"We Will Never Understand the Reasons if We Don't Bother to Ask..."

Several months ago then interim dean Nonie Lesaux invited me to give a speech at this event. She suggested I could give a brief review of the history of education research and how it has contributed to the betterment of the world. At this point, that suggestion has clearly been undercut by a couple of factors: First, there are much more urgent issues to reflect upon than the history of education research. And second, it is hard to argue that the world has gotten better, at least if we include the trajectory of the last four months in our calculations. So I am faced with a bit of a challenge. What candid message can I formulate that does not taint what should be a day of great pride and joy for all the graduates here, and for their families who have supported them, and for those of us on the faculty who want to cheer how much you have all learned and developed?

The joy should be real, and we should exult in it. But I recognize that many of you are also dealing with uncertainty about your own futures and dismay at the prospect of perhaps having to reorganize your plans and redirect your hopes. We on the faculty share your uncertainties and dismay. We realize how naïve we have been to assume that the values that Harvard stands for are widely shared, that producing life-enhancing and life-saving research findings was enough to justify our existence, that the undeniable benefits of constituting a student body which is heterogeneous in national origin, language, experience, and culture were obvious to all. It seems that we have failed to communicate our strongest commitments and deepest values in ways that make sense to many of our fellow citizens. Perhaps academia’s, and Harvard’s, focus on performative actions — pronouns and antiracist workshops and diversity slogans — has masked the degree to which those performances represented, however inadequately, deep commitments to shared values, to an effort to create a world in which words like ‘marginalized’ and ‘minoritized’ are no longer necessary and in which diversity is valued for its undeniable contributions to any group’s creativity and to each individual’s critical thinking, rather than for its utility in raising our scores on some external metric of institutional climate.

So today I offer the graduates not just my congratulations, but also my admiration. You are entering a less welcoming and more challenging world than I faced when I finished my graduate training in — listen carefully so you believe it — 1971. Those of us born in the USA just after the second world war could well be called the multiply-blessed generation. The country had emerged from a debilitating depression and then a devastating war, and everyone was ready to settle down into a period of world peace and domestic tranquility. And indeed we did, mostly. The facts confirm that things were steadily getting better in those postwar years: poverty continued to exist, but economic options were opening up and wages were rising; folks continued to complain that kids weren’t being taught to read properly, but schooling was universally available and access to higher education was rapidly expanding; racism was far from ended but the civil rights movement generated legislative initiatives that led to advancements in access to voting, schooling, housing, employment, and perhaps most importantly, beliefs. I certainly don’t mean to suggest that everything was wonderful. Sexist policies and attitudes were unquestioned. Racism and antisemitism were tolerated. The New Deal and the Great Society to the contrary notwithstanding, poverty persisted, as did severe inequities in access to good schools, to decent health care, and to safe employment. The Cold War generated anxiety; we weren’t participating in drills to prepare us for school shootings, but we did practice crouching under our desks in case of a nuclear attack — a set of measures that even in third grade we recognized would be completely ineffective. But despite all the failings of that era, there was a general sense of optimism — a sense that things were getting better, that the future was secure.  

Nor was this phenomenon limited to the U.S. Europe in the postwar years became an economic powerhouse, development spurred to some extent by the Marshall Plan but nurtured with a commitment in most western European countries to social welfare policies that ensured access early childhood education and university education and health care and elder care. China too started experiencing breathtakingly successful economic growth, starting in 1978 when the rigidities of exclusive central planning were abandoned in favor of a mixed economy that allowed for foreign investment and private enterprise. China has also invested its mixed market surplus in ambitious programs designed to create access to early childhood education for all children, including those in remote villages and poverty-stricken regions, an undertaking that has the potential to revitalize shrinking population centers by opening up jobs that help stem the flow of young adults to large urban centers in eastern China. Vietnam, after the merciful end of the American war, focused on developing a national literacy curriculum and assessment program, and has made astounding advances in educational outcomes that in turn are associated with an impressive decline in poverty rates, from about 80% in 1990 to under 8% in 2018. Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile have also seen impressive economic growth since 1945. In every case, the expansion of economic opportunities was powered by improvements in access to and quality of educational opportunities — undertakings often led or shaped by graduates of HGSE. And of course we back home at Harvard have benefited because students from all over the world are now prepared, educationally and financially, to join our student body, to expand our horizons and share their perspectives with us.

