Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove argues that ‘schools should be engines of social mobility, helping children to overcome the accidents of birth and background to achieve much more than they may ever have imagined’ .  For such an ambitious sounding project, it has attracted very few critics. Whilst there are some disagreements over the policy detail, the idea that schools can (and should) be helping to make Britain a ‘society in which everyone is free to flourish and rise.  Where birth is never destiny’  (in the words of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg) has achieved a wide consensus.  It is worth interrogating whether this as ambitious as it first appears.

What do we want from our schools?  As a parent of a 10 year old currently wading through the mire that is the school application process, this is a question that has been at the top of my mind.  I recently asked my mother-in-law, who attended grammar school in the 1950s, what she thought she had gained from her education, her response was that she had gained knowledge; the subjects that she had studied at school had given her a broad knowledge and understanding of the world and the way it works.  This meant that she could look at problems and issues from a more objective and critical standpoint.  She explained how this had widened her horizons, helped her to think and form opinions.  This is what I want my children to get from their education.  I want them to have access to knowledge and ideas that will take them out of their immediate surroundings (nice as they are) and open their eyes to a wider world.

Michael Gove does seem to have recognised that school life has become skewed against teaching knowledge to a new generation, and he has said that he wants schools to be rewarded for pursuing a more academic curriculum.  The English Baccalaureate (BACC) has been introduced as a (limited) technique to reverse the decline in school standards and promote more rigorous academic subjects.  However, there is a long way to go before that will be achieved, and unfortunately, the idea that at the same time schools should be ‘engines of social mobility’ has muddied the waters somewhat.

For those not versed in all the research and policy documents on the subject, the term social mobility is generally understood to mean social advancement. The Coalition’s Strategy for Social Mobility, Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers, however, argues for a narrow focus based around two concerns: The first is intergenerational social mobility, defined as ‘the extent to which people’s success in life is determined by who their parents are’, and the second is relative social mobility, which refers to ‘the comparative chances of people with different backgrounds ending up in certain social or income groups.’  The overarching theme is that the earnings and behaviour of parents closely determine the opportunities for their children.  Wider social influences such as the role that the economy might play in the opportunities available to us, or the role of politics in influencing our interests or ambitions more broadly, are ignored.  Also absent is influence, authority or any sense of ‘making it’ through any means other than earning more money.

In the hands of politicians, social mobility is not about wider economic or social development that might make everyone better- off, it is a zero-sum game.  As David Skelton of Policy Exchange argued in a Battle of Ideas discussion on this very subject , wealthy people have to give up some of their advantages too.  Add these assumptions to the pre-occupation with an apparent (although not uncontested)  decline in social mobility, and the focus of policy is established; to remove the ‘strait jacket’ of family and background on our ‘life chances’ in the hope that children’s income will be less closely related to that of their parents.  When politicians talk about schools and social mobility, this is the framework they are imposing on them. 

Schools are expected to advance social mobility in two ways; by narrowing the attainment gap that exists between rich and poor students at school; and by narrowing the destination gap (the jobs, or higher education their pupils move into) when they leave school.

That an attainment gap exists is widely recognised.  The figures quoted in the Coalitions strategy for social mobility are that ‘only 75% of the poorest children reach the expected level by the time they leave primary school, compared with 97% of the richest children. And just 20% of the poorest children gain five GCSEs at A*-C, including English and Maths, compared to 75% of the richest children.’  This gap is indeed an indictment of the current education system.  It is unlikely, though, that adding social mobility to the list of issues schools have to concern themselves with will solve this problem. 

Concern with the attainment gap encourages schools to focus their attention on children from poorer families.  The aim of policy is to raise their educational attainment, relative to the rest of the student population; to narrow the gap between rich and poor, not to improve education per se.  The result is a distortion of the teacher’s priorities away from educational needs, to the needs of improving social mobility.

When education policy becomes focused on narrowing the attainment gap even policies which appear to be about educating children, such as the proposal by Nick Clegg to introduce summer schools for children who are falling behind, end up being about something else entirely.  In this case, Clegg sees this policy as a solution to the summer riots, to help young people, who he says have lost touch with their future , but it is also informed by one of the key themes of the literature on social mobility, that children are disadvantaged because of their parents.  As Barbara Ellen argued in an Observer debate on this subject, ‘underprivileged children, who hold their own during the academic term but fall behind every summer because they miss out on the stimulation and structure better-off parents are able to provide throughout the holidays.  It’s disadvantage piled upon disadvantage – how is this fair?’ 

The idea that the attainment gap is a result of parents’ background or behaviour has won increasing influence in education policy and practice.  Advocates of this view have pointed to a correlation between such factors as the number of books in the home, parental (especially the mothers) attitude towards education, and parenting style with the attainment of children.  A review of the literature on the impact of parental involvement published in 2003 points to the 1997 government White Paper, ‘Excellence in Schools’ as first setting out the then Labour Government’s strategy for securing parental involvement in their children’s education .  Since then there has been a steady increase in the drive to involve schools in their child’s schooling and education, with home-school agreements; the provision of lessons for parents to teach them how to help their children with their homework; and campaigns to get parents to spend 15 minutes reading to their children daily just some of the techniques employed .  More recently, Children’s Minister Sarah Teather announced at the Liberal Democrats conference that the government would be piloting parenting classes for parents of all children under the age of five, stating they were a response to those parents who say they are under pressure, and would like more information on what to expect, more ideas on how to cope, and more ideas for helping children learn and develop Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers takes up this cause: ‘Children with more engaged parents are more likely to succeed.  Many schools that have successfully raised the attainment of disadvantaged pupils have successfully engaged disadvantaged parents in their children’s education.’ 

