What Is It That Surveys Survey?

I read a survey this morning concerning the impact of the recent economic downturn on employers’ attitudes toward college learning. Does it astound anyone that employers overwhelmingly say that there is “room for improvement” in what and how students are taught? Discovering the carbon footprint of a leprechaun would be less surprising. The survey confirmed my belief in the centrality of the liberal arts, and that, I realized, was precisely the problem with it and with surveys in general. What exactly do surveys measure, what insights do they reveal, and how useful, really, are they for guiding thinking? It seems to me surveys disclose only the prevailing narrative already existing at the time they are taken and, thus, reinforce it.

No conception we have about reality is unmediated. We get our information and, as a result, our opinions, largely from the media, either mainstream or new. Stories appearing in mass media are amplified and assume significance, sometimes unwarranted, precisely because they are massively mediated. Now, according to agenda-setting theory, the media tell us what to think about, not what to think. This theory, however, gazes past several significant considerations.

Media stories are selected by people who work for media outlets that are in the business of selling viewers to advertisers. “Good” stories—good, that is, from the media perspective--tend to be chosen for their hot topicality, for their potential to provoke a reaction, increasing the likelihood of their riveting the easily distracted attention of viewers. However, these stories seldom present historical context; they venture timidly, if at all, into an analysis of the animating assumptions or full implications of what they report, and that present conflict in an easily discerned binary fashion, without assessing the validity of the competing claims. No nuance allowed. Let’s not complicate things. We the audience won’t sit still for that.

Moreover, stories are often framed in a way that shapes our thinking about them. It makes a difference, for example, if low student persistence rates are framed as the result of teachers being insufficiently engaging in the classroom, or the lack of supporting infrastructure, or homesickness, or comfort issues like unfamiliar or uncongenial surroundings, or being unprepared for the academic rigors of post-secondary study, or whether or not the persistence rates are any different than they have been in the past. Too, stories are often presented as a crisis unique to our current historical moment, an ominous declension from the usual. A familiar one in this age of texting is the “crisis” in students’ writing ability. The current crop of students, we are told, can’t write, can’t express a coherent argument, flout the rules of grammar. That “crisis” actually has a pedigree that stretches back to the 17th century.

Now, the large and small failures of our educational institutions have always been “good”stories. They entice because they provoke an apocalyptic future of diminished American global influence; or because they prod the limbic region of those who think teachers have a cushy, nine-month job and are protected even in their incompetence by overly powerful unions; or, perhaps, because they arouse a feeling of vague displeasure with institutions in general. Think tanks and polling firms churn out reports and academics write articles and books suggesting various purgatives for the bacillus of educational ineffectuality. Those reports, articles, and books become news stories, and once picked up and broadcast, their resonance dilates and courses through the cultural capillaries. They become socially circulating attitudes. Business executives watch them, read about them, talk about them. Is it any wonder, then, that, when surveyed, they express the belief that colleges need to do more, and do it better?

I wonder if education is solely responsible for employee performance. Educational preparation is surely important, but it does not guarantee performance. Perhaps equally important is on-the-job training, the impact on performance of focused experience. As a college professor, I can teach communication skills, critical and analytical thinking, ethical decision making, finding and assessing information from multiple sources, and direct experience with the scientific method—but these skills must be connected to and activated by, must be particularized by, the context of a specific job. I can teach Kant’s categorical imperative, but as an ethical principle it assumes functional clarity only within the boundaries of the work one does, the job-defined issues and loyalties and persons with which one deals. Besides, Kantian ethics is one among many: Aristotle’s golden mean, Bentham’s utilitarianism, Dewey’s pragmatism, Rawls’ veil of ignorance. Which applies, given the particular company, its image, its relation to its customers, its degree of social consciousness? Or, I can teach how to write a business letter, but I cannot teach the specific purposes, customers, or situations that letter must serve. Only orientation to the job and the institution’s culture can teach that.

For the last 25 years, polls have repeatedly revealed that almost half of Americans, despite abundant evidence, deny the factuality of evolution. Is this surprising, given that the last 25 years have seen the religious right annex political discourse and that evidence supporting evolution is seldom reported. Angry people waving placards promoting the young earth theory bristles with compelling drama; a scientist explaining the evidence for evolution, not so much. Recent polls by CBS News and ABC news show a majority of Americans support extending jobless benefits. Is this surprising, given the economic downturn and deplorably high unemployment rates that have no immediate end in sight? At my university, the annual poll of faculty satisfaction consistently announces that the faculty disagrees, robustly, with the statement that it is adequately compensated for the work it does. Year after year this statement’s rating on the five-point Likert scale stands at 2.8. Is this surprising, given that the university is small, located in rural Iowa, religiously sponsored, and liberal arts oriented? What person with just a pint of common sense and a few fluid ounces of awareness could not predict the results of these polls?

Most surveys, it seems to me, do little more than stencil the common wisdom, the attitude de jure, on public consciousness. Perhaps their confirmatory nature is the point. Despite chanting silvery hosannahs to personal autonomy, maybe we like being validated by the majority, like the certification those hard numbers confer on our view of things, like the feeling of being in the know, of being bolted to a sturdy chassis, of being certain of our certainty. Or, perhaps, we simply like fires that comfort us with heat without blinding us with light.