I wanted to pile on the D.A.R.E. stuff because my son went through it and told me at the time what a crock it was.
On the plus side, according to the meta-study you linked to, it did make parents and teachers feel good about themselves: "Nonetheless, the parents were positive about the D.A.R.E. program because they viewed the D.A.R.E. officers as effective educators [6]; the classroom teachers’ also gave their high ratings to teacher-officer interaction, role-playing exercises, and graduation ceremony." So we've got that going for us. But I do kind of feel like they could have discovered the same thing just by talking to any random group of kids who have been through D.A.R.E. in the past 40 years.
By the way, the program costs about $100 per student. I feel like we could get better results if we said to kids "if you stay drug-free for a year, we'll give you $100 and a nice ersatz graduation ceremony".
Say what you will about Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, at least it was cheap.
I’m sure paying kids to stay off drugs would increase drug use once the payment period was over. They’re going to think what is this awesome thing the lame adults are paying me not to do? I want to do it.
What I've heard from others (my school was too small for DARE) is that it was the stoners who were really into DARE. (Whether to be ironic, or to throw off perception, I don't know.)
This is a great post. Can’t wait for the sequel, in which you explain how to fix everything.
I spent some time a few years ago looking for evidence of programs that seemed to reduce racial discrimination and had to go back to the 50s and 60s where there were some fascinating studies (which probably wouldn’t replicate) that entailed having white students work together over the course of weeks and months with some black students (who were secretly part of the experimental team) on cooperative games.
It was incredibly labor intensive, in other words, and would be very very expensive to scale. And the effects weren’t huge. But it was very suggestive of the kind of thing that maybe could work, and in fact maybe does work in the actual world where people of different backgrounds work together.
This reminds me of this idea in society that disabled kids need to be mainstreamed so that the normal kids are less prejudiced against disabled kids. I have a kid in a wheelchair and I don’t feel like subjecting her to all those nasty kids so that she may better them. I wish there were still schools for kids like her where they can feel normal around their peers. But I have to settle for the different groups and meetups for wheelchair kids.
Common goal (and, less virtuously, common enemy) organization definitely helps. People need to see those outside their culture/Dunbar circle as equally human, and that takes time and effort.
Ooooh Adam, so sweet and innocent! The various trainings given in workplaces, educational institutions etc are not intended to CHANGE people! And they're only intended to cover institutional butts in one specific way;
- the MOST COMMON 'defense' when people do things that are clearly obviously wrong is 'I didn't know!' I didn't REALIZE that me and my 3 friends making moaning sounds every time our hot subordinate walked by alone would be considered sexual harassment! It was just a little JOKE! C'mon, people are so SENSITIVE these days, they can't take a JOKE??? And for sure now I feel terrible, I would NEVER have done it if I realized it was sexual harassment! I only wish that the wolves who raised me had EDUCATED me about these things! And the people I work for, they KNEW it was happening, but they never INFORMED me it could possibly be considered a problem by some snowflake, ooops, innocent victim.'
Those trainings exist JUST to shut down the 'I didn't know' defense. At least if they had to click through the slides and answer the incredibly stupid multiple-choice questions, they can't claim that, or if they do, they can be told that they should have known, so not knowing is not an acceptable defense.
BTW, the college I work at does something similar for academic integrity policies; at least NOW when my students bat their eyelashes at me and say 'but miss, I didn't KNOW that copying word for word from an obscure online journal would be considered plagiarism' or 'I didn't KNOW that submitting an entire paper with no citations or references at all would be considered plagiarism' or 'I didn't KNOW that using the data my boyfriend gathered when he took this course last year would be considered cheating', I can ignore that. No longer obliged to give the benefit of the doubt, and glad of that!
I was in DARE for one session. We were supposed to go to an elementary school class, crack an egg into a pan, and then add rubbing alcohol. The egg white turned white, like it was cooked. We were supposed to tell them "this is what weed does to your brain." Not alcohol, weed. It was so clearly made up, I refused to do it. Ironically, it made weed MUCH more attractive, because I knew then they were telling me lies.
Ha! Reminds me of when I was a high school teacher, and the administration brought in a lady to do an anti–drug and alcohol training. She told the assembled students—all quite intelligent high school students—that the reason the drinking age is 21 is because your liver doesn’t work properly before then. The kids all kind of looked at each other and shook their heads as if to say, “Nah, that can’t possibly be true.”
