Is Gun Control Compatible With Liberty?

I think it’s important to try and catch yourself in contradictions. (We’re all made up of them. We’re like Douglas Adams’s Electric Monks, who - their inventor brags - can “hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any irritating system errors.” Walt Whitman knew this too; he just didn’t care.) I think it helps you grow and develop as a thinker and person, helps you become aware of your prejudices and clarify what it is you actually believe. And recently, in the wake of the tragic school shooting in Florida, I have noticed that I believe two seemingly contradictory things:

• People have the right to do anything that does not directly harm others.

• There should be greater restrictions on gun ownership.

How can I believe both of these things? Well, I’m not really sure. This post is my attempt to work through that question for myself. So in the event that this piece of writing fails to be cohesive or make any convincing points, I offer the lame defense that I never really expected it to, anyway.

A quick caveat: this isn’t about whether gun control measures will work or not. They have worked in other places; there’s no real reason to think they wouldn’t work in the United States as well, if implemented at a federal level and in good faith. But this is about whether these gun control measures are ethically justifiable or not, whether they are compatible with the principle of liberty.

My first thought is that we shouldn’t treat “liberty over security” as an absolute maxim. Sure, it makes for a nice slogan, and I like to break out that Benjamin Franklin quote just as much as anyone, but maybe the truth is that liberty and security are always going to be in tension with each other. We can’t just decide once and for all that we are always going to side with liberty (or with security, for that matter) - that’s a recipe for absurdity. We need to look at particular situations. And there are plenty of cases where we have erred on the side of security - the PATRIOT Act, for instance. But when it comes to gun ownership, I think we may be out of balance in the other direction.

Formerly the most famous "person who is on money
but was never president"; probably annoyed
with Lin-Manuel Miranda

There are always costs to freedom. I am just not willing to accept the particular costs of this particular freedom. I suppose that’s what it fundamentally comes down to.

But there is this attitude out there among Second Amendment people (I’ve heard it said that our country is divided into First Amendment people and Second Amendment people, although I think there’s also an interesting case to be made that our real political schism has to do more with the tension between the Ninth and Tenth Amendments) that we always choose liberty over security. Or that we are supposed to. That this principle is somehow baked into the crust of American pie. And that’s what really bothers me. The truth is that, as un-sexy as it may be, security is a valuable end in itself, and we are already in the habit of restricting freedom in order to achieve it. We wouldn’t be doing anything categorically different by enacting stricter regulations on guns.

Think of driving. We treat a drivers’ license as a privilege that can be taken away if your driving is too great a threat to the safety of others. Granted, there is no “right to drive” specifically enumerated in the Constitution. But there were also no cars when the Constitution was written. (Nor were there automatic weapons, for that matter, so the redefinition of “arms” to include things that the Founding Fathers, as imaginative as they may have been, couldn’t have even dreamt up is certainly questionable.) And there’s also that pesky Ninth Amendment again. Just because it’s not listed in the Constitution doesn’t mean it can’t be considered as a right. So why don't we ever talk about the "right to drive?" Why don't we ever hear that depriving citizens of the freedom to operate a vehicle (for the sake of  others' safety) is an affront to American values?

I suppose there is a distinction to be made between taking away someone’s ability to do something and to possess something. As any fifteen-year-old with rich parents can tell you, it’s possible to own a car and not drive it. Just as it is possible to own a gun and never shoot it (though it might displease Anton Chekhov.) But this example does show how willing we are - in other specific cases - to choose security over liberty. There is no movement (that I know of) to reinstate the “driving rights” of citizens who have been convicted of multiple DUIs or vehicular homicide.

And there are plenty of items that it is illegal to possess. Most obviously, substances like cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine are banned at a federal level. (I mean, so is marijuana, but not really. The only person who doesn’t seem to know this is Jeff Sessions.) There were states that banned the energy drink/alcoholic beverage/Spanglish bastardization Four Loko because it was “too dangerous.” Other places ban fireworks. And in perhaps the most ridiculous example, there is a chocolate-with-a-toy-inside-thing called a Kinder Surprise egg that brings joy to children across Europe but is illegal in the United Sates - because of the risk that children could choke on the non-food part.

Anything else besides a gun that killed nineteen children in a single incident would be banned immediately and without controversy.

