You probably remember Johnny from school. Maybe you even were Johnny, or his sister Janie. Maybe you were Johnny's mom or dad, or his teacher. We taught Johnny that he could expect to be judged on his own efforts, and to be held accountable only for the direct consequences of his own actions. He listened and learned, and now he wants his bailout bonus, because Johnny didn't personally break the economy or bankrupt AIG. Too bad Johnny didn't play a team sport, or have team instruction in the classroom. He might have learned something important.
And as it's Friday, your intrepid Kossologist has turned to the stars for your weekend outlook. Hint: your weekend outlook is "look out."
More below the fold....
Johnny works at AIG
A lot of the women in my platoon thought recruit training was unfair. You could do everything right, or try to, and still end up in the Pit with the rest of the platoon, grunting and sweating and cursing under your breath as you did what seemed to be endless crunches and up-downs, because one woman didn't stow her gear properly for inspection. Your gear was squared away, but no matter. Hers wasn't, so the entire platoon went out to the Pit and got sand in places that aren't supposed to get sandy. It was group punishment and it's an old military tradition. But a lot of women in my platoon thought it was unfair.
It didn't bother me, because I was accustomed to it. I'd played team sports - basketball, soccer, and later rowing - and I was used to the idea of group punishment. Or, as we called it, "losing." It didn't matter how well I'd played as an individual. The team won or the team lost. And when the team lost, we all lost. So that's how I looked at the group punishment in recruit training. Either the platoon aced an inspection or the platoon failed. If the platoon failed, we all failed, and we all paid for it in the Pit.
And there was a cold logic to that tradition. If your platoon are in a combat situation and someone else gives away your position, the incoming fire won't hit only that one person. His mistake puts the entire platoon at risk. Whether he personally gets hit is, usually, blind luck.
Of course our drill instructors explained that. But that didn't stop the grumbling, because most of us are taught a very individualized version of responsibility. If you did well, you should be rewarded. If you didn't make a mistake, you shouldn't be punished for someone else's mistake.
How our schools teach responsibility
We didn't get that notion of individualized responsibility out of thin air. Most of us were taught that, implicitly, in school. The teacher announces the homework assignment, and each individual is expected to do it. If Johnny did his, he should get credit for it. Whether the student next to Johnny also did the homework is irrelevant for Johnny's credit. Johnny is responsible for his own work. At the end of the week, or the end of a chapter, the teacher hands out a test. And again, Johnny does his own work and gets his own grade.
Indeed, our schools have a word for Johnny working with another student on a difficult test question: "cheating." Out in the real world, we call it "cooperation."
And Johnny, his parents, and probably the school administrators have a word for when Johnny gets punished or his grade marked down because someone else in class made a mistake, or did so well as to make Johnny's otherwise acceptable answers look poor by comparison: "unfair." Out in the real world, we call it "losing."
If Johnny doesn't play a team sport, it's not likely he'll be taught much about "cooperation" or "losing." He may well complete seventeen years of schooling - kindergarten through college - and only be held responsible for his own work and his own actions. If he did well, he should get a good grade, and he should only be punished for the consequences of his own behavior.
Maybe Johnny is bright and went on to complete three years of business school, and gets his MBA. Now he has twenty years of schools teaching him individual responsibility. And then he goes to work for AIG, and his contract says he gets a bonus, basically a sales commission. He made the sales. He didn't personally break the economy or bankrupt AIG. He wants his bonus. As Johnny sees it, as we taught Johnny to see it, he deserves his bonus.
A "socialist" proposal
I coached basketball for awhile, and that gave me a chance to talk with teachers and principals. And I had what I thought was a reasonable idea, because too few of our kids get the opportunity to participate in team sports. Team sports are too often reserved for only gifted athletes, and that's not fair to students who aren't gifted athletes, or simply don't enjoy team sports.