That parents’ educational and cultural capital might have an influence on how well their children do in school is hardly surprising, but it doesn’t follow from this that attempts to change how parents bring up their children, or even the number of books in a house, will change how well their children do at school.  Attainment is the result of a number of personal, social and educational factors and it is bizarre to think that enforced reading for 15 minutes a day can transform these, nor does it follow that schools should take on responsibility for influencing the home lives of their pupils.  Historically there has been more sensitivity about schools interfering in the family, because of the potential of damaging parental authority, but as more and more non-educational policy priorities have been heaped on them schools have been driven to look elsewhere for a solution to the one area that perhaps they should take responsibility for – education.  This is summed up by a comment made by Nick Clegg in September 2011, ‘We already expect our teachers to be social workers; child psychologists; nutritionists; child protection officers. We expect them to police the classroom, take care of children’s health; counsel our sons and daughters; guide them; worry about them, and, on top of that, educate them too ’ For Clegg, the solution is for parents to do the educating, but surely a more logical approach would be to let parents get on with all the other stuff, while schools teach?  This would mean putting aside the concern that parents are somehow damaging their children’s potential, and just trusting them and their children to do well enough on their own.  This is an unimaginable leap of faith for most policy makers today, who tend to see parents in the role of unworthy care-takers of their children, rather than loving Mums and Dads. This attitude is expressed by the increasing proclivity to call the home a ‘home learning environment’, rather than a family.  Once the family home is conceived of in this way, the role of schools easily slips to one of policing the extent to which parents fulfill their obligations to teach their children.  Tony Blair’s missive ‘education, education, education’ has become a moral value that parents must adhere to. 

It is not just parents whose behavior has to change to advance social mobility.  The Coalition argues that ‘wider society has a role to play in raising aspirations in schools’ .  The idea that some children end up NEET because their families did not go to University or have professional jobs has resulted in a swathe of initiatives that attempt to address this.  These include; ‘Inspiring the Future’, which will ‘get up to 100,000 people from all sectors and professions into schools and colleges to talk about their jobs and career routes’ ; ‘Speakers for Schools’ which will provide state schools with access to high profile speakers (including Cabinet Ministers); and mentoring programmes.  Apart from ignoring the fact that many people end up NEET because there are just not enough jobs, these patronising schemes assume that children (and their parents) will not be able to make the ‘right choices’ without armies of semi-professional do-gooders to help them. Schools are the conduit through which this ‘level playing field’ is be established, and they will be accountable for how well they do under Gove’s new ‘destination measure’.  This destination data ‘tells us if students are moving into high quality apprenticeships, satisfying jobs or good college and university courses’ .  It puts schools in the role of employment agency, and means that even the choice of subjects to be taught is discussed in this framework .  For teachers and students alike, the purpose of school becomes a narrow and instrumental obsession with obtaining the right certificate, experience, contacts and skills for a job in order that the criteria of improving social mobility can be met.

In truth schools already see themselves as “engines of social mobility”, where children’s failure to achieve is understood as stemming from a home life deficient in parenting skills, knowledge or opportunity.  The result is that a teacher’s traditional role of passing on knowledge to the next generation has become a side-act to the demand of creating a fair society, but this is a project in which schools can never succeed.  Schools cannot transform the job market, and neither will their interventions in family life have the outcome of improving children’s educational attainment, but by constantly sending the message through the social mobility discussion, that their parents aren’t good enough, they will manage to undermine the authority of parents in the eyes of their children.  One thing that schools can do is teach their pupils knowledge in the first place.  This requires educationalists to reject the attempt to turn schools into ‘engines of social mobility’ and to concentrate on what they are uniquely able to do – teach subjects to the next generation.

Cabinet Office (2011) Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers: A Strategy for Social Mobility, London, Cabinet Office

Department for Education (2010) The Importance of Teaching, London, HMSO

Desforges C, Abouchaar A (2003) The Impact of Parental Involvement, Parental Support and Family Education on Pupil Achievement and Adjustment: A Literature Review, London, Department for Education and Skills, Research Report RR433

Patterson C (2011) Parenting Matters: early years and social mobility, London, Centre Forum

Introduction

Whatever the political hue of government, the state has always tried to change our behaviours.  From straightforward information campaigns, subtle and not-so subtle scare tactics, to targets, tax breaks, promises of deferred gratification, punishments, sticks, rewards and incentives, local and national governments use an array of tactics that encourage us to do the right thing for ourselves and others.  Indeed, history shows that the state project of behaviour change dates back to the 1830s. 
The much-touted phrase ‘from nanny to nudge’ suggests that the Conservative-led government wants to move away from New Labour’s attempts to regulate our lifestyles in order to find new ways to shape the habits and attitudes of good citizenship and spread them more widely.  Policy makers hope to change our expectations of what local and national government should provide as universal public services, and encourage us to be proactive in changing our own and others’ behaviours. 
Certain behaviours are a particular concern.  While every other budget is being cut, local authorities in areas with the highest levels of obesity, alcohol problems and poor diet can have extra money from a ring-fenced budget to nudge citizens into achieving public health goals.  Formed in 2010 as part of the Cabinet Office, the Behavioural Insight Team is looking to behavioural psychology and neuroscience to offer effective ways for getting citizens to make better lifestyle choices.  At the same time, citizens are to be encouraged to take on a more active, voluntary role in areas traditionally run by local and national government, including housing, youth work and social care. 
The prominence of behavioural science in the contemporary politics of behaviour change extends to emotional and psychological aspects of our lives, reflected in state-sponsored interventions for emotional well-being, and renewed political interest in requiring schools to play an active role in ‘character development’.

These developments raise political and social questions:
• Is changing our behaviour per se a legitimate aim for government?  What are the implications of expanding behavioural interventions into areas such as emotional well-being and character development?
• In face of policy rhetoric about the Big Society and ‘people power’, what happens to autonomy and agency when unseen experts and policy wonks seek to subvert competent adults’ decisions about what they eat, how many units they drink or whether they give up time to help the community.  Or, if they decide to do these things, should government determine how?
• Is it a given that we all agree on ‘the good life’?  Who has decided that the model citizen should be exercise-loving, abstemious, emotionally-literate and volunteering ?  Who decides what makes ‘citizens of good character’?
• Is nudge a clever if slightly manipulative version of state interference, or a more progressive way of helping people help themselves? 
• What do contemporary approaches to behaviour change reveal about images of human nature embedded in them?

