Blog Archives

Avocational Education

4/30/2021

Among the many challenges facing higher education in the US (even pre-COVID) is coming to terms with the changing nature of college students and figuring out how to be effective institutions in our society. (I should emphasize that the points made here are quite generalized and not tied to any individual or particular groups.)

Most colleges, for all their reputation as hotbeds of political liberalism are, in terms of institutional culture, quite conservative. There are many causes of this (perhaps the subject of another post), but the effect is that changing their educational mission/philosophy/approach is extremely difficult.

Back in ‘the day,’ colleges were seen as sites for adolescent socialization and for what I might call “avocational” education. There was no straight line from studying the liberal arts to a job on Wall Street or main street. As with many cultural artifacts, the popular, embedded image of college is tied to the “liberal arts.” Many of us had a background and outlook that encompassed this approach. So, too, did most of those in college faculties and administrations.

In the 21C, many things have changed: much broader enrollment, much more diverse faculty and student body, and an expansive public culture around the correlation between a college degree and lifetime earnings/American Dream. This campaign has generally been successful in increasing percentages of young adults going to college, but that very success has contributed to the dilution of the economic benefit of a college education itself.

Simultaneously (causal relationships are not clear), educational demands on the workforce have increased and the percentage of high-end jobs (previously the implicit right of a college graduate) has gone down. The result is that college is becoming principally a matter of educating a middle-to-lower middle sector of the work force, as well as training “better” students for the post-graduate education which is increasingly required for the top-level jobs.

The “flip-side” of this has been the oft-noted “hollowing-out” of the “middle class” in the US.

The upshot is that all jobs require more education; at least a “college education,” even if the resulting status and average earnings of college graduates is not what it used to be. However, most colleges (by which I focus on large public universities and smaller, non-elite private schools) haven’t re-thought their purpose and offerings. Student demand for job-focused courses, often egged on by anxious parents, has increased. Demand for apparently “irrelevant” liberal arts/humanities courses has been steadily dropping. Well-rounded education to foster new generations of adults/citizens is giving way to vocational education for a relatively less-well-off sector of the rising generation.

Even more troubling are the relatively weak educational foundations the average college student brings upon matriculation, both in terms of substantive knowledge and, more importantly, basic writing and analytic skills. This pressures colleges to back-fill for high school education, making it even more difficult to move students towards knowledge and skill levels previously expected.

At one level, traditional elites can easily bemoan the decline of the humanities and the breadth of education as a dilution of the way college “should be.” At another level, however, while the percentages of college students taking such courses are down, it’s not clear that the percentage of 25-year-olds in general who ever took more than a couple of college liberal arts courses is declining. It’s just that a significant number of them are now taking vocationally-oriented courses in college, whereas before they either went into the workforce after high school, community college, or some other training.

This presents a host of problems around rethinking the nature of college education (still run by administrators and faculty with a liberal arts bias) as well as a challenge to how we think about the education of citizens. National governments are ill-equipped to deal with the increased integration of the global labor market and rise of automation; leading to anti-democratic (Trumpian?) pressures. We may soon learn the degree to which democracy is a long-term human teleology supported by principle and rational, thoughtful citizens or just a phenomenon that is historically contingent upon the presence of a middle-class (educated, reasonably well-off economically).

Beyond the civic aspects, it also seems that parental pressures and other short-term thinking (unsurprising for young people) is leading them astray by pushing them away from liberal arts and educational breadth. The labor market will only get more dynamic over the coming decades (both within and across “careers”), at least in those sectors to which college graduates aspire. There is little chance of colleges providing adequate long-term vocational education, so such graduates will be on their own. A vocational focus in college also limits their exposure to critical thinking and communications skills which are already sought by employers and will be essential to adapt to the long-term labor market.

There are no “magic wands” to resolve these concerns. Institutional sclerosis is widespread both at the collegiate level and more broadly in the educational system. Our society has underfunded education for decades, and the cultural infrastructure of family/community support for study necessary to ensure social and substantive foundations for well-educated adults will take a couple of generations to repair, even if we start promptly.

Of course, it may well be that replicating the past is impossible and foolish; even focusing on “correcting” for past deficits may be just “fighting the last war.” We need some broad and radical rethinking here; precisely the kind of thinking for which our graduates are increasingly ill-prepared.

