Money is not the way to motivate

(((Ayn Rand is wrong; more money does not lead to better performance in skilled work; autonomy, mastery, and making a contribution matter more.)))

American-style capitalism, particularly as it is instantiated in IP laws (see especially the DMCA), operates on the basic assumption that innovation only happens with the promise of a financial payoff. Never mind that money did not motivate Einstein to work out relativity, or Oppenheimer to develop the bomb. Why is it that we think the people who really do everything for money (if there even are such people) are the people we want making decisions?

In any case, Dan Pink has a really interesting, very short talk (animated by RSA), in which he makes the case that, when you put enough money on the table that work is no longer about money (a point you reach fairly quickly), then the other factors matter more: autonomy, mastery, and contributing to something bigger than yourself. I don't generally go in for the sort of stuff that Pink does, but there's something really interesting about this when I think of it in terms of those of us in academics. Specifically, we get scared and angry about financial insecurity; we do things often for the express purpose of getting more money, but that doesn't mean we do it completely or entirely well; we get frustrated at how undervalued we are by society, when no one expects doctors to work for peanuts, but we're supposed to because we "believe" in what we're doing. But the truth is, we keep doing it. For some of us, it's partly because we have no options. But I think Pink's analysis gets at the heart of the frustration of teachers when people who aren't us start trying to tell us how to do our jobs, as if our jobs are the kind of menial labor where an increase in pay would improve performance, but instead of increasing our pay, they take away our autonomy (teach these things, teach them this way), our mastery (no one *needs* mastery like you have, certainly not your students, and by the way, you're not any good at it and we're not going to pay you either money or respect for extending and maintaining your mastery), and our contributions (we in the humanities are a smaller and smaller and smaller part of even ostensibly "liberal" education, because we are not "practical" in that narrow utilitarian way).

If people want better schools, and I'm betting this applies in some way to K-12 also, stop telling us how to do our jobs. Stop making us feel incompetent or lazy for wanting some control over what we do, especially when you're going to hold us responsible for it. Stop treating education like a factory whose output is functional, healthy, normalized, trained-for-the-workforce-but-also-fully-actualized people. Not only are these contradictory sorts of goals, but people are not factory outputs, not widgets, not burgers, and not the customers who ordered the burgers or buy the widgets. Analogies of liberal education (which is to be distinguished from job training) to manufacturing or service utterly obscure the truly human aspects of the process.

And they only make us hate our jobs more, because it's not what we signed up for. It's not what we spent years in grad school for. And it's not what many of us are still paying off thousands of dollars of debt to have gotten.

The Red(coat)s are Coming!

(((More accusations of "socialism;" if you don't actually say who you mean, you don't have to explain why your use of the term is accurate or appropriate, or maybe not even what you mean by it.)))

Politico.com has a note on Spencer Bachus' ominous hinting that the Soviet Union left behind plants in the US Congress to turn us commie long after the Old Girl bit the dust. They were so clever that way.

Unfortunately, Politico actually takes this somewhat seriously.

“Socialism” is one of the more elastic nouns in the political lexicon. In the broadest sense, it defines a system that provides for state ownership of some private industries and governmental commitments to providing direct housing, health care, education and income supports.

To many on the left, it’s a relatively benign — if outdated — term, representing an activist, interventionist government that prioritizes economic security over the unfettered freedom of the marketplace.

To many on the right, it’s practically an epithet — suggesting a return to Soviet-style Communism or a leap toward a hyper-regulated European brand of capitalism that stifles innovation and hikes taxes.

But this is already to cede too much ground to Bachus's rationality and integrity. It's not "practically an epithet;" it is an epithet. Calling someone a socialist in the US is roughly equivalent to standing up in church and saying that some people sitting in nearby pews worship the devil; or in this case, like someone in the choir saying there are some unnamed choir members who worship the devil. Everyone agrees devil worship is bad, or at least no one is going to go standing up for the devil, so instead of defending devil worship, everyone trips over themselves to prove they don't worship the devil. The accusation is already the damning evidence, so the burden of proof is on the accused.

Enter the godless [sic] commie.

But socialism is not devil worship. Unless maybe poverty, unemployment, illness, and the desire for a meaningful life outside of wage slavery are sins. In that case, sign me up with whoever calls bullshit.

Anyway, I don't think Bachus pulled that number out of his behind. I expect him to name his names. That's why he came out with a number. He knows who he's prepared to make some kind of case about. So let's have 'em.

Oops, Indeed: Quechup Can't Stop Spamming

(((Quechup; Cheesy social networks; Spam; Bad business practices; Bad apologies you shouldn't have to make in the first place; And then making them twice: Oops!)))

So I found myself signed up for Quechup when a friend fell victim to their efforts to sign up his whole address book (this has also happened to your humble narrator, alas, but with a different site). It seemed silly, but I'm always curious about these things, so I gave it a go just to take a look. Haven't been back to the site since, and I honestly don't remember if I've tried to unsub from their mailing list, but I honestly don't care since I ignore it, anyway, and I think most of it is going to the trash, at this point.

So when I received Quechup's apology for sending too many and the wrong emails, I didn't feel apologized-to. I just thought it was hilarious. Imagine being the person who had to write the following with a straight face:

Ooops... First of all a big, big apology for sending the February newsletter more than once and for sending the 2007 newsletter! This was due to an admin error at Quechup, needless to say those responsible will be making the tea for the next month. We hope it didn't cause too much inconvenience and promise it won't happen again.

You've got to be kidding me. Making the tea? I guess if Quechup had a reputation to ruin or salvage, it might matter.

But here's the best part: I got the apology twice. No, seriously. On the same day.