Expanding the scope of behaviour change

As well as areas such as health and social participation, aspects of life once seen as virtues, the outcomes of moral choices, or the results of socialisation and lifetime development, are now depicted as behaviours.  This draws emotional well-being and character development into the remit of state-sponsored behaviour change. 

According to positive psychology, learned optimism is at the heart of well-being (Seligman et al 2009).  Its many supporters argue that this, together with resilience, stoicism, a positive and optimistic outlook, an ability to be in the moment or ‘in flow’, as well as feelings of satisfaction, being supported, loved and respected, emotional regulation, emotional literacy and empathy, managing your emotions, equanimity, compassion, feeling more and caring for others, and not comparing yourself to others can all be taught and learned (Huppert 2007, Layard 2007).

Supporters present these constructs as ‘skills’ or ‘capabilities’ vital for life and educational success, arguing that social and economic factors account for less than half of their development (e.g. Layard 2005, Huppert 2007).  Promoting school-based emotional well-being interventions, Richard Layard stated that ‘there is an overwhelming case for the state to intervene in the character development of every family’ (Layard 2007). 

Following the riots in August 2011, the psychologisation of attributes, attitudes and dispositions associated with emotional well-being paves the way for the same tendency in renewed political interest for schools to play a leading role in character and moral development.  A recent inquiry by the think-tank DEMOS defines the various attributes of character as ‘a set of capabilities (or virtues) that underpin a good and flourishing life, but which are also instrumental to success in a (comparatively) value-free sense’ (ibid, p29).

Advocates of emotional well-being interventions are re-presenting them as part of character education.  Anthony Seldon, Headteacher of Wellington School, commends positive psychology for teaching perseverance, courage, belief in justice, loving and being loved, curiosity, wisdom and humour, alongside traditional public school discipline, sport and ‘houses’ (2011).  An architect of the previous government’s Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning strategy offers it as ‘one initiative that seeks to develop character through the taught curriculum’, adding resilience, empathy, setting learning goals, friendship, determination and application, anger management and staying in control to the list of character capabilities (2011, p91).

The cumulative effect is to encompass even more behaviours amenable to intervention than was the case with emotional well-being.  Liam Byrne, shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, adds a therapeutic emphasis: ‘Our young people want to develop, not only their understanding of the things around them – but an understanding of the things inside them – self-confidence, self-esteem, ambition, motivation, nerve. Things some of us but not all were lucky to get from our parents; things that a small few often get from the finest public schools…This is why I have come to believe that a new agenda for character education is so important.’ (Byrne quoted by DEMOS 2011, my emphasis).

Looking for good science

Attempts to find scientific evidence for politically-sponsored interventions were well advanced under the previous government.  Introducing a report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on ‘well-being in the classroom’ in 2007, Baroness Susan Greenfield said ‘there is overwhelming sympathy for schools to do more to protect and promote…emotional well-being’, calling for support for existing initiatives and for ‘recommendations that carry considerable weight both scientifically and politically’ (Sharples 2007, p1). Richard Layard argues:

By using our brains we have largely conquered nature.  We have defeated most vertebrates and many insects and bacteria…. The great challenge now is to use our mastery over nature to master ourselves and to give us more of the happiness that we all want. (Layard 2005, p27)

In a similar vein, Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA,  argues that advances in psychological science are now able to tell us how to understand and then work on our emotions, and that this is no different or more problematic than using scientific insights to improve physical workouts (Taylor 2008).

These aspirations are fuelled by research that combines economics, behavioural/positive psychology and sociology in order to understand the interplay between people’s rational, irrational, conscious and unconscious behaviours in different aspects of life, and to use new scientific thinking to describe what makes for success and happiness (e.g. Brooks 2011). 

Amidst these ideas, ‘nudge’ has caught popular and political attention (e.g. Thayer and Sunstein 2008, John et al 2011, Cabinet Office 2010).  This aims to engineer ‘choice architecture’, the subtle signals and environments that affect our behaviour in specific contexts before we have chosen consciously to act in a certain way.  According to a report for the Cabinet Office, because ‘people are sometimes seemingly irrational and inconsistent in their choices’, attention should shift from ‘facts and information’.  Instead, policy makers should manipulate our ‘choice architecture’ to ‘change behaviour without changing minds’ (Cabinet Office 2010, p5).

This is an important departure from past political commitments to justifying traditional approaches to behaviour change, such as regulatory interventions or information designed to persuade or dissuade, through political and civic debate.

In response to such criticisms, some supporters of nudge argue that behavioural science is a shift from a deficit model which leads professionals to identify individuals’ behavioural needs and then turn them into targets and outcomes, usually without consultation or meaningful collaboration.  Instead, progressive uses of nudge offer an asset-based approach that encourages individuals, communities and professionals to agree what behaviours should change, and then to decide what interventions might work in the social, cultural contexts that shape collective and individual behaviours (e.g. John et al 2011). 
Yet, political interest in behavioural science is broader than nudge.  A report for the Royal Society of Arts argues that:

A greater comprehension of cognitive pathways, social norms and moral motivations should join with a continuing understanding of instrumental factors in shaping government policy-making.  Given the demands of co-production, and the limits to available finance, it could be argued that a shift to a more subtle range of interventions is essential to the future of public services.  Our caution rests not so much over the ethical or political issues thrown up by such developments….. There is currently a gap between our understanding of general and psychological processes and capacity to ensure that these insights become effective tools for social engineering (Stoke and Mosely 2010, p23).

