A Teacher's Journal 46: Political Arithmetic

My students are intrigued by Evo Morales, Bolivia's recently elected leader and self-proclaimed "nightmare for the US." We've tracked Evo's rise to power over the past several months, fascinated by his unpredictability and his disdain for wearing suits when meeting world leaders!

Also interesting to my students was the fact that Mr. Morales was the first indigenous candidate to ever be elected leader of a modern South American nation. We talked about the vast differences in the economic standing of the native people in Bolivia and the descendents of European settlers. We compared the lifestyles of native Bolivians to Native Americans, and imagined a day when a Sioux, Iroquois or Lumbee Indian would rise to the top of the political world in America.

While somewhat frightened by the links developing between Morales and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (who has turned us off with his unrelenting criticism of the United States), the majority of my children thought that it was neat that a native Bolivian had become president. They truly believed that Evo would do great things for the indigenous tribes of his nation and that representation for the poor was not only fair but also essential.

That belief led to one of the most interesting lessons I've taught all year. During one of our classroom current events, I introduced students to an article titled "Bolivian President Halves his own Salary." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4652940.stm) As we read through the story, we learned that during his campaign, Morales had promised to cut his salary -- if elected -- in half to symbolically "share the burden of the poor." What's more, he had promised to use the savings to increase the number of doctors and teachers in his nation. True to his word, Evo had cut his salary by 57% -- to $1,800 a month.

My students were enamored with the decision, instantly convinced that Morales had a depth of character unmatched by the world leaders of other nations and were ready to start a letter writing campaign to President Bush, Governor Easley and Senator Dole calling for cuts in the salaries of America's elected officials in order to pay for more teachers and doctors here! "See, he really is a good guy Mr. Ferriter," they argued.

On the surface, my students were right. Morales had certainly made what appeared to be a courageous decision in the interest of helping the people of his nation. My children were making a critical mistake, though. They were accepting a statistic as convincing evidence without digging below the surface. and that was a mistake that I wasn't about to allow them to make! We've worked hard this year to look critically at news articles and to ask challenging questions before making decisions.

"Guys, before we can truly know if Morales is truly interested in 'sharing the burden of the poor,' what else would we need to know?" I asked. "I mean, Evo's claims sound really good, but should we just believe everything he's saying without question?"

Ideas started to fly immediately. "We'd need to know how much the poor really make in Bolivia," James* answered.

With a little online research and some simple math we learned that even after cutting his salary, Evo Morales would be making almost 23 times as much money per year as the average Bolivian -- who makes $960 dollars annually. "Wow Mr. Ferriter, he's making twice as much every month as most people make every year. That's not sharing the burden of the poor," one child noted.

"Yeah, but I'll bet that George Bush makes tons more than the average American does too. Can we look that up now, Mr. Ferriter?" asked Anthony*

What we found destroyed the warm feelings that my students had developed for Mr. Morales. You see, while President Bush's annual salary of $400,000 sounds relatively impressive compared to Evo's, it is still only 10 times as much as the $42,000 that the average American earns annually. Annah* summarized the thoughts of the group when she said, "He's ripping his people off but looking really good while doing it! That's not sharing the burden of the poor!"

This discovery was almost electric to my students! They were completely jazzed to learn that people could use statistics to paint tarnished pictures of reality. It was a lesson that I'm sure they will remember for years to come and it was a significant step towards becoming a critical consumer of information that I'm glad that I was able to facilitate.

What I worry about is that far too many Americans have yet to make this discovery. Our tendency is to read a statistic and to accept it without question. We have an almost dangerous level of blind faith that a numerical representation of reality holds an undeniable level of truth. As a result, our ability to make informed decisions is greatly compromised by the differences between what we believe to be true and what is reality.

I see evidence of this all-too human weakness in the misuse of education statistics nearly every week. Consider the recent conversation that one of my colleagues had with a neighbor who passionately argued that Wake County didn't need any additional funds to build schools because of the new education lottery in our state. "You got your lottery," she stated, "So you won't get another dime from me. I'll never vote in favor of a bond. Period!"

What she failed to understand was that the lottery in North Carolina is likely to generate a total of $400 million dollars statewide this year. Of that $400 million, Wake County is likely to get $9.2 million dollars. While $9 million dollars is not an insignificant amount of money, it is less than half of the costs of building one elementary school ($23 million) and in a county that adds over 6,000 students a year, it is woefully insufficient!

National education statistics are no less immune to misinterpretation. A good example is the growing wave of panic building (http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2006/01/04/16engineer.h25.html?querystring=engineering%20graduates) behind the idea that the United States is losing its competitive edge in engineering to China and India. While numbers vary depending on how you define "graduates," fair comparisons have the US trailing China by over 200,000 engineers annually -- 137,400 to 351,500.

Looking only at these numbers would give anyone a reason to pause. But when you take total population into account -- China has over 1.3 billion citizens while the US has slightly fewer than 300 million -- is there any surprise that China leads in the number of engineering graduates? Using simple totals for comparison, it's likely that China leads in every category of graduates -- and probably in dropouts too!

I'm also constantly frustrated by the overuse of rankings as a common form of statistical comparison. They are quick and easy numbers that people immediately accept as true -- and they make for great headlines! Take SAT scores for example. Would a headline reading "North Carolina ranks 41st in the Nation on the SAT college entrance exam" get your attention?

Technically, that statistic is accurate (http://www.midwestsites.com/stellent2/groups/public/documents/pub/mws_am_ed_000924.hcsp). In 2005, our state's 1010 SAT score was only better than that of nine other states. Should we begin ratchet up the pressure on our high schools? Many would argue yes!

When you look closer though, you'll notice that out of the top twenty-five ranked states, only two tested more than 30% of their high school seniors. In Iowa (the top ranked state with a 1204 score), only 5% of seniors took the exam. How would that affect comparisons with North Carolina, where almost 75% of our high school seniors took the exam?

Gerald Bracey traces the origins of the term statistic in his new book Reading Educational Research (http://books.heinemann.com/products/E00858.aspx). What he found was fascinating to me: "In seventeenth-century England and France, some people took to collecting numbers that they thought reflected the health of the state....They came to be called statists and the numbers they collected were first called political arithmetic and then statistics."

Political arithmetic seems to be a painfully appropriate description of the way that statistics are being used in today's world! Regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, writers are resorting to the careless use of numbers to influence people's opinions. Partial truths that support a particular viewpoint have become the norm, muddying the quality of conversations that communities can have about essential issues.

We have an obligation to work through this bias to determine the truth before rushing to critical decisions -- especially when considering the performance and the needs of our schools!

Posted by William Ferriter at 08:35 AM on April 24, 2006 | Leave Feedback

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