Category Archives: Education / Youth

Misinformation As A “Wicked Problem”

I continue to be a “when” person, not an “if” person. What I mean by that is that I become more convinced every day that America will emerge from the disaster that is Trump and MAGA, and that the pertinent questions we will face have to do with how we will repair things when that day comes and we have to repair not just the damage done by the mad would-be king, but the structural flaws that enabled his unfit occupancy in the Oval Office.

Political scientists, sociologists, lawyers, law professors and a wide variety of experts in other fields are already offering their perspectives on how to address the Supreme Court’s corruption, protect Americans’ voting rights, jettison (or at least alter) the filibuster, and neuter the Electoral College– proposals intended to fix the structural weaknesses that have become all too obvious.

In most of these areas, we’ll undoubtedly argue about the approaches and details, but fixes are possible.

There is, however, one truly enormous problem that has no simple answer. As I have repeatedly noted on this platform, we live today in an absolute ocean of mis- and dis-information. There are literally thousands of internet sites created to tell us untruths that we want to believe, technologies that were created to mislead, cable and streaming channels in the business of reinforcing our preferred biases–even psuedo-education organizations that exist solely to propagandize our children. There is no simple remedy, no policy prescription that can “fix” the Wild West of our “information” environment–and virtually any effort to shut down propaganda will run afoul of the First Amendment and its essential Free Speech guarantees.

The widespread availability of misinformation is what academics call a “wicked problem.” Wicked problems have a number of characteristics that make them difficult to manage and– practically speaking– impossible to actually solve. They can’t be fully defined because their components are constantly changing; there’s no one “right” solution– possible solutions aren’t true or false, but rather good or bad, and what’s good for one aspect of the problem might exacerbate another part (in other words, the interconnections mean that solving one part of the problem can easily aggravate other parts); and there’s no clear point at which you can say the problem is solved.

Misinformation is a whole set of wicked problems– on steroids.

As a Brookings Institution publication put it some time back, 

Disinformation and other online problems are not conventional problems that can be solved individually with traditional regulation. Instead, they are a web of interrelated “wicked” problems — problems that are highly complex, interdependent, and unstable — and can only be mitigated, managed, or minimized, not solved.

The Brookings paper recommended development of what it called “an architecture” that would “promote collaboration and build trust among stakeholders.” It noted the availability of several models that currently promote collaboration among a number of  stakeholders, including the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) and the Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs). These and similar successful organizations have learned how to adapt and innovate, and have focused on trust-building and information-sharing.

Any effective effort to counter misinformation and propaganda will need to go beyond the creation of other, similar organizations. If and when we re-institute a rational government and are gifted with a working Congress, there will be a role for (hopefully thoughtful) regulation. And of course, long term, the most effective mechanism must be education. Students need to be taught to recognize the difference between credible and non-credible sources, shown how to spot the markers of conspiracy theories and propaganda, and given tools to distinguish between deep fakes and actual photography.

The crux of the problem, of course, is that all-too-human desire to justify one’s particular beliefs and biases–the allure of “information” that confirms what that individual wants to believe. We all share that impulse, and its existence is what makes the manipulation of data and the creation of “alternative” facts so attractive. It’s also what feeds “othering,” bigotries and self-righteousness.

The persistence of that very human desire is what makes misinformation–also known as propaganda–such a wicked problem.

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Onward “Christian” Soldiers

It has become increasingly obvious that there are two kinds of Christian–the ones who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, and the ones who use the label in their quest for political hegemony. I identify the latter group by placing quotation marks around the word Christian.

And that latter group is on the march, both locally and nationally.

In Indiana, where we have long had a legislature dismissive of the First Amendment’s Separation of Church and State, we currently have a Lieutenant Governor who is an out and proud “Christian” nationalist. And in Zionsville, a bedroom community north of Indianapolis, a newly formed organization called “Zionsville Men of Truth” wants the local library to stop endorsing “LGBTQ+ ideology,” by removing books and limiting accessibility to “GLBT inclusive” events like Pride.

According to the Indianapolis Star, the group wants to protect children and teens from “content that blurs moral boundaries or exposes children to adult themes.” And of course, they’ll decide where those “moral boundaries” lie.

As the article notes, a number of Republican-led states have experienced book banning and other restrictions of access, thanks to lawmakers’ passage of legislation making it easier to do so. “Men of Truth” is described as a group of local religious men who “want to see that truth be proclaimed in our communities and to restore those biblical values that our nation was founded upon.”

It’s their “truth” that must be proclaimed of course. And permit me to observe that Madison and Jefferson, among others, would be surprised to find that they’d crafted the Constitution using “biblical values”…

It isn’t just Indiana. Other Red states are experiencing equally “Christian” episodes.