Although behavioural psychology has long influenced areas such as child guidance, the diagnosis of special educational needs and the use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in schools, historical precedents should not obscure a crucial difference from the past.  The new combination of behavioural psychology, economics and social science is predicated on growing scepticism about rational, conscious approaches to behaviour change.  There is a view that classes, public information campaigns, doctors’ surgeries, or even self-help books, do not work: despite our best intentions, we are easily sabotaged by unconscious drivers from past experience, emotional reactions to situations and other irrational aspects of ourselves.
A recent popular example of these arguments is David Brooks’ book The Social Animal: the hidden sources of love, character and achievement which was widely promoted and debated by think tanks and policy makers in 2011. According to Brooks, it is not that we are victims of our unconscious selves.  Instead, shaped by the interplay of genes, culture, upbringing and education, and the institutions and networks in which we live and work, it is possible for us to influence at least some of these.  From this perspective, although we cannot master these factors, the art of living well is to know how to steer our natures, and slowly remodel our characters.  Supported by policy-oriented bodies such as DEMOS and the RSA, he argues for policies that strengthen ‘character’ and life skills, especially for those left behind by deindustrialisation and rising inequality (Brooks 2011). 

Images of human nature

Interventions carry implicit and explicit images of human nature.  Some approaches to nudge are predicated on ideas that humans are often irrational, too busy, unwilling or unable to think through difficult and complicated questions, and just need nudging towards rational decision-making.  Other interventions might depict us as driven by self-interest and the desire to maximize our own advantages at the expense of others: for example, some nudge-based approaches seek to make us more altruistic or compassionate through incentives that we will benefit materially or psychologically in terms of our own well-being.  Some interventions might regard participants as innately altruistic, compassionate and collectively-minded, and then create the social conditions that enable people to build on those attributes and decide how to behave.  Others depict participants as emotionally or psychologically vulnerable, and therefore requiring therapeutic support. 

The tendency to psychologise complex areas of life goes hand in hand with enthusiasm for science and measures.  According to Lexmond and Grist, ‘We need to get better at measuring the development of character capabilities and the range of outcomes to which they lead’ (2011, p137).  Arguing that narrow views of education based on examination results and narrow economic measures of prosperity ‘miss out on most of the important things in life’ the authors advocate that ‘capabilities important to good and successful lives (empathy, resilience, creativity, application and so on) and the outcomes that embody those good and successful lives (happiness, health, trust, beauty, connectivity and so on) are woefully undervalued by policy makers….because they are so hard to quantify and the tools we have to measure them are so rudimentary’ (op cit, p137-38).

Faith in accurate measures leads to behavioural training, including training for parents and programmes to help children regulate their emotions and ‘behave better’, ‘using a proven technology – not just pious exhortations’ (op cit, p138).  Hopes for more robust assessments include ‘sophisticated tools’ to measure communities’ well-being, as well as brain assessments of a newborn child’s ‘epigenetic’ code to see if it is already in ‘survival mode’ and ‘likely to be oversensitive or paranoid’ and therefore in need of different support environments, and of the epigenetic states ‘that help people to overcome adversity successfully or the types of cultural institutions – family, schools, community groups and so on – that support people to buck the trend’ (ibid).

Advocacy of such interventions is offered as a way of overcoming the social disadvantage that parents inflict on their children, and which ‘poor character’ exacerbates.  These images are reinforced by an underlying theme in social policy and associated research where emotional and psychological vulnerability has come to characterise whole groups and communities (e.g. McLoughlin 2011, Ecclestone 2011).

There is therefore new enthusiasm for turning social and individual traits, attributes, dispositions and moral choices into utilitarian behaviours that can be trained.  At the same time, the prevalence of counselling, therapy and psychoanalysis in private life and through educational and other interventions, offers ways to explore the interplay between conscious and unconscious, rational and emotional factors that drive those behaviours, dispositions and attributes. 

Challenging a behavioural approach

Renewed political interest in behavioural science, and in measuring complex aspects of human behaviour, raises questions about whether these are a basis for progressive social policy.  The salient point here is not whether faith in science is well-founded or realistic.  Instead, a warning by sociologist C.Wright Mills in 1959 is as relevant now as it was half a century ago.  For him, the purpose of social science should not be to predict and control human behaviour, or engage in human engineering because such ideas reveal a rationalistic, empty optimism rooted in ignorance of the role of reason in human affairs, the nature of power and its relations to knowledge, and the meaning of moral action.  Mills argued that talking glibly about prediction and control is to assume the perspective of the bureaucrat to whom, as Karl Marx observed, the world is an object to be manipulated.  For Mills, attempts to predict and control behaviour substitute technocratic slogans for reasoned moral choices (Mills 1959). 

In a modern version of these warnings, philosopher Tom Nagel responds to contemporary efforts to predict and control what people will do by arguing that ‘even if empirical methods enable us to understand sub-rational processes better, the crucial question is, how are we to use this kind of self-understanding?’ (Nagel 2011, p2).  The civic task is to go beyond simply discovering unacknowledged influences on our conduct and adapting our behaviour accordingly.  Instead, we need to learn how to respond critically (ibid).

This is no easy civic task.  Public services have become preoccupied with ever-more accurate ways of identifying and assessing a widening array of behavioural traits and capabilities.  Rooted in a view that many citizens are both psychologically vulnerable and trainable, the drive to predict future problems and diagnose our psychological states legitimises state intervention.  One effect has been to move responsibility for complex areas of socialisation, character development, health and lifestyle choices away from parents, individuals and the wider community into schools, guidance and welfare agencies and psychology services. 

Yet, life, morality and politics are not science and their improvement requires civic debate and thought, not about how to find the most effective means of shaping people, but about what our ends should be.  This means challenging a social project that hopes to engineer the emotional well-being, character, health and social behaviours of citizens seen as vulnerable whilst avoiding civic engagement in the political and educational questions this raises. The problem is that if we are seen as emotionally vulnerable and amenable to sophisticated forms of behavioural training, we are in no fit state to engage in these questions.

