Trucker convoy reveals ignorance of government

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

In his comments about the Ottawa trucker convoy, Kurt Phillips of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network described some of the protesters as “. . . people who really don’t understand how government works.” There is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence in support of Phillips’ claim. 

One of the first examples was the purpose of the convoy. Many in the convoy said they were going to Ottawa to protest COVID mandates, most of which were set by provincial health authorities. Fair enough, there is a vaccine mandate imposed upon commercial truckers entering the US (imposed by the US) and returning to Canada (imposed by Canadian authorities). But most COVID health restrictions are provincial restrictions according to the (Canadian) Constitution Act.

Another example in support of Phillips’ assertion were the numerous references to the US Bill of Rights and the right of free speech it confers. Although it is difficult to imagine that commercial truckers are geographically challenged, Ottawa is in Canada.

Canadians have fundamental freedoms under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – conscience and religion, peaceful assembly, association – and “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.” But many of the protestors appeared unaware that Section 1 of the Charter limits those freedoms: 

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Phillips’ assertion about the protesters as “. . . people who really don’t understand how government works” might be true of Canadians more generally. In an earlier blog I lamented the conspicuous absence of the concept democracy in BC’s provincial curriculum. The Phillips’ comment prompted me to examine the three BC documents - “Big Ideas,” “Curricular Competencies,” and “Content” - that guide teachers responsible for social studies from grades Kindergarten to Grade 10.

Grade 2 Big Ideas reveals a fundamental flaw in the thinking of those who created them. One of the Grade Two Big Ideas is that “individuals have rights and responsibilities as global citizens” (Grade 2). Citizenship describes a relationship between an individual and the state. It is in that social contract that rights and responsibilities are defined.

“Global citizenship” may be an aspiration among those writing the curriculum. But until there is world citizenship and the existing nation states cede their jurisdiction to some yet to be defined global body, I am grateful for citizenship in Canada and the rights and obligations that I have.

The authors of the provincial curriculum should have noticed their global citizenship mistake when they crafted one of the Big Ideas for grade six. The tip off is their statement that “systems of government vary in their respect for human rights and freedoms.” The inconsistency between the grade two and grade six big ideas should have caused them to reflect.

A closer look at the curricular competencies and the content suggestions – yes, suggestions – does not inspire confidence that Canadian students living in British Columbia will understand how their government works.

I do not want to blame the education system for protesters’ ignorance of government. Most do not live in British Columbia and only a few who do were young enough to have gone to school in BC since the curriculum change. But the ignorance of the truckers and their fellow travelers signals that this significant knowledge gap has been with us for some time and is likely not confined to British Columbia.

Anti-racism training works, but is no panacea

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

An increasing number of school boards are incorporating diversity training as part of their professional development programs for teaching, administrative and support staff. While motivations differ among boards, the general hope is that diversity training will have a positive impact. I share that hope.

Knowing something of the literature and practice in the field, I suggest that boards have realistic expectations about what diversity training (also called race-relations training, anti-racism training, etc.) can accomplish.

In the early 1990s, a colleague and I undertook a meta-analysis[1] of what we described at the time as “attempts to prepare teachers for managing inter-cultural and inter-racial contact in their classrooms and for creating the conditions under which students can learn to work and live together harmoniously and productively.”[2]

We were able to locate and systematically review 19 studies that contained 43 effect sizes.[3] The average effect was a +.20 standard deviation improvement of among those who had diversity training versus those who did not. To put that small effect into perspective, about 57% of the teachers receiving training exhibited less measurable prejudice than the teachers in the control groups who did not have diversity training. The chance that a teacher picked at random from the training group would exhibit less prejudice than one in the control groups who did not have diversity training was about 55% - just a bit better than 50/50.

We compared studies that used an anti-racism approach with those that used a social-psychological or cultural information approach. Training that focused on anti-racism produced superior outcomes. There was a 57.6% chance that a person picked at random from the anti-racism treatment group would exhibit less prejudice than a teacher picked at random from the group that had no anti-racism training. In contrast, the chance was only 52.5% that a teacher picked at random from the training using a cultural information approach exhibited less prejudice in comparison to a person picked at random from the group having no training.