There’s Oklahoma, for example, a state that ranks 50th out of 51 in education. A recent report from the New York Times set this former academic’s hair on fire.

At the University of Oklahoma, a student claimed to be the victim of religious discrimination because her psychology instructor gave her a zero on an essay in which she cited the Bible and called “the lie that there are multiple genders”  “demonic.” The instructor explained that she had deducted points because the essay “does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.”

Those certainly sound to me like permissible reasons to deduct points, but–hey! Onward “Christian” warriors–the University has suspended the instructor. Not only that, they’ve assured the student that her poor mark on the essay won’t affect her grade. She is identified as a psychology major and pre-med student who intends to go to medical school. (The prospect of a doctor who elevates “biblical truth” over science is rather chilling…)

The student’s cause was taken up by Turning Point USA, which has posted about it on X (of course!) and drawn 40 million views and thousands of online comments. (Granted, many of those views were probably bots, but still…) Oklahoma’s “Christian” governor weighed in, mischaracterizing the university’s reaction as protection of the First Amendment’s Free Speech provisions, calling the situation at the university “deeply concerning,” and demanding a review by the university’s regents to “ensure other students aren’t unfairly penalized for their beliefs,”

This ridiculous framing of the issue evidently forbids instructors from penalizing answers that are non-responsive to the questions, at least if the student invokes “Christianity.” As even a conservative political scientist observed, evidently “You have to pass students who only cite religious faith for their opinions now or they’re victims of discrimination.”

In this case, the class had been assigned a scholarly article on “gender typicality, peer relations, and mental health,” and told to write a “thoughtful discussion” of some aspect of it. The student wrote that “The article discussed peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms. I do not necessarily see this as a problem. God made male and female and made us differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose.”

When her instructor failed to accept a response that relied on “biblical truth” rather than psychological research, the student contacted Ryan Walters, currently the chief executive of something called “the Teacher Freedom Alliance.” Walters called the student “an American hero,” and said that any university employees who were involved in giving her a bad grade should be fired.

It may explain Oklahoma’s education ranking to note that Walters recently stepped down as the Oklahoma state superintendent of schools.

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The Kids Are All Right

Complaining about the younger generation has been a part of human discourse since Athenians were bemoaning Socrates’  “corruption” of that city’s youth, and it has been a consistent theme ever since. Young folks these days are routinely accused of lack of seriousness, addiction to technology, and a wide variety of other behaviors considered deficits by their cranky elders.

Admittedly, when it has come to their participation in electoral politics, the criticisms have been more legitimate. And recently, evidence of the neo-Nazi tendencies of younger Republican males has been disquieting, to say the least–its hard to avoid wondering just how widespread those very unAmerican sentiments are. My own experience with young Americans over some 21 years in a college classroom was overwhelmingly positive, but as the saying goes, anecdotes are not data, so it was refreshing to come across credible data that supported my own observations.

The New Republic recently published an article headlined “The Shocking Truth About Gen Z Voters Is That They’re Pretty Great.” The subhead was “Stop panicking: They are the most progressive generation ever, especially on race. If that surprises you, you’ve been listening to the wrong story.”

The article led with acknowledgement that the reigning story is far more negative: Democratic pundits are convinced that young Americans, especially white men, are being “red-pilled,” especially on matters of race, and that their increasing bigotry jeopardizes not just racial progress but also Democratic Party gains among young people.

The data doesn’t support that gloomy conviction. As the linked article reported, Gen Z voted overwhelmingly for Zohran Mamdani in New York, and for Democrats like Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia.

These Gen Z landslides for Democrats may have been a surprise to some, but not for us. Well before the election, the data was already telling a different—and far more hopeful—story about the politics of Gen Z. In surveys from over 60,000 Americans in the 2024 Cooperative Election Study, the gold standard for political research, a clear pattern emerges: Racial resentment is collapsing among young people.

Scholars differ on the question whether “racial resentment” is equivalent to full-blown racism, although most observers would have trouble distinguishing between the two. In any event, there is broad agreement that an individual’s level of racial resentment is predictive of how that individual will vote.

In predicting who votes for or against Trump, racial resentment is one of the most powerful variables out there—more predictive than income, gender, education, geography, or attitudes about economic policy, gender, or religious traditionalism. In short, scoring high on racial resentment means you’re virtually certain to vote for Trump, whereas scoring low means you’re basically certain to vote against him. And among young Americans, racial resentment is at historic lows.

Indeed, the data shows that Gen Z has the lowest level of racial resentment of any generation ever studied.