University of Birmingham

Brooks, D. 2011. The Social Animal: the hidden sources of love, character and achievement. New York, Random House

Cabinet Office (2010) Mindspace: Influencing Behaviour through Public Policy, London, Cabinet Office/Institute for Government

Ecclestone, K. 2011. Emotionally vulnerable subjects and new inequalities: the educational implications of an ‘epistemology of the emotions’, International Journal of Sociology of Education, 21, 2, p91-113
Ecclestone, K. 2012. From emotional well-being to creating citizens of character: policy discourses and behavioural interventions, Research Papers in Education, forthcoming 2012
Ecclestone, K. And Hayes, D. 2008. The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, London: Routledge
Ecclestone, K., Clack, B., Hayes, D. and Pupavac, V. 2010. Changing the subject?: interdisciplinary perspectives on emotional well-being and social justice. End of Award Report for Economic and Social Research Council funded seminar series, University of Birmingham.
Huppert, F. 2007. Presentation to the All-Party Group seminar ‘well-being in the classroom’, 23 October 2007, Portcullis House, London.

John, P., Cotterill, S., Hahua, L., Richardson, L., Moseley, A., Smith, G., Stoker, G. and Wales, C. 2011.  Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Using Experiments to Change Citizens’ Behaviours.  London: Bloomsbury.
Layard, R.  2005.  Happiness: Lessons From a New Science. London: Allen Lane.

Layard, R. 2007. Presentation to the All-Party Group seminar ‘well-being in the classroom’, 23 October 2007, Portcullis House, London.

McLaughlin, K. 2011. Surviving Identity: The Rise of The ‘Survivor’ in Contemporary Society.  London, Routledge
Nagel, T. 2011 Review of May 11th 2011, The New York Times
Seligman, M.,  Randal, E., Gilham, J., Reivich, K., and Linkins, M.  2009.  Positive education, positive psychology and classroom interventions.  Oxford Review of Education, 35, no.3: p293 – 313.
Sharples, J. 2007.  Transcript of keynote seminar for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for scientific research in learning and education, ‘Well-being in the classroom, Portcullis House, London, October 2007.  Oxford, Institute for the Future of the Mind
Stoker, G. and Moseley, A. 2010 Motivation, Behaviour and the Microfoundations of Public Services. London, Royal Society of the Arts
Taylor, M. 2008. A clumsy political road to well-being, Presentation to the ESRC seminar series, Changing the subject?: interdisciplinary perspectives on emotional well-being and social justice, December 8th 2008, Oxford Brookes University
Thayer, R.T. and Sunstein, C.R. 2008. Nudge: Important Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness.  New York: Yale University Press
Wright-Mills, C. 1959/1967 The Sociological Imagination, Oxford: Oxford University Press

The battle about how we control recreational drugs is supposedly fought between visionary idealists and value-free pragmatists. One side claims to have right on their side, the other has cold facts. But the closer you look, the more it becomes clear that the pragmatists should never have allowed themselves to be painted as knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

In the minefield of arguments about the supposed right to use drugs, information programmes in schools and harm-reduction measures like needle exchanges, one principle dominates. That is, that the measure of success of a drug policy is whether it reduces the damage caused by drug use and supply to users, families, communities, and institutions.

According to this approach, intrinsic morality and values have little practical application. The drug-free life may be valued, but because it imposes no drug-related harms, and not because it is seen as intrinsically admirable.

Likewise, the focus by policymakers on harms like crime means that the advantages some gain from drug use are either ignored, or at most, factored into a cost-benefit equation that includes their potential medical use. There is virtually no role in public policy for a measure of gains that could be derived from mind-altering affects.

But we rarely stop to ask whether this framing is balanced. It is important to question whether we make a mistake in excluding intrinsic morality from debates about drug use, or indeed whether the dominant pragmatic harm-minimisation approach is already one that draws on unacknowledged moral values.

When morality is applied to non-medical use of drugs, it is usually in condemnation. In its purest form, drug use is seen to be wrong in all circumstances because it offends certain arbitrary morals.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with this form of argument. As a society, we agree that some activities are nearly always unacceptable. Even though such arbitrary morals do shift over time and space, they are not meaningless by the standards of their location. Perhaps ‘recreational’ drug use contravenes modern morals and so we should be content that the action is unacceptable, without needing to explore the underpinning moral arguments.

But the trouble with this intrinsic moral response to drug use is its utter inability to deal with the grey areas that make up so much of the debate. Using ecstasy for a night out seems clearly different from injecting insulin for diabetes, but it is not obvious that taking heroin to deal with memories of childhood abuse is so unlike using prescribed anti-depressants for the same problem. An absolutist system that tells us to abhor all recreational use of mind-altering substances is no help here. We cannot rely on existing intuitive morality about recreational drugs because, on closer inspection, there are no general rules that can be applied.

The related argument that drug use is wrong because it is illegal is also of limited value. The key question is whether or not it is appropriate for the law to seek to restrict drug use. While we might agree that the law should generally be obeyed, this tells us nothing about whether the law should be rewritten.

The fall-back defence is that drug use is immoral because the apparent benefits it brings are somehow inauthentic(1). The drug user may feel happy, but their pleasure is insubstantial and transitory in a way that other experiences are not. It also distorts reality so that sensible behaviour is edged out.

No doubt this is often true, but it is tilting at a straw man. Its first weakness is the suggestion that someone can either take drugs and experience at best inauthentic happiness, or they can pursue other activities and experience deep and lasting happiness. In practice, there is no reason why someone cannot do both. Few would suggest that someone who has the occasional alcoholic drink cannot achieve fulfilment in life.

