Good Work, Compromised Work, Bad Work… And Ego

by Howard Gardner

In late July, I received a message from the USIA. For a brief moment, I thought it might be from the United States Information  Agency or Intelligence Agency, but it was actually from an organization that I had not heard of—The United Sigma Intelligence Association.  USIA informed me that , along with linguist Noam Chomsky and mathematician-physicist Edward  Witten, I was the winner of their annual prize. I don’t consider myself to be modest but I was astounded—and humbled—to be grouped with two of the outstanding scholars of our time.

I googled the USIA. I learned little about the organization online but noted that it had many outstanding figures as advisers—including several whom I knew personally. I wrote back to the agency and asked whether there were any requirements in connection with the award. I immediately heard from the director, saying that there were no ‘asks’—the organization hoped that my work would “inspire other talented people and help them further their love for humanity.” I notified a few organizations to which I belong that I had received this recognition and considered that the end of the matter.

In a few days I had occasion to write on several matters to my colleague and friend Steven Pinker (I entitled the e-mail “Sundry on Sunday.”)  I noted that, along with entrepreneur Jeff Bezos and historian Yuval Harari, Steve had received the USIA award the previous year.  He made light of this recognition and his role as an adviser, saying that he often agreed to lend his name to support organizations.

This past week—an unexpected twist. I had  inferred that the USIA award went only to three persons each year. But two individuals whom I also knew were informed that they had also received the USIA award for this year.  And undertaking more due diligence than I had, they had begun to wonder what was the USIA, where was it housed, how and by whom was it funded, and did it in fact issue the books, podcasts, and other forms of publicity that are mentioned on their website.  And not quickly receiving satisfactory answers, my colleagues so far have not accepted this recognition.

As someone who has studied and written about work—and particularly ‘good work’—for many years, I am left with a conundrum:

Could this be good work—in which case, the organization indeed has undertaken legitimate activities, actually makes appropriate use of its advisers, and reaches young people whom they seek to inspire?

Could this be compromised work—in which case the organization may have good intentions, and hopes to achieve its goals, but has gotten off to a slow start and exaggerated its achievements thus far?

Or is this basically a scam (aka ‘bad work’)—an effort to bring attention to an organization which is not legitimate and which may exploit well-known names in ways that are not sanctioned, not legitimate? 

From my grandson, I have subsequently learned the ‘sigma’ is often used online in a frivolous way—which did not give me confidence in this particular brand of sigma!  Perhaps we are being stigmatized!

And I have to ask myself: Did my own ego prevent me from doing the due diligence that I should have done?

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Updated October 2021

Writing in mid October 2021, after consulting with several individuals, I know a lot more about USIA. It is clear that this is not a genuine organization in the sense that American professionals assume. The leadership is new and is not aware of how USIA has operated in the past. There is no recognized process for adding advisers or choosing award winners. What astonishes me is that new award winners are regularly added as are new advisers—I suspect that, like me, these individuals were flattered to be informed of this award and did not bother to ask probing questions. At this point, USIA is best described as a reputational Ponzi scheme.

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Reference

https://www.amacad.org/publication/compromised-work

Questioning Identity and Discrimination with GCI’s Newest Ambassadors

by Lynn Barendsen

In late July, I led a virtual Good Project session for 36 high school students from around the world, participants in the Global Citizens Initiative LEAD Challenge (link here). These students represented 30 different cultural heritages, spoke 28 languages, attended 30 schools, and hailed from 14 different countries. To say it was a diverse group is a bit of an understatement.

The LEAD Challenge Program focused on Leadership, Ethics, Advocacy and Design Thinking, and over the course of one week, students gathered virtually to learn skills and collaborate on an advocacy campaign for a nonprofit organization, APOPO (link here), which fights tuberculosis and works to uncover landmines. Attending sessions with Teaching Assistants, led by experts in a variety of fields, and working in small groups, they were asked to apply their learnings to a real world challenge. Following the program, students are then encouraged to bring what they’ve learned back to their home communities and work to solve local issues of their choosing.

