In Quest of Unintended Consequences

In Quest of Unintended Consequences

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 2005


Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham (1692 – 1752)



Someone wrote,"You don't get it, Dr. Fisher. You're a moralist in an age that has moved beyond morality. The age has passed you buy."

There is no point in refuting or dignifying this claim. My wonder is the unintended consequences of "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you may die."

A new school year looms ahead, and my grandchildren are moving off from a summer slumber to what? Perhaps a fall slumber or worse. That is my sense.

Only today in The Tampa Tribune the main headline story is about turning the classroom into a lounge to cater to the needs of its most special students. A ninth grader it quotes as saying she refuses to read a book unless she feels cozy.

Her story is about how her school is accommodating her special requirements. It is turning the classroom of regimented desks in rows to random computer stations and comfy lounge beds to read. The classroom is turning school into home away from home. That has been tried in work centers and we know how that has worked out.

The administration comes back in this article: "If students feel more at home, then they are going to be more comfortable and be able to get into their reading."

If you think this idea is new, think again.

It was first tried with the hedonistic calculus of do-gooder sociology in the 1980s in American industry and commerce across the nation. It was believed if workers were happy, content, stress-less and carefree, they would think creatively and work productively. Guess what?

They settled into arrested development suspended in permanent adolescence as passive and reactive employees with behaviors I have come to identify as "six silent killers":

(1) Coming in late, leaving early, doing as little as possible to get by (passive aggression);
(2) Always having an excuse why an assignment isn't done or done on time (passive defensive);
(3) Only doing what one is told then standing around waiting for instructions (passive responsive);
(4) Accepting assignment with no intention of completing or completing on time (approach avoidance);
(5) Spreading disinformation about the company or colleagues, or withholding information necessary for the success of a project (malicious obedience); and
(6) Comparing and competing and always seeing the grass greener on the other side of the cubicle, and feeling everyone else is being better treated (obsessive compulsive).

Statistic show that these passive behaviors have not only cost American enterprise billions of dollars, but have had the unintended consequences of driving many American businesses to China, India, Indonesia and Japan, where the products made there are then sold in the US.

This has created an incredible trade deficit putting our national economy always in a Sisyphus "catch up" mode. Our trade deficit with China, alone, is $ 216 billion dollars in 2005. For each $ 1 billion dollars of imports, 20,000 American jobs are lost. You do the math. Our love of cheap products made in China and elsewhere represent a quest for unintended consequences.

We have moved from pain and struggle to comfort and convenience. I indicate in my writing that this represents a move from the CULTURE OF COMFORT to the CULTURE OF COMPLACENCY.

And now, like an uncontrollable virus, I see this complacency moving into our schools with a rationale to match.

Am I an alarmist; do I exaggerate? You decide.

Another column into today's newspaper is from an adjunct professor at a local college. She found several of her students whispering during a test. The students saw nothing wrong with the behavior. They said they were helping each other out, obviously to find the correct answers to the test.

To her credit, she didn't explode. She revisited the cheating policy with them, and then gave them all zeros for the exam. No problem. She didn't stop there.

She assumed that the students had become complacent in their test taking. To combat this and reorient them to more responsible behavior, she created multiple tests, clarified homework assignments, and commenced to monitor tests with due diligence. Cheating ended.

This teacher knows students are resourceful and they will find other ways to cheat if they are of a mind to do so. She then mentions an upscale preppy high school of the area, which discovered seven of its top National Honor Society students had stolen the manual for their advanced placement class with all its assignments, quizzes and answers for the entire year.

When one of the students was bragging about this heist, it got back to the administration. They were removed from National Honor Society, perhaps the most prestigious award of a high school student.

Were the students remorseful? Hardly. The response of one student to this punishment was, "What the school has done so far has been hugely incorrect. They clearly made a mistake, and that's causing more trouble for us."

Victimhood is typical of members of the CULTURE OF COMPLACENCY.

Another cheater said, "We were good people and happened to have one slight mistake and everyone turns their back on us." In other words, good we, bad you.

When still another student was asked bluntly, why, why did you do such a stupid thing? The student confessed honestly, "So we can be the best that we can be and have the greatest resume in our hands, so when we apply to colleges we look outstanding and the college of our choice will want us."

Oscar Wilde got it right, "Ambition is the first sign of failure."

Now, if you have a problem with cheating on tests, I have an equal problem with these crib sessions for taking the SAT and GRE examinations.

In my naiveté, after coming back from South Africa, and deciding to go back to graduate school, I took the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) after being out of school for many years. The students taking it with me could have been my children. I noticed they had manuals and crib notes. At the time, I had no idea what they were or why they had them.

I took the test, and did well enough to be accepted into graduate school at the University of South Florida. Once there, however, I got another shock. One of my professors confessed he had taken the GRE three times before he applied to graduate school. In the interim, he took courses to boost his score.

So, the Graduate Record Examination had little to do with his actual aptitude for learning. He was playing the system and beating it at its own game, and had no problem sharing this knowledge with me. I was embarrassed for him. He wasn't, as I like to put it, in the right pew for him. He might have been better at pumping gas.

Industry does this with a quality award called "The Malcolm Baldridge Award." So, it is endemic to our culture. We prefer to work for awards, or the product, rather than to fall in love with the process, in this case, which is learning.

The teacher, who found her students cheating with a nonplus attitude about it, were in for a bigger surprise: the parents. One parent called it simply "an unfortunate incident." Another parent said, "I think it's all been blown out of proportion." The parents of the three cheaters who actually stole the book retained legal counsel and appealed their dismissal from the National Honor Society.

These students and their parents are not in the minority. In 2002, a report card on American students, completed by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, found that 74 percent of all high school students admitted to cheating on tests.

A culture of tolerance has been spawned by parents of the spoiled brat generation of baby boomer (parents born after 1945). Cheating, stealing and lying have become paying propositions. Corporate corruption, which has become a major sporting event since the 1990s, reveals only the tip of the iceberg.

The teacher concludes:

"What becomes of these top notch, cream-of-the-crop 'honors' students? Despite this 'unfortunate incident,' they graduated at the top of their class and will go off to the best schools, achieving their ultimate end. They are future leaders in business, government, and politics -- tomorrow's Enron and Worldcom executives in training."

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