Re: Frankey Jones & Stanley Milgram's Obedience to

["George K Cunningham" <gkc@louisville.edu>]

JB and Bill,
 
Bad analogy.  In the Milgram experiments, like related experiments in
which subjects, through social pressure, are made to do things that they
otherwise would not do, the presumption is that afterwards when they
understand what happened they will realize that they were wrong.  You,
like many on this list, object to NCLB and the standards-based education
reform it represents.  You see it as the moral equivalent of
administering pointless and painful electrical shocks.  Most of the
country does not see it this way.  They view these as necessary and
effective educational practices.  Every governor aspires to be the
"educational governor" so that they can ride this to the White House and
become the "educational president," which was the successful strategy of
both Clinton and G. W. Bush.  NCLB was approved by congress with
widespread and bipartisan support.  The testing programs in all the
states are the result of the democratic process of legislative
deliberations.  The people who do this believe strongly that they are
doing what is best for the students in their state.

I respect those who oppose these policies.  I think that the test being
administered are technically deficient and way too expensive and the
ultimate goal of forcing schools to adopt more effective instructional
methods might be achieved in other ways.  What I don't think you can
legitimately do is assert that those who advocate these practices are
moral cowards somehow intimidated into doing things that they know are
wrong, like the subjects in the Milgram experiments.

George K. Cunningham
University of Louisville

>>> gbracey@erols.com 01/26/03 12:34PM >>>
Since some on the ARN list are too young to recall the Milgram
experiments,
a little historical context:  Israel had snatched Adolf Eichmann, the
go-to
guy of the Holocaust, out of Argentina and put him on trial in Israel.
People argued that Eichmann was had to be a monster.  Only an evil
monster
could do such a thing.  He said he was just following orders. 
Philosopher
Hannah Arendt said that was probably true in her "banality of evil"
writings
(Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil).  Anyone
could be
an Eichmann.  This thesis did not sit well with a lot of folks.

Milgram's experiments were designed to test, insofar as possible, the
banality of evil thesis.  He confirmed it.

The UK site is a bit inaccurate and incomplete.  In the original, the
naive
subject was led to think he/she was helping a scientist (in a white
lab
coat) conduct an experiment (in those days, one requirement for passing
a
psych. 1 course was to participate in experiments conducted by faculty
and
graduate students, a wee bit of coercion itself).  I don't recall
anything
about a middle aged man and heart trouble.  The dupe was visible and
could
be heard in pain and seen writhing.

I don't recall the scale being marked in volts, but the right hand side
was
in red and marked "danger."  Lots of people administered shocks with
the
scale in the red zone.

Milgram's studies have been replicated all over the world with the
highest
compliance rate being in...Germany.  If the "scientist" didn't have a
white
coat, compliance was reduced.  If another person was present,
compliance
also fell--that person could be enlisted as an ally of the
shock-giver.
There were other variations that elude me now.

I've been thinking about this in connection with NCLB--why the ef
don't
people rise up and denounce it???

JB
----- Original Message -----
From: "William Cala" <wcala@rochester.rr.com>
To: <arn-l@interversity.org>; <Wildyears3@aol.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 11:51 AM
Subject: [arn-l] Frankey Jones & Stanley Milgram's Obedience to
Authority


Stanley Milgram was a social psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard
and
later taught at Yale.  His award-winning book of 1974, Obedience to
Authority resonates today.  Please note the following excerpt from a
UK
Social Psych. site:

      Stanley Milgram's studies on obedience, conducted in the late
1950s
are among the most dramatic and unnerving of all Psychology studies.
Milgram
was interested in how far people would go in following the orders of a
person in authority. In his studies, a naive subject (the 'teacher')
was led
to believe that he was delivering increasingly powerful shocks to a
middle-aged man (the 'learner') with a heart condition in another
room.
      At some point in the study, the learner began to complain of
heart
problems, and to demand that the shocks stop. Each time the teacher
tried to
stop, the experimenter would insist that the experiment go on. To
everyone's
surprise, over 60% of all subjects followed the experimenter's commands
to
go on, even after the learner ceased responding entirely.

      Although it is sometimes suggested that the same results would
not be
obtained today, or with other populations - e.g., women. Remarkably
however,
similar results were obtained in the Netherlands in 1986, with female
nurses
as subjects. Some things never change.....

      I have repeatedly wondered why so many people (administrators,
teachers etc.) while speaking one-on-one clearly understand and are
able to
articulate the damage of HST, yet when told to administer them, take
them
etc., they follow like sheep being led to the slaughter.    On Friday,
I
spoke with a fellow resisting superintendent from Nassau County in
Long
Island.  He said, "Bill, they've all given up down here.  They
(superintendents) are now trying to raise test scores."

      When I read of the rare exceptions like Frankey Jones and James
Hope
(and the heroes on this list) I cannot help but think of Milgram's
Theory of
Obedience and why we are in the mess that we find ourselves with HST.

      "The theory that only those on the sadistic fringe of society
would
submit to such cruelty is disclaimed."    "....Milgram has noted
reoccurring
themes (as found in Obdenience to Authority)."  (He details the My Lai
massacre in Vietnam).  But the studies do not deal with extreme
situations
such as war.

      "People who are doing a job as instructed by an administrative
figure
are following the instructions of that administrative outlook and not
the
outlook of a moral code. The feelings of duty and personal emotion are
clearly separated. Responsibility shifts in the mind of the subordinate
from
himself/herself to the authority figure. There is a well defined
purpose
behind the actions or goals of the authority, and the subordinate is
depended upon to help and meet those goals. Milgram points out, "The
results, as seen and felt in the laboratory, are to this author
disturbing.
They raise the possibility that human nature, or -more specifically-the
kind
of character produced in American society, cannot be counted on to
insulate
the citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of
malevolent authority."

      Milgram speaks of a "malevolent authority."  What would
administrators
and teachers do under the pressure of a "benevolent authority?" 
Milgram's
studies show that 65% of all the "teachers" punished the "learners" to
the
maximum of 450 volts.

      I find Milgram's use of "teacher" and "learner" frigteningly
analogous.

      "According to Milgram, every human has the dual capacity to
function
as an individual exercising his or her own moral judgement and the
capacity
to make their own moral decisions based on their personal character.
What is
still a mystery is this, what happens to the average person who is
obedient
to authority when it overrides their own moral judgement?"

      We must continue the fight and support the Frankey Joneses of
the
world.

      Bill Cala (in total admiration of Frankey Jones and what she has
done)