Several months ago, I posted a blog deploring the tendency of all too many businesses to outsource their work to their customers, such as by promoting “paperless” records kept by the consumer, rather than continuing the practice of sending out paper statements. Several readers pointed out that since such “innovations” reduced costs or kept them from increasing, the customers should benefit by not having to pay higher prices required by the old practices. I mentally considered that the point might have validity in some cases, but, overall I have remained somewhat skeptical.

Some recent developments have tended to reinforce that skepticism. The first is the pending decision by the U.S. Postal Service not only to raise first class postal rates in the next month, but also to eliminate Saturday mail deliveries to cut costs, partly on the grounds that revenues have dropped because much former priority/first class mail has decreased because more people are using the internet to pay bills. That may be, but I think that argument is largely a red herring. First, most all the services most Americans and I use still send out paper bills, even if we pay by internet. Second, the volume of advertising and junk mail continues to flood the mailboxes. The Postal Service has claimed for nearly 30 years that they “save” money by letting advertisers do the bulk mail work and that raising bulk mailing rates would drive down revenues. Oh? I do know printing costs, and when multiple catalogues continue to deluge our mailbox, it seems highly likely that any company for whom printing and mailing thousands and thousands of unnecessary catalogues and solicitations is cheaper than cleaning up the mailing lists is getting far too low a rate, especially when the delivery of the first class mail that is far more important to most Americans than bulk junk mail is going to be delayed even more. This is likely to become critical to more Americans in these financial trying times when an ever greater number of companies have also shortened their billing cycles, giving customers far less leeway in paying their bills before slapping them with various fees. The public is already subsidizing advertising and waste through the present pricing system, and now we’re being told that we need to accept poorer service in order to preserve the junk mail bonanza for advertisers.

In another case, users of one of the more popular tax calculation programs became aware of a flaw in the program almost four months ago. The flaw would not allow taxpayers with certain investments, even of a few hundred dollars, to file their taxes electronically, because the software insisted that there were errors in the federal return. More and more users complained. Nothing happened. After several months, one user figured out a fix, and several others improved on it. Less than a month before April 15th, someone at the tax software company cleaned up the user-derived fix and posted it. It’s not really a fix, but a work-around. Exactly why in four months can’t a software company fix its own programs? Why do the users have to find the fix? My own suspicion is that the glitch only affected a few hundred or a few thousand users out of millions, most of whom just gave up in frustration and filed by mail, knowing that the glitch didn’t create an error in their tax returns. That way the company didn’t have to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars creating a real fix.

Another set of examples lies with the airline industry. First, most airlines gave up meal service included in the price of tickets. Then many gave up “free” snacks. Some even restricted or eliminated inclusive soft drink services. Checked bags used to be included in ticket prices. Now anyone who needs more than an overnight bag pays a surcharge. That doesn’t just include business travelers whose companies can pick up the tab, but mothers of infants and small children visiting parents, for whom schlepping bags is usually neither possible nor practical. It also makes security screening, as well as loading and unloading an airliner, an increasingly tedious experience, which may be yet another reason why scheduled flight times are growing longer and longer, even though airplanes are not flying any slower [except, of course, in comparison to the discontinued Concord]. The latest “cost-saving” inconveniences are the replacement of boarding cards with flimsy paper boarding slips and the elimination of the airline ticket envelope. If one does check baggage, then the baggage claim notice is unceremoniously stuck to the back of a boarding flimsy, where the chances of its survival through multiple flights are greatly reduced.

I’ve only cited a few such cost-saving inconveniences, but I dare say that there are many, many more out there. Now, I’m the first to admit that anecdotal evidence doesn’t necessarily have any statistical value for the population as a whole, but there are times when it does. I’m beginning to think that we just may have reached that time. The other aspect of this that bothers me, especially as a F&SF writer, is that, while I have tried to retain the optimism that technological and computer advances would reduce the pressures and costs on people, I have the feeling that more and more often technology is being used to optimize ways of separating people from their money, rather than providing new and improved services.

