A Case of Bad Work

by Howard Gardner

Background: For fifteen years, my colleagues and I have studied GoodWork— work that is excellent, engaging, and carried out in an ethical, responsible way (see goodworkproject.org and goodworktoolkit.org). From time to time, I have written about Compromised Work—work that, while not strictly illegal, is carried out in an irresponsible, unethical way.

Recently, I’ve been the victim of fraud—an example that goes beyond Compromised Work and is best described as a scam, a swindle, a prototypical example of Bad Work. In what follows I report the facts of the matter, as best I have been able to ascertain them, and then draw a few conclusions. By doing so, I hope to spark discussions of how best to reduce the incidence of blatantly Bad Work.

The Case: On October 31st 2010, I received an email from a person in Mexico City, expressing regret that my plane had been cancelled and that, therefore, I had been unable, at the last moment, to attend a conference at which I was the featured speaker. Though my memory is far from perfect, this note did not ring any bells. Consulting my records, I confirmed that indeed I had not accepted any invitation to any conference at that time. Further correspondence with my informant indicated that a Dr. Dzib had said that my plane was cancelled and had then read aloud an entire paper that purported to be from me. I was angered to learn of this “whole cloth deception” but did not think that there was much if anything that I could do.

Then, at the beginning of December, I received in the mail a book length publication from Mexico, entitled APRENDIZAJES Y DESARROLLO EN CONTEXTOS EDUCATIVOS, compiled by Joaquín Hernández González, Gilda Rocha Romero, José Pérez Torres, Nicolás Tlalpachícatl Cruz, and María Imelda González Mecalco, dated October 2010, and published by Universidad Pedagógica Nacional—complete with the customary notice “all rights to reproduce prohibited.” The lead essay in the book contains my “Conferencia Magistral”. There is no copyright on the essay; but there is an acknowledgement of thanks to Dr. Alma Dzib and a reference to Dr. Dzib Goodin. The essay is mostly my words, though there is inserted material devoted explicitly to the conference. With the mailed book came an unsigned piece of paper from the Rector, expressing regret at the cancellation of my flight. According to the publication, the Rector is Sylvia Ortega Salazar. That piece of paper is reproduced directly here.

Thanks to sleuth work by Kirsten Adam, Yael Karakowsky, and Charles Lang, I’ve been able to ascertain the following additional bits of information. This conference was advertised for several weeks on the Internet. The organizer at the conference (presumably Dr. Dzib) reported that I had sent the presentation the day before, thinking ahead of the worst case scenario—a cancelled flight. She went on to read the paper as if I had written it in the first person. She apologized that she could not add the remarks about American education that I might have included. She indicated that she is at the Harvard Medical School, that she and I are friends (I have never met her, to my knowledge, and she is certainly not a friend or colleague), and that she and I are both members of Mensa International (an organization that I know nothing about and certainly don’t belong to). And she includes a reference to my parents’ departure from Nazi Germany which is completely wrong and gratuitously hurtful. In other words, one complete falsehood after another.

For further information, see http://www.upn.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=865:howard-gardner-en-la-upn&catid=50:actividades-academicas and http://www.webmii.es/Result.aspx/Alma/Dzib http://www.upn.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=865&Itemid=610

Implications:

This episode is an unambiguous instance of bad work. As far as I am able to ascertain, there was nothing that I ever did or said that indicated or implied that I would attend such an event or prepare a paper for a volume—particularly a volume that had clearly been planned ad prepared well before the Conference took place. Nor do I ever give permission to reproduce my work without retaining the copyright. Any statement or implication that I had anything to do with this event has no basis in fact.

The episode raises a number of questions:

l. What was the motivation for the fraud? We have no direct information on this. I suspect that a person or persons wanted to have a conference and used my name and interests as a pretext for setting up the conference, securing an audience, and issuing a publication that purportedly grew out of the conference.

2. Who was involved in the fraud? It is completely unclear whether the fraud was the creation of one or a small group of persons, or a much larger undertaking, involving many people, including the editors, the Universidad Pedaogica Nacional, and/or other parties.

3. Who are the victims of the fraud? Clearly, those who attended the conference, expecting to hear me speak, were deceived. They may well have invested time and money to come to the Conference and they are owed an apology by the organizers, if not reimbursement for any expenses that they incurred. Also, any readers of the book who believe that I spoke there and prepared a paper for the conference were also victims. Since I was misrepresented, I (and my reputation) are victims as well. So are those who believe in honoring international copyright regulations.

4. Why bring attention to this shameful event? This is not the first time that my name has been exploited, and I have also been the victim of other frauds and swindles. In general, rightly or wrongly, I have kept quiet about these events. In cases where I know the deceivers personally, I have registered protests which may or may not have had any impact.

In this case, however, the fraud is of such a scale, and so blatant, with so many victims, that it seems wrong simply to be silent about it. Indeed, when people remain silent about circumstances where they have been deceived, they often, if inadvertently, encourage the deceiver to initiate yet another deception, perhaps even one on a broader scale. By bringing attention to this event, I hope both to embarrass the perpetrators of the fraud and to reduce the chances that they can repeat the deception again, on other unwitting victims.