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Global Democracy

4/23/2021

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While Americans are agitated by debates over voting rights/suppression and global surveys bemoan democratic decline in a widening group of countries; now may not seem like an opportune moment to consider whether and how we might move towards a fully-integrated global democracy. Domestic democracy is a global norm and the nominal form of virtual every government. International organizations have proliferated in recognition of the trans-national nature of many routine governmental functions and upcoming challenges (e.g. pandemics or climate). Is there a route to either a fully proportional world government or even a direct democracy (one-global person=one vote)? I think we’re a long way off, but not for reasons tied to recent developments.

In 2016, while criticizing Israel’s intransigence in dealing with local Muslims, then-Secretary of State John Kerry said: “Israel can either be Jewish or democratic — it cannot be both.” It was an acute observation that neatly captured the security dilemma of a state that combines a staunchly-defended identity with liberal/cosmopolitan aspirations. The same concern, writ large, also faces the incumbent Western dominated global power structure and explains why global democracy is a (very) long term prospect. In other words, the world can be Western/liberal/progressive/ Enlightened or it can be democratic—it cannot be both.

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, where the “Concert” of (European) Great Powers agreed to work together and, along the way, kept the dozens of smaller fry out in the anteroom while they sorted out what we would call “geopolitical” issues. This was the first effort at on-going international cooperation which spawned, in the 20C and on a now-global stage, the League of Nations and, later, the UN. In both cases, the “Great Powers” preserved a distinctive status and power, the better to protect themselves against the mass of smaller states who might out-vote them if everything was a ‘one-state, one-vote’ system.

We can see similar concerns in the structure of both the US government and the European Union, where balances were struck between the “equality of states” claims of smaller members and heft of the potentially dominant larger states. In the US, we have a Senate with equal representation of the states and a House where California has 50+ times the weight of Wyoming. In the EU, a more complex, weighted-voting system was adopted.

On a global scale, the “Western” countries total well less than 1B people, a bit over 10% of the total world population, even while their share of global GDP is about 50% and their share of military power (as measured by spending) is over 2/3. While long-term development trends will ameliorate these discrepancies, the mis-match over the next fifty years is clear. Territorially-organized nations states will remain the fundamental mode of global political organization, both on a domestic basis and in terms of international organizations. Barring the arrival of extra-terrestrials or a global climate or pandemic cataclysm, the chances of the moving towards global democracy—i.e. population-weighted voting at the international level (much less direct democracy based on the model of one global person=one vote)—will remain a distant idealistic dream.

As I noted in my piece on Sci-Fi governments, the only other models on offer depend on the elimination of the nation-state as the central premise of global political organization. Current political leaders (whether of the Trump/Bolsonaro/Orban/Xi variety or of a more liberal bent) are unlikely to crack this essential epistemological component of the modern world.

Still, it will be interesting to see if and how India and China, as the two largest (by far) countries in terms of population start making noises about “majoritarian” mind-sets. We might also see some movement in that direction from countries whose population is set to put them in the top group over the next few decades (e.g. Indonesia (currently #4) , Brazil, Nigeria (perhaps overtaking the US for #3 in 25 years), Pakistan, Bangladesh, Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia). This trend will be exacerbated by the long-term decline in Western birthrates, of which Japan is the leading example.

How the “democratic” countries of the West react to being hoist on the petard of their own liberal, one-person, one-vote rhetoric and domestic structures will be fascinating. Certainly there will be carping about the democratic defects of these parvenues (or at least those defects to which non-Western states uniquely susceptible). Shortcomings in the US (Georgia voting rules and electoral college), the EU (toothless parliament), UK (monarchy and House of Lords) will be bandied about in return.

Even disregarding these democratic defects, the working assumption of the liberal/progressive/Enlightened/cosmopolitan elites has been comparable to the standard of “civilization” which European empires applied in the 19/20C to determine who was worthy of recognition and inclusion in the “family of nations.” The current version, there is a belief (hope?) that the laggards will catch up (India has been key here) and join the club of already “enlightened/civilized” societies, thereby enabling and justifying a semi-utopian world government in which the global management of democratic norms could be safely entrusted to the now-adult countries who had emerged from their tutelage (with a nod to the echoes of Greece-->Rome and Britain-->US). But just as Rome and the US went their own (respective) ways, so, too the shape of global governance in the 21/22C will be determined more by India/China/Nigeria/Indonesia/Brazil than Europe (and perhaps even than the US). Indeed, it must if the one-person: one-vote standard is to be achieved.

So, the incumbent powers face a dilemma: whether to honor their own mythologies and rhetoric or to retain power (UN vetoes, IMF appointments) until they are confident that the late-comers are sufficiently aligned (co-opted/indoctrinated?) so that things can be safely handed-off to them to preserve these aspirations. Recent developments (nationalistic/nativistic governments, repression of democratic mechanisms, apathy) make this more difficult; but the fundamental issue is that global power (economic/military) will trump democracy and demographics for a long time to come.