Isn’t there a point where so-called cost-saving is going to be recognized as just another gimmick to preserve profits and, heaven forbid, corporate bonuses — which will doubtless go to the executives who dreamed up the ever-increasing levels of inconvenience foisted upon Americans in all sectors of the economy?

Some time ago I was reading a book [Lies My Teacher Told Me]. I didn’t finish it, not because it wasn’t good, but because it was thoroughly depressing, and I’m usually not the kind to be easily depressed. The author was pointing out case after case where textbooks and teachers were wrong. I got to thinking about his approach and realized that what he was often complaining about wasn’t about lies at all — but that teachers and textbooks all oversimplified everything to the point that those oversimplifications become simplistic and often were not technically correct.

Part of that is understandable — almost nothing is as simple as anyone makes it out to be, and few of us have the time and patience to learn the full story about anything. Life is really like fractals — while we seem to see regular patterns, those events aren’t all that regular, and the deeper one looks the more there is.

Yet, at times, overunderstanding can be counterproductive. I don’t care about impact physics when I’m stapling shingles or hammering in a picture hangar. The problem is that once some things, particularly economics and politics, are oversimplified, they are in fact lies, and those lies change the course of human events, while oversimplifying the impact physics of hammering nails generally has little effect on the ability to hammer in nails — or the rate of housing construction.

But failure to understand can be even more deadly, especially in a representative democracy where voters have to decide on who represents them and when those decisions are based on news so condensed that it’s essentially a lie, even if every fact presented is in fact accurate, because the facts not presented would have changed the entire slant of that news item. Unfortunately, in this day of instant news and instant information, most individuals don’t want to listen to the full story. They have a thirty second — or less — attention span for anything that doesn’t affect them, especially at that moment, and to cater to that, most information providers condense information and news to short snippets of quick and oversimplified material. Almost always, this results in distortion and can change popular opinion or reinforce already existing stereotypes.

Years ago, when I was legislative director for a U.S. Representative, he made the point that in an appropriations hearing there was more debate on a line item for mule barn than on research appropriations for a nuclear collider — because everyone knew what a mule barn was and wanted to voice their opinions. He was exaggerating, but not by much. In another case, the abandoned hazardous waste sites [Superfund sites] ignited a giant controversy during the Reagan administration because the American public had heard about Love Canal and could visualize the problem. The political uproar that followed because people felt that EPA wasn’t enforcing the law vigorously enough essentially resulted in the removal of 33 out of the 35 political appointees at the Agency, and all the top officials. Yet, several years later, studies revealed that there were nine other far more serious environmental problems that were killing far, far more Americans than leakage from abandoned Superfund sites, and that those problems couldn’t be addressed adequately because so much of EPA’s funding, as a result of the Superfund scandal, had gone to the waste site problem.

Virtually every government agency has similar stories, and so do many corporations. While absolutely egregious, the recent payment of bonuses to AIG executives tends to overshadow the far larger and more critical problem of a financial system that institutionalizes and rewards excessive risk and short-term profits and diverts funding and attention from basic reforms of that system, as well as from vital infrastructure, health care reform, and education.

In short, in a condensed, sensation-based news culture, what you hear is usually an oversimplified version that’s all too often a “truthful” lie because of what’s missing. And, more and more, such “truthful lies” lead to bad public policy and worse legislative fixes, which in turn create more problems reported in another set of “truthful lies”… and so it goes.

A number of years ago, a book called The Bell Curve was published and immediately became the center of an intellectual firestorm. In retrospect, one could almost say that it was a case of “While I don’t like your statistics, I don’t have any better figures, but because your statistics conflict with what I believe (or have seen on an individual basis), they can’t possibly be so.”

As Murray and Hernstein, the authors, stated, statistics are not valid for individuals, but well-developed statistics are almost always accurate for large populations. Their statistics appeared to raise disturbing implications in two areas: (1) individuals with higher IQs — on average — are more successful in our society, and (2) certain minorities, notably blacks — on average — have lower IQs. The authors also claimed that IQ does not change significantly for most people after an early (pre-school) age. Recent research has raised some issues with the last point, but only about the threshold age after which IQ seldom changes, although it seems clear that certainly IQ does not usually change significantly after puberty, and may be determined considerably earlier.