I spent the better part of my career developing corporate training, and I helped sell it to our customers based on the absurd proposition that OUR training—on sexual harassment, cybersecurity, etc.—was based on the finest adult learning theory and was built to change behavior! Ugh, it was all horseshit. But what do you do? Not try? Life is so absurd!
Ahhh, the hubris of science is prioritizing quantitative research over qualitative research. And the societial devaluation of education, combined with the arrogance to believe that if you've "successfully" been taught something, then you can successfully teach it too. Both exemplified by that old gem of "those who can't do, teach." A saying that not insults the complex sciences of learning and teaching, but also suggests you can seperate *teaching* from *doing* with any degree of success.
This was an enjoyable, if frustrating, read and I agree with your analysis. This is one of the things I am really interested in and passionate about. Back when I was working on my PhD in Instructional Design, this was the general area I wanted to focus my research on: how instruction shapes people's beliefs and actions. I was (am) working on a theory involving the role of education on personal epistemology- and how differences in personal epistemology affects how people are changed (or not) by society. Alas, I didn't frinish my degree or ever get past the literature review for the prospectus phase of the research.
Your gym routine is dangerously close to mine :) Another gem of an article. Maybe we should give up on this flavour of empirical psychology and get back into the murky Jungian territory with frightening terms such as soul, anima and projection.
Okay, so not only did I laugh out loud while reading this because of the painful accuracy, it also brought up some lovely memories of D.A.R.E. and anti-drug campaigns, including:
-having my PE teacher in elementary school stick a wad of chew in his mouth and walk around in front of us seated 1st graders and tell us, "Right now, my mouth is burning."
-passing around a doll that had a clear torso so we could see its lungs turn colors when it smoked
-a police officer passing around an actual box of labeled drugs to a bunch of 6th graders so we could know the drug when we saw it - best interaction was when one kid commented on how a certain drug looked different to him and the cop was immediately interested in that kid's name
I am all for playing dumb and asking why more often - looking forward to using that strategy in the startup space.
This is such a fine post that I will overlook the omission of "National Brotherhood Week": It was years before I knew Tom Lehrer was making fun of an actual attempt of increasing multicultural harmony.
Too often, people try to enact new programs or policies to change people against their will. Your example of a sexual predator realizing the error of his ways during corporate training is an example of these sorts of efforts. Sometimes, people come to the realization that you must change someone's mind (although still against their will). Your example of a school trying to encourage kids to make the decision not to smoke or do drugs is an example of this.
Rarely, it seems, people look within at times in their own life when they made an important decision or changed their mind. Was it a snazzy presentation that spurred it? A great political ad? A lesson plan at school? No-- it always seems to come from deep within. Often, this change of heart is tied to our long-held moral and personal values-- in fact, it rarely feels like a change of heart but rather a reorientation of the world around your unchanged internal self. Because of this, I see a deep aura of elitism pervading these social programs. Something akin to, "My values are formed via independent thought and internal debate; your values should be formed by me".
I realized years ago, a lot my values were shaped by the novels I have read, especially those I read in my teens.
I don’t think ‘independent thought’ is actually a thing. There may be all sorts of different influences, and depending on our own personalities and experiences, we pick and choose among those. But for sure, if we’re never exposed to certain ideas or concepts, or our exposure to them comes in some forms and not others, that will make a difference. Not a determinant difference, but some difference.
It seems that workshops and lectures and training programs are particularly ineffective however.
Hilarious. Because it's true. I've written about this topic, but not with nearly as much humor or righteous sarcasm. If a psychological program could reliably get people to change behavior like drug or cigarette use, then it could also get people to change political parties. It could also make terrorists love liberal democracy. If psychological programs were that powerful, the makers would be ushered to a secure bunker and made to change the course of geopolitics with their fancy mind-changing techniques. At the very least one cola company would use the program's techniques to steal the other cola company's consumers.
I wanted to pile on the D.A.R.E. stuff because my son went through it and told me at the time what a crock it was.
On the plus side, according to the meta-study you linked to, it did make parents and teachers feel good about themselves: "Nonetheless, the parents were positive about the D.A.R.E. program because they viewed the D.A.R.E. officers as effective educators [6]; the classroom teachers’ also gave their high ratings to teacher-officer interaction, role-playing exercises, and graduation ceremony." So we've got that going for us. But I do kind of feel like they could have discovered the same thing just by talking to any random group of kids who have been through D.A.R.E. in the past 40 years.
