Ask Kazzy #2
Co-blogger extraordinaire Burt Likko asks:
How does one authority figure appropriately indicate to a child that a second authority figure has done or said something bad? E.g. and very heavy-handed, what should a teacher say when confronted with: “Mr. Kazzy, my father said that black people are more violent than white people”? You don’t want to subvert the father’s role as a father, but you clearly can’t let that statement stand unchallenged. How does that needle get threaded?
Fantastic question, Burt. And one which I think is far easier than you might imagine. You tell the kid his father is wrong.
Now, how you’d go about doing this would greatly depend on the age of the child. If this was an older student, say high school aged, I’d enter into a conversation on how people tend to come to that conclusion (e.g., crime statistics, selective news reporting, popular media portrayals) and demonstrate why the conclusions are false and what these sources do tell us and what they don’t tell us. If this was a younger student, say the age I typically teach (4- and 5-year-olds), I’d connect it to conversations we already had on such a matter or, if we hadn’t had them yet, use this as a springboard to address the topic. I’d talk with them about how we know that people look different but this doesn’t mean that they are different and that one’s skin color or hair color or eye color or height does not connect to their personality.
And the reason I’d feel comfortable doing this is because a big part of a teacher’s job is dealing in the world of facts. And the fact is that black people are not more violent than white people. If a student were to come in and tell me that his father told him squares have 3 sides or 5 comes after 6, I’d have no obligation to perpetuate such silliness out of respect for the father’s role. So why should it be any different with a statement regarding race and violence? Because it is a touchy subject? A charged issue? Some teachers might shy away from that, but I am not one of them.
However, I think Burt’s question begs a question: the role of an authority figure is challenged if that authority figure is shown to be incorrect. I reject that assertion. In fact, I make a point to show my students that despite my role as a teacher, I am not perfect, infallible, omniscient, or omnipotent. And I encourage parents to do the same. Ultimately, I think this leads to more respect, not less. Fortunately, such situations come up all the time in schools. It is common for a teacher to have to override another teacher’s authority, but I believe this can be done without undermining their authority. “I understand Ms. Johnson said you could stay in from recess but because there is no adult to supervise you in the library, I’ll need you to go outside. I’m sure Ms. Johnson didn’t realize the room was empty and I will touch base with her later. We’ll see if we can come up with a plan that works.” And I’d say that even if I knew Ms. Johnson to be a spaz. Authority can be challenged without being undermined. Authority does not rest in perfection. Not all people feel this way, which can lead to some difficult situations, but I believe those are for adults to solve behind closed doors.
Now, not all such situations will involve objective facts. Suppose a student came in and said, “My dad said that gay people shouldn’t be allowed to be married,” my response would be, at least in part, impacted by the school’s mission statement and other articulated stances on such topics. Regardless, given that the focus should be first and foremost on the student, I would attempt to take a path that modeled how people can respectfully discuss differences of opinion and which sought the student to ask and answer hard questions for himself rather than simply parrot an authority figure, be it me, his father, or anyone else.
And the fact is that black people are not more violent than white people.
You do not spend much time studying crime statistics. You may wish to argue about the reasons observed reality takes the form it does or argue that this particular observed reality does not manifest itself in domestic life or workplaces (you’d be out of luck arguing it does not in secondary schools). There is no point in arguing the observations are not what they are.Report
Please take your racist, trolling drivel elsewhere. This will be the last response I offer you here.Report
Racist trolling drivel????
Kazzy, it does not matter whether I am a person of good character or bad, or whether I have it in for some ascribed group or not, or whether I subscribe to some approved narrative of social relations or I do not. The social statistics which describe the world in which we live are what they are. You can argue over the interpretation of those statistics or the implication of those statistics, but there is not point in pretending that what is is something other than what is and no point in making personal assaults on people who collect the data or know what the data says. Deal with social reality and stop being an ass.Report
This comes down to a question of exactly what is meant by the original (hypothetical) statement. If it’s meant as shorthand for “In the U.S., the percentage of black people who’ve committed a violent crime is higher than the equivalent percentage for white people”, then it’s a statement of fact. But as phrased, it sounds like the speaker is claiming that black people are inherently more violent, which is probably why Kazzy reacted the way he did.
