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“appreciating” secretaries, “appreciating” teachers

pamela — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:54:48 +0000

Last week was Administrative Professionals’ Day. On this day, you are supposed to take some time to thank your secretary and/or other support staff, usually with a gift or lunch or whatever. A Facebook friend who shall remain nameless expressed bafflement at the existence of said holiday, claiming that administrative professionals should not get extra recognition just for “doing their jobs.”

Of course, my mind immediately snapped to Teachers’ Appreciation Day/Week, which is coming up soon, actually. Would the Facebook friend be as quick to reject that holiday, on the grounds that teachers are also merely doing their jobs? Fully expecting to get flamed, I made a comment to this effect on the Facebook thread. Oh no, she replied, teachers deserve the extra recognition because they are so badly underappreciated, underpaid, and they “make us who we are today.”

Well this is where I almost spat my drink at my monitor. I have no doubt that these sentiments are very, very widely held. But they are unjustified, or at least are very hasty generalizations. Contrary to popular belief, teachers on the whole are not in fact paid badly at all. The Cato Institute has done research in this area; see especially this report and this post. And teachers do “make us who we are today” — but “who we are today” is unfortunately a population whose members often don’t read, write, or do math sufficiently well even to carry out basic life activities, and “who we are today” is a country that spends more on education than ever before — with no apparent payoff, except to teachers and other bureaucrats.

And, just on a personal note, I think I’d rather be the person who I would have been in the absence of about 1/3 of the teachers I had in K-12. Surprisingly many of them were not only incompetent, but petty, power-hungry, and even vindictive. I remain angry and bitter about those damaging years, and it’s part of why I’m so interested in education now (Maybe I’ll write a whole post on my anger and bitterness another time). But, because it was a wealthy area, most of the students did just fine academically — despite these bad teachers, not because of them. And, every year, the parents were coughing up expensive gifts and gift certificates for the poor, underappreciated teachers. I reckon that many of the teachers who truly deserve some extra appreciation — those who work with severely underprivileged students, those whose schools are unsafe, those who don’t make a decent living — are those who are, sadly, the least likely to receive it, holiday or not.

So I don’t know what to make of this situation. Obviously, I’m not a big fan of Teachers’ Appreciation Day (in fact, it makes me stabby). But, then, are both Administrative Professionals’ Day and Teachers’ Appreciation Day unjustified? Or is there some important difference between the two professions that I’m overlooking? The intentions are probably good — to draw attention and recognition to female-gendered, often marginalized lines of work. But perhaps these holidays are now past their prime. If you know an administrative professional or a teacher who is genuinely exceptional, you should thank him or her on your own time and on your own way. To suggest that all of these professionals are worthy of recognition and rewards just for existing is not fair to the ones who truly are.

unintended consequences: Stupak Amendment & miscarriages edition

pamela — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:44:17 +0000

One of the most interesting things I have read about the Stupak Amendment is this:

Will the Stupak Amendment Affect Insurance Coverage for Miscarriages? I Think So

Sadly, the author experienced a miscarriage recently. In her case, as sometimes happens, the fetus had yet to be expelled. She was put in the difficult position of either waiting for that to occur naturally, or choosing either a chemical abortion or D&C. Each had different risks and costs. The author, like many women who miscarry, chose to undergo the procedure.

Although the fetus is this sort of case is deceased, there is some question (and dispute) as to how the procedure to remove it is typically described medically, or how it is supposed to be documented. It may be described as an abortion. If so, then the Stupak Amendment (which I wrote about earlier this week) would forbid public funding of these procedures even in the case of miscarriage.

It is doubtful that even the most ardent of pro-lifers intended to limit access to post-miscarriage medical care. The mainstream feminists who claim that generous reproductive care, including abortion, is a non-negotiable when it comes to health care reform are using this unintended consequence as evidence that the government should generously fund care but stay the heck out of decisions between a woman and her doctor.

However, that position is not politically viable right now. And, I was taken aback at the naïveté of one commenter who wrote to the OP: “Your eloquent post points out the problems when legislators do not adequately consider complex issues.” The legislators are trying to consider complex issues, but no result will ever be satisfactory to everyone, and there will always be unintended consequences. If they try to write in miscarriage exceptions to Stupak, the pro-life contingency will object that such measures will be used to cover up actual abortions with miscarriage paperwork. Or, women will start trying to induce miscarriages themselves at home, so that the care afterward will be covered by their publicly funded health plans.

There will not be any no strings attached public funding of reproductive health care anytime soon. Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, take a look at how legislative bodies have always functioned in the past, and take a guess as to whether you will be happy with how they handle bungle this one.

thoughts on NOW and the Stupak Amendment

pamela — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:15:17 +0000

Disclaimer: I haven’t been following the health care stuff too closely, because it is exhausting, but this particular aspect interests me.