Whether the authors are correct or not should be assessed, not by philosophical predilections or by anecdotal evidence, since exceptions make both bad law and bad policies, but by a broad-based study which addresses such specific issues as:

(1) Is IQ a valid predictor of economic/societal success [not whether it should be, but whether it is]?

(2) If IQ does have validity as such a predictive tool, to what degree is IQ genetically determined, and what other factors can scientifically and effectively be determined to change IQ [i.e., do prenatal care, maternal nutrition, very early childhood education and support, etc., play a significant or a minor role]?

Finally, regardless of causal factors, the authors addressed one simple and basic problem: the fact that, in an information-based hierarchy, those who show higher IQs are more likely to be successful than those who do not. Even if methods and techniques can be developed to ensure all individuals realize their maximum potential IQ, in our society those with higher IQ levels will continue to become an increasingly powerful and self-selecting elite. Isn’t that really the controversy? That we have developed a culture where some individuals, no matter how hard-working, will never be among the most successful so long as success is measured by hierarchical power and economic success and that such success requires the skills measured by higher IQs?

We also seem ready to reject any “scientific” method that may indicate some groups will be either more or less successful than others in areas requiring mental prowess, even while we readily acknowledge such inequality in athletic areas. Why? Is it because we are unwilling to admit that most individuals cannot alter their basic mental capacities, and that such capacities are fixed by outside factors and the actions of others?

In the end, much of the controversy over The Bell Curve seemed to have been generated by individuals — on both sides — whose beliefs were deeply affected — those who either wished to use the statistics presented to justify their already-existing negative feelings and actions about minorities or those who rejected those findings because the findings were antithetical to their very beliefs.

Yet, more than ten years after the publication of The Bell Curve, I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever addressing the authors’ point that, like it or not, economic and professional success in the present-day United States can be predicted largely on the basis of IQ. I have to emphasize that I am not saying this is as it necessarily should be, but the fact that this finding has been quietly buried and remains unrefuted is more than disturbing in itself.

The in-depth and devoted study of music is perceived by many as either fluff or irrelevant to today’s education and world. It is neither. Archeological excavations have discovered various musical instruments that predate historical society, and every human culture, without exception, has some form of musical expression. Music, in particular classical music, is a discipline based entirely upon rigorously applied mathematics, requiring intellectual and physical abilities developed over a period of years. Music has been a key element in culture and politics for at least 50,000 years, and cultural musical achievements are inseparable from a culture’s political, economic, and even military power.

Yet, even today, some politicians and educators question the value of music as a subject of educational study, assigning higher priorities to everything from driver education and athletics. After all, with American Idol, the message is that anyone can sing. With such skepticism and ignorance about the disciplined study of music, one must ask the basic question: Is music important to a culture, and if so, why, and to what degree?

The music enjoyed, played, and composed by a culture defines the soul of that society, and how music is taught in that culture, and to whom, not only illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of its education system, but foreshadows the fate of that education system — and of the society itself.

Aristotle called music the keystone of education. In practical terms, more than any other single discipline, music improves intellectual functioning, emotional intelligence, and understanding of and ability to integrate multiple intellectual and physical activities. PET brain imaging studies show that sight-reading and performing engages more areas of the brain than any other activity.

As noted by a number of scholarly presentations over the past decade, music increases emotional intelligence, and as pointed out by the neurobiologist A.A. Anastasio [Decartes’ Error], intelligence devoid of emotional content is an impaired and reduced intelligence. It is not exactly happenstance that Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein were both violinists, or that a high percentage of physicians have musical talents and abilities.

Ensemble musical performances also require cooperation and coordination under time pressure. This is a useful skill in a society that exalts individual success at any cost, particularly since we live in a complex society that rests on cooperation. One has only to look a various third-world societies or Middle Eastern cultures — or even western situations such as Northern Ireland or Basque Spain — to see the devastating impact of societal divisiveness.