By the way, the program costs about $100 per student. I feel like we could get better results if we said to kids "if you stay drug-free for a year, we'll give you $100 and a nice ersatz graduation ceremony".
Say what you will about Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, at least it was cheap.
This is a common outcome for programs like this: "It doesn't work, but the adults like it!"
I’m sure paying kids to stay off drugs would increase drug use once the payment period was over. They’re going to think what is this awesome thing the lame adults are paying me not to do? I want to do it.
What I've heard from others (my school was too small for DARE) is that it was the stoners who were really into DARE. (Whether to be ironic, or to throw off perception, I don't know.)
Raw beef and Ulysses is for losers -- raw pork and The Sorrows of Young Werther is where it's at!
Weak. I have my children eat raw chicken and memorize *La Comedia* in the original Tuscan.
This is a great post. Can’t wait for the sequel, in which you explain how to fix everything.
I spent some time a few years ago looking for evidence of programs that seemed to reduce racial discrimination and had to go back to the 50s and 60s where there were some fascinating studies (which probably wouldn’t replicate) that entailed having white students work together over the course of weeks and months with some black students (who were secretly part of the experimental team) on cooperative games.
It was incredibly labor intensive, in other words, and would be very very expensive to scale. And the effects weren’t huge. But it was very suggestive of the kind of thing that maybe could work, and in fact maybe does work in the actual world where people of different backgrounds work together.
This reminds me of this idea in society that disabled kids need to be mainstreamed so that the normal kids are less prejudiced against disabled kids. I have a kid in a wheelchair and I don’t feel like subjecting her to all those nasty kids so that she may better them. I wish there were still schools for kids like her where they can feel normal around their peers. But I have to settle for the different groups and meetups for wheelchair kids.
Common goal (and, less virtuously, common enemy) organization definitely helps. People need to see those outside their culture/Dunbar circle as equally human, and that takes time and effort.
Ooooh Adam, so sweet and innocent! The various trainings given in workplaces, educational institutions etc are not intended to CHANGE people! And they're only intended to cover institutional butts in one specific way;
- the MOST COMMON 'defense' when people do things that are clearly obviously wrong is 'I didn't know!' I didn't REALIZE that me and my 3 friends making moaning sounds every time our hot subordinate walked by alone would be considered sexual harassment! It was just a little JOKE! C'mon, people are so SENSITIVE these days, they can't take a JOKE??? And for sure now I feel terrible, I would NEVER have done it if I realized it was sexual harassment! I only wish that the wolves who raised me had EDUCATED me about these things! And the people I work for, they KNEW it was happening, but they never INFORMED me it could possibly be considered a problem by some snowflake, ooops, innocent victim.'
Those trainings exist JUST to shut down the 'I didn't know' defense. At least if they had to click through the slides and answer the incredibly stupid multiple-choice questions, they can't claim that, or if they do, they can be told that they should have known, so not knowing is not an acceptable defense.
BTW, the college I work at does something similar for academic integrity policies; at least NOW when my students bat their eyelashes at me and say 'but miss, I didn't KNOW that copying word for word from an obscure online journal would be considered plagiarism' or 'I didn't KNOW that submitting an entire paper with no citations or references at all would be considered plagiarism' or 'I didn't KNOW that using the data my boyfriend gathered when he took this course last year would be considered cheating', I can ignore that. No longer obliged to give the benefit of the doubt, and glad of that!
dear adam,
fascinating piece as always!
i love this: "WE SPRAY PEOPLE WITH A HOSE AND EXPECT THEM TO STAY WET FOREVER"
thank you for sharing your work!
love
myq
I was in DARE for one session. We were supposed to go to an elementary school class, crack an egg into a pan, and then add rubbing alcohol. The egg white turned white, like it was cooked. We were supposed to tell them "this is what weed does to your brain." Not alcohol, weed. It was so clearly made up, I refused to do it. Ironically, it made weed MUCH more attractive, because I knew then they were telling me lies.
Ha! Reminds me of when I was a high school teacher, and the administration brought in a lady to do an anti–drug and alcohol training. She told the assembled students—all quite intelligent high school students—that the reason the drinking age is 21 is because your liver doesn’t work properly before then. The kids all kind of looked at each other and shook their heads as if to say, “Nah, that can’t possibly be true.”