My colleague, Josette McGregor, conducted a study of the impact of anti-racist teaching and role-playing approaches to reduce prejudice in students. She found that both approaches were about equally effective, each producing an effect size of approximately +.45 standard deviation. In other words, there was a 62.5% chance that a student picked at random from training that used either a role-playing or and anti-racist teaching approach would exhibit less prejudice than a student picked at random from a control group that did not have either kind training.[4]

A 2016 meta-analysis of 40 years of diversity training research produced similar findings. The overall effect size was +.38 of a standard deviation, meaning that about 65% of those diversity trained exhibited better outcomes than those who are in the control group without such training. Or, to put it another way, there was a 60% chance that a randomly chosen person from the diversity training group exhibited more positive outcomes than someone picked at random from the control group without diversity training. The best outcomes achieved for cognitive learning were maintained over time. Attitudinal learning effects attenuated over time.[5]

Diversity training produces small effects. The literature devoted to the topic provides information about practices that are effective and ones that are not.[6] Such training has a greater positive impact: on younger rather than older people; in situations where women predominate among those trained; and where training occurs over a longer period (but not too long); etc.

Diversity training is not a panacea. The impact of diversity training will be modest. This suggests that such training must be part of a larger effort that includes policies and practices aimed at eliminating systemic racism.

This summary is no substitute for a careful review of the literature, especially the meta-analytic literature that looks across studies for effective and ineffective practices and conditions. School boards undertaking diversity training for staff or students should ensure that the training is evaluated closely so that adjustments can be made that will produce maximum positive outcomes.

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[1] Meta analysis involves looking across studies that address the same question to determine what the overall pattern of data looks like.

[2] J. McGregor & C. Ungerleider (1993) Multicultural and racism awareness programs for teachers:  A meta-analysis of the research. In K. McLeod (Ed) Multicultural education:  The state of the art - report 1. pp. 59-63

[3] An effect size is a statistic that compares the difference in mean outcomes (effects) between two conditions, programs, or approaches.

[4] McGregor, J. (1993) Effectiveness of Role Playing and Antiracist Teaching in Reducing Student Prejudice, Journal of Educational Research, 86(4), 215-226.

[5] Bezrukova, K., Spell, C.S., Perry, J.L., and K.A. Jehn, (2016) A Meta-Analytical Integration of Over 40 Years of Research on Diversity Training Evaluation, Psychological Bulletin, 142(11) 1227-1274.

[6] See, for example: FitzGerald, C., Martin, A., Berner, D. et al. (2019) Interventions designed to reduce implicit prejudices and implicit stereotypes in real world contexts: a systematic review. BMC Psychol 7(29). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0299-7

Will litigation change social media?

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]  

It has been more than a year since the seditious incursion into the American Congress. In the intervening period Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook (now Meta), and YouTube. Banning Trump was tacit acknowledgment by the three media giants that it was providing license to name calling, demeaning characterizations, misogynistic rants, taunts, incitement of violence, and lies.  

In July, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang published An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination. I read the book prior to the Christmas holiday; it certainly did not put me in a festive mood. The book is based on thousands of hours of interviews with 400 informants. In it, the authors argue that the company knowingly spread lies about the US election, promoted hate speech that led to violence, used algorithms to provoke emotional reactions, and prompted negative social comparisons among school-age boys and girls -especially girls. Although aware of what it was doing, Facebook, the corporate entity, did little or nothing to change for fear of diminishing its profits.  

Frenkel and Kang’s claims were reinforced by evidence of Facebook’s agency from documents provided to the Wall Street Journal and the US Securities and Exchange Commission by Frances Haugen. Initially an anonymous employee at Facebook, Haugen became a whistleblower. She is quoted  by CBSNews as saying: “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.” When she appeared before the US Senate, Haugen said she was appearing because she believed “Facebook’s products harm children.”

 

Facebook’s (now Meta) founder Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, have walked a snakelike path to obfuscate the company’s agency and have done relatively little to put the public good before private profit. They’ve paid fines for breaching privacy protections and other transgressions, but one gets the sense that the fines are simply the cost of doing business. In response to public outrage, they delayed the development of Instagram Kids, a service that would have groomed children under 13 for adult social media. The company’s rebranding from Facebook to Meta appears a shallow attempt to further deflect responsibility for its egregious disregard for people.  