Although it is scarcely politically correct to declare so publicly, all music is not equal, either within a society, or in comparing music from different societies. Because almost every human being can do something that can be called music, all too many humans equate what they like with excellence. Such popular personal taste does not necessarily recognize or reward technical expertise and genius. As in many fields, understanding and appreciating excellence in music takes education and talent.

In terms of the larger implications for American society, all too often overlooked and obvious is the fact that for the past 600 years western European music has been the most advanced, most technologically diverse, and most multifaceted… and that western European culture dominates the world — politically and in terms of economic and military power — and has ever since its music developed in its present form. The only cultures that have been able to challenge western-European-derived ones economically, politically, and militarily are those that have adopted — if by adapting — western European music.

Music is indeed complex. Like all of the most worthwhile disciplines, it requires study, long hours of practice, and is expensive to teach. But… as in all matters, what is cheap and popular does not survive. In that sense, it is far too expensive for the future for universities, especially state universities, NOT to teach music. Americans live in a nation that is increasingly polarized by two opposing straight-line, single-value camps of thought. Americans also live in a nation whose popular music has been degenerating technically and compositionally as this polarization has increased. This is scarcely coincidence or mere happenstance correlation.

Likewise, music teaches its students how to handle multiply faceted values and inputs, a skill more and more valuable in a complex and multifaceted world. Because music does increase intellectual and practical abilities, eliminating and/or reducing the study of music at state schools is another critical factor in effectively limiting, if not destroying, the position of the United States as the principal dominant society of the world.

That is because music will only be taught at elite state and private universities, and, when taught at other schools, educators are increasingly pressured to simplify and dumb-down the curriculum, because true musical education on the collegiate level is anything but easy, and difficult courses are less popular and have lower enrollments. This combination of exclusivity and content degradation will only help to increase the division between the privileged and the rest of the population at a time when the economic gap between these groups is already increasing. In addition, it will contribute to other trends already reducing the proportion of the population with the range of skills necessary to analyze, manage, and innovate in a complex world society.

From all the articles and cases, there’s clearly a problem in U.S. schools with cheating, and another one with grade inflation. There’s also a problem with too many students not mastering skills. All three problems are linked to a single societal perceptual problem — the false equation of credentials with skills.

In music, for example, mastery of an instrument or the voice is not demonstrated by how fast a musician can get through the piece, nor how many works can be quickly learned, nor by a piece of paper that says the student has a B.M., M.M., or D.M.A. Mastery is singing or playing on key, in tempo, with flawless tone and/or diction, and precise emotional expression.

In recent years, time after time, various studies have trotted out statistics to show that people with degrees make more money than those without degrees. Seldom, if ever, has anyone addressed first, what the studies actually show, and second, their actual applicability to life. The initial studies reflected the difference in earnings between those with a college degree and those without one. And the key term remains “degree.” Once upon a time, a degree signified a mastery of a certain set of skills, and the degree was the certification of those skills. Today, a degree is viewed by students and society alike as either a passport to a better job or the credential to another degree which is a passport to an even better job. The emphasis is on the credential, not on the process of education, not on learning the skills necessary to do the job. Given this emphasis the symbols of success — the grades, the honors, the degrees — is it any wonder that students — and their parents — cheat?

Those teachers who try to emphasize the need to learn fundamentals well, to master skills, and who grade rigorously, are overwhelmed by a society that wants quick results and easy-to-verify credentials and that has lost its understanding of the true basics. The “answer” to a test is only a small part of the learning process. The idea behind learning is to gain the abilities and understanding necessary to find answers on one’s own, especially in new and different situations. This emphasis is being lost behind the demands for testing and accountability.

Students are far from stupid. They see that only the result matters in most cases. The answer obtained on-line or through cheating, if done successfully, counts as much as the one sweated out the hard way. The well-publicized Kansas case of several years ago was not an exception, but far more common than most politicians and school boards want to admit. Just talk to the teachers — well off the record.

