Monthly Archives: February 2012

Why Do Teachers Tolerate a Professional Double-Standard?

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In a recent article titled, “What if the Doctor is Wrong?” The Wall Street Journal asserts what you and I already know, that “primary care doctors can misdiagnose common symptoms.” In a study 202 patients most commonly complained about abdominal pain, fever, fatigue, shortness of breath and rash. Incorrect diagnoses included: benign viral infection 17%; musculoskeletal pain 10%; asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 6%; benign skin lesion 4%; and pneumonia 4%. Final correct diagnoses for patients misdiagnosed initially included: cancer 16%; pulmonary embolism 6%; coronary artery disease 5%; aneurysm 8%; appendicitis 6%.

Every profession consists of a mix of hardworking, conscientious, especially caring and skilled people and those who are less so.

I don’t point this out to bash doctors or excuse any teacher that is unprepared, uncaring, and unmotivated. I point it out to ask why politicians, business leaders, state legislators, and other policy makers are so determined to identify and then fire the worst teachers, but no similar efforts are made to rid medicine, dentistry, the law, or other professions of perennial underachievers? Think doctors would find it motivating if we reported their “initial correct diagnosis” percentages in local newspapers and then used those percentages to divide them into different categories of relative effectiveness?

Do we single out teachers for public scoring and scorn because they make a fraction of most doctors, dentists, and lawyers and in our society money, status, and power are intimately interconnected? Do policy makers feel like that they can push them around because of their modest compensation?

 

Battling Self-Doubt—Who to Believe?

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When I was eighteen, nineteen, twenty, I remember being frustrated when home from college. I have three older siblings. One older brother is mechanically inclined, so whenever something needed fixing, it got fixed before I ever got the chance to swing the bat. And no one ever taught me how to work with my hands. Through teasing, I got put in a “mostly incompetent” box which hurt my confidence and zapped my initiative. Better not to try than to fail. A downward spiral of self-doubt. Alex Smith in need of a Jim Harbaugh.

Built like a pool cue, I was also labelled soft and spoiled. Truth be told, I shied away from physical contact, and by the time I came along, my parents were better off, the task master was often traveling, and Mother Dear had let her hair down. I did live a charmed life. I coasted through high school so much, my dad, who also thought of me as sheltered, discouraged me from going to college.

Proving him wrong was motivating. As a first year college student living on my own in a culturally diverse, challenging, and stimulating setting, I was transformed. Afraid of failing, I applied myself, studying intensely. I quickly improved as a thinker, writer, student. I gained confidence in communicating original ideas. I met lots of interesting people who had no preconceived notions about me. I spent a summer working at an inner-city Boston park and food bank with a dozen other college students from around the country.

Whenever I returned home though, time seemingly stood still. In the eyes of my family, I was still the mostly incompetent, soft, sheltered, spoiled seventeen year-old. The result was equal parts alienation and frustration.

So who to believe, others from the past or myself? Incompetent, soft, spoiled, sheltered, or increasingly capable, resilient, socially conscious, and experienced?

This “who to believe” dilemma is universal. Everyone has to contend with negative messages that go way back to parents, teachers, coaches, other authority figures, siblings. Why do some people succumb to long-running negativity and others rise above detrimental preconceived notions?

The single most important variable is whether you surround yourself with positive or negative people. A negative past can be blunted. Case in point, I love how my Better Half always goes into “compensation” mode and encourages me whenever I attempt to install or repair something.

Most of the time though, we have to confront our self-doubt alone. The way to do that is to build enough countervailing evidence to eventually tilt the balance from self-doubt to self-confidence. A marathon without shortcuts.

To illustrate, consider my preparation for IronPerson Canada in late August, a mere seven months away. Something about swimming 3.8 kilometers, riding 112 miles, and then running 26.2 sparks serious self-doubt. Athough I’m not building up for it yet, I can’t help but think about it from time to time. My mental prep is hampered by the fact that I’ve internalized the “soft” messages of my youth. I not only internalized them, I embellished them. Like a taller, skinnier Woody Allen, I even thought at times that I had a particularly weak constitution, and that I’d probably contract some chronic illness, and pass from the stage prematurely.

The self-doubt is playing havoc with my sub-conscious; consequently, I’ve had a series of disconcerting IronPerson dreams. In last night’s version, the brakes on my bike unravelled right before the start leading to the dreaded “DNF”—did not finish. I’ve had others where I swim completely off course and the race goes on without me. I probably haven’t dreamed about the most challenging leg yet because I haven’t worn out all the swimming and cycling nightmares.

