I don't have the quote at hand, I'm supposed to be on holidays, (HA!) but I
remember reading something Galton said to the effect that "no matter what
aspect of a population one measures, it will ultimately fall into this
theoretically constructed curve" - he was much more pompous about it than that.
Anyway, soon after, the concept of "normality" became statistically
entrenched in society to the degree that the concept has become
institutionally inscribed throughout the world as a "thing" - the normal
person. Any aspect of the normal person, according to Galtonian statistics,
can be - indeed must be - stuffed into the curve. (for a full critique, read
scott atran (I think) in modes of thought: explorations in culture and
cognition (torrance and olson, eds), 1997, cambridge university press -
sorry, rough biblio please write if you want the full thing. It's late, I'm
tired)
Here's the rub. Like chaos and complexity theories, which have provided us
with some lovely metaphors for thinking about society, the normative curve
is a statistical method that had its roots in nature - _human nature_. An
explanatory tool for predicting the lengths of lizards' tails and children's
height, and for the benefit of being "right" about a whole stack of
predictions. Nothing else. I'm not sure that Galton would have wished his
theory to become the basis for his own students' "grading", a detestable
term, but apparently necessary in the context of education nonetheless (why?
because there are more equal pigs, as Orwell so bluntly put it. Plus, some
people try harder and deserve to be rewarded with recognition for their work
- who doesn't want that? Who wouldn't do that?). Perhaps Galton's own
enthusiasm to be "right" in explaining the world rubbed of on a faithful few
and then got out of hand, perhaps as Rick Iedema and Jay, among others,
note, these "things" - these human concepts - become an institutional tool
of administration and harden up into impenetrable, concrete dogma once
institutionalised. This is rampant and dangerous idealism: the concrete
institutionalisation of ideas as the "one right way". There is no one right
way, otherwise we would have found it by now. Plus, even if there were such
a thing, it'd be dead boring and immediately fall out of fashion as a
result, except perhaps in the IMF, the Vatican, or Federal treasuries around
the world.
All of us who are familiar with statistical methods know that, as soon as
you take more than a single unique case and try to draw statistical
parallels or conclusions about _anything_ , important detail gets lost. The
more data that's squashed into a statistical analysis, the more detail gets
lost. Squash enough in and you inevitably get something resembling a
standard distribution curve with the appropriate "standard deviations".
That's why minimum sample sizes and all that have become a statistical
requisite - so that the data eventually matches the theory!. Upside-down stuff.
There is no universal code, no universally valid statistical method. There
are only unique people who have their unique experiences of life in
'circumstances not of their own choosing'. There are no normal people, nor
are there normal _social_ circumstances. There never were. Nothing is new,
but everything's unique. Jay reminds me that successful education enables a
person to simultaneously hold any number of conflicting ideas about an issue
and not go insane.
If we can make a training robot for navy people to fix engines, so what? The
robot will be as creatively limited as the people who program the box that
connects to the hat and gloves that make it go. Nothing more than a fancy
toaster, a labour-saving/eliminating device. The people who learn from it
will be none the wiser about the social importance of putting out a fire in
an engine room until their shipmates burn (as happened here recently),
drown, or until their friends get cranky with them because the damn boat
doesn't go. The robot will never know either. Even if it's programmed to
"know" (HA!), perhaps it might cry if things don't go right. It'd be no more
convincing than watching some paid hack on Oprah Winfrey burst into tears
about past transgressions for theatrical effect. Technological "sweetness"
adds to the social appeal of any sophisticated idea, as the Los Alamos
people so terrifyingly demonstrated. When it all boils down, technologies
are just prosthetics, like this damned computer (also supposedly a labour
saving device).
Ideas can become things and things can become ideas. Some ideas should never
become things. Some things will never become ideas. But - 'between the
decision and the action falls the paperwork'. Thus, a bureaucracy is implied.
Well dear xmcaers, that's my final incoherent rant for the year. A wish for
peace and joy to you all for the forthcoming year. Also, thank you for your
fine company throughout the year.
Best wishes to one and all,
Phil
Phil Graham
School of Communication
Queensland University of Technology
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/