Also banned in the US and Canada.

I suppose you could make the case that all of these bans are unjust, that they are examples of government overreach, that they only prove how much we already encroach upon the liberty of individuals to live as they please rather than provide any justification for doing so any further. And I’m sure there are plenty of libertarian-minded thinkers out there who would make that point. But it would be a rather extreme thing to say. It would mean arguing that meth and heroin should be legal. That position is out there, but it is at the fringes of our political discourse. Not quite inside the Overton Window.

The view that automatic and semi-automatic weapons ought to be legal and accessible, in spite of the risk they pose to public safety, ought to be a view held by a minority of extremists. But it has been made artificially mainstream by the NRA, the politicians who listen to them, and a whole bunch of bad faith.

There is definitely an all-or-nothing attitude out there when it comes to gun control, which has been mocked for years but has not disappeared. Some lawful gun-owners do legitimately believe that liberals want to take away all their guns, that what is being proposed is something similar to the mandatory gun-buyback program that Australia implemented after the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre. (A program which was, by the way, extremely successful.) And I have been disappointed to see some liberals out there lately start to say (or, usually, Tweet) things like, “Yes, I do want to take all your guns.” (Or “Why do you need a gun anyway?” Which is very much not the point. Does anyone need a 52-oz soda? Of course not. But Michael Bloomberg is still a putz for trying to take them away. [This is, by the way, one of the only issues on which I disagree vehemently with Leslie Knope.])

No, we ought to be absolutely clear about what specific policy changes we are actually advocating. (And not use euphemisms like “common sense gun control measures” either, because that is a totally meaningless phrase.) So what do I believe we should do in response to mass shootings? Two things: I think we should make NCIS background checks mandatory in all gun sales (a measure which is supported by something like 97% of the population, which means that it is only that fringe liberty-uber-alles crowd that disagrees with it) - and I think we should ban the sale of all semi-automatic weapons, such as the infamous AR-15.

The "child size" bit is great, though.

This second measure is probably the more controversial one. (Marco Rubio claims it is “well outside the mainstream,” though that seems like a stretch as well.) But again, I don’t think it is anything unprecedented. Let’s extend things outward a bit. Let's stop talking about “guns” and start thinking about it in terms of “weapons.” We all accept that there must be certain weapons that it is illegal for a private citizen to possess. Is there anyone out there who would argue that I have the right to own a nuclear bomb? Do I have the right to enrich uranium in my bedroom (and do all the other crap making a nuclear bomb entails - I don’t really know what it is and it’s probably not a good idea to look it up right now, especially since I’m currently on a plane) so long as I never actually use the weapon? It’s an absurd example, but that’s the point. I feel pretty safe in assuming that no one would argue for my right to possess a nuclear bomb. (Anyone who would needs to get to know me a bit better first. The same is true of anybody who believes teachers should be armed.)

Then a bit further down the continuum of weaponry, we have machine guns - fully-automatic weapons - which were successfully banned in the 80s. The idea of moving the legal/illegal line just a bit further down the continuum to include semi-automatic weapons doesn’t seem like it should be all that controversial. It is not as though we are completely forsaking liberty, not as though an AR-15 is synonymous with the abstract principle of freedom. I guess it is a symbol to a lot of people. But are we really willing to accept so great a cost for the sake of a symbol? Symbols are important, sure, but so is the well-being and safety of our population. We're not a young, single woman moving to New York City in a sitcom from the 90's - we can't have it all. We have to make a choice and accept the consequences. 

Yes, gun control means a little less liberty. I think I can live with that.

Let Them Eat Cake. Literally.

I used to believe that government benefits for food assistance should come in the form of actual, physical food rather than money, rather than the famous “food stamps” or the cards that have succeeded them. (I used to know a guy who referred to his EBT card as his “free card.”) Now the Trump administration wants to overhaul the SNAP program so that it does just that. The problem is: I no longer believe it’s a good idea. Now, this isn’t just me being contrarian, changing my position so that I don’t accidentally end up on the same side as Trump - the way I used to with my parents when I was a “rebellious” teenager. I’m pretty sure my thinking on this issue changed before Trump was even elected; it has just never really come up until now. But I suppose that doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether I actually have a decent point or not.

