it were limited. We have not needed the Medicis to assure the production of art for several centuries (though with the digital challenge to copyright we may yet need patrons again). In the same way, we may not need classics as a keystone of learning. Perhaps we’ll learn to appreciate (and make) our culture in different and freer ways. (So Roger Ebert appears to feel about film critics – thanks to my friend Jon Art for this link.) At any rate, I think we’re all going to find out.
But in a world of 15 minutes of fame, these lists may take another kind of hit. They won't disappear, of course. In fact, they'll be (they no doubt already are) instantly available on the web. There'll be a lot of competing lists, but for a somewhat unsettling reason that competition probably won’t be distracting. The reason is the nature of knowledge networks -- in which, so I'm told, a small number of nodes become the focus of a great deal of connection, while many other items go almost or completely unattended (e.g., and most painfully for scholars, unread). That disparity of attention will enable search engines to smoothly take us to the most well- or widely-regarded.
So the lists will remain, and they'll be better -- at least, more inclusive -- than the older versions they replace. But will people care about the items on them in the way they once did?
Some people certainly will. The web lets every enthusiast pursue his or her passion. And really it's never been remotely the case that everyone shared a passion, or even an attraction, to the classics. So here's my question, better phrased: will the degree of attention our culture has paid to the classics decline?
I think the answer has to be yes. Human attention is finite. Multitaskers may be expanding the size of that finite quantity, but they aren't making it infinite. And the point of multitasking seems to be to carry out multiple activities simultaneously by giving each less attention. That’s a workable strategy up to some point, but the news reports (the "papers") are full of stories of people who quickly exceed their own true capacities, such as cellphone-using drivers and even pedestrians.
Another way to put this is to ask why all our screens are so attractive. The answer is partly that they're full of interesting stuff. (I'll come back to this in a moment.) But another answer is that we're the sort of beings who are easily distracted by whatever we find interesting. Being so responsive to changes in our environment must be useful to survival, though I also suspect that the brains we're equipped with are so powerful that they just need more stimulation than many of our actual environments provide. Either way, we – or at least many of us -- are easily distracted. So the more stuff there is to distract us, the more we'll be distracted. What else is the information age but a galaxy of potential distractions? And if we're distracted, then we're not paying as much attention to some short list of important matters -- like "the classics."
Perhaps it’s also important to think about what particular stuff interests us. Obviously we’ve known for a long time that we are mostly not that interested, that much of the time, in the purest abstractions of philosophy. Sex and violence are more up our alley. But the web provides a particularly supple way to learn more about what interests us. So, for example, we now not only know that many people like to watch appalling YouTube videos, but we also know that many people like to watch videos of other people watching the first set of videos – and many people make videos of themselves watching these appalling videos. Whether this behavior is an expression of empathy or of schadenfreude doesn’t much matter for now; my point is just that whatever actually grabs us, the web is remarkably well suited to deliver (virtually, to be sure), and that a whole lot of what actually grabs us is a long ways from the classics. I don’t mean to equate the classics with philosophical exploration either; the classics are classics because they too speak to what actually grabs us. But they generally speak to it in a more complicated and less accessible way, and in a way that inevitably becomes less accessible over time as the worlds of the creator and the audience diverge. Meanwhile, we now have very good and quick fixes available for a click.
So the classics won’t disappear, but I think it is fair to say they will fade. Perhaps that’s not ultimately a bad thing. The existence of “classics” was itself the result of a world in which information and the ability to access it were limited. We have not needed the Medicis to assure the production of art for several centuries (though with the digital challenge to copyright we may yet need patrons again). In the same way, we may not need classics as a keystone of learning. Perhaps we’ll learn to appreciate (and make) our culture in different and freer ways. (So Roger Ebert appears to feel about film critics – thanks to my friend Jon Art for this link.) At any rate, I think we’re all going to find out.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Doctors and lawyers as gatekeepers or agents
Today's New York Times science section has a very interesting article on how doctors should interview patients who they fear might be trying to trick them into prescribing addictive drugs. Under the title "Occupational Hazard: Playing the Fool,"Dr. Michael W. Kahn argues that "the harm of missing a chance to help often greatly exceeds the harm of prescribing under a false pretext," and suggests that "our prescribing habits" could benefit from the legal idea "that we should let the guilty go free rather than punish the innocent." But lawyers face similar problems, as I wrote in what became a chapter in Lawyers and Clients, the book I've mentioned earlier on this blog. It is right that a lawyer should not be a prosecutor to her own client, but also right that lawyers often need to learn truths from their clients that the clients may be reluctant to reveal, and that lawyers may be constrained in what they can do for their clients by what they learn -- as, I'm sure, Dr. Kahn would agree that doctors also must try to learn what their patients' true situation is, and must, in his words, "exercis[e] proper skepticism and clinical shrewdness."
