24 Comments on Can anyone help me defend social engineering?

Pras on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 5:21 pm


Hi dude.. I would love to help if I can. I’ve spent the last 10 years developing a city-level social-engineering platform that is user-driven (ie people in the city run the world, so to speak)..

It’s not a replacement for the real system, rather a platform for the development of new ideas etc.. The interesting thing for you may be that I spent a lot of time researching and understanding the social engineers and their motives (rather than reactionary anti-capitalist thinking), so maybe I have some insights you could use?

You can email me if you want mrpras@gmail.com

Pras on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 5:32 pm


I don’t know if this is interesting for you but I thought I could splash some ideas here.. (we can arrange a call if you want to talk about it more)..

A common misconception is that Social Engineering is a bad thing. However, who is supposed to design the world? We have forgotten that we live in an imagined world. A world built on other people’s ideas. Whilst workers worked, those with higher opportunity took to designing the future.

Historically, those with the power to influence rarely had insight or interest in the common folk. They were more consumed by sovereignty or religious right. More recently the shift has moved to making money, or implementing political strategy.

The time has come that we all have access to the power that our statutory human rights give us. This is mostly wasted (in terms of social engineering) although there are examples such as Avaaz.org that have made steps in the right direction.

As someone who has worked for many years on a platform to give power to the people – I think I’m fairly aware of the pros and cons of such an idea in practical terms. There are many arguments for and against, but mostly are conjectural, not based on factual evidence.

A civil uprising has historically been the only type of social engineering open to the public. This will change over the next years as technology gives rise to a new conscious movement to upgrade the old ideas causing social problems in our society.

I just wrote this off the cuff, so sorry if it’s riddled with errors. I hope you get some insight to help with your interview!

Pras

Luke Robinson on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 5:41 pm


The research you’re looking for was five year study tracking 8000 A Level candidates and was carried out by the Sutton Trust. The main findings are summarised pretty well in this Guardian article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/dec/03/state-school-pupils-university

p.s. Surely the links between our top universities and private schools are simply ‘social engineering’ by a different name. It’s called the old boys network what what!

Lilly Evans on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 5:50 pm


Mathew,

I would really not bother with UK or US research on this. Overall, we are both doing badly on the world scale. Go to countries where education is better across the board. If you take Finland as being on the top of the league table – they have no private schools! Similarly, when I was educated in former Yugoslavia, there were no private schools. Yet, by the time I was working at BP, having gained an electrical engineering degree in Belgrade and PhD in computing in UK, I was clearly much more rounded in my education than private school and Oxbridge educated corporate executives – none of them had done Latin nor understood basic modes of decision making (Modus Tolens and Modus Ponens were mysteries to them!)

Social engineering is always open to manipulation and bureacracies are known to misapply rules to suit their purposes.

On the access, I have recently helped with a mock interview of a very good candidate for a place at Oxford from local state school – he was well rounded and impressive. Unfortunately, he did not get offered a place there. He has however an offer from Imperial College.

Samantha Earle on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 6:04 pm


Hi,

I’m afraid I’m not aware of the research. I think you should site it anyway.. and perhaps call it ‘levelling-up’.

Also, against the ‘liberty’ argument; it’s actually a fallacy, in that such a system is more likely to prohibit rather than encourage social mobility. So, one’s future successes in life are heavily contingent on circumstances of birth (and since when that distribution a meritocracy – except in principles of Karma of course!). Thus, the liberalism is actually a misnomer. Is it really a meritocracy at work?

Quota systems are used in other contexts: in India in certain professions there is a quota for scheduled castes etc. It is not giving unfair advantage, but creating a level playing field, so to speak. When the system is more equal and the gulfs begin to close, the quota system can be removed.

The problem is the discrimination – of punishing the more advantaged for circumstances they had no hand in…However, perhaps the distinction should be made between a) discrimination that inclusivist and that which is exclusionist. and b) discrimination that is overt/active and that which is covert/passive (the sort of discrimination that characterises the underprivileged throughout life). The latter is the more insidious and what needs to be tackled.

Good luck!

Nick on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 6:12 pm


Matthew,

I don’t want to muddle your line of argument but is there not also a case for suggesting that diversity is an important part of excellence. As a very expensively educated student at Oxbridge I was indisputably better prepared when I went up there then many of my comprehensive contemporaries (or indeed some of the other private schools or grammar schools) but it was also with a specific world view. I don’t mean that in the sense of political affiliation but just a way of interpreting and processing information and a presumption of what was received wisdom.