But in any case, this is a threadjack — the specific content of that hypo is not the subject of the post.Report
I will point out that my remark above contains this phrase:
You may wish to argue about the reasons observed reality takes the form it does or argue that this particular observed reality does not manifest itself in,,
which rather discredits that charitable construction of Kazzy’s remarks (unless Kazzy has a severe reading comprehension issue – a problem in a schoolteacher).
As far as I can recall, the last time I saw in public print a remark as aggressively and obnoxiously naive as Kazzy’s was around about 1984. Makes me more suspicious of the ed schools than I already am.
Where I grew up (the Genesee Valley), you have a complex of disagreeable inner city neighborhoods, agreeable inner city neighborhoods, tract suburbs, small towns, and countryside. The disagreeable inner city neighborhoods have a homicide rate of 35 per 100,000 in a typical year and comprehend about 10% of the population. The remainder has a mean homicide rate of 2.5 per 100,000, and I doubt you could find a neighborhood in the remainder that had it worse than the national metropolitan mean of 6.5 per 100,000. An aspect of that is wretched understaffing of the police and fragmentation of the police in a half-dozen different departments. Both of these can be feasibly addressed and the experience of New York City suggests a homicide rate of 14 per 100,000 is a realistic goal. But you cannot get to first base on quality-of-life improvements in slum neighborhoods if you insist on adhering to social fictions.Report
You should probably learn the difference between an observation and a conclision. While you are at it, you may want to bolster your knowledge of statistical methods by learning the difference between a descriptive statistic and a predictive statistic and also learn what a unit of observation is.Report
I know perfectly well what the difference is between a descriptive statistic and fruits of statistical analysis. It has been years since I made use of SAS and Statview, but I was skilled in that at one point, albeit dealing with economic data, not social data.
I assume you can put together a massive bibliography of regression analyses of the influences on observed criminal behavior. That would certainly be helpful for the formulation of public policy. It certainly helps generally to sort out what you see when you hold other influences constant. That is a rather different exercise than lying to elementary school kids or in verbal assaults on fat middle aged men telling them they are repulsive characters for pointing out the world has the contours it does.Report
Describe the difference, if you can. I’ll check your work.Report
A descriptive statistic is a metric derived from survey research. In the analysis, you develop a model derived from theoretical discourse and test the model. There can be bivariate and multivariate analyses. You can test for between group differences with t-tests and ANOVA or you can undertake a regression analysis and attempt to locate the variables that have a statistically significant relationship with your outcome variable. There are phenomena which invalidate your analyses. There are also metrics which assess how much observed variation in a phenomenon can be absorbed by the model you have constructed.Report
… and what sort of statistic would we call an analysis of the reasons observed reality takes the form it does?Report
I used statistics as a tool. I am not a student of mathematical statistics and never was. I never really dealt with data that was not normally distributed.
It will depend on what your discipline is and what you are attempting to determine. Multivariate regression analyses are modal in economic literature. I think psychologists tend to favor t-tests and ANOVA, but that’s outside anything I ever studied.Report
Now incorporate the concept of a unit of observation and you should be able to see your errors.Report
What error?Report
I’d point out that whites in Chicago only commit 5.3% of the city’s homicides (despite the city being a melting pot of every organized criminal element from Europe), and that among only those, Chicago has a lower number of homicides and a lower homicide rate than London England. But then, whites don’t commit half the crime in London, either. The British write about the matter quite extensively, and it’s probably not because they lack the proper statistical professorships.
But if I pointed that out, I’d be tasked with deriving an entire branch of mathematics from first principles, because as Eric Holder pointed out, we’re all cowards, and we’d rather check under the refrigerator for dust bunnies than dare mention some uncomfortable data that might subject us to public scorn and sanction.Report
Wonderful response, Kazzy. Because one of the most important things all authority figures do is model authority; and part of that is that folks often disagree, are frequently wrong, and we all need to develop something called judgment; not only to evaluate others, but to evaluate our own positions.Report