Indeed, even if one accepts that some happiness is more authentic than others, it is not clear why this would mean that drug use was immoral. It would be a peculiarly ascetic definition of morality which insisted that happiness can, all other things being equal, only legitimately come from certain sources, and not from others. To accept this would require us to think it immoral to get passing excitement from a roller coaster or scary film.

A further counter-argument to this criticism of drug use suggests a very different view. The Greek philosopher Epicurus argued that we should prioritise pleasure seeking over all else; thus we needn’t account for where the pleasure comes from, or whether it is derived from authentic sources.

However, there is a danger in focusing too narrowly on the pursuit of pleasure. It is inescapable that one person’s pleasure-seeking has an impact on someone else’s attempts to do the same. Indeed, the same challenge undermines the libertarian argument that drug use is a matter only for individual choice.

JS Mill argued that individual liberty should only be restricted when to not do so would allow harm to be caused to other people(2). But for better or worse, the world has too few solitary desert islands for drug use to take place without its consequences, whatever they may be, reaching beyond the user.

Abstract rules fail because they can never achieve moral consistency. Instead, we need to look at the consequences of drug use on users and the people around them. This is not to say that we consider moral arguments to be irrelevant; in fact, we suggest that a moral view is strongly applied in our analysis.

In general, we as citizens disapprove of actions that have a negative effect on others. It could further be argued that we should disapprove of actions that do not actively promote the common good(3).

Some drug use often does have a destructive effect. Some people with severe drug addictions commit substantial amounts of acquisitive crime to be able to pay for drugs. Consumption supports a long chain of organised crime. Many users require treatment that is expensive for taxpayers. There is also an emotional and social cost to the families of people with serious drug problems. Crucially, it is extremely difficult to predict who, out of all of those who try a recreational drug, will go on to develop a drug problem that causes these harm to other people. As Aquinas argued, what matters is not just the actual consequences of an individual’s behaviour, but the likely consequences of a type of behaviour(4).

From the perspective of the non drug user, the least harm would be caused by other people not using drugs at all, even allowing for the short-term violence-reducing effects of some depressants like ketamine, and the mind-altering effects that inspired countless artists from Byron to Lennon.

From this perspective alone, all drug use should be regarded as morally wrong. But then so should other activities that impinge on others without benefitting them, like driving fuel-inefficient cars or playing many high-risk sports. Clearly what matters is the total extent of the harms caused, set alongside the benefits gained.

We can also take a wider perspective of harms caused by drug use. It can be seen as self-focused, diminishing citizens’ ability both to devote time and energy to caring for others and to being fully productive. Hogarth’s Gin Lane reminds us that we would not be the first to fear the consequences to society of overindulgence.

A parallel comes from alcohol restrictions. As a society we live with some of the restrictions on alcohol imposed in 1914 to improve Britain’s war effort, even though not many think that alcohol use is always morally wrong. A riposte to the Epicurean view, argued by the Stoics, is that restraints on our pleasure-seeking are necessary so that we are better prepared to survive leaner times(5). Under these principles we see a moral basis for restrictions even on drugs that cause no physiological damage.

Yet, it is not clear why we should single out drug use as the subject of these arguments. Other unproductive and self-indulgent activities like the playing of video games are widely accepted(6), so long as they are not pursued to extremes. This seems to us to be a weakness in the argument of those who say that the impact of drugs on a user’s responsibilities to other people is a reason why it must be avoided(7). Their logic would extend to all manner of pleasure-seeking activities that few currently see as immoral.

The solution is to recognise that some drug use is uniquely harmful to other people. But, clearly what matters is the extent of the harms caused, balanced against any benefits gained.

Does the harm that drugs can cause to the user mean that the act is immoral? Probably the majority of people who have taken drugs have done so without any significant problems, though some have suffered greatly.

It might be argued that people choose to take drugs knowing the risks involved. But this is true only in a very limited sense. People start using drugs for a variety of reasons, and generally expect to gain some benefit, even if the risks are high. Many who are trapped in dependency want to stop, but cannot. For these people, drug use can become very harmful, and a situation they have entered without making rational choices.

As many drugs workers point out, no-one chooses to be an addict. We accept it to be morally right to restrict the freedoms of children, and those with severe psychiatric disorders. With those parallels, we may well question how far drug use should be left as a free choice.

Yet even if we think it may be morally acceptable to restrict the supply of drugs in order to minimise harms, this is not the same as saying that the act of using drugs is itself immoral. Even suicide is now generally not seen as immoral, except in terms of the impact it has on survivors.

It should also be noted that the harms caused by drug use are to a great extent influenced by how the illicit drug markets are constructed and the laws applied. Pure heroin, cheaply or freely available to addicts in a controlled way is likely to do far less damage to each user than the contaminated and expensive rubbish usually for sale on the street. The rules that are in place because drug use is seen as unacceptable are part of the reason it can be so harmful. The logic becomes self-fulfilling.

It may be argued in response that without moral disapproval, drug use would be much more widespread, and so the total harms could be much greater, even if the harm to each individual user might be lower(8). There is not enough evidence to prove whether this is true; the important point for now is that it is not inevitable that drug use should cause the levels of harm that it currently does. It would be hard to justify policies whose aim was to reduce harms, but whose consequences were the opposite.

Set against these harms, there should be no doubt that drug use does bring benefits to many participants. Why else would two million people a year use cannabis? Most users are not addicted yet the drugs market remains strong: there is clearly an attraction to rational people, as anyone who enjoys a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine knows. The question is how to respond to this desire in a way that increases the sum of everyone’s happiness and keeps to a minimum the collateral harms.

There is no strong argument that illicit drug use is intrinsically unacceptable, as many parallels can be made with other activities that society deems morally permissible, like dangerous sports and use of legal drugs, and modern morals are a poor guide when applied to real-life examples of drug use. The solution has to be some better calculation of the benefits and costs of drug use across a full range of consequences.