The National Organization for Women is very upset because the Stupak Amendment passed and is part of the health care bill that passed the house the other day. According to the NYT, the Amendment “would impose tight restrictions on abortions that could be offered through a new government-run insurance plan and through private insurance that is bought using government subsidies.” According to the LA Times,

The compromise amendment, offered Saturday by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), in effect bans abortion coverage by all plans that are purchased using taxpayer dollars. Abortions could still be obtained by policyholders who pay their entire premiums without government assistance or by individuals receiving federal subsidies in the event of rape, incest or danger to the mother’s life.

Since the Amendment was included in the bill that was passed last night, NOW sees this as a “bill that strips millions of women of their existing access to abortion.” More from NOW:

NOW calls on the Senate to pass a health care bill that respects women’s constitutionally protected right to abortion and calls on President Obama to refuse to sign any health care bill that restricts women’s access to affordable, quality reproductive health care.

NOW is so into universal health care, but then they act all surprised and indignant when the political processes which govern the birth of any such scheme return a result which — surprise! — reflects the preferences of the sizable pro-life constituency in this country. Just imagine: If you (or your constituents) thought that abortion was murder and therefore the very antithesis of health care, you would vote to minimize directly or indirectly state-funded abortions, too.

Furthermore, it’s unwise for NOW to keep pressing the point that the Amendment keeps women from using “their own money” to access abortion care. It’s not clear whether NOW is counting federal assistance as “their own money” (I think they are). But, even if they’re not, it’s important to remember that this hugely expensive (don’t even try to deny it) plan does lots and lots of things with money that belongs to other people. So while women seeking abortions may be prevented from spending their money in that way, there are tons and tons of taxpayers who are also prevented from spending their money in ways of their choosing. The “their own money” point does not support opposition to this particular bill, it supports opposition to expanding the government’s role in health care in the first place.

Finally, obviously this Bill is not itself an amendment to the constitution and it does not abridge the right to have an abortion. True, it would not in theory respect a right to have an abortion on the government’s tab, and thereby on the tab of pro-choicers, but no such right exists. The Stupak Amendment seems to be the logical extension of the Hyde Amendment, which has long prohibited the funding of abortion using federal Health & Human Services monies. Since now a more expansive health care program is on the table, a more expansive abortion funding policy is needed.

(Of course, I am still ardently pro-choice, and always will be. But nothing regarding positions on the state funding of abortions follows merely from that).

Editing to add: Megan McArdle has some cogents thoughts on this matter in this post: The Health of the Nation

competition is as american as apple pie, except in education

pamela — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:29:41 +0000

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvaJYYeXf70]

Recently, I saw the above video on Facebook. Basically, it illustrates the argument that a public option in health care would compete against private insurers to the benefit of those covered under both kinds of plans. This argument seems like it is supposed to appeal to the market-minded among us, who are into competition amongst businesses. And “competition is as American as apple pie,” quoth MoveOn.org

Now, I’m going to take the liberty of guessing that alot of people who are in favor of the public option also oppose school choice (in my experience, this is true, but feel free to take issue with this assumption in your comments). To the extent that their arguments for the public option are really about competition, their opposing school choice — which promotes competition amongst schools — is inconsistent with their position on health care.

Alternatively, perhaps this just exposes the fact that the proponents of the public option really don’t care about competition much at all, that it was just a strategic argument aimed at pro-business types, and that really they favor something about the state provision of important goods and services, like health care and education.

Thoughts anyone? I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who favor the public option but oppose school choice. Please explain to me your real position on competition, as I am confused. Thanks in advance.

boycotting marriage, part two

pamela — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:13:51 +0000

I was thinking about my previous boycotting marriage post some more, and I figured out that this is a great chance to give a little ethics lesson on deontic verdicts.

“Deontic” just means something like “related to duties.” In this case, we’re interested in moral duties, as opposed to legal duties, or some other kind. Different moral theories can be distinguished by what deontic verdicts they issue — that is, moral theory A might say that abortion is wrong, while moral theory B says abortion is sometimes ok.

There are four basic classes of deontic verdict that a moral theory can issue on any given action.