This was the first year for this program, and GCI’s online debut, designed in part in an effort to continue its efforts to build community and global connection in spite of the challenges of the global pandemic. The Good Project team has attended the GCI Summit (an in-person opportunity) for numerous years, both in Cambridge and in Tokyo, so we are familiar with its mission and its methods.

During my short hour with this international group, I offered a brief history of The Good Project and the nature of our research, but we spent the bulk of our time engaged with an ethical dilemma about discrimination (link here). In this dilemma, Elena, a high school student, who immigrated with her family from Mexico at a young age, witnesses discrimination towards her father and others. She wonders if she should hide her ethnicity as she applies for internships in order to eliminate the possibility that she might receive similar treatment at the hands of hiring managers. Ultimately she decides to represent herself truthfully. In small breakout groups, students used a “See, Think, Wonder” thinking routine to further consider Elena’s situation (link here). The question “What do you see?” asked students to focus on and unpack the information and the facts of the story. “What do you think?” asked them to consider Elena’s decision and what they might have done if they faced similar challenges. Finally, “What do you wonder?” asked more far-reaching questions, including additional questions about the dilemma itself and about good work in general.

The breakout groups outlined the relevant information about Elena’s situation thoughtfully. Her choice was described as a decision between hiding her Hispanic heritage or being true to herself. Some pointed out that she assumed that she would be subject to discrimination because of her ethnicity, while others pointed to the existence of discrimination itself as fact. Calling out the inherent injustice of discrimination, one student pointed out that race and ethnicity are not equal to one’s abilities. 

Asked to consider what these facts made them think, students identified with Elena in multiple ways. They asserted that she is at an age where she will begin to question “everything,” and if she is finding herself ready to compromise her values, she should perhaps also ask herself why she is working in the first place, questioning “Is it for money, or for something else?” Some recognized that she and her family might be struggling financially, and if this were the case, some students suggested that hiding her identity might be the more prudent choice. Asserting that the inherent inequities in society made the situation difficult, one student wrote, “In my opinion either option is commendable because they both have their hardships.” Although most students were behind Elena’s decision to be true to herself, several explained that they would understand if she felt she needed to make a different choice.

Finally, asked to consider what Elena’s choice made them wonder, the breakout groups had a number of thought-provoking questions. Not surprisingly, with such an action-minded group, some turned to the possible solutions, wondering “what can companies do to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices” and what steps should be taken to “become inclusive enough so people will not be put in a situation like this?” Some responses asked straightforward, important questions, including “Why are managers still in charge if they are discriminatory?” and “What percentage of hiring managers are white?” Other students became more philosophical in their musings. For example, one participant explained that the word “good” is subjective, and wondered if there are “any universal moral values that hold true at all times?” Another probing question asked, “What makes certain societies give superiority to specific races/ethnicities?” Finally, one student asked, “To what extent can you break technical/legal rules for the sake of remaining on the moral high ground?”

Although our conversation together was brief, it was clear that the discussion prompted some important reflection. Participants recognized that experiences like Elena’s “have a larger impact on our personal view of ourselves and our families.” At the same time, they also questioned the nature of this impact, asking, “Should marginalized people be burdened with the task of being ‘brave’ and ensuring respect for their community? Is that a burden at all? What do we owe to each other and ourselves?”

Using this dilemma as the basis of our discussion, I also encouraged the students to consider larger questions about the nature of good work, its relevance in their daily lives, and how they might learn to reflect upon good work on a regular basis.

The challenges of online gatherings are by now way too familiar to educators, and in particular, the issues of community building across such a diverse group are especially complicated. Our brief hour only scratched the surface, but during that time the group was engaged and shared a passion about the topics we discussed. I look forward to hearing about what comes next for this idealistic and talented group.