I agree with Dr. Kahn's approach, and I'm particularly impressed by it because in urging doctors to give their patients the benefit of the doubt, he is urging doctors to risk enabling the client, quite directly, to violate a number of laws (and even to risk the repercussions of coming under suspicion as aiders and abettors). In many circumstances, lawyers who err in favor of trust don't run quite such acute risks.
But what strikes me about both professions, in light of Dr. Kahn's article, is how awkward the idea of agency is -- "agency" as it's meant in the statements that lawyers, or doctors, are the agents of their clients. It's often been pointed out that lawyers are also gatekeepers -- as clearly is true of doctors as well -- but I had thought of that function as something of an add-on, or a sidelight, of the role. It seems to me now, however, that the gatekeeper function is absolutely integral to what members of these professions do. Law and medicine are storeboxes of tools, very powerful and dangerous tools. Someone must give lay people access to those storeboxes, but the right kind of access -- access structured so that the clients/patients don't harm themselves and don't harm others.
If we think of lawyers as the agents of their clients, it is easy to conclude that they should structure their relationships with the clients so as to put their expertise at their client's service. This is one formulation of the idea of client-centeredness, an idea which I hold to. But it is an idea whose grip is somewhat weakened when we think of lawyers as gatekeepers as well, for a gatekeeper is not completely at the service of those clamoring at the gate. The idea of lawyers as partners with their clients -- a formulation sometimes taken to suggest greater lawyer authority than client-centeredness connotes -- also fits uncomfortably with the gatekeeper role; again, the gatekeeper and those waiting at the gate are not partners.
Of course, one might respond by trying to diminish the ways that lawyers perform as gatekeepers, and there's a lot of value to this approach to lawyers' responsibilities (just as Dr. Kahn is trying to diminish doctors' performance of this kind of role). But it's very hard to eliminate this part of the professional function altogether. In fact, all agents have their zones of responsibility that the principal cannot override, and so in an important sense no one is meant to be entirely anyone else's agent.
I agree with Dr. Kahn's approach, and I'm particularly impressed by it because in urging doctors to give their patients the benefit of the doubt, he is urging doctors to risk enabling the client, quite directly, to violate a number of laws (and even to risk the repercussions of coming under suspicion as aiders and abettors). In many circumstances, lawyers who err in favor of trust don't run quite such acute risks.
But what strikes me about both professions, in light of Dr. Kahn's article, is how awkward the idea of agency is -- "agency" as it's meant in the statements that lawyers, or doctors, are the agents of their clients. It's often been pointed out that lawyers are also gatekeepers -- as clearly is true of doctors as well -- but I had thought of that function as something of an add-on, or a sidelight, of the role. It seems to me now, however, that the gatekeeper function is absolutely integral to what members of these professions do. Law and medicine are storeboxes of tools, very powerful and dangerous tools. Someone must give lay people access to those storeboxes, but the right kind of access -- access structured so that the clients/patients don't harm themselves and don't harm others.
If we think of lawyers as the agents of their clients, it is easy to conclude that they should structure their relationships with the clients so as to put their expertise at their client's service. This is one formulation of the idea of client-centeredness, an idea which I hold to. But it is an idea whose grip is somewhat weakened when we think of lawyers as gatekeepers as well, for a gatekeeper is not completely at the service of those clamoring at the gate. The idea of lawyers as partners with their clients -- a formulation sometimes taken to suggest greater lawyer authority than client-centeredness connotes -- also fits uncomfortably with the gatekeeper role; again, the gatekeeper and those waiting at the gate are not partners.
Of course, one might respond by trying to diminish the ways that lawyers perform as gatekeepers, and there's a lot of value to this approach to lawyers' responsibilities (just as Dr. Kahn is trying to diminish doctors' performance of this kind of role). But it's very hard to eliminate this part of the professional function altogether. In fact, all agents have their zones of responsibility that the principal cannot override, and so in an important sense no one is meant to be entirely anyone else's agent.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Babies' moral life, and who created us
My letter to the NY Times Magazine, responding to Paul Bloom's argument, in his fascinating article demonstrating that babies have morality, that the parochial character of their moral life casts doubt on the argument for divine creation (I say it doesn't): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Letters-t-THEMORALLIFE_LETTERS.html.
But no, I'm not a creationist (though I do think it's hard to understand where the whole universe comes from, if there isn't some sort of a creator).
But no, I'm not a creationist (though I do think it's hard to understand where the whole universe comes from, if there isn't some sort of a creator).
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Law school classes with Twitter (!)
A scientist friend, Jonathan Art, tells me that when he lectures in class, there’s a simultaneous Twitter feed on which students can discuss what he’s saying. A teaching assistant also adds commentary, e.g., “The three main points the professor is making are ….” Would this work with a class built around the professor’s questions to the students, as law school classes normally are (under the title of the “Socratic method”)?