Not only did my comprehensive contemporaries catch up within the first year in terms of analytical skill but in the meantime we’d challenged each other in all sorts of big and small ways which made us all think a little wider. I know it sounds wishy washy but for me excellence requires not being limited in the views you argue with. You get much less teaching at Oxbridge then you do at one of the big selective public schools and the people you’re surrounded with are not of much less analytical skill (most of them go to Oxbridge) but I definitely felt my ability to understand was vastly improved even by the relatively limited diversity Oxbridge offered compared to those schools. And to me the ability to understand is what excellence is at university.

peter roberts on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 6:37 pm


‘Social engineering’. Yuk! I’d go for the Justice argument every time. Justice is about treating equals equally. It isn’t about treating unequals equally.

Livy on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 7:08 pm


Well… one possible counter you could be hit with by fellow panellists is the question of effort or innate talents of the better off, and an attempt to make the charge of social engineering stick a tad firmer by implying you’d rather the fastest runners wear lead shoes. There is, regrettably, only a slippery way out of this; the counter to the counter would be to accept that it is indeed social engineering, but only insofar as it serves as an auto-correction to the existing methods of social engineering by the very well off in society. And you can list those.

It may sound quasi-Rawlsian, and prone to annoy a lot of people, but it’s not entirely unreasonable to asert that even effort may be the result of a privileged upbringing. You can persuade if not convince people of this by referring to something as morally arbitrary as birth order in determining achievement; first borns have been shown to be more successful, have a stronger work ethic and earn higher salaries than their younger siblings. I can’t remember who wrote this but one of the lecturers at Harvard once claimed 80 per cent of his students are first borns, and the that the number was the same every year when he repeated the poll.

There is an intellectually coherent argument for prizing attributes other than intellect in university admissions – indeed, for prizing no single aspect of an application over any other. Consider affirmative action in America and a ruling by the US Supreme Court, ‘Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1978’, where Allan Bakke was rejected twice despite being more than academically qualified.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=438&invol=265

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke

In response to the Court ruling the admission process to be unconstitutional, Ronald Dworkin argued that applicants have no intrinsic right to be considered under an admissions policy that values any attribute or skill over any another, whether sporting prowess, musical talent or even academic ability.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1977/nov/10/why-bakke-has-no-case/

As I understand it, his point was that admission is justified to the extent that it contributes to the social purpose the university serves, which they are entitled to design, not because a candidate has the highest grades or a disadvantaged background. It is for the institution to define its mission and therefore the appropriate selection criteria.

A diverse student body creates a better learning environment; a great deal of insight in higher education comes not from textbooks or lecturers but from the process of students learning from one another and interacting with contemporaries from a wide range of social backgrounds. In a similar way, social media and purely on-line relationships increases our capacity to think and develop because of how different we all are off-line. We’re all doing it right now.

Even young people who are raised separately can now grow up together, and when they’re older the mission of their university can define the merits of entry, not vice versa.

But it’s an incredibly tough sell, and I wouldn’t try it.

Livy

Mark on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 7:09 pm


Matthew,

I think that the principles e.g. fairness in educational opportunity are very important. Even if there was a drift from those in private education to public schools it wouldn’t make a difference for several reasons:

-The proportion of those going from private schools to University is far higher than in state schools, this may eventually become even more pronounced with the fees hike;
-Only a small number of those from state schools would get a place in the best universities, as such the motivated or those with motivated and more capable parents would help them to succeed;
-In the long run, perhaps more from disadvantaged backgrounds would enter into the top universities, but this number would represent a ‘minority’ of those from the state school sector;
-So where is the likely equilibrium? This would most likely only happen if the number of individuals gaining places at university/top universities from the state sector was equal to that number coming from the private schools.

In summation, therefore, I think it is unlikely that the situation could be engineered to provide a ‘balance’. However, there is nothing to stop state schools aiming higher and discrediting social background as an excuse for poor educational outcomes. I am sure there have been a number of examples of this in the past. Perhaps HMIE should set the goalposts higher in determining how well as school is doing?

Matt Grist on Wed, 22nd Feb 2012 9:08 pm


“Support starts to dwindle when it comes to schemes quietly provided by some of the more progressive Russell Group Universities (they keep it quiet apparently because the other Russell Universities would accuse them of diluting excellence).”