First, let’s be clear that this isn’t a question of whether the government should provide food assistance to its citizens or not. That’s a separate issue. All this plan does is change the form of that assistance. Nor is it guaranteed that the new plan will be cheaper than the current system. The Trump administration claims it will be, but other analysts have suggested that the money it saves by reducing benefits will be offset by increased distribution costs. It is simply more expensive and cumbersome to send boxes of cereal to a bunch of people than it is to send each of them a card with money on it.

I was disappointed to learn there was already a band out
there called Government Cheese.

But that is not my real objection to the change. My real objection has to do with the principle of freedom of choice. EBT cards allow recipients to go into a grocery store and choose for themselves which foods they want to purchase. There are some restrictions (as Eminem famously stated, “these food stamps don’t buy diapers”) but for the most part people are free to choose the products that they want. There is a sense of independence and dignity that goes along with this. And I think that anyone who believes in conservative or libertarian principles should concede that if we are going to have something like the SNAP program, then it is better to have individuals making choices than to have the government choosing for them. Government-brand cereal distributed directly to poor households sounds like something from Paul Ryan’s unfinished socialist-dystopia novel.

Of course, a system where people can choose for themselves what foods to purchase is inevitably going to lead to people making “irresponsible choices.” The guy with the “free card” seemed to use it exclusively to buy energy drinks, chips, and candy. And everyone you talk to has an example of this: the person they know, or used to know, or knew someone who knew, or happened to see one time who was using EBT (or a similar program like WIC) to buy something ridiculous and unhealthy. A welfare queen, usually. Soda instead of water; cake instead of broccoli. And that right there is the main argument against the current system of distributing SNAP benefits. Some use it to argue for greater restrictions; others, the complete elimination of the program. And some, like my past-self and the Trump administration, use the same basic reasoning to claim that we should just provide SNAP recipients with food directly.

But that’s the thing about freedom. It necessarily includes the freedom to make dumb choices as well as responsible ones. And really, who cares? I believe in something like John Stuart Mill’s “harm principle” - the only valid reason to restrict one person’s liberty is that they are doing something that harms someone else. And who is being hurt when an EBT recipient chooses to buy pizza or fried chicken instead of vegetables? No one. (Except for the person themselves, and even that is arguable.) We are bothered by the idea of it, the principle of it. But the truth is that it doesn’t actually affect me at all how someone else chooses to spend their money - regardless of where they got that money.

The usual rebuttal that would be offered here is something like: “Well, I pay taxes so it’s really my money they’re spending so it is my business.” But that’s a terrible argument for a couple of reasons. First, everyone pays taxes in some form or another. Even those who are unemployed - even children - pay taxes at the point of consumption. So it doesn’t give you any more right to speak on a subject than anyone else. (Unless we’re going to say that wealthy people have more right to speak than others, that your freedom of speech is proportional to the amount of tax you pay, and that seems like a dangerous path.)

Pictured: paid spokesmen for the insidious broccoli industry.

Second, the whole point of taxation is that it ceases to be “your” money once it is taken from you; it becomes the government’s money. Now, of course you can take the libertarian position that this constitutes theft, but again, it’s theft from everyone. And it’s used for everything. I don’t claim any right to stop the military from using “my” money to build bombs or conduct drone strikes in the Middle East. The way our system works is that I voice my opposition to those things by voting for a representative who will argue against them (assuming I can find one). Yes, it’s indirect and imperfect, but it’s the best system we have come up with so far.

Finally, the “taxpayer” argument is totally disingenuous because it doesn’t actually address how anyone is harmed by one person’s irresponsible choices. All it says is, essentially: I live in a society with this person and I am made uncomfortable by the choices that they are making. Which is the same argument that social conservatives use against homosexuality or recreational marijuana. It’s also one that could be used to argue against alcohol, tobacco, country music, or wearing Crocs. And it’s a line of thinking that is totally opposed to the principle of individual freedom. It’s “I don’t like it, therefore it shouldn’t be allowed.” It’s “your rights end where my feelings begin.” And there is nothing in the Constitution that says that individual rights cease to exist when one receives government benefits.

And, besides, in a larger sense, we all receive government benefits. We benefit from the security of having a powerful military and police force, from the convenience of well-maintained infrastructure. I’d even argue we all benefit from a greater sense of stability that comes from welfare programs like SNAP. It's really just a question of degree. But that is tangential. The point is: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are supposed to be fundamental rights, not privileges that must be earned.