First we’d need teaching assistants (TA’s). We don’t have graduate students in the same way as arts & sciences departments do, but we certainly have upper-level students who have already taken the courses we are giving. Would these upper-level students make mistakes? Well, probably, but the chances are they’d usually get things about right, and that their doing so would be helpful to the students currently taking the course, who might be reluctant to ask about the kinds of fundamental points the TA's would reiterate.
Would the Twitter feed interfere with the students’ focus on the dialogue with the professor? Possibly the effect would be the reverse – to increase students’ otherwise flagging attention. (What's on those laptops now?) The use of the laptop and Twitter for an online discussion paralleling the in-class dialogue might reach them partly because they like these media. The chance to speak via Twitter to their peers (and semi-peers, the TA’s) might also operate to draw them in more immediately than the large-class Socratic discussion, in which only a small number of people can participate in any given period. Maybe the students would as a result follow and understand the dialogue led by the professor better, and be more engaged in it as well. Or maybe they'd be more involved in the Twitter discussion than in the professor's dialogue, but still with the net result that they are more engaged in the overall learning process (Twitter included) than they otherwise would have been.
At the least, it seems worth a try.
First we’d need teaching assistants (TA’s). We don’t have graduate students in the same way as arts & sciences departments do, but we certainly have upper-level students who have already taken the courses we are giving. Would these upper-level students make mistakes? Well, probably, but the chances are they’d usually get things about right, and that their doing so would be helpful to the students currently taking the course, who might be reluctant to ask about the kinds of fundamental points the TA's would reiterate.
Would the Twitter feed interfere with the students’ focus on the dialogue with the professor? Possibly the effect would be the reverse – to increase students’ otherwise flagging attention. (What's on those laptops now?) The use of the laptop and Twitter for an online discussion paralleling the in-class dialogue might reach them partly because they like these media. The chance to speak via Twitter to their peers (and semi-peers, the TA’s) might also operate to draw them in more immediately than the large-class Socratic discussion, in which only a small number of people can participate in any given period. Maybe the students would as a result follow and understand the dialogue led by the professor better, and be more engaged in it as well. Or maybe they'd be more involved in the Twitter discussion than in the professor's dialogue, but still with the net result that they are more engaged in the overall learning process (Twitter included) than they otherwise would have been.
At the least, it seems worth a try.
Feedback, nondirectiveness, and learners' autonomy
At the very enjoyable clinical teachers’ conference in Baltimore this past week, an education theorist named Grant Wiggins spoke about design by understanding, a theory of teaching that calls for identification of objectives, and then “backward design” to shape the actual class plans so as to demonstrably meet those objectives. He and the other panelists applied this general approach to clinical supervision, and along the way surfaced a real difference in what Wiggins sees as educationally essential and the nondirective approach that clinicians have often endorsed.
He said (among other startling and interesting points) that “feedback” was important to effective supervision. Now everyone would agree with that, but not so many would agree with his definition of feedback. For Wiggins, feedback is like what a baseball coach does, when he tells a player, “You’re pulling your head back when you swing.” Notably, the coach does not say, “So what do you think led to your missing the ball?” The idea seems to be that there are aspects of performance which the performer/actor/law student cannot perceive for himself or herself. The coach sees them and names them.
Moreover, in the baseball example, there’s no doubt that what the coach has named is a mistake; batters shouldn’t move their heads when they swing, presumably because doing so makes it harder to connect with the ball. The supervision analogy would be something like, “Your client was very upset, and your response didn’t show empathy.”
Wiggins is, I think, ultimately committed to learners’ autonomy – but not to the idea that they can exercise it on their own. To enable them to be autonomous, Wiggins wants feedback that is, pretty unmistakably, instruction. He may well be correct. Certainly he's right to say, in effect, that our commitment to learners' autonomy doesn't automatically translate into an effacing of the teacher's expertise and responsibility to convey it. One more thing for teachers to think about!
He said (among other startling and interesting points) that “feedback” was important to effective supervision. Now everyone would agree with that, but not so many would agree with his definition of feedback. For Wiggins, feedback is like what a baseball coach does, when he tells a player, “You’re pulling your head back when you swing.” Notably, the coach does not say, “So what do you think led to your missing the ball?” The idea seems to be that there are aspects of performance which the performer/actor/law student cannot perceive for himself or herself. The coach sees them and names them.
Moreover, in the baseball example, there’s no doubt that what the coach has named is a mistake; batters shouldn’t move their heads when they swing, presumably because doing so makes it harder to connect with the ball. The supervision analogy would be something like, “Your client was very upset, and your response didn’t show empathy.”
Wiggins is, I think, ultimately committed to learners’ autonomy – but not to the idea that they can exercise it on their own. To enable them to be autonomous, Wiggins wants feedback that is, pretty unmistakably, instruction. He may well be correct. Certainly he's right to say, in effect, that our commitment to learners' autonomy doesn't automatically translate into an effacing of the teacher's expertise and responsibility to convey it. One more thing for teachers to think about!
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