I don’t think this is true, Oxford and Cambridge are committed to using contextual data and have been for a while. Oxford declare so on their website: http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/finding_out_more/contextual_data.html

As for quotas – a crazy idea! All sorts of unintended consequences will follow as did in the Florida scheme with middle-class parents sending their kids to the worst schools: result was more university places taken up by mediocre rich kids. And I think I’m right in saying Florida scheme had no impact on widening access to most disadvantaged.

Matthew Taylor on Thu, 23rd Feb 2012 12:52 pm


Thanks very much to all of you for these very helpful comments and ideas – I used some of them in what turned out to be a rather heated debate on Moral Maze last night: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01c7rql

Robert Burns on Thu, 23rd Feb 2012 12:59 pm


Has anyone considered the following possibilities:

(a) that all of this talk of ‘social engineering’ and ‘opening up opportunity’ is flogging a dead horse?

(b) That the economically practical and socially desirable limits of what can be achieved have been reached?

Because:

(c) The majority of employment positions in this country do not require graduate level education; and

(d) Because of this there are already too many Graduates bidding for a limited number of employment places requiring their level of education

Unpopular as these observations may be there are worse things to look square in the eye.

Diversity:

Someone wrote in the ‘diversity is necessary for excellence’.

Politically correct, but (beyond a low threshold) factually unsupported.

The Diversity Fetish that so frequently surfaces in this kind of discourse ignores the fact that nearly everywhere in the world there is an inverse proportionality between the economic and educational attainments of individuals and the social/ethnic/racial diversity of their immediate social environment.

So, if you want to keep people down, just keep feeding them the ‘Diversity’ message.

All that emerges from high levels of ‘diversity’ is the product of the lowest common denominators between sub-groups and individuals.

Ian Christie on Thu, 23rd Feb 2012 2:33 pm


Thanks Matthew.
I tend to agree with Livy. One approach here is for ‘top’ universities to devise their own entrance procedures and criteria beyond the reliance on A-level grades.

While we’re ‘engineering’, here are some possible policies:
1) Turn the top 6-10 universities into graduate -only systems, and give proper funding for undergraduate teaching and school-university links to the rest. As things are, the Government has reinforced the sense in university life that teaching comes a very distant third place behind research and business ‘impact’.
2) Fund university-run summer schools for state pupils from age 14 to boost study skills and awareness of what university study, life and course content will be like.
3) Urgently tackle the mismatch between what happens in secondary school and what is expected in first-year university study.

Dan Hammond on Thu, 23rd Feb 2012 3:38 pm


Isn’t ‘social engineering’ exactly what a government is for (and why we voted for them)?

Tom Brookes FRSA on Thu, 23rd Feb 2012 4:25 pm


A little late, but I just got the email…

The best argument for social engineering is already here – that most human endeavour is some form of societal or physical engineering depending how broad a perspective you take, so I suppose it drops back to the social aspiration gap; & a question – what world do we want to live in, that we might strive to it?

Perhaps that would be the most helpful thing for social engineering and closing the aspiration gap – a measurable vision of what global progress ought to look like, a hash-tag for progress almost. Because if there isn’t an easily communicable goal to, in this case, education reform, it’s easy for changes to be seen as self-interested meddling, or useless. Making it easier for poor children to get into university sounds simple enough, doubtless altruistic to some, but why? Why is that a good thing and what’s the end goal?

I don’t intend to be obtuse, I can think of several good answers, but where is it in the policy – where’s the guiding objective – is it to make education equitable? If so then logically private schools and league tables ought to go, teaching methods be reassessed to apply modern neurological insights into development, learning and flourishing… & removing the monetary constraints on education, recognising it as a key pillar of an advancing society.

Maybe your take on social engineering depends largely on your circumstances, perspective and idea of how the world should look. Ergo, if you’re successful or wealthy you might think social engineering is unwise, because (of course!) anyone can make it on their own with enough effort – you did. Similarly if you’re destitute or sympathetic to poverty it may seems like a good idea that society be reorganised more equitably. I believe the truth to lie somewhere in the grey area between these extremes – that anyone can make it on their own, give enough effort… & help

But to defend social engineering, seriously, it’s important that the collective imagination and ability of humanity be out to use – now more than ever that is possible, and more so needed to engineer progress. Perhaps the will is absent because the vision is lacking.