Admittedly, it is true that no one makes choices in a vacuum. One’s choice to buy unhealthy foods rather than healthy ones may have some effect on others: it may lead to health problems in the future, it may make one less productive at work, it may subsidize the sugar industry. But we have got to strike a balance between the good of society and the rights of the individual. Because otherwise, all of us could be condemned. All of us make choices that could be deemed socially irresponsible. I go for long drives and burn up fossil fuel; I buy things from Walmart and Amazon; I use plastic water bottles even though I have perfectly good reusable ones.

“First they came for the welfare queens . . .”

The World's Biggest Try-Baby

As someone who grew up in New England, a passive Patriots fan, I was surprised to learn that the rest of the country hated Tom Brady. Now, I was never naive enough to think that they liked Brady. I figured they didn’t think or care about him much at all; I figured they regarded him pretty much the way I regard Lebron James. Acknowledgment of talent; slight personal dislike that can probably be explained away as jealousy. But then - somewhere between 2008 and 2012 (significant years in both politics and Boston sports) - I found out that people in other parts of the country actively disliked Brady. Belichick too. They saw the Pats as the villians, the bad guys who need to be stopped. Camp MVP from Heavyweights; Globo Gym from Dodgeball; the nameless other team from The Bad News Bears. (Okay, they have a name. But I guarantee you no one, with the possible exception of my dad, knows it without looking it up.)

Yeah, Ben Stiller plays basically the same character in both movies.

For me, it was one of those moments of forced introspection that are occasionally thrust upon us in life, as in this brilliant Mitchell and Webb clip where a low-level Nazi begins to wonder, “Are we the baddies?”

But the great thing about sports is how arbitrary it all is. There is no real reason to support one NFL team over another; they don’t really symbolize anything. Being a Patriots fan isn’t actually morally reprehensible the way being a Nazi is. What is interesting to look at, though, is what the team, its coach, and its quarterback seem to represent or signify to all the people who have strong feelings about them. And I don’t think any of the usual explanations are satisfactory here - or at least not wholly satisfactory.

First, it’s not political. Now, I will admit this got a bit more complicated around Super Bowl LI, when the culture seemed to decide all at once that the Patriots were synonymous with Donald Trump. The red hat in Brady’s locker; the come-from-behind victory without ever having been an “underdog”; the support of white nationalists like Richard Spencer; the inability of America circa 2017 to have anything that wasn’t about Trump. A perfect storm, really. But the Brady-hate did not start there; if anything, it was that pre-existing resentment that allowed him to be so easily subsumed by the anti-Trump movement.

Nor do I think the Spygate or Deflategate scandals really have that much to do with it. They didn’t help the team’s national image by any means, and they may have changed your straight-laced, church-going Grandmother’s mind - but, as a culture, I think we tolerate (and even like) a certain amount of cheating in our sports. It keeps things exciting. And no one seems to hate all the baseball players who have been caught taking steroids - or, at least, they don’t hate them for taking steroids. A cheating scandal can amplify existing dislike, but doesn’t create hatred out of nothing. (I think this is basically true of all celebrity scandals, by the way, which is why there are people out there who still like Chris Brown.)

And it’s not just “they hate us because we win.” Because we don’t hate every team or individual who is successful; this isn’t The Fountainhead or "Harrison Bergeron" (or whatever piece of dystopian fiction happens to align with your politics and/or attention span). People didn’t hate Michael Jordan in the 90s or Wayne Gretzsky in the 80s; no one really seems to hate the Golden State Warriors that much today. Outside of sports, we don’t hate Lin-Manuel Miranda or Donald Glover or Kelly Clarkson. In some cases, we even root for people who are already successful; we say things like “good for them!”

But this explanation seems to get closer than any others. We don’t hate all “winners,” but we do hate a certain subset of them, which includes Tom Brady. And I think the group of winners that we really save our most virulent hatred for are the triers.

Because it’s a schoolyard-to-graveyard social truth: it’s not cool to try.

