Who Needs Capability Assessment?

You would expect a sensible government to put in place critical assessments where there is a need to manage substantial risks and dangers, but otherwise make trust and openness the norm.

By that simple logic, the British Government would insist on carrying out the most stringent capability assessment of bankers and financial traders to determine if they can be trusted to manage other people’s money. Their failings in the past have cost us almost a trillion pounds in bank bailout spending. But the government prefers to leave them to it. Even the tax on their bonuses was dropped on the grounds that they should not be troubled by the red tape of government control.

Where the government does want to see much more red tape is in the lives of vulnerable people. Take the Work Capability Assessment, for example. People who have been found by their doctors to suffer impairment, which prevents them from getting adequate paid employment, need disability allowance to survive. But they are subject to an assessment regime, notorious for its flawed criteria, run by people with no medical expertise, which to meet pre-determined targets would simply declare a large number of them as ‘fit to work’ and cut their benefits. The victims are left to starve. Some have committed suicide.

Why doesn’t the government put an end to this? Or at least recognise that if anyone’s capability sorely needs to be assessed, it is that of the contractor paid millions to do something they are manifestly incapable of doing fairly or competently.

That takes us to the heart of the matter. This government only believes in using ‘capability assessment’ to make life more difficult for scapegoat groups it wants to portray as untrustworthy. Disabled people and low income groups seeking social security; immigrants looking for an opportunity to start a new life in the country; unions trying to resort to strike actions when all else fail; they all have to jump through endless hoops and still find themselves branded negatively.

By contrast, if you are in tune with the plutocratic outlook of this government, then capability is not an issue at all. Like G4S, you can mess up the public contracts given to you, end up being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, and still be given more work and money by this government (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/08/g4s-expand-contract-freeze-government-work). Or like HCA (Hospital Corporation of America), which has been fined over $1 billion for mis-selling healthcare in the US, but is a generous donor to the Conservative Party, and it gets a lucrative NHS contract
(http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-hospital-corporation-america-donates-2246513).

In fact, in order to bring in more corporate ‘high flyers’ to take charge of public services such as education and policing, the government wants to get rid of capability assessment altogether. It has scrapped the requirement of a formal qualification in teaching for academies, ‘free schools’, and (since September 2013) Further Education. Business executives can soon be parachuted into the top ranks of our police forces with no experience in policing whatsoever.

Ultimately, this government’s thinking on capability assessment comes down to this. If you’re high up the corporate ladder, ready to side with/donate to the party that will look after your interests, you will be rewarded even if you’re grossly incompetent. But if you’re low down the socio-economic scale, unable to fight against the vilification and injustice directed at you, you can expect to have plenty of assessments coming your way to frustrate you.
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[It is worth remembering that less than 0.9% of the social security budget is lost through fraud AND error (£3.2b), whereas £18 billion more would be spent if there were no underclaim or underpayment of benefits. See, The Lies We Tell Ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty (report by Baptist Union of Great Britain, Methodist Church, Church of Scotland, & the United Reformed Church, 2013)]

The Cooperative Gestalt

One of the most significant contributions of the Enlightenment is its transformative approach to learning. By shifting the focus from static authority-based teaching to progressive lifelong learning, it enabled us to think and interact with one another in a radically critical and democratic way, which opened up new opportunities to improve our lives.

But just as it has become fashionable in some quarters to dismiss the Enlightenment, the value of progressive lifelong learning has also been increasingly undermined.

So let us take stock and ask ourselves:
What exactly is distinctive about progressive lifelong learning?
What makes its cultivation of the cooperative gestalt so valuable?
Why are some people against it?
& what can we do to promote it in spite of the obstacles before us?

What is progressive lifelong learning?

Instead of accepting that one individual or group of individuals can claim that by some special privilege they alone can know what ought to be believed, and others must accept on their authority what they are told to believe, progressive lifelong learning assesses and shares ideas on what is to be believed in an on-going, provisional manner that is open to anyone to contribute, question and revise. A hypothesis, which may be upheld at one time because of the weight of probabilities supporting it, can come to be amended or altogether rejected should new evidence and interpretations cast doubt on its reliability.