‘Taking a Stand’ on Good Citizenship

by Carrie James and Emily Weinstein

For over a decade, we (Carrie and Emily) have been careful observers of young people’s experiences as they grow up in an age of radical connectivity. Our studies have spanned the ways digital life intersects with adolescents’ mental health and well-being, close relationships, civic development, and moral and ethical decision-making, among other topics.  

Our latest round of research has focused on digital dilemmas. We study dilemmas by digging into young people’s perspectives with a multi-generational research team that spans teens to Gen Xers. A regular part of our research team meetings involves squirming in our seats as we puzzle over dilemmas that demand consideration yet evade easy answers. If someone participates in a hateful protest, is it fair game to use social media to expose personal information that might in turn compromise their physical safety or employment? Is it okay to share violent videos online to call attention to what is happening in the world, even if the content is triggering to some viewers? When is it reasonable to expose and exploit people’s past posts and private messages? These dilemmas are timely, relevant, and vexed.  

For middle and high schoolers, social media use is now a routine aspect of everyday life. Interspersed with social updates and casual sharing, youth encounter more weighty civic posts and decision points about what to share, re-post, like, and screenshot, as well as what to follow, unfollow, mute, and avoid. Good citizenship in a connected world requires that young people have both knowledge and thinking dispositions to grapple with digital dilemmas. 

Although digital citizenship has been on schools’ agendas for some time, it often takes the form of cautionary tales and a list of “Don’ts” Don’t cyberbully. Don’t believe everything you read. Don’t post anything that could get you in trouble, kicked out of school, or denied a job opportunity.  

Supporting young people in a networked era requires approaches that meet the complexity of our times. In our work—using pedagogies that confront (rather than skirt) the complexity—we advocate educating with and for digital dilemmas. Over the last few years, we’ve worked in partnership with our colleagues at Common Sense Education, a leader in providing digital citizenship curricula (link here) and related supports to educators and schools.

With Common Sense, we’ve developed and field-tested a variety of resources and approaches that advocate using digital dilemmas as jumping off points for thoughtful classroom discussions. We’re especially excited about our new Digital Dilemmas and Thinking Routines resources (link here). 

Dilemma scenarios have long been used as signature tools in moral education. Readers of this blog are likely familiar, too, with The Good Project’s longstanding emphasis on powerful, thorny dilemmas. When our team started using digital dilemmas in the classroom, we found that they immediately sparked engagement and interest, in no small part because they are provocative and often directly relevant to students’ lives.  

But we also saw how youth (and even adults) can get stuck in their knee-jerk reactions. We wanted to help students look beyond their initial reactions; to support more nuanced consideration of their own views and more intentional dialogue with others’. This is all the more important because digital life can itself trap us in echo chambers where we only engage with perspectives that reinforce our own views. Good citizenship certainly requires broader consideration, and classroom discussions are an apt context for discussing dilemmas (link here) with others and debating pros and cons (link here) of different paths forward.  

Good thinking is foundational to digital citizenship—and to citizenship more broadly. We aim to help students develop dispositions that guide reflective, responsible, and ethical use of technology. These essential dispositions for digital life include slowing down to recognize dilemmas as they arise; reflecting on responsibilities to self, close relations, and wider communities; exploring perspectives (especially those that differ from one’s own); seeking facts and evidence to make informed decisions; and building agency through envisioning options and impacts, and taking actions that are both self-protective and socially responsible.  

How do we get there? In classroom practice, thinking routines (link here) are a powerful pedagogy to support dispositions (Ritchhart et al., 2011; Tishman et al., 1993), Taking direct inspiration from our Project Zero colleagues’ long standing work on thinking routines and dispositions, we created a routine called Take A Stand. Take a Stand is designed to support dispositions to slow down and reflect, and to discover one’s own perspective or stance while also exploring perspectives of others.  