*

Some other examples of triers who inspire antipathy:

• Elon Musk - ever since he launched a Tesla Roadster into space, he’s gotten a lot of backlash suggesting that his “billionaire superhero” shtick is contrived and disingenuous
• Taylor Swift - often called “fake” and accused of dong everything (including dating men) for the sake of cultivating a certain image and selling records (as if that wasn’t true of, like, most musicians)
• Bono - despite raising a lot of money for good causes, was famously depicted by South Park as an actual, anthropomorphic “piece of crap”
• Hillary Clinton - probably the most obvious example on the planet; literally lost an election to the worst candidate of all time because people found her “forced” and “unnatural”
• That kid from your middle school who studied for every test, participated in every single extracurricular activity, and always won the Spelling Bee

Now, none of these people are universally hated. But they are defined by their unlikeability. Even those who do like them have to start out their defenses with, “Now, I know he/she is annoying, but...” And then they will go on to spell out the person’s good qualities, which we will acknowledge rationally. But they will not penetrate the part of our brains that decide, instinctively and holistically, whether we like someone or not. Triers (or “tryhards,” a term I can’t quite bear to use outside of scare quotes) just aren’t likeable.

Honorable mention goes to this guy. But that might
be partially just because of The Social Network,
which I haven't seen.

Tom Brady, though, doesn’t just study; he also makes sure to get a good night’s sleep and eat a full, balanced breakfast on test day. His significance is that he has subjugated his entire life to the singular goal of being the best quarterback in the world. He doesn’t drink coffee; he doesn’t eat processed foods; he doesn’t seem to give much thought to anything besides football. (Which is why the aforementioned red hat isn’t important.) Tom Brady is the exact opposite of well-rounded; he is the ultimate in specialization.

So that is one reason why it wasn’t all that devastating to watch him and the Patriots lose to the Eagles in Super Bowl LII a couple of weeks ago. (The other reason, for me, is just that I have some positive associations with the Eagles: my eighth-grade crush used to wear an Eagles shirt sometimes; I'm a fan of pop-punk band The Wonder Years, who are from Philly and mention the team in some of their lyrics; also, Philadelphia is just one of my favorite cities that I have visited.) Or at least why it wouldn’t have been that exciting to watch them win. If Tom Brady hadn’t been sacked in those last two minutes, I think he would have led the team to yet another come-from-behind victory. And I would have been happy, yes, but not as thrilled as I could have been. Not nearly as thrilled as I was, for instance, when rookie Malcolm Butler intercepted that pass in Superbowl XLIX.

The narrative would have been, essentially: if you devote your entire life to being good at one specific thing, then you will, in fact, become very good at that one thing.

That’s probably true, but it’s not the sort of thing anyone wants to hear.

*

I’ve always been kind of infatuated with characters who are natural, effortless geniuses, who are perceptive and quick-witted, who can walk into any new situation and handle it deftly. It’s how I like to imagine myself. Some examples: Rick from Rick and Morty; Raphael Barba from Law and Order: SVU; Lip Gallagher from Shameless; Patrick Jane from The Mentalist; Alexander Hamilton from Hamilton (sure, we pretend it’s a play about hard work and determination, but it’s really about genius); every fast-talking, name-dropping avatar of Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing. I’ve never gotten into any of the Sherlock Holmes shows (mostly because I can’t remember which one  is actually supposed to be good), but I assume the people who enjoy them get some similar sense of vicarious satisfaction from watching that brilliant detective solve each case.

The thing that binds all of these characters is that you never see them trying. You never see them sitting down and studying the law, or struggling to learn a new skill, or jotting down a clever one-liner to use at the next available opportunity. It all comes naturally to them; it flows organically out of the people they already are.

The West Wing's Ainsley Hayes - AKA who Tomi Lahren thinks she is.

When I first started working at a particular large, corporate-owned retail store that may or may not have gone bankrupt since, I was given a brochure that listed the company’s “expectations” for their employees. I still remember one of them: employees should be naturally friendly and outgoing without having to “force it.” Of course, that’s an absurd requirement, impossible to police. (And in practice, most people who worked there - myself included - didn’t even bother to “force it” most of the time.) But it does show that the company understood there is a difference between being a certain type of person and trying to be that sort of person. It manifests itself in small, subtle ways. Looks, gestures, words. But it does make a difference.

