life – Alan C. Jones

(Daughter to Father)

The idea for this blog originated with a conversation I had with my daughter regarding a new business venture she was orchestrating. Both my wife and I had managerial backgrounds, so, we were questioning her recent business moves—a lot of “what if” statements. She patiently responded to all of these queries with what was in my mind sound business and organizational logic. At some point in the questioning process, I sensed my daughter was becoming somewhat frustrated with the barrage of “what if” questions. In the middle of one of my “what if” questions she made the comment that introduces this blog: “Dad there are no bad decisions. People keep looking for certainty, for safety, for decisions that are not bad. But, you don’t grow in a job, in life, in anything you do without learning from bad decisions. You have to find out what works for you.”

As I thought about my daughter’s comment, I reflected on the countless decisions I had made in my job and personal life. They all fall on a continuum from the highly rational to the highly emotional. As an individual prone to a rational decision-making model, I focused on the decision-making process: identify the problem>gather information>evaluate alternative solutions> and select the option with the highest utility. I discussed my thoughts with my wife who said to me: “Al, you missed the point of what our daughter said.” She went on to explain that it is not the process for making a decision that should be examined, but rather the process you use when it turns out to be a bad decision.

What struck me with this response is the feedback function, which is what my daughter was focusing on, and the most important function in the act of learning, is exactly the function schools pay little attention to. Yes, schools do provide feedback, in fact, mountains of feedback, but, it is in the form of red pen notations or perfunctory recitation of correct answers on a forced choice testing instrument. There is little attention paid to the “why” of a wrong answer, or a process for checking for wrong answers, or for considering how some wrong answers but be corrected in different circumstances. The source of these poorly designed feedback functions is in assessment instruments that are not designed to analyze decisions, but, to identify wrong answers. After school, however, in the real occupational world, bosses are not looking for the right answers, but rather the effective enactment of goals, policies, and plans.

The source of the effective enactment of goals, policies, and plans is a repertoire of leadership and managerial moves that are built around bad decisions or the often-repeated organizational axiom: “I won’t do that again.” This short axiom illustrates workers in the trades and professions engaging in a feedback function that has examined the causes and effects of a process that resulted in bad outcomes. Most importantly, within that process, the worker has determined what he or she ought to have done. Those of us in leadership or managerial roles have our private thought process for analyzing bad decisions—mine in particular was the “five whys tool” which for me always led to the root cause of the bad decision.

Returning to my daughter’s comment, over time the knowledge base developed over the analysis of bad decisions, produces sound professional judgment and what works for you—there are no bad decisions.

“…Real knowledge arises through confrontations with real things. Work, then, offers a broadly available premonition of philosophy. Its value, however, does not lie solely in pointing to some more rarefied experience. Rather, in the best cases, work may itself approach the good sought in philosophy, understood as a way of life: a community of those who desire to know.”

(M.Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft)

For a number of years, I taught a Philosophy of Education course to teachers seeking certification in school administration. For the first couple of years I used a traditional philosophy of education textbook, which, was a compendium of philosophical writings in education from Socrates to Dewey. While I personally enjoyed rereading these philosophers, it was clear to me that the students in front of me found little relevance in the vocabularies and stances of these philosophers.

What did spark some interest in the class was when I related a particular philosophical stance to school policy or a personal experience in the classroom or main office. I responded to these sparks of interest by redesigning my instructional approach into three parts: case study—>concepts/theories—>philosophy. On the one hand I was pleased with the class discussions that were generated by this redesigned pedagogical approach. On the other hand, I felt somewhat guilty that my students were leaving my class unschooled in the particular philosophies covered in my colleagues’ classes.

As I was struggling with how to reconcile both pedagogical approaches to teaching philosophy of education, I came across the quote that begins this blog from M. Crawford’s book, Shop Class as Soul Craft. My epiphany in reading Crawford’s book, was treating philosophy, in his words, as “some more rarefied experience,” rather than as a “confrontations with real things.” My experiences in the classroom and main office, the “work” of schooling, offers, in Crawford’s words, “a broadly available premonition of philosophy.”

The point Crawford in making is all work experiences involve the what and how of getting stuff done. Lurking in the background of all work experiences is a “why.” The why may be reduced to an instrumental outcome—a paycheck—but, also may pose a variety of moral, ethical, intellectual questions that philosophers have grappled with and, which, guide the what and how of enactment.

The error I had made when assigned the course, the same one my colleagues were making, is creating a firewall between philosophy as an academic discipline, and philosophy as a living, breathing, discipline that serve as a means of making collective sense out of the problems that arise in all work experiences. This divide between academic ideals and workplace realities is made worse when a discipline, like philosophy, is presented as embodying eternal truths that, if interpreted correctly, will offer up truthful answers to human and worldly problems.

The pragmatists philosophers, John Dewey being the most notable, countered this academic view with the position that truth is not discovered, but, rather developed based on experience. For pragmatists philosophy is not a discipline so much, as just one more tool, among many academic tools, that come in handy when solving real world problems. Again, returning to Dewey, in his words, it is not what you study, but, rather, habits of thought and methods of inquiry that become the all-important tools in making sense of the day-to-day home and work problems.

Tag: life

“Dad, there are no bad decisions”

“Philosophy at Work”