Anyhow, Lots of helpful comments already, I hope the maze went well.

Steve Jordan on Fri, 24th Feb 2012 9:38 am


Listened to the debate and avoided shouting at the radio which is a good sign. In a sense this is not about social engineering but about measurement. If you believe that the people with the most potential (although this raises the question of potential for what?) should benefit from the best education the question is how do you measure that potential?

We know that a crude assessment by exam results is not very accurate so the issue must be focused on better assessment measures. If we keep arguing about this issue based on flawed data it will remain a matter of people fighting their own corner based on ideology and self interest.

Afterthought – I have listened to a number of people who have been to Eton and other public schools being interviewed in the last year who say one of the key things they learnt was to “look after their friends and the people they know”… How does this make itself manifest in our higher eduction system do you think?

junius on Fri, 24th Feb 2012 12:23 pm


In the context of this debate, it may be useful to recall what the man who coined the term ‘meritocracy’ thought about it some forty years later;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

Livy on Fri, 24th Feb 2012 1:44 pm


If anyone comes up with a hashtag for progress I’m quitting Twitter and possibly even the internet for good.

Tom Brookes FRSA on Fri, 24th Feb 2012 2:01 pm


I’m glad I meant that metaphorically!

Another Kate on Sat, 25th Feb 2012 10:57 am


I heard you on the Moral Maze – struck by your comments about studying medecine and law. You seemed to be saying that these are just training courses albeit at the higher end of the payscale. Didn’t you listen to Thinking Aloud a few hours earlier where on the same topic somebody was saying how these subjects go beyond mere training and learning of facts? I was only half-listening, maybe I’ve remembered this wrong.

Patricia on Sat, 25th Feb 2012 9:42 pm


Dworkin’s objection to the notion of equality of opportunity is probably the best indirect vindication of social engineering if you approach this issue from the fairness angle. If you go along with his argument, an intervention (a form of SE) is required to reduce unequal outcomes coming about as a result of luck rather than effort

‘…people are not equal in raw skill or intelligence or other native capacities; on the contrary, they differ greatly, through no choice of their own, in the various capacities that the market tends to reward. So some people who are perfectly willing, even anxious, to make exactly the choices about work and consumption and savings that other people make end up with fewer resources, and no plausible theory of equality can accept this as fair. This is the defect of the idea fraudulently called ‘equality of opportunity’: fraudulent because in market economy people do not have equal opportunity who are less able to produce what others want.’

Not sure that I would agree entirely with the case you made for university admissions (for me the question of timing is crucial) – still, it was a damn fine performance.

Here is the link to Dworkin:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LahVSmS26YEC&pg=PA207&lpg=PA207&dq=people+are+not+equal+in+raw+skill+dworkin&source=bl&ots=Wo_E_uWkgg&sig=OGHqi917VByKI4tLU2fcAo6Z0cY&hl=pl&sa=X&ei=fVBJT8bqGZGq8QOQ1b2hDg&sqi=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Carl Allen on Sun, 26th Feb 2012 9:56 pm


Social engineering re the Russell Group Universities, has a number of answers.

Without stating the question (left to the reader), one answer is to have an optional universal university exam for graduates that bestows a standing equal to or more than that conferred by a Russell Group University degree. Agreed … such an exam would be expensive.

Such an option would give sectors such as business, charity, government and others a wider pool of graduates for particular jobs i.e. more and better competition.

But one doubts that many in the Russell Group Universities would welcome such an exam if only for the reason that their graduates may not do too well in comparision with graduates from non Russell Group Universities.

By way of note, the correct question to the answer would make it a solution but only to that question.

Carl Allen on Mon, 27th Feb 2012 9:44 am


Also by way of note … a challenge to the assumption of “more questions than answers” .

There are more answers than questions when one airs an issue publicly.

So let us look a bit harder for the question to the issue i.e. the correct question brings the correct answer bring the solution.

Roy Boffy on Tue, 6th Mar 2012 8:34 am


Late I know, but only just discovered this after your excellent Analysis last night! One thing entirely missing from this debate over the last few years has been the predictive value of A levels. Like you, I can’t remember the research but there certainly were studies (in the 70s?) which showed that there was little or no correlation between A level grades and degree performance, except in the ‘hard’ sciences – Maths, physics, chemistry. Universities, for most subjects, would do as well to pull names out of a hat! Yet we continue to trust in this absurd notion of a Gold Standard.

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