The Futile Search for "Trust-Proof" Systems
Dear Diane,
As the poor get poorer, and college tuitions keep rising, the media declare that no one without a B.A. qualifies for a living wage. Something's rotten in this proposition. It isn't that way in Finland, for example.
Finland didn't do it overnight, but they built their education system around critical democratic habits: competence and trust. They didn't trade off one for the other. Looking for a trust-proof solution is the fragile error. David Remnick says it well in the March 12th New Yorker: Democracy, he writes: "At best, it's an ambition, a state of becoming," and "the fragility of democratic aspiration is a brutal fact of history."
Every time we try an end-run around it we at best distract ourselves from useful next steps, and more often undermine our own aspirations.
Trust and skepticism go fine together—alongside a sense of humor. The leap of faith we make is always somewhat foolish, whether it's a question of when to lock one's car doors, leave things out on the lawn, etc. But
As the poor get poorer, and college tuitions keep rising, the media declare that no one without a B.A. qualifies for a living wage. Something's rotten in this proposition. It isn't that way in Finland, for example.
Finland didn't do it overnight, but they built their education system around critical democratic habits: competence and trust. They didn't trade off one for the other. Looking for a trust-proof solution is the fragile error. David Remnick says it well in the March 12th New Yorker: Democracy, he writes: "At best, it's an ambition, a state of becoming," and "the fragility of democratic aspiration is a brutal fact of history."
Every time we try an end-run around it we at best distract ourselves from useful next steps, and more often undermine our own aspirations.
Trust and skepticism go fine together—alongside a sense of humor. The leap of faith we make is always somewhat foolish, whether it's a question of when to lock one's car doors, leave things out on the lawn, etc. But