So sometimes we end up in the absurd position of trying to appear as though we aren’t trying. I mean, imagine your manager at that retail store was attempting to enforce that regulation, and you really needed the job. What else could you do but act the way you imagine someone who was naturally friendly would act? Or say you’re a high school freshman and you want to impress the older kids, but the only thing lamer than a freshman is a freshman who’s trying to impress them. You’d say something like, “I don’t care what you think of me” and try to make it seem like it was actually true. (That sentence, by the way, is one that I’m pretty sure can never be true. If it was true, you wouldn’t be saying it at all.) I remember getting into this exact discussion with a couple of friends right before we entered high school: we were trying to decide whether another friend’s dyeing her hair a crazy color would read as “cool freshman” or “freshman who is trying to be cool.” A very important difference when you’re fourteen.

I think we all know intuitively this is how it works. But we tell ourselves and each other (and, most of all, young people) that it’s not really. We say that what really matters are our actions, our behaviors - the things we can control. And sure, it might be nice if that was the case, but it’s not.

*

It’s cool to know Spanish because you lived in Spain for a year, or because you used to work with a lot of Hispanic people. It’s not cool to know Spanish because you studied flashcards every night - or, God forbid, you used Rosetta Stone or Duolingo.

*

People love to debate whether there is really such a thing as “natural talent” or if all success can be attributed to “hard work” and “determination.” I think this is more ideological than empirical. Neither side is going to be convinced by evidence. If you presented them with proof that the “other side” was right, they’d find some way of insisting that the study was flawed, or that’s not really what they mean by “success,” or there are other factors that must be considered. Some way of rejecting the research and holding onto what they already believe.

Fun fact: J. S. Mill worked so hard as a young man that
he had a nervous breakdown in his early twenties!

For what it’s worth, I do usually tend to find myself on the “natural talent” side when I get into these discussions (aligning myself with thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Aldous Huxley.) But that’s not really what I want to consider here. Let’s assume for a minute that the people who say success is all about “hard work” are right. Let’s assume that human beings are born as blank slates, that it really just takes Malcolm Gladwell’s ten-thousand hours of practice to get good at something. There are still important differences in the way you acquire all those hours of practice - and that has an impact on the end result.

Sam is born into a family of musicians. He’s surrounded by music his entire life. At three, he sits down and plucks curiously at the keys of the piano; at six, his mother teaches him solfege; at ten, he performs his favorite songs in a band with his siblings. Music is an integral part of his daily life. It is joyful, it is social, it is fun. He gets his ten-thousand hours gradually, without even realizing it. When he is an adult, he writes his own songs and can play them on both piano and guitar.

On the other hand, Nick is born into a family that has no interest in music. He is first exposed to it through school and decides that he wants to learn piano. At age eleven, he starts taking lessons. His teacher gives him exercises, scales, drills, and he practices them diligently every night. Even though they are tedious and boring, he works hard at them because they align with his long-term goal of becoming a better pianist. He gets his ten-thousand hours of practice deliberately, by trying. By the time he is an adult, Nick has mastered all the basics of piano and has begun to write his own music.

Who is going to be the better musician? Whose music would you rather listen to?

I think we want to believe that it will be Nick. We want to believe that his work ethic and grit will allow him to surpass someone like Sam with all his unfair advantages.That's the "right" answer. Tortoise and hare and all of that. But if it’s a question of whose album to download, I’m going with Sam every time. And not because he is innately more talented. Certainly not because he has practiced more. Actually, because he has practiced less and played more. Practice implies intention, trying, effort; playing is just what musicians do. The quality of Sam's musical experiences were fundamentally different than the ones Nick had and I have faith that the music he creates will reflect that. (By the way, these two fictional dudes are loosely based on two musicians I knew in high school; if we went to school together, have fun guessing who!) Nick may be a better pianist in a technical sense; he may be good the way Tom Brady is good at being a quarterback. But as both a musician and in our judgments of him as a person, he is hurt by the fact that he tries too hard.

Is any of this fair? Absolutely not. But is it true? I think so.

The Real "Real World"

“That’s how it is in the real world.”

A sentence that people use to justify all sorts of educational practices (most of which I happen to disagree with, for what it’s worth) - not allowing students to redo assignments or turn in late work, punishing them for not bringing a pencil to class, separating them into leveled groups based on (perceived) ability. And there certainly is an interesting discussion to be had about whether the best way to prepare young people for things that are unpleasant in the “real world” is by subjecting them to those things as soon as possible. (Alfie Kohn says no.) But I want to bring up a different point: in many cases, that is not how it works in the real world.