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Pop. Culture

4/16/2021

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Concerns with the pace of global population growth have been circulating even before Malthus (1798) made them coherent which led to a new science of demographics in the 19C. These concerns made a great revival fifty years ago with Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb and the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth. All this was before the huge uptick in the global growth rate which began in the late 20C.

Year               Global Population (M)         Annual Growth Rate
1000 (est.)                268                                       .1%
1820                      1,042                                       .2%
1950                      2,524                                       .7%
2000                      6,149                                     1.8%
2050 (proj.)           9,640                                        .9%

Malthus was concerned about the adequacy of food supplies and argued that our species’ proclivity to procreate would consistently outstrip our ability to produce food. Agricultural improvements, including the “green revolution” of the mid-20C more than outstripped those fears, even factoring in longer life expectancies that have come from better health and sanitation. However, recently, the anxiety has been based on our greater awareness of the impact on the environment and the various ways of looking at the planet’s “carrying capacity.”

Future projections of global population growth (as to which there is a wide variation) must contend with a couple of apparent trends: 1) declining birth rates associated with increased urbanization, wealth, and education, especially as relatively poor countries (often characterized by the suppression of women) become more “modern,” and 2) disturbingly high continued growth projections for sub-Saharan Africa.

If the latter concern can be resolved (perhaps by the former), then the chances of total exhaustion of global resources (especially in light of emerging technologies) appear to be receding. The caveat here is continued inequality of global wealth. Stated simply: poor people use less. Global GDP per capita is about $16,000; for the (relatively rich) OECD countries as a group, it’s about $40,000 (& $62,000 for the US). If everyone in the world started living at OECD rates (not at all likely), then the strain on the planet would be overwhelming. And the alternative of everyone moving to the global average of $16,000 is even more difficult to imagine.

So, let’s assume that current levels of income inequality are only slightly trimmed and turn back to the population growth story. If there really is something to the decline of birth rates with increased urbanization, wealth, and education, as is borne out by all the economically advanced countries (esp. Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy), then could we see a time at which the global population actually went down. Certainly, even by UN projections for later in the century, this is a real possibility.

I recently read a somewhat breathless and generally-mediocre treatment of this scenario (Bricker and Ibbitson, Empty Planet (2019)). There are some real concerns about its implications: labor-market adjustments, the burdens from a reduced number of workers supporting a relatively high number of retirees, and (according to a more recent and considerably more cogent economic analysis by Charles Jones) reduced innovation, and human knowledge.

I’m not going to critique either of these works, but I do have a problem with some of their implicit assumptions, particularly the widespread and deeply embedded belief that “growth is good.” First, traditional measures of economic growth, almost by definition, ignore/externalize environmental effects. So, the cost of global economic growth, especially since the industrial “revolution,” has assuredly been significantly understated.

Second, the case for growth is usually made by those who benefit from long-term economic inequality. It’s much easier to tamp down the political risks of poverty by holding out the possibility of “growing out of it” than by structuring a more equal society; in other words, the generic growth argument is premised in part on a version of “trickle-down” economics.

Third, much of the growth mantra (both economic and demographic) has come from national discourses which are based on inter-national competitiveness. France, for example, was seized in the later 19C with dread at “falling behind” Germany (it turned out that they were right about their fears, though its much less clear that another 10M Frenchmen in 1914 or 1940 would have changed the course of either war). This kind of competitive mind-set may be morphing as the concept of global democracy gains a bit of traction in the 21C (of which more next week).

Finally, while there is certainly something to be said for the benefits of innovation and technology, there is also something to be noted in terms of its costs, even beyond the environmental. Modernity is all about change and later modernity has been all about accelerating change. At the same time, we can look at the profound psychological and societal dislocations that have resulted (including well-established tropes about alienation, disconnection, ennui, loss of community/context). The balance is not so clear.

It would be interesting, at least as a thought exercise, to consider what the world would be like with a lot fewer people, slower economic growth (&greater income equality), even with some slowdown in the rate of technology development.

The recent spike in global population would take a while to work off and reverse, but what would a world with 2.5B people look like, even if it took another 100-150 years? That would take us back to the levels of 1950.

It’s hard to get our heads around that kind of scenario and guess what aspects would continue and what would be reversed. There was plenty of growth and optimism back in 1950; technology developed at a robust pace. What if we went back to a US with 150M people, but now most lived in cities (more ecologically efficient); with extensive renewable power systems (much less traffic), and in an economic context that didn’t demand greater soul-sucking productivity?