The value of the Cooperative Gestalt

What makes progressive lifelong learning so valuable is not the production of new knowledge as such. The monumental Encyclopaedia produced by the leading Enlightenment thinkers in the 18th century is hardly of much value as a source of knowledge now. Neither is it special in setting out a definitive methodology for acquiring knowledge, or simply being a modernist spirit in seeking to overturn ideas of the past. Its real value lies in cultivating what may be termed the ‘Cooperative Gestalt’, a mindset that disposes those who have embraced it to:
(1) view others without prejudice as fellow human beings with whom one can collaborate on equal terms to pursue shared objectives;
(2) explore with others on what may be believed on the basis of the open exchange of evidence, testimony, and experiments that are available to public scrutiny; and
(3) involve others in making decisions on matters that are not already settled by common consent, under conditions of informed discussions and mutual respect.

Opponents of progressive lifelong learning

The more people interact with others with the Cooperative Gestalt, the more we approximate a truly inclusive society, grounded in solidarity, and helped forward with the shared deliberations of critical minds. But it is precisely because this would undermine the power of certain exclusionary groups to do as they please that progressive lifelong learning has such implacable opponents. From fundamentalists who want to be able to push their unquestionable doctrines, to ‘I’m more than alright, Jack’ plutocrats who want education to serve their narrow profiteering ends, they would like to see progressive lifelong learning fade away. The problem is compounded by muddled relativists who think nothing taught can ever be better or worse than anything else, not to mention the ‘this glass is one-tenth empty’ brigade who belittles everything about the Enlightenment because it did not achieve improvements in every sphere of life over night.

How to support the cultivation of the Cooperative Gestalt

In order to counter the attempts to marginalise progressive lifelong learning, and promote the cultivation of the Cooperative Gestalt, we need to address the needs, so to speak, of the head, the heart and the hands. The head needs to be reinforced with greater understanding. It is important to explain why it is better to learn continuously in an open and inclusive manner so that we are able to make the most of changing circumstances for the good of all. The heart needs to be stirred with passionate concern. We should explore diverse means – fiction, art, film – to fire up the desire to resist attempts to shut down the cooperative mindset. Last but not least, the hands need the practical tools to bring about changes. We should make use of the many resources available to strengthen the impact of progressive lifelong learning.

(For more information on resources available to help teach the Cooperative Gestalt, see ‘Learning more about Cooperative Gestalt')

[The above is based on the talk given by Henry Tam at the ‘Power of Adult Learning’ conference, 23 October 2013, held at the University of Edinburgh (jointly organised by WEA Scotland, Learning Link Scotland, the Scottish Community Development Centre, Dyslexia Scotland, and Lead Scotland).]

The Economics of Disability

We all have abilities to varying degrees for certain things in life, and lack abilities for others. What we make of these differences between us is a matter of economics.

In the economic model favoured by libertarians, individuals are left to their own devices to deal with life’s challenges. People with latent talent would not be assisted by others in developing and realising their full potential. People with clever ideas would not get the backing of others in turning those ideas into a large-scale enterprise. Each person, with one’s abilities limited by lack of organised aid from others, and one’s shortcomings magnified through isolation, would thus be left with an impoverished life.

In a cooperative model, where reciprocity and solidarity take centre stage, people organise to give each other systematic support so anyone’s abilities are nurtured and promoted for the benefit of all, and the different inabilities around are compensated for to the disadvantage of none. It does not matter what mix of ability or disability any individual may happen to have. Everyone is treated as equal in so far as they contribute to and are assisted by the collective arrangements in accordance with their respective abilities and needs.

Economic arguments are sometimes presented as a tussle between these two models. But while the cooperative model is one which actually guides progressive reformists as an ideal to strive towards, the libertarian model is just a smokescreen.