That said, the evidence of young Republicans’ bigotry isn’t wrong. The data also shows that young Republicans “remain nearly as racially resentful as older Republicans.”  The massive shifts researchers have found are seen among Democrats and independents–and those young independents “now look more like Democrats than like older independents, or Republicans, for that matter.”

The Republican Party maintains its base through consistent racial attitudes across generations, but that base is shrinking. Meanwhile, everyone else is moving left on race. The center isn’t drifting right; young people are redefining where the center sits.

Why is there so much misunderstanding of Gen Z?

There’s motivated reasoning everywhere. Conservatives want to believe they’re winning the youth. Centrist Democrats want to believe the party needs to move right. Pessimistic progressives want to believe we’re doomed. Political consultants want a reason to sell their clients on new, expensive advertising markets. Everyone finds anecdotes that confirm their assumptions while ignoring mountains of contradictory data.

What about democratic participation? Attitudes don’t mean much without electoral turnout. Happily, the news there is equally promising. In the wake of the off-year elections, Newsweek reported on what it characterized as “a growing generational realignment: voters under 30 — who turned out in unusually high numbers — overwhelmingly backed Democratic candidates.”

Trump and MAGA have placed their bets on Americans’ continuing racism. The data shows that is a losing bet, because the kids are all right.

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Indiana’s Embarrassing AG

He’s at it again.

I don’t know how many pixels I’ve wasted on discussions of Indiana’s ridiculous Attorney General, Todd Rokita. When I took a look at the history of this blog, I realized that reports of his problematic behaviors began while he was still in Congress, and  accelerated when he became AG. 

Rokita’s self-importance isn’t matched by even a modicum of self-awareness, a lack that has led to admonitions of him from Indiana’s all-Republican Supreme Court. His tireless efforts to play to the craziest fringes of MAGA (and those are some fringes!) have led to his efforts to smear the IU Ob-Gyn who performed a legal abortion on  a ten-year-old rape victim, a recent request that the Trump administration send federal troops to Indiana, and his maintenance of an unvetted list of school teachers who are reportedly sharing “woke” positions in their classrooms.

Rokita’s sustained assault on public education has erupted again, via a bizarre lawsuit Rokita has filed against Indianapolis’ Public Schools for failure to assist ICE in terrorizing students. IPS has had the nerve to demand legal authority before allowing ICE agents into its classrooms.

As the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported, Rokita “filed suit against Indianapolis Public Schools — with help from a conservative think tank — accusing the state’s largest public school district of ‘thwarting’ federal immigration enforcement.”

In response, the IPS board re-affirmed the district’s commitment to “ensuring safe, supportive, and welcoming learning environments for all students.” (It isn’t difficult to picture the eye-rolls that must have accompanied the response–and the “here he goes again” sighs…) Per IPS,

As has always been the case, we will continue to uphold the law while keeping these commitments,” the board added, before knocking Rokita’s intentions.

While IPS takes all legal obligations seriously, we respectfully hope that all concerned parties will recognize the heavy burden that silly litigation and political posturing places on students, families, and taxpayers,” the statement continued. “Every dollar spent on defensive legal posture is a dollar not spent on instructional support, teacher development, student services, or enrichment. In this case, Mr. Rokita prefers those dollars go to fight gratuitous political battles, as has too often been the case.

A very tactful way of saying “we really don’t want to pay for his incessant grandstanding.”

IPS requires that officers have a warrant signed by a judge unless there is an emergency situation, and the school system’s legal counsel must authorize the access. That policy certainly appears reasonable; after all, school systems are legally charged with acting in loco parentis, and with safeguarding the children in its care. Rokita, however, argues that the district should allow individual employees to “voluntarily comply” with ICE demands.

Rokita’s office began “investigating” (harassing) IPS in February, and communications have evidently gone back and forth since, with Rokita’s most recent demanding immediate changes.  As the IPS response noted,

Unfortunately, despite taking six months to craft his opinion on IPS’ policies, Mr. Rokita permitted only five business days from the time IPS received his review to respond, and then refused IPS’ request for any additional time….Yet, these important issues deserve thoughtful, deliberative weighing of important legal rights — not impulsive, superficial efforts for political gain.

Board members also criticized Rokita’s use of the term “aliens” for noncitizen children and their families, accusing him of  “willfully dehumanizing” them.

Assisting Rokita in this effort at bullying the system is something called the America First Policy Institute. (I guess a name really does say it all…) The institute says the Indiana case is part of its mission to hold “rogue” government entities accountable. Evidently, it’s “rogue” to protect children from being terrorized without legal authority.