This emphasis on the credential, rather than the skills, is everywhere. High school students want to get into the prestigious college so that they can get the good grades there in order to get into the prestigious graduate school in order to get the best job/highest compensation. More and more money and effort are being poured into testing students as to what they are learning. Here, again, we run the risk of focusing on “credentials” — the good test score. Tests like the SAT and the ACT, the GRE, the LSAT, the MEDCAT all purport to measure two things — a certain level of knowledge and the ability to recall that knowledge in a short period of time. Individuals who know their subject matter in great depth, but do not recall the material either swiftly or under time pressure will score less well than those with lesser knowledge but greater test-taking skills.

While there are certain occupations where time is of the essence, and one must act in seconds or minutes — most high-level occupations don’t — and shouldn’t — require such haste. Most occupations are those where a thoughtful complete mastery of the subject and skills is far more preferable to incomplete knowledge and speed. We don’t need an architect who can design a building quickly; we need one who designs it well and safely. We don’t need medical researchers who experiment quickly, but ones who do so thoughtfully and thoroughly. We don’t need financial analysts who can design new financial instruments that magnify credit and the money supply nearly instantly — and then crash and plunge us into financial and economic chaos, but analysts and “quants” who fully understand the ramifications of their work and who can also explain it clearly and concisely… and who will.

There is an old proverb that seems to have been forgotten in our desire for easy credentials, quick measurements, and instant gratification: Haste makes waste.

Never before was this more applicable than in education today. “Accountability” and all the other buzzwords being used are in danger of creating an even greater charade in education than the present sad situation. Universities tout the percentage of their faculty with a Ph.D. Can all those highly degreed professors actually teach? How many actually do? Which ones are effective? Is there any serious effort to evaluate whether candidate A with a masters degree is actually a better and more effective teacher than candidate B with a Ph.D. or candidate C with a mere bachelors degree, but with twenty years practical experience?

A number of studies and articles have also appeared recently suggesting that student evaluations of professors at universities have become both omnipresent and are focused more on the grades that the professors give than upon their teaching effectiveness. That is, in general, the more high grades a professor gives, the better the student evaluation. Once more, both the students and the administrations which rely on such evaluations are focusing on the “credential,” the grade given by students largely ignorant of the requirements of the discipline they are learning, rather than on the process of learning and the skills attained by the students. Yet when such elite schools as Harvard set the example by giving half the student body As in all courses, it becomes increasing difficult for others to go against the example. In the state of Utah, the governor and the legislature have been pressing the universities to graduate students more quickly so that they can get into the work force more quickly, and presumably pay taxes more quickly. Yet, even as the number of students swells, the resources available on a per student basis decrease, and the buzz-word “efficiency” gets bandied around wildly, as if the only important measure is how quickly students get a piece of paper in hand — a credential.

All of these examples have one factor in common — the failure to understand that education is a process, and that mastery of the skills involved is what leads to eventual long-term success for the student — not merely a credential that, without the skills mastery that it is supposed to represent, means little. Most Americans understand that a basketball or football coach cannot merely have a players attend three practices a week for nine months for four years, give them high grades without rigorous examinations, and then graduate them all to a professional sport, saying that they are all equivalent. Yet, in many ways this is exactly what the American public is asking of its undergraduate colleges and universities.

Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t end with graduation. It goes on. Credentials take the place of judgment in the business and academic hiring world. The recommendations of the highly credentialed analysts at the Wall Street brokerage houses were accepted unquestioningly in the cases of Enron, Tyco, Global Crossings, and all the other high-level corporate disasters. So were those of the accountants at Arthur Anderson, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and innumerable banks. Everyone focused on “credentials” — reported profits — rather than on the process of the businesses at hand. Instead, the financial world went on focusing on paper credentials, just as the education world seems prepared to do.

Credentials have become more and more divorced from the abilities and results they were once supposed to measure and have in fact become almost a substitute for ability and accomplishment, yet so long as this continues, we as a society will continue to pay the high price for that practice.