The Business Sensei

Ethics? Not pragmatic.

Yesterday, I wrote a post and also posted on Facebook a link to the NYT article about a six year old cub scout being suspended for 45 days because he brought a “weapon” to school: a combination spoon, fork, and knife. The presence of this obviously deadly weapon triggered the school’s Zero Tolerance policy. One of the responses to my post was rather interesting:

“Steve, this issue isn’t really about what’s ethically/morally correct when you’re in the school “trenches”.”

The poster explained that these policies exist to protect the school against lawsuits for discrimination, and added, “sometimes pragmatism gets the nod over the idealism we’d prefer.”

First of all, this is a textbook example of the process of moral disengagement: in other words, people justify unreasonable or unethical behavior by saying that it’s necessary to protect themselves or others. In this case, the argument is that, “We have to do this to protect ourselves from lawsuits.”

But I also have to wonder just how seriously a district takes ethical and moral behavior when the attitude is that ethics can be disposed of if they’re not convenient. In what other areas will they cut corners?

On a deeper level, what I see here is an organization that has forgotten what its mission is. Schools need to educate in a safe, supportive environment. Zero Tolerance doesn’t do that on several levels.

The American Psychological Association, the Department of Education, and the US Secret Service (!) have all found that ZT policies do not improve student safety. ZT is nothing more than a CYA for administrators who want to look like they’re doing something. While they are focusing on imaginary threats, they are not dealing with the real threats, the ones that the Secret Service (for example) found actually do turn into real violence. They are also creating an atmosphere of distrust and fear.

Indeed, the very idea that a well-behaved six year old can be sent to reform school for 45 days for an innocent, childish mistake is profoundly unsettling. How can one possibly feel safe in an environment when having a pocket knife dropped in your lap is grounds for expulsion? No, I’m not exaggerating. That’s happened too: ZT says that if it’s in your lap, it’s yours. How can parents trust a school district when they know that the school is perfectly willing to do serious psychological damage to their children in the name of Zero Tolerance? Let’s face it, sending a well-behaved child to reform school for a quarter of the school year is going to be psychologically and probably physically traumatic.

For a business to work well, it needs to build a sense of autonomy and competence amongst its employees. ZT destroys that. It turns administrators and teachers into robots and creates an atmosphere of fear. When you create an atmosphere of fear, people look for threats and they look for people to strike out against in order to reduce their fear. The schools are striking out against the students, and the parents naturally look for ways to strike back against the schools.

In a for-profit business, you’d see increasing amounts of fighting between teams and within teams. A for-profit business would be in serious danger of going under just from the deterioration of its products and services. Something to think about.

And, by the way, the last thing we need children learning is that ethics should be disposed of whenever they are “not pragmatic.”

Cosmic Stupid Rays from Outer Space

I believe it was Dilbert (or more likely Dogbert) who commented that “stupidity is like radiation. You don’t want to get it on your clothes.”

When writing games, we used to joke about the cosmic stupid ray problem: the tendency of inexperienced writers to create a story in which people acted in ways that simply could not be explained by any other means. Unfortunately, it seems that cosmic stupid rays are not a product of the imagination, as I can’t really find any other explanation for this article from the NY Times:

It’s a Spoon, It’s a Fork, It’s a… Weapon?

The article tells the story of a six year old who was suspended and sent to reform school for 45 days because he brought a Spork to school. A spork is one of those all-in-one utensils. The kid received it at that bastion of violence, the Cub Scouts. As we all know, Cub Scouts are trained to use sporks as deadly weapons in order to take down entire armies equipped with modern weaponry. However, a Cub Scout with a spork (or lightspork, as they are known to cognoscenti, due to the fact that they are almost always made from plastic) can bat bullets from the air with the tines, and catch missiles in the spoon bowl and fling them back. As for the knife edge, best not to think about that, but let me just say that if you happen to be made of soft butter, you’re in trouble.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made the point.

What is even more amazing in the article is the argument by school officials that they must have ZT because otherwise they might make unfair or discriminatory decisions. Instead, they will guarantee that they will make unfair and stupid decisions.

If you’re worried that your employees will not make good decisions, the answer is not to take away all decision making power, and hence all requirement to actually *think*, but to train people in sensible decision making.

In typical bad management fashion that is fully worthy of Dilbert, the response from the president of school board was this: “There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife,” said George Evans, the president of the Christina district’s school board.

This is known as a straw man argument and is being used only to scare people. Rather than attempt to lead, the incompetent manager seeks to coerce obedience through fear: “You can’t question us because something terrible will happen.”

They are right: something terrible might happen if ZT goes away. School officials might have to learn to think, to do their jobs competently instead of copping out, and the ones who can’t might just get the boot.