In the wake of the suit, the Indiana State Teachers’ Association affirmed its belief that “every child in Indiana, regardless of background or immigration status, has the right to a safe and welcoming public school.” The organization confirmed the  professional and moral responsibility of educators “to protect the wellbeing of their students and ensure schools remain places of learning, trust and stability….Turning schools into extensions of immigration enforcement threatens that trust and undermines the learning environment every student deserves. Our focus must remain on educating and protecting students, not politicizing their safety.”

A local immigration attorney interviewed by WTHR believes the lawsuit is part of an effort to increase ICE’s presence in Indianapolis, and characterized it as fear mongering playing to the base….”the idea of federal agents often masked and in full uniform and flak jackets going into schools is just diabolical.”

It would be nice if Rokita would stop his constant pandering to MAGA’s looney-tune fringe and spend some time doing the job he was elected to do, but I’m not holding my breath…

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This Is How You Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm…

Republicans in Indiana are currently struggling to find enough votes to engage in a mid-cycle gerrymander that they believe would send one or two more Republicans to Congress.

If enough members of Indiana’s GOP legislative supermajority cave to Trump and pass his desired gerrymander –and if that legislation survives a legal challenge (not a given, since it would run afoul of the state constitution)–and if the sheer effrontery of the act doesn’t drive turnout that reduces, rather than adds Republican seats–Indiana will presumably send to Congress the same sort of Republicans who keep trying to turn Indiana into Mississippi.

I have posted several times about the sheer knuckle-headedness of Indiana’s legislature, especially (but certainly not exclusively) when it comes to education policy. Not only have religious fundamentalists and Christian nationalists managed to squander huge amounts of our tax dollars on vouchers–starving public education while sending those dollars to private, overwhelmingly religious schools– virtually all of their interventions in education reflect their utter lack of understanding of what education is–they apparently confuse it with job training.

Not surprisingly, Indiana’s Department of Education reflects that legislative blind spot.

Michael Hicks–a Ball State University economist–recently published an essay criticizing a dangerously misguided policy change from DOE.

In crafting Indiana’s new high school diploma requirements, the state Department of Education identified only one of the two deep challenges to education in Indiana.

The new diploma might, and I stress might, help the smaller of the two problems. At the same time, it risks making the larger problem worse.

Indiana’s largest, and growing, problem is that we send too few young Hoosiers to college. The decade-long decline has been so bad, and so sustained, that we are now graduating and keeping young people beneath the replacement rate of our already dismal educational attainment.

This ensures we will slide toward the bottom of the nation in our share of college graduates by mid-century. That matters for our economy because over the past half-century more than 100% of economic growth accrued to places in the top half of educational attainment. So, if you wish to grow the place where you live — whether it’s a county, city or state — it needs to have better than average educational attainment.

The second problem Hicks identifies is a lack of entry-level job skills among the “excess supply of young Hoosiers” who don’t go to college. The state’s large employers complain about that lack, but as Hicks notes, employers who need college graduates or employees with advanced degrees don’t complain to the legislature–they simply recruit elsewhere.

DOE’s new policy charges schools with finding additional internships for more “hands-on” learning. Sounds good–but as Hicks quite correctly points out, the changes come at a steep cost. That’s because, in order to accommodate work outside the classroom, academic requirements have been reduced across the board.

Under the new rules, it is now possible to get a high school diploma with mathematics courses that are mostly taught in middle school and have been since the 1920s. Math, science, literacy, history and writing requirements have all been reduced. These are the lowest diploma standards in modern state history.

Once again, Indiana is ignoring the needs of poor and rural children. As Hicks says, affluent, college educated parents will ignore the minimum standards. Children from those families may even be better off, because “smart kids in rural and poor school corporations will be funneled into less exacting academic programs” weakening competition for college slots.

The new diploma offers some nice soundbites, but it’s an engine of unequal opportunity and a near guarantee that we’ll send fewer kids to college, and that we’ll send them there less prepared. That will be a panacea for businesses looking to hire folks for $15 an hour jobs, but will do nothing to promote prosperity in Indiana.

Of course, none of these concerns appeared in the briefing slides or implementation guidance of the new diploma. State officials simply didn’t do their homework, which is a damning observation for folks involved in education.

Hicks also notes the lack of homework evident in what the new policy calls the “military option.”

Students can obtain a “military diploma” in one of three ways–appointment to a service academy (which would require far more academic preparation than the new standards call for), enrollment in a college ROTC program (which requires that the student be in college–again, requiring more academic preparation than the standards contemplate), or enlistment in the armed forces before high school graduation.

Can we spell embarrassing?

Just what Congress needs–more GOP representatives from Indiana’s version of Mississippi…

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