It's not fair, because team sports teach kids a lot of lessons about life in the real world. You learn that "cooperation" is not "cheating." You learn how to support and help each other. If you have a good coach, you learn how to compete honorably and how to win and lose with grace. All of those lessons will be important later in life, because almost all of us have to cooperate, support and help each other, compete honorably, and win and lose with grace. Why, I wondered, should those important lessons be reserved for kids who are gifted athletes and enjoy team sports?
So after explaining that rationale, I'd float out what I thought was a reasonable proposal: our kids should have teams in the classroom. The students on each team would be changed each quarter, so it was likely each student would have each classmate as a teammate at some point in the school year. The teachers would introduce the lessons and be there to answer questions, but students would explore the lessons in their teams. They'd do their homework together. And while tests would usually be taken individually, a student's grade would be the average of his/her individual grade and the team's median grade. Each student would have a stake in helping his/her teammates do well.
It was, I thought, a way to bring the important lessons of team sports into the classroom, to make those lessons available to kids who were not gifted athletes or did not enjoy team sports. And every time I offered that proposal to a teacher or administrator, I heard the same reply:
"That's socialism."
It seemed bizarre to me, as these were usually public schools, and public schools are by their very nature "socialist" enterprises. But more's the point, it seemed bizarre because all of these schools had sports teams that taught the very same lessons. But those lessons were almost always limited to the sports teams. And it wasn't only the athletes who would go out into the real world, where we usually do work in teams, and where we often do succeed or fail as teams.
Of course, I made that argument, and then came the inevitable comeback: "The parents would never stand for it." The parents, I was told, would not allow Johnny to be responsible for anyone else's work. If Johnny was a bright student, Johnny deserved his "A," no matter what. If Johnny had not made a mistake, he shouldn't suffer for anyone else's mistakes. And besides, the school taught about cooperation and such in civics classes.
It's all about you, Johnny.
Sure, most states do require a civics class in high school. And most civics classes do have a section on cooperation. One section, of one class, in one year, out of all of the classes in all the years of school, from kindergarten through college. And that section is balanced against all of those other sections, classes, and years when Johnny is graded for his own work, and only responsible for his own actions.
Those other sections, classes, and years are meta-lessons on the topic of responsibility, and they teach the same meta-lesson: It's all about you, Johnny. If you get 91% of the answers right on a test, you've earned an "A," even if that's the lowest grade in the class. If one of your classmates is struggling, it's his problem. If you help him, it's cheating. If someone else acts out, you shouldn't be denied recess or given extra homework. Punishing you for someone else's misbehavior would be unfair. It's all about you, Johnny.
And now Johnny works at AIG, and he's demanding his bonus because he brought in business, he earned it, and he didn't personally break the economy or bankrupt his company. We shake our heads and wonder how anyone could be so clueless. But that's what we taught him in twenty years of schooling. It's all about you, Johnny.
Except it's not, for any of us. That's not "socialism." That's life as a social species. And we all should have taught Johnny better.
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The stars are out and the Kossascopes are in. It might have been better the other around:
Pisces - Today is your last chance to make a mistake during your sun sign. Make it a good one.
Aries - Don't eat the leftovers at the back of the fridge. We like having you around.
Taurus - You've had ups and downs lately. Relax. This weekend will be the same.
Gemini - In "lather, rinse, repeat," the sequence matters. You can't start with "repeat."
Cancer - Your astrological animal is the crab. I wonder why that is....
Leo - Congratulations! I guess. So far. Maybe.
Virgo - You're hot because your planet is Mercury, not for how you look in those jeans. Honest.
Libra - Another week, another weekend. Next week will be different. We'll cancel the weekend.
Scorpio - Your planet is Pluto. Pluto isn't even a planet anymore. Not saying you screwed up....
Sagittarius - That's so cute. Really. Beano. Please.
Capricorn - Your sun sign is universal. So is human error. We find a correlation.
Aquarius - Your planet is Uranus. Bend over and say hi. We won't watch. Honest.
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Happy Friday!