In reality, the people who are most vocal with libertarian-sounding advocacy of leaving people to get on with life on their own, are the ones who have already secured the largest support for themselves. But using their status, inherited wealth, and/or a market system that facilitates their profiteering, they are in a position where they have a steadily expanding surplus to more than cover their own shortcomings and disabilities. What they want is to strip others of all collective support so they end up being even more vulnerable, and less able to resist the exploitative demands of the powerful.

It is vital we expose this deception. There is no serious ideology of rugged individualism. If everyone goes down that road, everybody loses out. What the plutocratic elite really wants is to keep preaching to those disabled by illnesses, injuries and poverty the virtue of self-help, while they carry on with the vice of helping themselves to the fruits of others’ labour.

Politicians with a progressive conscience should not be pushed aside by this pernicious rhetoric of unleashing the ‘able’, and resenting the ‘disabled’. It is the economic system that divides us into the elite whose disabilities are well compensated by the excess resources they take from others, and the downtrodden who are disabled by the refusal to give them the necessary support in terms of health, housing, education and employment so they can live a fulfilled life.

It’s not vulnerable people who need to pull their socks up. To adapt a wise saying, it’s the economic system, stupid!

Who’s Afraid of Political Education?

The spectre of bias hangs over political education. Teachers are anxious that they can be censured for siding with one political party against another. But to abstain from discussing the flaws of any policy proposal just because it has been put forward by a political party is not a sign of neutrality but one of intellectual dishonesty. Teachers should feel confident in tackling the ‘why, ‘what’, ‘who’ and ‘how’ of politics.

Why
The whole point about politics is that people’s choices are not just their own personal business, it is society’s business. If people made political decisions on dogmatic grounds, they would be ignoring evidence and jeopardising the wellbeing of others with their prejudices. If people adopted a ‘free rider’ perspective, their attempt to pursue their own ends at the expense of others would threaten the possibility of political cooperation itself. The only coherent guiding principle for why people should choose certain political options is that those options on the available evidence are more likely than others to bring about improvements for everyone in society, or at least improvements for those most in need of them.

What
But what policy would in each case enhance the common good is much more contentious. Political education’s role is to teach how critical reasoning should be applied to individual proposals. People need to recognize that the findings of empirical research, on which we rely for all aspects of our everyday life, must not be suspended when it comes to political evaluation. On the contrary, if research carried out by people not funded by vested interests points to problems or suggests solutions, then these should be taken seriously regardless of whether a political party happens to dismiss them.

Who
Political education should also address the question of who is to be given the electoral support to carry out the most appropriate policies. Not everyone has the same degree of reliability when it comes to fulfilling electoral promises. Some achieve real improvements, but others are merely adept at convincing the public that they would, e.g., champion green policies or improve healthcare, when their intention is to do the very opposite should they secure power. From recruitment interviews to criminal investigations, we need to know how to apply evidence-based assessment to individuals and the claims they make. It is no different in politics.

How
Once people appreciate why, what and who would make improvements for more people, especially those with greater need than others, then it is essential they learn to exercise their electoral power in backing the appropriate policies and political candidates. In addition to the mechanisms of registration and voting for different elections, there are issues such as how to maximise one’s influence with different methodologies (e.g., with tactical voting, second preferences), or how to overcome attempts to prevent one from voting (e.g., complex bureaucracy to deter minorities, or making it easier for young people not to register to vote).

For the sake of democracy
Only those who dread the prospect of an enlightened citizenry reclaiming government institutions for the common good, want to marginalise political education. For the rest of us, it is indispensable to the functioning of democratic politics wherein objective reasoning and cooperative reciprocity underpin the improvement of society. Far from holding it back for fear of offending politicians, it should be taken forward in line with the approach outlined above, in every school, college, and adult learning class.

[For more information on the collaborative project with the Equality Trust to use dystopian literature to raise political awareness, see: ‘A Novel Exploration of Inequality’]

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Syria?

The Syrian problem is not unique. One only has to look at Human Rights Watch for the Middle East and North Africa (http://www.hrw.org/middle-east/n-africa) to see that it is far from being the sole regime in the region that does not respect the human rights of those who have to live under its jurisdiction.

