The Corean Chronicles
The Presumption of Competence
In recent years, however, students and younger employees alike seem to want more than mere acceptance of competence. College students' evaluations of teachers are filled with comments with phrases like "didn't make me feel special" or "expected too much" or "failed to encourage student self-esteem." In addition, most students seem to think that showing up and presenting merely competent work merits an "A." An ever-increasing number often fail even to buy and read the required textbooks for their classes. And yet there is still a continuing grade inflation in both high school and in college. In many areas of study, such as in English literature and writing, in general, students know less and write far less capably than did their predecessors. Fewer and fewer business students have any innate sense of estimation, and more and more seem lost without computers and calculators. Part of this is the result of a greater percentage of the student population going on to college, many of them falsely encouraged by too much cheerleading, too little emphasis on competence, and a society that tends to punish teachers who insist on excellence and the mastery of basic skills.
We've seen the same thing in the financial community, where so-called excellent performance -- that later turned out to be even less than competent -- was rewarded with bonuses ranging from the hundreds of thousands of dollars into the millions. The last time I checked, the minimum salary for a professional NFL player was something like $400,000. A recent study just cited in the Wall Street Journal made the observation that, given the structure and requirements of most large public corporations: (1) few CEOs were truly excellent; (2) excellent CEOs could make a slight positive difference greater than merely competent CEOs in a comparative handful of instances; (3) merely competent CEOs were adequate for the job in the majority of cases; and (4) even terrible CEOs took a while to destroy a company, except in a few exceptional cases. Yet corporate boards all presume that their CEO is excellent, and that is seldom the case.
From what I can see, fewer and fewer Americans, especially the younger ones, seem to understand the concept that every job requires basic competence and the fact that doing a job competently shouldn't have to result in cheerleading, bonuses, and constant positive feedback -- and continual promotions. Then again, if that's what it takes to motivate someone to do a job, maybe that's not what he or she should be doing. Rather than trying to bribe people like that, maybe their superiors should just fire them. As for the students, a lot more Bs, Cs, or even Fs wouldn't hurt either.
I established high expectations, required students to read their textbooks, and gave challenging exams that accurately assessed students' knowledge and understanding. My hard work earned me the second-lowest evaluation from the medical students and a delegation of students complaining to the Dean about a course I taught to doctor of pharmacy students. Fortunately, both Deans supported my efforts and paid little heed to student whining. Not all faculty are so lucky, and bad evaluations from students can jeopardize promotions or be used as an excuse for dismissals.
Recently, I directed a lab at a VA hospital. The younger technologists were greatly offended when, after learning of serious mistakes, I explained that their incorrect work had put patients' lives in jeopardy. How dare I critize them! It mad them angry and hurt their self-esteem. Their complaints went all the way up to the Chief of Staff, which I found astonishing. I was reprimanded and told to be more sensitive to the technologists' needs. When I brought up how serious the errors were, I was told that it was irrelevant. I quit soon after, because I won't direct a lab in a hospital that puts an employee's self-esteem above patient care and safety. The world has gotten strange.
: 4:11 PMAs an aside, my experience leads me to believe that writing quality has decreased partly as the result of the wide availability of word processors. Because it is much easier to produce a ten-page paper on a word processor than it was to produce a five-page paper on a typewriter, many instructors ask for longer papers. I think this may contribute to the decrease in the quality of the writing produced.
"(D)oing a job competently shouldn't have to result in cheerleading, bonuses, and constant positive feedback," but cheerleading and feedback are cheap ways to motivate employees. I'd much rather come to work knowing that my boss thinks I do a good job than believing that he thinks he could find a better employee on any street corner. Giving regular positive feedback also makes it easier for employees to accept the occasional necessary criticism. Finally, regular downstream communication encourages regular upstream communication--employees will more readily tell management of problems or ways to improve production.
There are serious problems with the "entitlement" mentality of many students and workers, but, unfortunately, there are many managers and teachers who have done nothing to discourage this. My wife quit her high school math teacher job partly due to being frustrated at having to fail 70% of her students--not because she was failing 70%, but because she felt she should have been failing 85%. The system encouraged (required?) lower grade teachers to pass undeserving students, resulting in a glut of unprepared students in calculus. How was my wife supposed to teach calculus to students who couldn't handle fractions? The students expected good grades for little effort, because that is what they always received in the past.
1. Why should I do excellent work, put in that extra bit of effort, or even bother really trying when "good enough" gets A's? I learned years ago that what I would call mediocre work was usually enough to get the highest possible mark. If I'm interested in the subject or think it would be useful, I'll do extra studying on my own. I'm reading all the chapters in my Chinese Heritage text we didn't get to this semester because knowing more about the Chinese is useful, and I find the book fascinating...But I never bothered studying for any of the tests, and got an A in the class. Now, not all classes are like that, and I am quite proud of the B's I got in Organic and Physical Chemistry, because those classes were very difficult, perhaps two people pulled off A's, and the majority of each class failed. But...How, precisely, is it my fault that older and presumably wiser heads have decreed how the world I live in works, even if it has little bearing on the world I will graduate into in a few years?
2. I was unusually lucky in that the advanced-track program at my high school was more interested in teaching us "why" and "how". As a result, I was able to write a tolerable essay explaining links between the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and World War I. Most of my friends in college were not so lucky, and were required to memorize such useless trivia as the dates of major battles in WWI, the names of various generals, the "starting date" of the agricultural revolution, and many more factoids. And not one of them had the slightest notion of how any of the events they "knew" related to one another. Is this their fault? Partly, sure. The information is available, they could have figured it out. But...Seems a tad odd to blame them for not learning what they weren't taught.
3. Self-esteem. We did a case study in my high school statistics class about the difference between correlation and causation. This particular study showed that students with high self-esteem had good grades, with a fairly high correlation. As a result, my entire generation grew up in a school system that believed that the key to high grades was high self-esteem. The results are well known. Fortunately, this trend is reversing itself, and I am reasonably confident that my children will not have this same trouble.
I think that the root of the problem in question has been all too painfully acknowledged by a precious few, and "A Letter To Garcia" an easily popularised piece, was written a hundred years ago.
Inititative.
This is the true gift bestowed to the human, and the least recognised and celebrated. Even college study is but an elaborate display of being able to replicate established knowledge, while the true kernel of humanity's brilliance lays mouldering.
Too much of society is a student or an employee. What do they care? In recent popular culture the only man with initiative is MacGyver. If the world spent a bit more time considering what motivated Rowan, we might just be a bit better off.
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