I would argue, though, that the growing prosperity of the postwar period was not its major feature. Optimism was. Things were getting better, and were experienced as getting better. Were they perfect? Of course not. Politicians cheated and profited from their positions of power then as they do now, but they did at least attempt to cover up their lapses and they had the decency to be embarrassed about them. People lied, but they could get called out on their lies; there was a shared recognition of the difference between truth and fantasy, rather than widespread participation in fiction-reinforcement-procedures. Antisemitism existed, but it could still be distinguished from legitimate criticism of Israeli government actions. Party politics could be vicious, but republicans and democrats in the House and the Senate lunched together and played squash together and attended each other’s birthday parties. Scientific misconduct existed, but it was not seen as an excuse to demolish entire structures focused on improving health or education outcomes. In other words, there was a general presupposition of good will that licensed disagreements and kept them civil. Losing that presupposition of good will may be a greater threat to our well-being than a tariff-induced economic downturn or an unprecedented increase in the national debt.

So as you go out into the world with your Harvard degrees, you have to recognize that the reality based, fact-informed, truth-valuing culture characteristic of academia is not universal — and perhaps that your credibility is suspect simply because of your association with an elite institution. Crimson journalist Miles Herszenhorn coauthored an op-ed in today’s New York Times celebrating the new unity at Harvard, alliances across political divisions engendered by outside attacks; one wonders why the conversations that led to that unity were not going on before the threat was mounted. I hope you have learned, at HGSE, how to anticipate the need for conversations across divisions, how to discuss important issues civilly with those who disagree with you. I hope you have learned to defend the principles that we espouse here while listening to and learning from adherents of different principles. I have been involved for over 20 years in developing elementary and middle school programs that are designed to teach adolescents the skills of argumentation, which require sophisticated oral language and literacy and knowledge and respect for facts and for one’s opponent. Argumentation is, ultimately, the process of embracing disparate positions as opportunities to learn. “How can anyone think that?” We will never understand the reasons if we don't bother to ask and to listen to the answers.

Such conversations are difficult. They require skills that we too rarely impart to students in our classes, whether in kindergarten or graduate school. They are difficult because they create paralyzing dilemmas. Is the point of such discussions making our own thinking clear to others, or making their thinking clear to us? Should we be trying to persuade people or understand them? What is the right balance between courtesy and candor? Between freedom of speech and avoidance of harm? Between commitment to our own values and premature rejection of others’ values? Between disagreement and disagreeability?  

These are dilemmas — by definition, dilemmas are irresolvable. Problems can be solved, dilemmas can only be reasoned about.  Howard Gardner said somewhere “If we want to have good workers and good citizens, we need to create common spaces in which individuals can talk about the moral and ethical dilemmas that they have faced and how they resolve them.” And of course I agree. But common spaces are not enough. We need to nurture the presupposition of good will that allows for both candor and ardor, that invites disagreement and a willingness to admit uncertainty, and that helps each of us inch toward the ability to listen to those whose perspectives are most distant from our own.  

So go out into the world proud of your achievements and ready to exploit them, and prepared to defend this institution against mendacious attacks and gratuitous insults. HGSE’s motto is “learn to change the world” — note that, change THE WORLD, not change Massachusetts or change the United States. You are here because we need you — your skills, your commitment, your willingness to speak up, the knowledge you have brought to us about your own corners of the world, and your courageous candor — if the world is going to change for the better.