By now, we should all have learnt that trying to solve the problem of arbitrary rule with arbitrary intervention is morally flawed and politically unsustainable.

There are two questions that need to be considered: (a) what type of transgression within a country’s own borders is to be recognized as warranting external intervention; and (b) what type of intervention should be sanctioned without it adding to the suffering of the people concerned.

With the first question, the current answer appears to focus on the use of chemical weapons in killing civilians in Syria. But historically, we know that those powers leading interventions in the Middle East have often shifted their position. At one end of the foreign policy spectrum, being suspected of possessing weapons of mass destruction (Iraq), or harbouring terrorist groups (Afghanistan), would justify armed intervention. At the other end, having nuclear weapons, as well as being reported for violation of Palestinians’ human rights (Israel), or carrying out tortures and arbitrary detention (Saudi Arabia), do not seem to raise too many diplomatic eyebrows. In between these two poles, attempts at developing nuclear capability anywhere else in the region (e.g., Iran) might stir calls for an attack, while failures to keep a tight lid on a disgruntled populace (Egypt, Libya) might lead to pressures to concede to regime change (such pressures being largely absent when those regimes were far more effective with their oppression).

As for the second question, for a long time it was simply ignored. The establishment seemed to assume that bombing any ‘transgressing’ regime into submission was the one and only option for intervention. The fact that the collateral damage from repeated bombings and combat escalation would lead to thousands of civilians being killed and millions being made refugees, would hardly feature in policy discussion.

Both questions must be satisfactorily answered if a real solution is to be found. If the force deployed against a country, which is accused of using force illegitimately, is not to become illegitimate itself, then it must have a defensible and consistent rationale. If the claim that one is concerned with saving innocent lives is not to turn out to be hypocritically hollow, the interventionist ‘cure’ must not destroy more lives than it would actually save.

We hope the American-Russian diplomatic collaboration will produce a solution that removes deadly chemical weapons, ends the civil war, and ensures Syrians are no longer subject to repression and arbitrary arrests.

Is that likely to happen? Both America and Russian are major exporters of arms to the Middle East, and they share an interest in removing chemical weapons and the immensely negative publicity associated with them from the scene. They can then return to doing arms business as usual. There may be a truce here and there in the civil war. But for a truly democratic system to take root and for human rights to be genuinely safeguarded for all, America and Russia would have to stop viewing Syria, and indeed every other country in the Middle East, as mere pawns in advancing their own plutocratic/oligarchic interests, and start prioritising the spread of social and political justice across the entire region.

Arab Spring? More likely, another winter of discontent.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Teacher

Producing exam-hardened individuals to serve the needs of employers has become the be-all and end-all of contemporary education.

But is the exclusive focus on the ability to pass tests in short bursts really helpful to employers, let alone those being tested or the wider society?

Education is ultimately about the kind of people we want to bring up as our fellow citizens. It is indeed important they develop some competence in serving the needs of others so that others will in turn reciprocate by contributing to the meeting of their needs. It is equally important they develop their capacity to find meaning and lead a fulfilling life themselves. Neither of these goals can be realised if we institutionalise a narrow range of skills and tests as the only ones that matter in evaluating the worth of a human being.

Instead of accepting the dominant frame that presents the teacher’s role as that of the factory worker churning out standard components (as well as quite a few spare parts) for the corporate machine, educators concerned with the overall development of those in our charge – in schools, universities, or adult learning – should persist with aiding students in pursuit of their long-term wellbeing.

In spite of the dominant dogma, which stigmatises failures in raising pass rates as disastrous and condemns success in raising pass rates as lowering standards, it is vital to recognise the value of promoting a better understanding of cooperative interactions, opportunities to cultivate diverse human potential, causes of injustice and exploitation, and ways to access cultural enrichment.

To reduce people into categories of good, average and poor exam-takers, and use that differentiation to segregate them into the well-rewarded and the marginalised, is to betray the purpose of education.