Impermissible: If an action is morally impermissible, that means that you cannot do it, from the moral point of view. Synonyms for the impermissible category include “wrong” and “forbidden.”
Permissible: If an action is morally permissible, that means that you can do it, from the moral point of view. Synonyms include “right” and “optional.”
Obligatory: If an action is morally obligatory, that means that you must do it, from the moral point of view. Synonyms include “required” and “duty” (as in, “feeding your children is your duty”). Notice that “right” can be a synonym for both “permissible” and “obligatory.” When people say that something is “right,” their statements are ambiguous, and we have to figure out from the context whether they mean “permissible” or “obligatory.” For instance, if someone says “gay marriage is right,” they probably mean that, for any given couple, gay marriage is morally permissible, not that it is morally obligatory.
Supererogatory: This word describes actions that go above and beyond what is morally required in a praiseworthy way. For instance, you probably think the acts of charity performed by Mother Theresa were supererogatory. But not all morally permissible actions are also supererogatory. For instance, eating Lucky Charms instead of Golden Grahams for breakfast is permissible, but there’s nothing supererogatory about it.

Got all that? Great! So here’s the point I really wanted to make:

I propose (tentatively!!) the moral principle that symbolic gestures of solidarity with disadvantaged, unlucky or oppressed groups of people are supererogatory. That means it’s great if you do them, but you’re not morally blameworthy if you don’t. I suggested before that heterosexual people postponing or even renouncing marriage in support of their homosexual friends and neighbors is indeed a symbolic gesture (since their act in itself is unlikely to actually change things). Heterosexual people who don’t choose to engage in the symbolic gesture and who do marry (like me) are not violating a moral duty, but are merely opting not to do the supererogatory thing.

Other possible examples of symbolic gestures of solidarity include those rubber Livestrong wristbands, wearing black to mourn the dead, and changing your Twitter avatar green in support of Iranian demonstrators. These things are probably supererogatory, but not morally obligatory.

Can anyone think of a counterexample to my principle that symbolic gestures of solidarity are supererogatory? You’d need to come up with a situation in which a symbolic gesture does NOT seem supererogatory — either a symbolic gesture that seems to be morally impermissible or, on the other hand, a gesture that seems morally obligatory.

boycotting marriage

pamela — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:52:23 +0000

I am a heterosexual woman who recently married a man. I also support same-sex marriage. So, I feel pretty torn about taking part in a valuable social practice that is systematically, perniciously and deliberately (thanks to DOMA and the like) discriminatory.

I have heard of heterosexual couples who are engaging in a marriage boycott of sorts by refusing to consider marrying until same-sex marriage is widely legalized. Ok, so maybe the only couple who I’ve actually heard is doing that is Brangelina, but I’m sure there are others.

This is a nice idea on the face of it, and I would never go so far as to say that it’s silly or wrong to do. But, the trouble is that boycotting marriage isn’t like boycotting businesses. When people boycott a business, the business is pressured into complying with the boycotters’ wishes because otherwise they will lose lots of money. Marriage, alas, is not like that. The local governments will lose only trivial sums of money from the issuance of marriage licenses (I think?), and they might even stand to gain tax revenues if people remain unmarried, depending on the financial particulars of the would-be wed.

On the other hand, if most or all people who support same-sex marriage quit marrying for the time being, it would kind of culturally surrender the institution of marriage to those who oppose same-sex marriage (and who would presumably continue to marry as usual). The same-sex marriage opponents could spin the observation that predominantly (conservatively) religious people marry as further evidence that marriage is some kind of First Amendment protected religious practice, or that it has deep and inviolable historical roots. And, there is a risk that unmarried heterosexual same-sex marriage advocates won’t be taken seriously, for the reason that the terms of an agreement should be set only by those who engage in it. It might be strategically awkward for unmarried heterosexual and homosexual people to collectively defend same-sex marriage on the grounds that marriage is a great institution that should be available to all, when few of them have ever even experienced actually being married. Paradoxically, if that many people quit marrying, marriage could look less and less like the basic and necessary human right that the same-sex marriage supporters so strongly believe that it is.

It seems, then, that the value of boycotting marriage must be symbolic. It is a show of solidarity with those same-sex couples who also wish to marry but cannot do so. Unfortunately, if widely practiced, it might actually have the counterproductive effect of allowing gay marriage opponents to appropriate the institution of marriage.

If you are a married heterosexual or a heterosexual planning to marry, there are lots of other ways of standing in solidarity with those denied the right to marry. The whole reason that many homosexual people want to marry in the first place is because there are significant benefits attached to marriage — financial, legal, social, psychological, etc etc. I’m not sure it’s worth it, all things considered, to deny oneself and one’s family those benefits for a symbolic gesture. Celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt might draw appreciable attention to the cause by boycotting marriage, but your average Jack and Jill probably won’t. If you care that much about the issue, why not set aside some money from your wedding or vacation budget and send it to an organization that supports grassroots same-sex marriage initiatives?

And if you need a little motivation to do that, watch the Courage Campaign’s “Don’t Divorce Us” video. The specific message is outdated since the Proposition 8 vote already took place, but it is still just as moving.