Here’s the odd thing though, in the last two decades I’ve become an experienced open water swimmer, long distance cyclist, and marathoner. And while this is hard to admit publicly, I’ve gotten pretty good as an endurance athlete. Riding especially strongly at the end of RAMROD last July and my last half iron distance triathlon last September were major confidence boosters. Yet, I struggle to even write “pretty good” because deep down in my gut the cassette recorder quietly repeats “I’m soft, an impostor, a wannabe.”

I’m wrestling with who I am as an athlete. Ultimately of course, I’m an insignificant weekend warrior, but I have to get more specific to set goals and then devise and successfully implement a race strategy.

Am I still the third-grader who climbed down from the 10 meter platform too afraid to jump off, the scrawny junior higher who routinely got whupped in the 660 yard dash, the junior high cornerback who whiffed an easy tackle, the batter who was too chicken shit to hit a curve, or the long distance runner who was mentally tough and gutted out the last 10k of the 2010 Seattle marathon, or the cyclist who last summer got stronger the longer and tougher the mountain climb? If I’m more of the former, my goal should be the traditional “just to finish,” if more of the later, it should be to throw down with the fastest dudes in my age group.

Forget me and my inconsequential, irrational race. What negative messages limit your potential? Have you succumbed to the negativity of critical peeps from your past or are have you created a positive present?

[extra credit—What city is in the February header?]

When It Comes to the Media, New is Not Better—The Huffington Post as Case Study

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“Come here dad,” Sixteen said a few days ago, “you have to see this.” A vid made by some of her high school classmates.

What’s the capital of Washington? Some students say Seattle, others tentatively guess Olympia. Especially funny because they’re Olympia High School students standing two miles from the Capital Campus. Goes downhill from there. What foreign countries border the U.S.? Some guess South America. One girl says “Canada,” and then adds, “no, that’s a state.”

The students’ struggles make sense given 1) social studies content, disconnected from our country’s economic performance, is not seen as worthwhile today and 2) too many social studies courses are taught poorly. The students’ ignorance isn’t the story. The story is what passes for journalism today.

Thursday afternoon, skimming the Huffington Post, I was shocked to stumble upon the vid and this story. Three things to note.

1) Don’t expect anyone at the Huffington Post to take the time to scratch below the surface and show that things aren’t always as they appear. Over 1,200 students attend OHS and about twelve are highlighted in the vid. Olympia High students have been accepted to Yale each of the last three years. Two years ago, two young women went to M.I.T. This year, two young men got perfect 2,400 scores on their SATs. Another student will play golf at Stanford next year. Those stories don’t get highlighted because they don’t serve the purposes of those who want to convince others that U.S. schools are failing, teachers are lazy, and teacher unions are the root of all evil.

2) New journalism is not better journalism. The story and the vid have next to nothing to do with one another; as a result, the story doesn’t make sense, doesn’t hang together, and therefore, never should have ran.

Comedy aside, the United State’s poor international rankings in subject proficiencies such as math is a problem that could cost the country around $75 trillion over 80 years, according to a study called “Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?” Based on the research, U.S. students place behind 31 other countries in math proficiency, and behind 16 other countries in reading.

What the hell kind of segue is that? One minute 1% of students are unsure of some basic knowledge, the next, the country is $75 trillion dollars poorer. If this is new journalism, I’ll stick with the old.

3. Young people aren’t thinking about their privacy nearly enough. One minute a few students are having some chuckles practicing their videography skills, the next, their work has a word-wide audience. When I stumbled upon the story the vid had 37,500 hits. By now it’s probably six figures. The second comment, about a friend of Sixteen’s reads, “Dammn would nail the girl in gray by herself.” The “girl in gray” had no idea what might happen to the footage once her classmates uploaded it to Vimeo. I’m not buying this “end of privacy” bullshit. I’m guessing she regrets having participated. Lots of lessons for all of the young people involved. The primary one, having a vid go viral may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Postscript—one of the comments from someone at the school:

This article is incredibly misleading and should be taken down immediatel­y. It doesn’t contextual­ize the video properly and makes it sound as if the answers given in it are representa­tive of… well, something. The following descriptio­n is from the High School Student newspaper “The Olympus” which produced the video:

“Students found Jay Leno’s “Jay Walking” videos funny and decided to make one of their own. As is natural for a comic bit, the creators edited in the funniest responses, with the students’ consent. Though there were many correct answers to these pop questions, the comments in national forums concentrat­e on the negative, and, as usual, do not take into considerat­ion the amount of editing it took to get these funny, incorrect answers. So, we are taking down our video. Thanks for thinking about this. It is an interestin­g lesson for all.”

Post Postscript—On Thursday, after the video was taken down from Vimeo, someone, an OHS student I believe, uploaded the whole thing to YouTube. As of Friday afternoon, the video is embedded in the Huffington Post article under a different person’s YouTube account. My guess is the administration required student one to take it down only to have another upload it. Point four. Given the proliferation of social media, school administrators stand no chance of censoring students.