Take A Stand: The protocol

In collaboration with teachers as well as our colleagues at Common Sense Education, we designed a classroom protocol called Take A Stand, which is designed to be used alongside dilemma scenarios. This four-step protocol gets students in the habit of considering and reconsidering their own and others' perspectives. It especially directs consideration to tensions between responsibilities to individuals and responsibilities to the wider world and civic life.  

Here’s an overview of the protocol: Take A Stand

What does Take A Stand look like in the classroom?

Kelly Erceg’s eighth grade classroom is situated in a public middle school the Los Angeles area. When she used the Take A Stand protocol, she paired it with a dilemma that enabled a powerful discussion about the ethics of streaming fights online.  

The topic was highly relevant on a number of levels. A recent public incident at nearby Disneyland had led to viral videos of a violent brawl that erupted between two members of the same family. The videos had received widespread attention/clicks and gave police evidence to file criminal charges that ultimately led to jail time for one of the aggressors. The fight was local news for Kelly’s students; they all seemed to know about it. This incident and concerns about a larger “record everything” culture sparked her interest in bringing the issue into her classroom. The school district’s recent launch of a 1:1 iPad policy, which gave students ongoing access to their own recording devices throughout the school day, was another motivator.  

“Streaming Fights” (link here) is a fictionalized dilemma scenario about students recording and streaming a fight between classmates. Pairing the dilemma with the Take a Stand routine invited students to share their own perspectives on the ethics of recording/posting violent incidents online and provided a structure to support listening to different views. As the conversation unfolded, students asserted stances across the spectrum from approval to disapproval and gave voice to different considerations. They wondered about instances when recording violence is for entertainment or for increasing one’s own views and popularity on social media versus instances when recording is carried out as an effort “to serve justice.” Whether and when to use mobile devices for recording purposes—a thorny dilemma—became an accessible topic for rich, purposeful classroom learning. 

Here are a few examples of student takeaways we’ve collected related to Take A Stand:

• “You have to be aware of the implications of your actions, not just from where it takes you but where it takes other people”

• “You need to look from multiple perspectives and make sure you know every outcome”

• “One thing I took away from today's activity was that if something big and negative is happening nearby, and [if] we have the power to try to stop it, we should, instead of posting it on social media.”

• “We have to take in consideration of others and posting may ruin their reputation.”

• “Once we take out our phones and start filming the problem we've automatically become part of it”

Digital dilemmas can offer an opportunity for talking with students about hard situations before they arise in students’ own lives. When we pair them with thinking routines like Take a Stand, we can build students’ sense of agency by supporting dispositions to envision options and possible impacts so they can make informed decisions in their real, radically connected lives.  

To read more about our disposition-centered approach to digital citizenship education, read our new report (link here).

Interested in using this routine to bring digital civic dilemmas into your classroom? See our Take A Stand Educator Guide (link here) and Student Handout (link here). Pair it with the Protest Dilemma (link here) or another dilemma in our Digital Dilemmas compilation (link here). Or, create your own dilemma that feels relevant to your context and students right now. 

Carrie James is a Research Associate and Principal Investigator at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research explores young people’s digital, civic, and moral lives.  

Emily Weinstein is a Senior Researcher at Project Zero. For the last decade, her work has focused how today’s technologies shape teens’ lives and development.  

Carrie and Emily currently co-direct the Digital Dilemmas (link here) and Reimagining Digital Well-being (link here) initiatives at Project Zero, which have been supported by Susan Crown Exchange, Germanacos Foundation, and funders of Common Sense Education. Weinstein and James are co-authors of the forthcoming book, Behind Their Screens: What Teens are Facing (and Adults are Missing) (The MIT Press). 

References

Ritchhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. (2011). Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners. Jossey-Bass. 

Tishman, S., Jay, E., & Perkins, D. N. (1993). Teaching Thinking Dispositions: From Transmission to Enculturation. Theory Into Practice, 32(3), 147–153.

