[NLA] Government Misinformation-summing Up (long)

[Catherine B. King]

Hello Tom:

Thank you for your response to my concerns about your 
approach and assumptions about research in adult 
education.

My briefest answer to your note is, where you say:

"For instance, in San Diego, there are some 2.5 million 
people in round numbers. Now how do we go about 
carrying on an extended dialogue about success with 2.5 
million people?"

My short response:  You don't need to know.  They do--
each for themselves.

But the longer response is this, and I will try to make this 
as short as possible, but a "summing up" of what I think is
important about this dialogue can be said by relating these 
fundamental insights:

The clue to the insights is in your right information that 
200 million adults won't agree about what "success," etc. 
means.  We can add to this that what any of us means by 
such statements may, and often does, change over time, 
making it even more difficult to draw what you mean by 
"valid research" from.  At least two points can be 
inferred from this fact.  

First, if we pay attention to the data, we note that it is 
developmental.  And if it is difficult for researchers to grasp 
what success, etc., means, so it is for 200 million adults 
whose notions are ever-changing.  But isn't developing 
these kinds of ideas, and changing horizons about these 
kinds of meanings, what education is about?  Even 
getting a new kind of job holds a development of horizon 
and a change of meaning for the adult (see Mezirow on 
this).

The question is, does the above exigency of the data, and 
its relationship to adult education, matter to what we mean by 
"valid research"?  

And so, we must go to the underlying scientific and political 
assumptions in any research and ask what we mean by "valid,"
"outcomes" or similar "results" language.  Since the data 
thinks, does it matter what they think, and that they develop 
around such ideas as "success," etc.? or because the data 
changes and is "difficult," does the researcher avoid it 
altogether?

Politically, IF theoreticians, researchers and policy makers are
dealing with people who, we expect, are capable of making
their own decisions about what their educational needs are, 
even IF it is in the context of change through the teacher-
student dialogue, and IF policy makers and funders exist to 
assist the polity <<develop>> in a democracy, and perhaps 
change whatever they initially mean by these notions, THEN 
the movement of decision-making power must rest in, or at 
least be shared by, the program-to-teacher-to-student level, 
and not only rest at the national level, where everything 
"valid" must be known and documented before funding is 
assigned.  

But IF what the students, teachers and program directors
think and decide within the context of the adult's own specific
education doesn't matter to the policymaker and funder,
then what determines a "valid" area of concern, regardless
of its difficulty, is considerably changed. 

In your most recent note, a view of the whole, and the problems
you point out, reveal even more so the inadequacy of trying to
fit the data into a prescribed mold rather than dealing with the
data on its own grounds in a democratic political milieu.  
You assume I, and everyone, do and should work under your 
own political and philosophical assumptions (this is what I 
mean by "philosophical provincialism").  

But these assumptions are what serve to create your perceived
incoherence between the data and the research methods--
research methods that would erase essential areas of the data.  
You say,

"They will need to know things like how many dialoguers do we 
need and have? Will they all ask the same questions or just carry 
on free-wheeling discussions? How much time will the interview
take? Will you use different language speakers? How many 
different ones? Will they translate the information? And so on 
and on."  

These kinds of questions already obviate the importance of
 the particularity of the dialogue between the teacher and 
the student and the particularity of the decision making, and 
the creative aspects of educational change--about 
development on the part of the adult student.   

These are not children.  They are adults in a democratic 
polity who are already on a developmental route by even 
being present in an adult education center.  Your questions 
are, on the other hand, for the researcher, and not for the 
adult, save by an extremely expensive, convoluted, 
circuitous and ultimately desiccating route that 
must travel through the political assumptions of anyone in 
power who wants desiccated answers.
.   
So, you are quite right-on in your generalization that "some 
200 million adults or even a sample of 26,000 adults do not 
agree on what is meant by success in family, work, or 
community and never have and in my opinion, as a citizen 
not a scientist, never will."   

Nor, under some philosophical assumptions, SHOULD
we all agree. Total agreement is what factories aim at--
everything looks and acts alike by design.  So either
cross off anything that is disagreeable, or define what
is authentic about the data only in terms of what about 
it we can all numerically agree on?

The question is, what does the above reality mean in
terms of valid research and funding?  Does it mean that, 
because we cannot know in any "scientific" way (defined 
as only statistical drawn to the national level) what these 
mean, that none of it comes under the wing of research 
and certainly not "valid research?"  Does it mean we 
shouldn't even ask these kinds of questions?  or that
research that enters the field of the dialogue is all 
"invalid"?

If this is the case, this view has vast political, as well as 
scientific, implications.

The scientific implications are that we rule out an important
and even essential part of the data merely because its
dialogual and developmental aspects are troublesome, or 
as you say, "exceedingly difficult, and leads to contentious 
conclusions for a number of reasons, . . ."    

But since when did difficulty in the data stop scientists 
from trying to understand it or, more importantly, from 
looking to our own underlying philosophical assumptions 
to uncover a potential flaw in the B, C, and D that leads 
us to and informs our A?  If this is the case, we need not 
even go to the political to see the breach in the scientific.