What if we took economic gains currently envisioned and deployed them to a more equitable distribution, both domestically and globally?

Our culture’s fixation on growth (for reasons noted above) is not the only way to live. Maybe a drop in global population could spur a very different type of thinking, who knows where we might end up….?

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Bhutan

4/9/2021

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I’ve been lucky enough to travel to lots of obscure corners of the world, far beyond European Capitals and famous sites of natural beauty. But one place to which I have returned over the years is the mountain kingdom of Bhutan and there’s a good chance I will go back again pretty soon (post-Pandemic).

There was certainly some component of exoticism in my decision to go for the first time, 23 years ago this month. Recently married, I was eager to get back to my earlier pattern of wanderings. I prevailed on my bride to join me in this exploration (although the itinerary’s delight in announcing the availability of hot-and-cold running water almost put her off). Six years later, we went again and, while I went off with most of the group on a trek in the mountains, she stayed in “town” and we arranged for her to teach a decorative arts workshop in the local middle school. Ten years after that (2014), I went for a third visit, this time introducing three dear friends of long-standing to the place and people they had heard me talk about for many years.

One of the main draws for me has been to witness and learn from Bhutan as one of the few places which is connected to the global sprawl of modernity, but which is trying to consciously manage its own encounter with that epistemology. Western imperialism and the sparkly lures of capitalism and technology have swamped most parts of the world; most local cultures didn’t stand a chance. Plastic shoes and T-shirts with knock-off logos can be found in the most startling locations on earth. This is not to say the Bhutanese are wholly averse to the things we take for granted, but they do so (if I may overgeneralize a bit) thoughtfully and with a commitment to maintaining their culture while they interface with the wider world.

Part of this is due to the profound resonance of Buddhism. Bhutan is part of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition (the name Bhut-an actually means the “end of Ti-bet”). It is the only country that has Buddhism as a state religion. The country’s isolation until the later 20C has enabled the religion’s continued vibrancy and the reverence of the people makes it stunningly different from the noise and bustle of e.g., Bangkok or the sensation in nearby Nepal of being overrun with tourists. Buddhism is embedded in Bhutan in a way hard for those of us from a “modern” Christian-rooted, secular-trending culture to fully grasp.

Bhutan has become (relatively) famous for its concept of “gross national happiness,” which was articulated by the 4th King (the now-retired father of the current King) in 1972. GNH has since been adopted as the government’s foundational policy goal. It symbolizes a priority for the qualitative over the quantitative, for social and cultural harmony over economic development. This is a laudable aspiration, but one should not confuse Bhutan with Shangri-La. By Western development standards, Bhutan is a poor country and there are serious issues about its treatment of Nepali and other Hindus.

Nor is Bhutan immune from modernity (nor COVID (although it was well-managed)). During our second trip (2004) we visited the first (only?) disco in the country. By 2014, electrification had reached a considerably majority of villages and I had to remind our local trip leader that extended conversations with his friends on his mobile phone disrupted the purpose of our trek. Some of the ills of modernity (medical and moral) have come along with internet access.

These developments are important reminders that the Bhutanese are not there for our touristic pleasure, like the re-enactors in Colonial Williamsburg. We might wish to see the way life “used to be,” but the Bhutanese are no less entitled to electrification and inoculations than are Texans or Turks. At the same time, while the colorful festivals and quiet temples continue to exist for the people, not for tourists; they are amazing at several levels.

Beyond the culture at a broad level, Gina and I have been fortunate to connect to individuals who have shown us immense kindness and generosity. These experiences, on walks, in homes, or in more formal settings are worth at least as much as the sites and public events. These sorts of things do happen in travels to Australia or other parts of Asia, etc. but there seem to have been more of them in Bhutan than the time we have spent there would predict.

Yes, London is different than New York, and San Francisco is different from Shanghai, but Bhutan’s different-ness is different. It is not primitive (a la tribes in New Guinea or the Amazon), but it is not-so-modern. Therein lies its ability, for those of us from the “West” to open doors of serenity and perspective. To be sure, its different-ness has lessened some over the years that I have been going; but watching the process (progress?) has been rewarding on its own terms.

I have been working with the Bhutan Foundation on some projects relating to democracy education and tree planting; and lately, we’ve talked about me making a fourth visit (perhaps next year) to check them out. Something to look forward to….

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Who Lost Hong Kong?

