Rationality and idealism: A moderate response to Robertson, Kerdeman, and Bredo

Educational Theory

Volumn 59, Issue 5, 2009, Pages 549-558

  Feuer, Michael J ^a  

^a NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 76649108861     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2009.00337.x     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Prizes for Second Best," May 2009;
2. cited in Michael Weiss, "Second-Best Is Good Enough," May 14, 2009, http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/Second-best-is-good-enough-5869.
3. Ibid.,
4. Weiss, "Second-Best Is Good Enough."
5. Michael J. Feuer, Moderating the Debate: Rationality and the Promise of American Education (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press, 2006).
6. Deborah Kerdeman, "Why the Best Isn't So Bad: Ideals and Moderation in Educational Reform," in this volume, 511. This work will be cited in the text as WB for all subsequent references.
7. Himmelfarb notes that in the original French, Voltaire's words were perhaps even more extreme, because "le mieux" can mean either "better" or "the best." If he was saying that striving for anything better can be the enemy of the good, then my book is certainly more idealistic.
8. Let me also express my deep appreciation to Nicholas Burbules for his invitation to participate in this forum, and to Chris Higgins for his patient and efficient guidance.
9. Emily Robertson, "Broadening the Debate: Comments on Michael J. Feuer's Moderating the Debate," in this volume, 508 (emphasis added). This work will be cited in the text as BD for all subsequent references.
10. And as an aside, I wonder if even the leisurely scan of reviews at home, which Robertson hints might be the more exhaustive or even objectively rational strategy, would be sufficient to rule out the possibility for error, which of course would only be known after the fact, if at all. Whether the word "leisure" is at all appropriate to the task of scanning the complete choice set and finding the restaurant that assures us satisfaction is an interesting question; some might argue that for anything but a trivially small number of options, the scanning-and-selection problem is not exactly an act of leisure. Moreover, there is the problem of hindsight bias in the evaluation of decisions, which is beyond the scope of this article. Interested readers should see, for example, Baruch Fischhoff, "Hindsight Is Not Equal to Foresight: The Effect of Outcome Knowledge on Judgment Under Uncertainty," Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 1, no. 3 (1975): 288-297.
11. Eric Bredo, "Is Educational Policy Making Rational - And What Would That Mean, Anyway?" in this volume, 536. This work will be cited in the text as EPMfor all subsequent references.
12. As my friend Ken Prewitt points out, "Simon viewed bounded rationality like gravity: it just was" (personal communication, 2009).
13. See, for example, Stefano Zamagni, ed., The Economics of Altruism (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1995);
14. and Edmund S. Phelps, Altruism, Morality, and Economic Theory (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1975).
15. See, for example, Oliver E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (New York: The Free Press, 1975). I note with pleasure and admiration that Professor Williamson was awarded the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
16. See, for example, Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (New York: William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2005);
17. and, more recently, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2008).
18. The classic statement is by Milton Friedman, "The Methodology of Positive Economics," in Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
19. For more discussion on this point, see Michael J. Feuer, "Science Advice as Procedural Rationality: Reflections on the National Research Council," http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/ CPNSS/projects/ ContingencyDissentInScience/DP/DP%20FeuerOnline%200909.pdf.
20. Kerdeman's reference to Henrik Ibsen's Enemy of the People was especially poignant for me. She could not have known this, but years ago in a production in the Washington area I played the part of Aslaksen, who was famous for his pleas for "moderation...!" Freudians may rejoice at this noncoincidence; but let me assure readers that I had to work hard to take on old Aslaksen's apathetic (pathetic, actually) worldview, and still do not equate moderation with cowardly acquiescence to the status quo!
21. In my childhood home we had a small wooden statue of Don Quixote atop a bookcase, and when I would occasionally go off on a rant about the evils of poverty, discrimination, hunger, war, or the many other imperfections in the world, my father would gently point to our little "man from La Mancha" as if to say "stand up for your ideals, but beware the windmills...." I dedicate this essay to his memory.
22. For all their allegiance to neoclassical assumptions, economists have provided some of the most forceful antidotes to conventional models and their hazards. On the possibility that an excessive preoccupation with unintended or perverse consequences of policy choices can lead to the suppression of any progress, see Albert Hirschmann, The Rhetoric of Reaction (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991). My commentary on this point here and in Moderating the Debate draws from Hirschmann, with admiration and gratitude.
23. Lest there be any confusion here, I am not suggesting that there can never be sufficient evidence to reject a proposed policy or stop one that is already in place. My point is that we should weigh more carefully the range of benefits and risks and not accept evidence of imperfection as the sole and sufficient indicator of failure. For discussion of an interesting episode in the history of test-based accountability and the importance of going beyond the discovery of imperfection in a social policy, see Michael J. Feuer, "Linking Tests and Democratic Education," in Measurement and Research in the Accountability Era, ed. Carol Ann Dwyer (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005).