I spent the better part of my career developing corporate training, and I helped sell it to our customers based on the absurd proposition that OUR training—on sexual harassment, cybersecurity, etc.—was based on the finest adult learning theory and was built to change behavior! Ugh, it was all horseshit. But what do you do? Not try? Life is so absurd!
So, what your saying is, the solution are cults. I can get on board with this as long as I get to be the cult leader.
Ahhh, the hubris of science is prioritizing quantitative research over qualitative research. And the societial devaluation of education, combined with the arrogance to believe that if you've "successfully" been taught something, then you can successfully teach it too. Both exemplified by that old gem of "those who can't do, teach." A saying that not insults the complex sciences of learning and teaching, but also suggests you can seperate *teaching* from *doing* with any degree of success.
This was an enjoyable, if frustrating, read and I agree with your analysis. This is one of the things I am really interested in and passionate about. Back when I was working on my PhD in Instructional Design, this was the general area I wanted to focus my research on: how instruction shapes people's beliefs and actions. I was (am) working on a theory involving the role of education on personal epistemology- and how differences in personal epistemology affects how people are changed (or not) by society. Alas, I didn't frinish my degree or ever get past the literature review for the prospectus phase of the research.
Your gym routine is dangerously close to mine :) Another gem of an article. Maybe we should give up on this flavour of empirical psychology and get back into the murky Jungian territory with frightening terms such as soul, anima and projection.
Okay, so not only did I laugh out loud while reading this because of the painful accuracy, it also brought up some lovely memories of D.A.R.E. and anti-drug campaigns, including:
-having my PE teacher in elementary school stick a wad of chew in his mouth and walk around in front of us seated 1st graders and tell us, "Right now, my mouth is burning."
-passing around a doll that had a clear torso so we could see its lungs turn colors when it smoked
-a police officer passing around an actual box of labeled drugs to a bunch of 6th graders so we could know the drug when we saw it - best interaction was when one kid commented on how a certain drug looked different to him and the cop was immediately interested in that kid's name
I am all for playing dumb and asking why more often - looking forward to using that strategy in the startup space.
This ↑ is why I subscribe to this Substack.
This is such a fine post that I will overlook the omission of "National Brotherhood Week": It was years before I knew Tom Lehrer was making fun of an actual attempt of increasing multicultural harmony.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Conference_for_Community_and_Justice
Great article, thank you.
Too often, people try to enact new programs or policies to change people against their will. Your example of a sexual predator realizing the error of his ways during corporate training is an example of these sorts of efforts. Sometimes, people come to the realization that you must change someone's mind (although still against their will). Your example of a school trying to encourage kids to make the decision not to smoke or do drugs is an example of this.
Rarely, it seems, people look within at times in their own life when they made an important decision or changed their mind. Was it a snazzy presentation that spurred it? A great political ad? A lesson plan at school? No-- it always seems to come from deep within. Often, this change of heart is tied to our long-held moral and personal values-- in fact, it rarely feels like a change of heart but rather a reorientation of the world around your unchanged internal self. Because of this, I see a deep aura of elitism pervading these social programs. Something akin to, "My values are formed via independent thought and internal debate; your values should be formed by me".
I realized years ago, a lot my values were shaped by the novels I have read, especially those I read in my teens.
I don’t think ‘independent thought’ is actually a thing. There may be all sorts of different influences, and depending on our own personalities and experiences, we pick and choose among those. But for sure, if we’re never exposed to certain ideas or concepts, or our exposure to them comes in some forms and not others, that will make a difference. Not a determinant difference, but some difference.
It seems that workshops and lectures and training programs are particularly ineffective however.
More novels!
Hilarious. Because it's true. I've written about this topic, but not with nearly as much humor or righteous sarcasm. If a psychological program could reliably get people to change behavior like drug or cigarette use, then it could also get people to change political parties. It could also make terrorists love liberal democracy. If psychological programs were that powerful, the makers would be ushered to a secure bunker and made to change the course of geopolitics with their fancy mind-changing techniques. At the very least one cola company would use the program's techniques to steal the other cola company's consumers.
I am reminded of this article which addresses similar topics but with much more cynicism https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/04/the_maintenance_of_certificati.html