As pointed out by Katie Davis, this fraud underscores the powers of the internet. The internet makes it possible to advertise the conference and circulate the proceedings to a very wide audience. But the Internet also makes it possible to track down the perpetrators of a fraud and at least call attention to their misdeeds.

The case raises the broader question of how to deal with instances of compromised work, or of blatantly bad work. I’ve given my own views, and I’d be very pleased to hear views from others.

There is one other moral to this episode.. If you learn that I am coming to a conference, or that I have failed to show up at a conference, it is best if you confirm that report. The same thing ought to apply when you consider attending any event of whose existence you are uncertain.

The health of a society depends upon trust. When trust is diminished or absent, life becomes difficult. Alas, the executors of this bad work have torn apart the fabric of scholarly trust, and for that they deserve condemnation.

Howard Gardner on best approaches for teaching ethics

by Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner responds to a question posed from Korea, from someone interested in best approaches for teaching ethics:

Thank you for your inquiry. You raise the question of the advantages of teaching ethics as a ‘stand alone’ course, as is done in Korea. My own view is that no one is born moral or immoral, ethical or unethical. Our upbringing and our surrounding culture determine how we behave toward others—those whom we know (what I call neighborly morality); toward those with whom we have a work relationship (what I call the ethics of roles). Across cultures and history, morals and ethics have been taught or conveyed in multiple ways: through religion, through stories, through history, through the media, through formal education, and, most importantly, through the individuals with whom one spends time, particularly when we are young. Traditionally parents, grandparents, older siblings, and other relatives have had the most influence; we see how they behave, for what they are praised and rewarded, for what they are shunned and punished, and we decide how we should behave ourselves. In recent times, and particularly in the United States, the examples of peers are very important. When formal schooling began, it often featured a very strong moral and ethical curriculum. Indeed, except for acquiring literacy, learning how to behave toward others—and how not to behave toward others—was the chief curriculum of traditional schooling. And so the ethical curricula featured in Korea, in China, in Scandinavia, and indeed in most countries is probably the norm. And yet, the existence of moral /ethical education scarcely guarantees the emergence of moral/ethical human beings. To take just one recent example: in China, during Mao Zedong’s era, there was plenty of moral education in school. Yet in the Cultural Revolution, young people were extremely destructive, often participating with enthusiasm as their own parents or teachers were ridiculed, punished, even murdered. In my view, the important consideration is not whether there are formal classes in school. Rather, there are two crucial considerations: l) How do the influential persons in the young person’s life behave toward other human beings? 2) Are the messages in the society consistent or inconsistent with one another? When the influential persons behave morally and ethically, and their behaviors are similar to one another, then young people are likely to emerge as moral and ethical human beings. This happens whether or not there is formal schooling. If, on the other hand, the role models are immoral and/or unethical, or the messages across the society (including school) are inconsistent with one another, then it is unlikely that young people will merit the labels ‘moral’ or ‘ethical.’

Twitter Trouble

by Diana Lockwood

I learned firsthand all about the “digital perils” associated with Twitter.  An administrator pulled me aside to explain that a student’s mother was challenging my ability to teach her child because of a tweet I posted encouraging students to not be lazy and attend tutorial to raise their grade.  There was no room for discussion because the student had already been reassigned to another classroom.

Getting called into the office for tweeting and learning what the word “tweet” meant happened in the same year.  I used to think it was a birdcall, but now I know it is a noun and a verb and a way to cause harm or good.  High schools are focused on immediate visible danger like fists, knives, and guns; however, cyber conflicts also spill over into reality.  A tweet about the location of a fight will cause students to skip class to watch and cheer as two kids beat the living daylights out of each other.  Situations where the Internet is used to cause harm, intentional or accidental, are preventable.

Twitter is also a place where communities can work together to spread positive news.  Working as a classroom teacher, I frequently tweet updates about homework, school-related sporting events and tutorial sessions.  I am always looking for new ways to be a 21st century teacher who communicates with parents and students using a variety of modalities. Being a member of the Twitter community alerts me when a student is sick, running late for school, in a bad mood, or worse.

At the Educating for Today and Tomorrow conference, I attended The GoodPlay Project: Exploring Digital Ethics workshop. Here, we explored “digital promises” and “digital perils.”   I’ve found that Twitter engages my students, because they love to see their work.  It offers instant publication and gratification. I tweet because the majority of my students have internet capable phones.  They may not bring paper or pencil to class, but they always have their cell phones.  Through Twitter, I tell my students to share their journal entries, or send positive messages.  For example, “So proud of all the football players! You guys played really well!”  Or, I message reminders, “Quiz tomorrow on class this week.  Be sure to study!” However, messages may also be easily misconstrued – emotions and tone are often difficult to interpret through digital media.  Also, online information should be monitored by parents and teachers through active participation in online social media.