It is of course difficult to challenge the prevailing model of education when it is an integral part of our increasingly plutocratic socio-political system. But resistance is most needed precisely when the threat is most difficult to dislodge.

If you too reject the notion that education is about cheering on a few natural born sprinters, and you believe in helping all to run the long distance obstacle course for self-development, then share your thoughts with other like-minded teachers. You may at times feel isolated, but in this struggle you are not alone.

The Reciprocity Test: Pros & Cons

Political differences are usually projected onto a spectrum with Left and Right designating the two ends. But what defines Left or Right? And doesn’t this approach privilege the ‘centre’ in some way as the most balanced position?

To gain a better understanding of political differences, I propose the Reciprocity Test. Whether people think of themselves as Left, Right, or neutral/centrist/independent, taking the test would help them see where they are situated in relation to others politically, and what underpin their contrasting positions.

Instead of a spectrum, the Reciprocity Test maps its results on a series of concentric circles. The mapping itself is determined by the extent to which people agree/disagree with eight propositions derived from the ethical Golden Rule of reciprocity: as we would want others to treat us with due consideration, we should treat others with similar consideration. The eight propositions are:

• As we would want others not to act in a prejudiced way against us (because of our ethnicity, sex, religion, etc), we should avoid acting with prejudice towards others.
• As we would not want any punitive sanction directed at us without due process, we should not impose any arbitrary sanctions on others.
• As we would want to be protected from the dangers posed by transgressors and high-risk activities, we should back the protection of others from similar dangers.
• As we would want others to help us in desperate times, we should ensure others are helped in desperate times.
• As we would want others to support collective action where it can improve our common wellbeing, we should be prepared to contribute to such collective action.
• As we would not want anyone to amass such wealth and power that would leave us at their mercy, we should not allow anyone to have so much wealth and power that would put others at their mercy.
• As we would not accept any claims put forward by others without the backing of adequate evidence and coherent arguments, we should not expect others to accept unjustifiable claims.
• As we would want to have a say about any important decision that can affect us, we should not make key decisions affecting others without giving them a say.

Those who firmly agree with all eight propositions would constitute the core circle – they are the Pros. They consistently back practices and systems, which respect the needs of others, because they appreciate being treated with similar respect themselves. Beyond them, there are four other concentric circles, representing ‘tend to agree’, ‘not sure’, ‘tend to disagree’, and ‘firmly disagree’. Those who firmly disagree with all eight propositions occupy the fringe of our political disc – they are the Cons. What they want from others for themselves, they are unwilling to reciprocate for others.

Between the core and the fringe, people’s answers may not fall uniformly on one circle or another. Some may answer ‘tend to agree’ to some of the propositions, but opt for ‘not sure’ or ‘tend to disagree’ in relation to others. What we then get is what is often called a spider-gram where the answers are joined up across the different circles (for it resembles a spider web). Spider-grams closer to the core are people inclined towards being Pros, and those with more points nearer to the fringe are people inclined towards being Cons. Those in between are not so much neutral or independent, but just people who can’t make up their minds about their readiness to reciprocate towards others.

Mapping our political differences with the Reciprocity Test helps to show what set people apart, not in terms of their party allegiance, attachment to cultural labels, or stance on single issues, but in relation to their readiness to apply the Golden Rule of reciprocity to diverse interactions with their fellow human beings. People can go on disputing what Left and Right really stand for, but the Reciprocity Test would reveal who are the Pros, the Cons, and those who have yet to decide.

[It may be noted that beyond the outermost circle of the Cons, there is a further category of people who reject the very premise of every one of our eight propositions. These are people who do not want or expect others to treat them with any consideration at all. They shrug their shoulders at being neglected or treated badly. And they see no problem with neglecting or treating others badly. While Pros can try to enter into a dialogue with Cons by probing why the latter refuse to accord others what they demand for themselves, there is little prospect of any real engagement with nihilists, for whom anything goes, and nothing needs any justification.]

Note: anyone interested to read more on the eight propositions and what they may entail, please go to ‘Notes on the Reciprocity Test’.