For instance, if I get a bad evaluation from my supervisor, am I fired on the spot? Or am I given specific, constructive feedback and given an opportunity to improve my performance? In every job I’ve ever had or known anyone to have, it has been the latter. And that includes both minimum-wage jobs and my current professional career. But so often we hold students to a different standard - they must get things right the first time or else it doesn’t count. They get a failing grade on an assignment or a test and they just have deal with it.

Or let’s imagine you have been working on an important project at work and are having trouble meeting the deadline. Only the most exacting of bosses (or average bosses under exceptional circumstances, I suppose) would refuse to accept it a moment late or do something dramatic like take your weeks of work and throw it into the garbage without even reading it. Most employers, most of the time, would be willing to compromise, give you a little bit more time to complete the task. They might not be especially thrilled about it, but they would do it. Because on the whole, they would rather see you complete the project than not do it at all.

And yet, when a teacher even considers doing this for a student, he or she is instantly derided as “coddling” the student or “doing them a disservice by failing to hold them accountable.” (Both accusations that have been leveled, indirectly, at me throughout my short tenure in education.) But there is a balance to be struck between learning lessons about accountability and, you know, learning. We must recognize that, when we overemphasize things like deadlines, other things are going to suffer as a result. Too often, I think teachers are willing to sacrifice students’ learning

This guy is not the model of a good teacher.

opportunities for the sake of “making a point” about the real world - which, incidentally, does not even apply to most places in the real world.

The same line is also used to defend tracking, the process of putting students into different groups based on their (perceived) ability levels. But where in the real world does that happen? We don’t live in a caste system; as prescient as Aldous Huxley was in some ways, we do not divide our society into Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons like they do in Brave New World. Sure, we do have divisions of class, but they are much more complex and nuanced than a strict division into discrete groups. Socioeconomic mobility is still possible (though of course it might not be as common as we’d like it to be.)

And I don’t know of any workplaces where workers are actually divided up into different groups based on their performance. Maybe in the short-term, as part of some sort of incentive program, but not permanently. It kind of sounds like something Michael Scott would try on The Office, only to have it backfire spectacularly. And I suspect that any business (or other workplace) that did try to do something like that would probably meet with opposition - and that one of the chief arguments against it would be that it was “treating them like children.” And yet we do it to children under the supposition that it is how they will be treated like adults.

I am reminded of how, every single year in school, we were told that the teachers in the next grade “wouldn’t tolerate this kind of stuff.” In fourth grade, they insisted that the fifth-grade teachers wouldn’t accept late work; in fifth grade, they said the same thing about middle school. In middle school, high school; in high school, college. But they always did. There was a gradual progression of higher expectations, of course, and some individual teachers were stricter than others - but we never quite reached that promised “never." In fact, it seemed like college professors were overall more willing to be lenient than high school teachers had been.

I'm literally both of these at the same time.

And now that I have been living in the “real world” for a couple of years, I can attest that it is even more applicable here than it ever was in school. Everyone I work for (and with) is willing to make compromises. They will listen to my explanations if I fail to get something done or meet their expectations; no one ever barks “No excuses!” They treat me like, you know, a person. And maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but I really don't think that's all that rare.

I used to work with a guy who was five minutes late to work pretty much every time he had a shift. And yes, it was annoying, but gradually we grew to tolerate it because once he was there, he was a pretty good worker and we couldn’t afford to lose him. If that particular business were run like a school, though, he would have been written up, punished, chastised every single time. And I doubt it would have made much of a difference; his lateness was not deliberate, just the result of something-or-other always “coming up.” All it would have done was make him angry and resentful - and hurt his job performance.

The only “real world” that these inflexible, zero-tolerance attitudes prepare anyone for is the impersonal world of other institutions. Walmart; prison; the military. And certainly some students will end up working in places whose rules and expectations make school seem lax in comparison, but not all of them. Some of them - maybe even most of them - will go on to places that are more reasonable, more flexible, more respectful of them as individuals than schools ever were. So why aren’t we doing more to prepare them for that real world?