In Howard Gardner’s Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter, he refers to the Internet as the “Wild, Wild West” and speaks about the “compromised work” and ethics often seen among American youth.  Twitter can contribute to the demoralization of our youth, if we do not work together to set and monitor parameters. The Internet is a gateway for “digital perils” where tweets are posted with little forethought, but we have to remain mindful of the potential Twitter has to elevate learning.  I speak to my students in a language with which they are already familiar – “tweeting” – and use their knowledge to scaffold and build upon their current understandings.

Gardner discusses how youth “know the right thing to do,” but ask, “why should I be more ethical than my peers seem to be?”  Could we as teachers expect students to act ethically if schools focused on the “digital promises?”  Educators are trying to teach as best they can in a time of limited resources.  Many of my colleagues are too afraid to use the new technology, because textbooks and worksheets seem safer than the Internet.

I believe that we need to work together to educate our youth and ourselves to make safe decisions online.  The recommended guidelines I propose for online usage in schools begin with teachers:  Teachers should discuss the purpose of the Internet for classroom use, set parameters for word choice and stick to posting positive news.  Students must agree to act ethically online and receive teacher approval before posting a school related message.  Parents need to help students understand the concept of thinking ethically, monitor their children’s social networking, and contact the teacher if an inappropriate event occurs.

We have to start teaching in the 21st century and use the resources at our fingertips.  As adults we must cooperate and keep the doors open for discussion – both in person and on the internet.  Most importantly, we have to work together to keep our children safe in cyberspace as well as in reality.

Howard Gardner Visits Bloomsburg

by Joan Miller

I first learned about the GoodWork Project five years ago. Since then I have collaborated with researchers in the nursing profession to learn about the meaning of good work among nurses in local, regional, and international settings. I have integrated the theory of good work in courses across disciplines at Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA.

Recently, Dr. Howard Gardner delivered the Provost Lecture at Bloomsburg University to an audience of over 1500 faculty and students. Dr. Gardner provided an overview of the theory of multiple intelligences. He transitioned seamlessly into the theory of good work. Following the lecture students approached Dr. Gardner to ask questions about both theories. Students grasped the theory of multiple intelligences and the need for both individualized and pluralized teaching. They understand that individuals have intelligences that cannot be measured solely by psychometric tests. However, they struggled with the notion of what it takes to become the kind of people we want to be and to build the society in which we want to live.

At breakfast the following morning, conversation with students turned to a discussion of what it means to falsify a resume. One student stated she would want to present herself just as she is, with enthusiasm for her profession and no falsification. She wants to be accepted for the person she is. Another student stated she would not be able to ‘put her head on the pillow’ at the end of the day if she falsified a resume. However, she is concerned about how hard it is to adhere to high ideals when others in the work place do not. She stated, “At the end of the day, a young person can return home and even there witness compromised work and values. What is a young person to do?” This student seemed desperate for a role model.

How are we preparing the next generation? Have we abandoned the role of the trusted role model? Have we failed as educators or is there hope for a better future among those committed to preparing the next generation of professionals to assume roles as responsible citizens? What does it take?

Howard Gardner’s Provost Lecture

Educating for Today and Tomorrow

by Lynn Barendsen

Last week, along with several colleagues from Project Zero, I participated in a conference in Washington DC. Our hosts were CASIE (Center for the Advancement and Study of International Education) and WIS (the Washington International School). Project Zero’s first “off site” conference! Very exciting for all of us, and a great opportunity to learn from passionate, creative teachers and researchers. I thought I’d share a sampling of thoughts that are still lingering with me:

Our first day was spent at the National Gallery of Art – a treat! Considering the idea of the museum, Shari Tishman asked us to consider the various “frames” we bring to our experiences. She referred to studies which demonstrate that most of us place a great deal of trust in our museums. Thinking through my goodwork “frame,” I wondered: what are the responsibilities that go along with this trust?

Our second day began with a plenary in which David Perkins talked about the Languages of War and Peace. Guiding us through how meaning is made, using phrases such as “regrettable necessity” or “zealous allegiance,” David enriched our understanding of what global competence means in the 21st century. As global citizens, whether or not we may agree with the actions of our nation’s leaders, we are all complicit in the societies to which we belong. A question Wendy and I have been thinking about for years, but one that seems to be getting increasingly complex: what does it mean to be a responsible global citizen?

Howard Gardner spoke about Five Minds for the Future on the final day of the conference. I always learn something when I listen to Howard, and this day was no exception. But what I found most moving was his response to a question posed by a participant. Attending the conference as a parent, not an educator, a woman asked how she might encourage new ideas in her school system. She is apparently up against a difficult school board, undoubtedly facing budget cuts, and feeling quite powerless. He offered encouragement, pointed to some examples of incredible “boutique” approaches (e.g. Reggio Emilia), and then pointed to what is really most important in our education system. We should not be focusing solely on test scores, or even on intelligence or knowledge. Education should be about teaching young people to be the kinds of human beings we want them to be.

Just a few of many ideas I’ll continue to mull over as Thanksgiving approaches.