In mid November, a law firm in Washington State, formed the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC). SMVLC’s website says that it was established “to hold social media companies legally accountable for the harm they inflict on vulnerable users” by using the principles of product liability. The founder of SMVLC, Matthew Bergman, is quoted as saying, “We believe jury verdicts on behalf of victims of social media cyberbullying will not only furnish the compensation they need and deserve but also incentivize social media companies to design safer products to avoid having to pay court awards in the future.”  

It is clear that there is a relationship between internet access and online aggression and that children and youth are harmed as a result, in part, of using Instagram. Facebook says it is looking for ways to “nudge” users to better content and to be more transparent. It is hard to see how Facebook will do that because it refuses to share internal research and has denied external researchers access to its data.  

It is doubtful that a technological solution to the negative impact of social media will improve the situation. Education is a more promising but limited approach. Perhaps litigation and financial penalties for successful litigants will have some impact. But, given its track record – amply documented in An Ugly Truth and in its own leaked documents – it is doubtful that real change will occur without formal regulation.

What education are students entitled to receive?

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

Statute, international covenant, and court decisions make it clear that all eligible children are entitled to an education. But what is the nature of that entitlement? In British Columbia, under section 2 of the School Act eligible persons are “entitled to enrol in an educational program provided by the board of a school district” if they are resident in the school district and of school age. The School Act defines an educational program as “an organized set of learning activities that . . . is designed to enable learners to become literate, to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy.” The definition accords the agency responsible for the provision of an educational program some latitude as to what constitutes learning activities.

Although granted some latitude as to what an educational program entails, it must meet specific conditions. The definition refers to an educational program, meaning it must be a plan of action to accomplish specific objectives. The objectives of such a plan are to equip the learner with “knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy,” specifically calling attention to literacy. Again, there is obviously some leeway about what knowledge, skills, and attitudes learners might need to make such a contribution. Leeway is not carte blanche.

To my mind, the determination of the learning activities must meet the Professional Standards for BC Educators. Chief among those standards is: “Educators value the success of all students. Educators care for students and act in their best interests.”

The educational program provided would not impede a student’s normal progress to graduation. Or, to put it another way, the educational program should not discriminate among students without adequate reason. Thus, it might be reasonable to provide an educational program that would take a given student longer to complete than her peers because of the circumstances affecting her situation. This, for example, is a consideration in adjusting the educational program provided to a student with special needs.

Provincial ministries and departments of education acknowledge that adjustments to a student’s educational program may require the student to spend more time in achieving its intended purposes. Secondary schools in British Columbia, for example, incorporate five years (from grade 8 to 12). The BC Ministry of Education reports the number of grade 8 students that earned graduation in five years as well as the number that completed in six.

An educational program that prevents a student from acquiring the knowledge and skills s/he needs after she completes school does not meet the spirit or the intent of the School Act. The concept of program requires both deliberation about the characteristics of the learner and the circumstances affecting her and consideration of the knowledge and skills that she needs to maintain normal progress toward successful school completion and the eventual assumption of adult responsibilities in “a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy.” 

School board determination of what constitutes an educational program is an essential task that must be performed for all learners and, especially, for learners who face challenges that, if not considered, would impede their successful attainment of the intended outcomes of schooling. These include students with special needs, students who are not proficient in the language of instruction, and students who, because of circumstances beyond their control, find schooling more challenging. 

School boards, to which the responsibility for ensuring that students are provided and educational program, are not without guidance. There is a provincial curriculum. There may be, as there is in British Columbia, a ministerial order that spells out the required areas of study. That order specifies that a school board must offer students in kindergarten to grade 9 an educational program that meets the learning outcomes in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and other subjects. There is a complementary order that specifies the requirements a student must meet to achieve graduation, including the number of credits a student must accumulate, the courses for which credit must be earned, and the literacy and numeracy assessments that a student must complete.  

There are students for whom the determination of an educational program is too often overlooked or is treated perfunctorily: students subject to out-of-school suspension. Students suspended from school are among the most challenged and challenging students. For some, one of the factors prompting the behaviour that gave rise to suspension is lack of school success. Their reintegration to schooling should not be further impeded by failure to provide them with an educational program while suspended, one that, given the circumstances, a reasonable person will regard as appropriate.