But this egregious scientific oversight --disregarding 
essential elements in the data on the faulty grounds that
they are difficult, or worse pretending that this oversight is
not directly related to well-defined political orders--coupled 
with the institutional growth of hegemonic "measuring" 
departments in universities--easily supports the flow of that
political order:   "Valid research" meets in a correlative
fashion  with "make it simple, please" policy makers who
have set up a department sporting a correlative name
where the meaning of "blind" takes on interesting and
ironic political overtones.  What is, in fact, the purpose of
adult education in a democratic milieu?  

And here is where "what do you mean by 'valid research'"
comes in.  Does such a department, and its valid research 
mean (1) paying attention to the data regardless of its 
difficulty and (2) owning up to the philosophical and 
political foundations (and ethical I would argue) that, 
in fact, inform and flow from departments and their 
research? 

Or does valid research mean funding will only flow from 
those figures that have:

(1) avoided essential parts of the data on the faulty grounds 
that it is difficult and 

(2) made decisions about "what is best" based on what is 
leftover but countable for their own constituents without 
having consulted them in ways that would account for the 
basic developmental and political orders that underlie 
education--and democracy.  

In this case, the avoidance of explaining political 
foundations is essential to the easy delivery of the 
"outcomes" and "results" that affect adults who are 
already often unaware of their political position in a 
democratic milieu.   Knowledge is, after all, power.  
And a capitalist, rather than a democratic, 
underpinning will eschew anything that doesn't 
"produce" in terms of specific but unspecified (to the
polity) economic investments.

In brief, I cannot address your questions directly without
wholly accepting your philosophical, political, and ethical 
ground, except to show how they reveal the underpinnings,
which I have tried to do here.   And I won't do that because 
those underpinnings are my point of critique--a valid point, 
as it were.   And my guess is that you, Tom, and perhaps 
some others here, are not going to even hear the import 
about anything I am saying without questioning your own.  

If there is an impasse, its on these grounds and not on 
the logical flow of your arguments.  If we all accepted your
underpinnings, your argument holds, and we all become
dismayed because the data just won't fit the paradigm--
"darn."  

The paradigm is, by the way, suspiciously similar to 
natural science where the data is much more amenable 
to the researcher's aim of complete predictability and a 
disregard of the particular where the developmental 
dialogue between adult persons is worked out, and 
where a disregard of it by researchers reveals a 
decidedly political and ethical position.  . 

If you are still with me, the second point is that, when doing 
philosophical, psychological sociological, ethical, etc., 
theory, terms (such as success, etc.) must be clarified and 
defined, new terms are developed, and general principles 
and relationships are drawn out, identified and named.  
This process is essential to any empirical method, 
theoretical development and discourse.  So common 
terms used in common discourse with nebulous meanings 
sometimes become theoretical terms with technical 
meaning, or come under the cover of more appropriate 
technical language. 
 
This process of theoretical refinement does not mean, 
however, that the scientist is defining terms for everyone for 
all time.  Nor does it mean that common discourse used in 
the general public is meaningless or obviated by the 
theoretician, or in the case of your complaint about the 
quote you mentioned, the statistician.  It only means that 
when we leave the field of common discourse and enter 
the field of theoretical discourse, we need to clarify that, 
in this field, these terms mean this, whatever that 
theoretician means by them, and states, in that discourse. 

The point is, the refinement of theoretical meaning in the 
human sciences is not a political encroachment onto 
common, but less defined, meaning and discourse.  It's only 
to add the essential definition and theoretical refinement to 
the language used in the theoreticians work.  In this way, 
theoreticians can speak and write among themselves in 
refined technical meanings and terms.    When we move 
out into common discourse, the theoretical refinement drops 
away and common meanings return.    When speaking in 
common or theoretical discourse, the qualifier "if you mean 
by success, . . then,".. . etc. is essential to any refinement 
of the dialogue.

But when dealing with quick-reads by the general public, 
as on a WebPage, then an explanation of meaning will often 
serve to lessen your readership--a readership who has their 
own understanding of these terms and can apply them 
generally in their own frameworks of meaning. 

This is a philosophical point about different areas of 
knowledge and discourse that seems to go missing from 
your notes.  I would suggest that this is an important
point for any theoretician or researcher to know so that
they don't give themselves naive grounds to critique
common and professional dialogue, and so that they
may be more aware of the movement of meaning when
statistics are mixed with common meaning for general
communications with the public.   

To your final question in your note about my own research,
I will finally be publishing this coming year, after 20 years of 
theoretical work, what turns out to be four works on 
various areas of cognitional theory and the foundations 
of cultural democracy.  I'll be glad to share excerpts with 
you if you are interested, some of which I have sent to
other colleagues on this list; but forgive me if I rest in 
the doubt that you are.   

But I am glad that you have done so much work.  If we
are competing about numbers, you win.  But we're
not in a competition here?  Or at least I thought not.  Also,
please remember that I am not at all criticizing statistical
science as an important science that makes important 
contributions to this and every field.  My criticism is its 
movement towards hegemony in the sciences, and its
lack of regard for its own foundations and their 
implications, at the behest of a simplicity that does not 
match the data, and at the service of very questionable 
politics and ethics.  That is, at the behest of the 
concomitant view on the part of our policy makers that 
"valid research" is only that done by statistical science 
and ruling out all questions that would ask about
either the underlying assumptions of research, the 
outcomes, and the kinds of things that quantification 
cannot reach.  

Regards,

Catherine B. King
Adjunct Instructor
Department of Education
National University
San Diego, CA

 

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