Apple Cares About Profit Margins Not Its Chinese Workers

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My conclusion after carefully reading Charles Duhigg’s and David Babroz’s NYT article, “In China, Human Costs are Built Into an iPad“. Major props to Duhigg and Barboz for the thoroughly researched, fair, convincing, damning description of Apple’s negligent, laissez faire approach to working conditions in its suppliers’ factories in places like Chengdu, China where I once lived for a few months and toured the largest television factory in the world.

In fairness to Apple, I should read Tim Cook’s “we care about every worker in our supply chain” email to Apple employees, but Duhigg’s and Babroz’s analysis convinced me that Cook’s email is most likely hollow, public relations spin.

Apple recently reported their 2011 fourth quarter results—$13.06b in profit on $46.3b in sales. The sales number is remarkable, but given industry norms, the profit margin even more so. I’ll return to it later. As a result of the record quarter, my AAPL holdings increased in value way more than the cost of the MacBook Air I bought the GalPal for Christmas and the iPad 3 I’ll be buying myself in March. I divulge that to point out I am complicit in Apple’s pernicious business practices.

I have a responsibility to carefully consider Apple’s relationship with its suppliers in China because I help create demand for Apple products. I also think of myself as a global citizen with a social conscience, I have praised the company in previous posts, and I own individual shares of AAPL both directly and through stock index ETFs.

Some key excerpts from Duhigg’s and Barboz’s article:

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

Foxconn is one of the few manufacturers in the world with the scale to build sufficient numbers of iPhones and iPads. So Apple is “not going to leave Foxconn and they’re not going to leave China,” said Heather White, a research fellow at Harvard and a former member of the Monitoring International Labor Standards committee at the National Academy of Sciences. “There’s a lot of rationalization.”

Granted, China is still a developing country with a serious urban/rural imbalance. Young people are choosing, of their own free will, to migrate to its cities to work in factory jobs that require, by our standards, long hours in tough conditions. Even when adjusting for where China is in its development, Apple is failing its Chinese workers who had no idea they’d have to suffer grievous injury and in some cases death as a result of toxic chemicals, aluminum dust, and large-scale explosions.

Three quarters through the article I sadly concluded Apple is to technology as Walmart is to retail—so large and influential that it can dictate conditions to suppliers. Apple says to suppliers, “Get us this product, tomorrow, at this price.” In order to make money, the supplier has to figure out how to do things more efficiently or cheaper, which often means cutting corners on implementing Apple’s ineffectual code of conduct. Then, Apple pays suppliers less each year and looks the other way when they fail to implement the code of conduct.

What makes this unconscionable is Apple’s unprecedented profit margins. If Apple users and shareholders like me take the baton from Duhigg and Babroz and put serious pressure on Apple to truly enforce their code of conduct, they could not only match the global labor practices of Intel, H.P., and the ubiquitous swoosh, they could raise the bar for every other multinational operating in China.

More key excerpts:

“If you see the same pattern of problems, year after year, that means the company’s ignoring the issue rather than solving it,” said one former Apple executive with firsthand knowledge of the supplier responsibility group. “Noncompliance is tolerated, as long as the suppliers promise to try harder next time. If we meant business, core violations would disappear.”

“You can set all the rules you want, but they’re meaningless if you don’t give suppliers enough profit to treat workers well,” said one former Apple executive with firsthand knowledge of the supplier responsibility group. “If you squeeze margins, you’re forcing them to cut safety.”

“It is gross negligence, after an explosion occurs, not to realize that every factory should be inspected,” said Nicholas Ashford, the occupational safety expert, who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If it were terribly difficult to deal with aluminum dust, I would understand. But do you know how easy dust is to control? It’s called ventilation. We solved this problem over a century ago.”

But ultimately, say former Apple executives, there are few real outside pressures for change. Apple is one of the most admired brands.

People like Ms. White of Harvard say that until consumers demand better conditions in overseas factories — as they did for companies like Nike and Gap, which today have overhauled conditions among suppliers — or regulators act, there is little impetus for radical change. Some Apple insiders agree.

Will Dughizz’s and Babroz’s reporting create a groundswell of pressure that forces Apple to care—even in a Chinese context—about the quality of life of their Chinese workers? “Right now,” Harvard’s White says, “customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

Near the end of the article a “current Apple executive” is quoted as saying, “You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards.” That’s flat out wrong. Given Apple’s unprecedented profit margins, here’s what the exec should have said, “You can manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper in factories that supersede existing Chinese standards if stockholders—especially my Apple execs and me—are willing to accept smaller profit margins that are more typical for the industry.”

I’m not ready to sell all my shares and boycott the products until work conditions in China truly improve, but I am willing to accept slower growth in AAPL’s share price as a result of smaller profit margins.