We may question whether this calculation is even possible; some argue that there are far too many unpredictable consequences of any action for this to be realistic(9). But, having seen that arguments based on the intrinsic morality of drug use do not stand up to scrutiny, not attempting a calculation of costs and benefits would leave us with no guide to the morality of drug use. We still need to take a view, even if the calculation will be hard.

This is not the place to work through the full calculus. But some principles are clear. We would need to take into account short and long-term costs to others, both direct and in terms of opportunity costs. The costs and harms of enforcing the law have to be accounted for. We also need to recognise the role of risk: most benefit from drug use, but some suffer greatly, and the unpredictability of this is important. But set against these drawbacks are the advantages to users: of happiness, pain relief, and liberty to choose their own actions.

The starting point is agnosticism, and the aspiration to achieve the best results possible. By being guided by evidence, not ideology, and continually striving to improve our responses, the pragmatic approach allows us to be flexible and recognise that drug use cannot be seen in isolation from its context or its impacts.

Although prosaic, the pragmatic calculations that form evidence-based drug policies are in fact the ones infused with morality: about protecting life, and improving physical, mental and social wellbeing. Compared with those bound by iron rules, these are the calculations that allow us to save the most lives and disrupt the fewest others.

 

Roger Howard & Leo Barasi, UK Drug Policy Commission

(1) Pike, Gregory K; Putting ethics in its place – right at the heart of drug policy; The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice; Volume 1, Issue 4, Winter 2007
(2) Mill, JS; On Liberty; 1859
(3) Pike, Gregory K; op cit
(4) Fieser, James; Moral Issues that Divide Us; 2008
(5) Ibid
(6) Foddy, Bennett & Savulescu, Julian; Addiction is not an affliction: addictive desires are merely pleasure-oriented desires; The American Journal of Bioethics; 7:1, 29 – 32; 2007
(7) McKeganey, Neil; Controversies in Drug Policy and Practice; 2011
(8) Ibid
(9) Pike, Gregory; op cit

The exhibition titled ‘The Power of Making - the importance of being skilled’, intended to be ‘a celebration of the empowering nature of making and the human instinct to create’, (1) has recently opened at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. As well as containing a varied set of exhibits, from a 6-necked guitar to a 48 cylinder motorcycle, some of the most notable objects are practical and high tech, yet still hand crafted, such as a crocheted medical implant. Given that the exhibition is presented in partnership with the Crafts Council, it is not surprising that emphasis is put on individual skills and the processes involved in the direct interaction of individuals with materials, whether forming them into original objects in clever ways or more generally with tinkering and fixing existing but broken objects. So, to me, the exhibition and much of the accompanying book tends to highlight, or at least concentrate, on the direct relationship between the individual, their skills and made ‘things’.

Also included from the manufacturing view point is a 3D printer – in general terms a basic example of what many see as the next revolution in manufacturing; additive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing is seen as being revolutionary, firstly because rather than many existing ‘subtractive’ processes – such as milling and turning- it is perceived as involving less waste. Secondly 3D printing is seen as having democratising possibilities, by allowing individuals to manufacture many items and components in their own homes or workshops, which at present can only be designed and manufactured by larger companies. Whilst I have many doubts about the short to medium term ability of personal automated manufacturing to actual deliver on the production of anything durable – let alone useful ‘in the home’ or garage, my main concern with the individualization of production, as anything other than a time filling and personally satisfying hobby, is that it negates the real (but often invisible) ‘power of making’ of industry. 

In the manufacturing industry, ignoring just for a moment the historical tensions and conflicts between owners and workers, we have often huge numbers and groups of people - company owners, employees, customers and suppliers - working in modern design and supply chains to produce the vast majority of our material needs. These can be from absolute essentials such as food, clothes, energy and heating units, through to modern ‘essentials’ such as cars, landline phones, plate glass for windows and finally onto non essential ‘desirables’ such as iPads, iPods and stiletto heeled shoes. Despite sporadic class tensions or just simple disagreements and personality clashes between individuals working in teams, somehow industrial organizations manage to increase productivity over time, produce products of better quality and innovate to produce new products that as customers we hadn’t even realized we wanted. Even smaller companies and individuals fit in to these large organizational chains to produce the wonders of the modern age from large aircraft such as the Airbus 380, subsea telecommunication cables and communications satellites, to smaller marvels such as the aforementioned iPod .You probably need to be over 40 to recall the huge reconfiguration of both the mechanisms for playing music - from vinyl through CDs to MP3s and the sheer reduction in physical size of what a music collection is - to how it is published and distributed. Of course large non manufacturing industries such an insurance and film also produce ‘products’ based around similar sophisticated levels of organization. As time goes on the distinction between manufactured components and their factory assembly into modules and products and pure service based products (such as healthcare) will diminish. With the Rolls Royce aerospace provision of ‘power by the hour’ in the corporate space to long term car leasing in the consumer space, manufactured goods will increasingly just be part of a mixture of service components some tangible, some intangible, which come together as a service.

Many might see a dehumanising side to much of this hierarchically organized large corporate industry. Cultural images from such films as Metropolis to I’m all Right Jack highlight the high drudgery and repetitive factory aspects which reinforce this view. The dehumanising side of much factory work – even in the modern economy of the UK – is not to be dismissed, yet as anthropologist Daniel Miller points out in the exhibition book, many in the 3rd world see the positive sides of industrialization and wanted to give up farming and small scale manual work for more rewarding work, including factory work. However, what many of the various TV programs which aim to celebrate engineering and manufacturing tend to do is concentrate on the end product – as in the recent program about Rolls Royce aero engines which went into some detail regarding the impressiveness of the manufacturing technique for single crystal Turbine blades (3).