4/2/2021

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The fate of Hong Kong has been a continuing lesson in geopolitical history. A small fishing village in the early 19C was settled by British and other Europeans in the course of opening up the “China trade,” a more-or-less organized British colonial administration began in 1841. China was forced to formally cede the island (and allow British drug pushing across its country) as part of the resolution of the First Opium War in 1843. The Fourth Governor of the colony, Sir John Bowring, is generally assigned responsibility for launching the Second Opium War with China in 1856 which further enhanced British imperialist designs in East Asia. As the Chinese Empire decayed across the 19C, European powers seized increasing chunks of territory and trading rights and, in 1898, China was “convinced” to lease a chunk of the mainland across from Hong Kong Island to the British for 99 years.

British control (except when ousted by the Japanese for four years) remained even through the decades of revolutionary turmoil in China and the consolidation of power by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. However, when the lease on the “New Territories” expired in 1997, a much-reduced British Empire faced facts and ceded the island back to China under a complex arrangement that promised the maintenance of Hong Kong’s quasi-democracy for fifty years. (I’ve always been slightly amused that the British Imperial government was a champion of democracy for a colony.)

Now, China is cracking down on the small components of democracy preserved under the deal with the UK in 1997. Given British global power, and Chinese aggressiveness in a variety of international contexts, the limiting factor is not the threat of Prince Charles and the Royal Navy bombarding Shanghai, but rather the risk of undermining the important role Hong Kong capital markets have played in financing Chinese domestic growth, international trade, and investments outside of China; in other words, international capital markets. A second significant concern for the Chinese is reinforcing those in Taiwan who will insist that China would never peaceably re-integrate that island, thus leaving China with few non-military options for re-asserting formal control over that erstwhile province.

We will hear a robust lip-service favoring democracy from banks, investors, and their entourages, but they remain focused on preserving the access to the giant profit potential controlled by the China. So, it falls to the “Western powers,” various NGOs and the commentariat to defend democratic ideals and practices and it’s not clear how high up their priority list Hong Kong lies. Brexit has ensured that, history notwithstanding, Britain can’t be any more effective than Poland in altering Beijing’s behavior. As a result, there’s little reason to be optimistic about Hong Kong’s fate.

China may continue to move aggressively to enforce its recent “Security Law,” restricting eligibility for democratic groups on Hong Kong’s Legislative Council or cracking down further on dissidents and protestors. Hong Kong’s status as a “Special Administrative Region” may remain, but become increasingly superficial and nominal.

In contemplating this likelihood, I was reminded of another political implication of Chinese history: the impact on US domestic politics of the triumph of the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949. At that time, in the height of the early Cold War paranoia, the issue of “Who Lost China?” was a fearsome cudgel used to attack the Truman Administration and other designated targets who were “soft on communism.”

This episode was a typical manifestation of the right-wing delusion that America controls the world and our power and will are sufficient to determine the fates of other nations (i.e., that we could have prevented the Chinese Communists from winning). Rather than face the limits of American power, it’s much easier to blame domestic political opponents for adverse geopolitical results.

I expect we will see a similar situation once Hong Kong is returned to its pre-1843 status as a normal part of China. Since there is a good chance this will happen while we have a Democratic administration, I rather suspect Biden/Harris/Blinken et al. will be blamed for “losing” Hong Kong.

As if.

* As if the US had sufficient power and political will to prevent it from happening.
* As if the Trump administration’s
o Gratuitous trade war with China didn’t make it harder for us to press China on other issues (including Hong Kong).
o undermining of American international standing and alliances did not make it much easier for China to extend its influence and power in the region.
o mishandling of COVID didn’t weaken the US economy and global stature.

None of this will prevent Trump and Trumpians from blaming Democrats, Socialists, (did I hear the word “pinkos’?). Hell, Kevin McCarthy may reconvene a Congressional Committee on Un-American Activities.

As I have noted elsewhere in this blog, the rise of China is a long-term phenomenon with a lot of momentum behind it. Hong Kong, as the British recognized in 1997, is too small to stand alone next to such a giant neighbor. So, the fifty-year promise of autonomy that the British negotiated at that time was always aspirational rather than likely.

Still, history is full of surprises and it would have been interesting to see a more robust/irritating Hong Kong political culture for a few more decades. It might have made a real difference, especially if China were to change in surprising ways in the future.

As it is, we can only watch and wait (with pro forma protestations). Dominoes are falling; Taiwan may be next, but don’t blame Joe (or Barack).

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

Avocational Education

Global Democracy

Pop. Culture

Bhutan

Who Lost Hong Kong?

Condemned to Repeat It --Musings on history, society, and the world.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.