The Latest Reads: Our Summer Top 5

It’s mid-summer here in the United States, and our team members have each been enjoying a little summer reading and a few holidays away from work. Of course, while summer is often a time to slow down and recharge, world events these past few weeks have not slowed. The COVID pandemic continues to be with us and is entering a new phase of danger due to the delta variant; dangerous weather fueled by climate change has affected many countries; and the Olympic Games in Tokyo are well underway.

Below are a few articles that got us thinking recently. We invite you to read them and share your own thoughts.

• Vishal Kheptal, a physician working in Rhode Island, describes for Slate how the disparity in COVID vaccination rates in the United States is resulting in starkly different conditions on the ground for communities across the country. Most people expect physicians to do “good work” in their practice of medicine, and the difficult conditions that doctors respond to influence their understandings of excellence, ethics, and engagement on the job. These understandings will continue to change and adapt for many people depending on the pandemic’s local course (link here).

• The Good Project supports the free exchange of ideas and believes in the power of “better arguments” (link here). A major goal of our work has been to support the open discussion of values and views across groups. We have been troubled by the attempts of some lawmakers in the United States to pass laws that would prohibit educators from freely discussing ideas with their students, which have been targeted in particular at critical race theory. Four writers from across the political spectrum explain in the New York Times why these types of laws are in opposition to free speech and liberal education (link here).

• Gymnastics is a sport that often demands strong commitment from athletes from a young age. A popular dilemma from our database concerned a young gymnast who felt pressured to attend practices by her parents (link here). Echoing this situation, when champion gymnast Simone Biles stepped away from competition at the Tokyo Olympics, commentators like Jemele Hill in The Atlantic pointed out Biles’ bravery in countering the narrative of athletic invincibility and in potentially setting a precedent for others to take care of their mental health, rather than face the pressures of competition (link here).

• We have mentioned moral paragons like Mother Teresa (and others) as exemplars of “good work.” A new podcast series titled “The Turning,” summarized by Salon, reevaluates Mother Teresa’s legacy through the eyes of former nuns from the Missionaries of Charity, the order that she founded. The interviewees allege a culture within the order of total repression and silence that made it difficult to actually do good for the poor. The criticism from those close to Mother Teresa raises questions about aspects of her life and legacy, and subsequently those of other moral exemplars, that must now be looked at through a different lens (link here).

• Addressing climate change is taking on ever-increasing urgency, as recent heat waves and flooding events have demonstrated. The solution may seem like simply transitioning away from fossil fuels, but as Dr. Beverly Wright explains for The Hill, environmental justice is also about making sure that people can thrive in “good jobs” in the aftermath of economic transition. As her argument shows, doing “good work” most often involves multiple factors and considerations, and is rarely easy (link here).

Announcing The Good Project Fundamental Lessons

We are excited to announce The Good Project Fundamental Lessons, which can be found on our website here. 

This set of 16 lessons organized into 4 units serves as an introduction to the core concepts of The Good Project. Adapted from our longer 45-minute lessons (here), each fundamental lesson is approximately 15-minutes long. They are designed for secondary school students but are adaptable to middle school, and some lessons may well work with younger audiences.

Similar to our longer curriculum, the Fundamental Lessons include introductory material to familiarize teachers with The Good Project’s approach and theory of change. Each individual lesson includes an overarching goal, lists the core concepts covered in the lesson, and indicates any prerequisite lessons. The lesson instructions are detailed and broken down into separate steps with recommended timing in order to help adhere to the 15-minute window. All necessary worksheets and reading materials are also included. 

While we wish all students had the opportunity to delve deeply into the ideas and frameworks related to “good work”, we realize classroom time is at a premium. Our hope is that this abbreviated curriculum sparks interest in both students and educators, and that it provides enough of an overview for students to begin to think about how they might view themselves as “good workers.”

We would like to thank The Argosy Foundation for providing the generous funding that made this work possible. The Good Project has also received significant support from The Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation, The Endeavour Foundation, and additional anonymous funders. 

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to connect as you implement these lessons with your students. We are available via our “contact us” page, which can be found here.