What I feel is often missed, even by adherents of manufacturing, is the degree of non-manual complexity and effort required to shepherd and manage the design of a complex product such as a car an aircraft engine, of the aircraft it powers. When people think car manufacturing they generally think ‘factory’ – where in actual fact that is just the tip of the iceberg, where final assembly to the end product is performed. What they do not see are the teams of people in market research (and I mean proper hard, analytical market research), new technology ‘capability acquisition’ (think airbags, ABS brakes) and component procurement (to make use of the supply chain’s products, such as lights and brakes) to name just a few hidden areas. This is in addition to the teams of design engineers who take the high level design parameters for customers and markets – such as style, performance, fuel economy – and who then must cooperatively make all of the various tradeoffs required to produce the manufacturing process which in turn produces a final product that not just works technically – but works in the markets. Much of this has to be done by ‘future-ing’, by estimating what the market will be in 5 or more years from the projects inception. All of this adds to the complexity compared to the simple products that an individual designer can do in their head for a one off or simple product such as bespoke clothing or even a range of dinnerware.

I can see why people may prefer or gravitate to the idea of the small scale and personal – but in many cases I guess there is lurking the idea of ‘let me get off of the world for an evening and give me back some control over my life’, especially with the support of some like minded people, where there’s none of that having to deal with an awkward boss (who’s not quite sure what he wants) or a co –worker who’s not over forthcoming with information. My (not so) secret feeling about the modern day hobby of open source software development – is that some of the devotees see an escape from the ‘alienation’ of their day jobs, probably hang around until they disagree with someone on the ‘team’ or just get fed up & then have the ‘freedom’ to silently leave the project to go on to another. It is only those open source projects which have a leader with a clear vision that make the light of usefulness. Some see 3D printers as being able to enabling ‘the means of production’ to be liberated from the corporate world and allowing for likeminded individuals to work on open source engineering type projects, which will probably be more sustainable and definitely allow for more self expression. But if this were ever to be a practical reality would it ever enable the real gains of the types of products and services which we have seen develop over the last century, from the huge gains in transportation and infrastructure to industrialised farming and pharmaceuticals?

An important part of the foundations of the modern post world war two formulation of industry had its roots in WWII and previous to the war at Bell Labs– but the largest identifiable progression occurred when the Apollo program took off in the 60s. Stephen B Johnson (3) describes the rapid evolution of systems management (or systems engineering) which was initiated to prevent the fatalities and launch failures which had occurred in the earlier Mercury and Gemini programs and also the low launch success rate in the United States ICB missile program of the 50s. This was the start of the development of a methodology which could start to systematically organize the various and often large, powerful, competing (and mainly defence) contractors as well as the NASA bureaucracy as well as the rocket propulsion scientists and engineers at JPL, into a design, test and management network, which could develop a reliable system to land on the moon by the end of the decade. On this goal the project was a complete success. Of course there were many down sides and budget over runs were common – but the politicians did not lose their nerve and funding continued at least until the moon landing mission was accomplished.

Since Apollo the European and other space agencies work on similar principles and aerospace and large car manufactures have adopted similar processes. Other downsides do exist (although if budget is a priority – systems management is now better at optimizing to meet this target), in particular organizations which adopt systems management can tend to lose their drive to innovate over a period of time and when some of the techniques which are based on meeting targets are miss-applied to situations such as health care delivery, the results can be disastrous.

Although many more large scale projects are delivered on time and on budget than might be thought – there are the glaringly bad cases which make the headlines– often IT ones and military projects. In health care for example it is arguably the failure to identify the proper goals and have the leadership to reach them without loss of nerve, which may be the problem, rather than the idea of systems management or the idea that we can do ‘big projects’ itself. Systems management may not be the answer to how we orchestrate all large problems and we may have to re-think how large projects are managed and delivered – but we shouldn’t forget the large strides it gained us and also that much of the time Big IS Beautiful and just because the world can seem complex, we shouldn’t retreat in to the individual and familiar.

In all then, systems engineering – in combination with some of the better so called ‘Japanese management’ techniques and statistical techniques has allowed us to produce the even more complex products which must mix aesthetic form with function and be reliably produced in large numbers. Cars for example are now far cheaper for what you get, of a far higher quality, last longer (even Alfa-Romeos don’t rust as much anymore due to the better statistical techniques used in manufacturing), are safer for passengers and pedestrians and, after a period of ‘jelly mould’ designs in the 80s and 90s, often look far better on than those design classics of the 60s and 70s. Of course, despite being able to safely accelerate to speeds far higher than the motorway speed limit (and also stop far more effectively and safer than in the past) the general cultural shift to constrain such ambitions as to go faster is acting as a far more effective societal brake than any modern ceramic or Kevlar lined brake pad acts as a physical brake on an individual car.

So whilst even in industry individual skills based around human and material contact and processing, mediated only by hand tools are still in some industries important – it is the large scale mediation of component and large tool designs by individuals, teams and organizations, using hidden systems such as the Toyota Product Development System– that give us the far superior and better quality products than earlier generations had.

We need to start to celebrate the fact that with larger and more complex systems the tools and techniques to organize ourselves to produce them, we can have large scale products such as national electricity grids as well as transport systems which allow us to have the electric light and warmth to give us the extra fee time to pursue our hobbies and crafts simply for the pleasure they give (and without growing blind and developing rheumatism in the process) , rather than have to rely on our individual ‘folk’ skills to produce and mend and somehow get back in touch with our nostalgic inner self. Personally, even though I may be estranged in some way from my employer’s end product, I’m happier contributing to a more positive and expansive future where we don’t know where we may end up, creating and solving problems on the way rather than some static and at best slightly better future version of what we have now. If we had more political and business leaders who would be prepared to be bold enough to lead us there – I think there might be more people who would think this way too.

Paul Reeves, principal software developer, Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks R&D; former senior researcher, International Automotive Research Centre, University of Warwick

(1) ‘Power of Making’ introduction of book accompanying the exhibition of the same name. Edited by Daniel Charny.
(2)  How to Build… - A Jumbo Jet Engine BBC – June 2010
(3)  Johnson, Stephen B. The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs (Johns Hopkins U Press, 2002).