University of Vermont philosophy professor Tyler Doggett has a friend who puts him to shame when they go skiing together. Maybe he had better instructors when he was younger, maybe he got more time on the slopes or maybe someone in his life provided the necessary push to get him out of his comfort zone at just the right time.
Whatever the reason, Doggett — like most people in similar situations — just accepts that different people excel at different things and that talent and opportunity aren’t distributed equally.
If that’s the case, why do disparate outcomes elicit such hand wringing in educational settings? What are the key ethical differences between an achievement gap on the slopes and an achievement gap in the classroom?
Doggett won’t offer clear-cut answers to questions like those in his talk “The Ethics of Raising Children,” Wednesday evening at 7 at Norwich Congregational Church. Rather, his lecture, part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays Lecture Series, is meant to get people thinking deeply about the ethical quandaries they face — or choose not to face — on a regular basis as parents, educators and community members.
“I think a lot of everyday life is caught up in pretty profound ethical issues,” Doggett said. “One thing I’m looking forward to is just talking to thoughtful people about these issues.”
The first half of Doggett’s lecture will focus mostly on the achievement gap, the term applied to the variations in academic performance among different groups. Doggett, who teaches and researches about a variety of philosophy topics and specializes in food ethics, said he became interested in the topic in part by reading books and articles that illuminate the ethical issues at the heart of public and private education.
Norwich makes an interesting setting for such a discussion. The town spends $17,700 per pupil, according to 2017 data from the Vermont Agency of Education, the 13th highest rate in the state. And just 3.52% of students in the Dresden School District, where Norwich students attend secondary school, qualify for free or reduced lunch, a common measure of poverty. If there’s an achievement gap here, it’s pretty microscopic.
But zooming out on the educational landscape of Vermont, one can see an enormous achievement gap between towns like Norwich and poorer rural communities.
The implications of that is what Doggett wants to discuss. “If you think some sort of educational achievement gap is problematic, what should individual parents do about it?” said Doggett, who lives in Burlington and has two middle-school-age children of his own. “It’s an important moral issue.”
Neither wealthy families nor working class families have a corner on good parenting, Doggett said. As Annette Lareau explains in her 2003 book Unequal Childhoods, rich parents tend to “cultivate” their children, while poorer families trend more towards a “natural growth” model.
The problem, Doggett said, is that society is set up in such a way that rewards the good aspects of rich parenting much more than the good aspects of parenting in poorer families. Middle class kids, for example, tend to be much more self-sufficient than their more fastidiously tended peers. “But there’s no SAT for self sufficiency,” he said.
Trying to buck the system isn’t easy from a parenting perspective either. In her 2016 New York Times Magazine article “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City,” journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones chronicles what happened when her ideals about equality in education collided with her parental values. The article profoundly affected Doggett’s views by highlighting one of the most salient ethical quandaries some parents will face.
It’s hardly the only one, though. With such a rich field from which to glean philosophical grist, Doggett plans to leave the second half of his lecture open for topics on people’s minds.
Just don’t expect easy answers. In an era dominated by sound bites and bulleted lists, the beauty of philosophy is its prismatic quality, said Doggett, who loves bringing philosophy to general audiences through events like Public Philosophy Week and resources like the open access philosophy website Wi-Phi.
That doesn’t mean philosophy needs to be dry and difficult, just that it encourages critical thinking over pat answers.
“I think there’s an intrinsic value in figuring out the right explanation for something,” Doggett said. “Philosophy allows you to gain some understanding of what it is you’re doing and why it matters.”
Sarah Earle can be reached at searle@vnews.com or 603-727-3268.