How Do You Know?

What to Believe or How to Think?
Nicholas Johnson
The Gazette, July 7, 2021, p. 6
A lifelong friend we’ll call “Ralph” told me his father always asked, upon Ralph’s return from school, “Did they teach you what to believe, or did they teach you how to think?”

The Harvard Business Review published “Why China Can’t Innovate” and concluded, “The problem . . . is not . . . the Chinese people . . . but the political world in which their schools . . . need to operate, which is very much bounded.”

Americans’ innovative, entrepreneurial, economic, artistic and intellectual comparative success is largely driven by the educators who have taught us “how to think.”

As you may have noticed, for the past six years America has been sliding from the “shining city on a hill” down toward the pit of authoritarian dictatorship with the uncontrolled speed of a kid on a plastic sledding saucer in winter.

A democracy can no more stand without supporting institutions than a beach home can stand without pilings. Democracies need their respected and protected “columns of democracy” – professional, independent, journalists; wise, impartial, non-partisan judges; electoral procedures that encourage ever-increasing numbers of voters – and dedicated public school educators teaching students “how to think.”

President Thomas Jefferson wished “most to be remembered” as “Father of the University of Virginia,” not president. Iowa’s early 12,000 schools made it number one. When I was teaching at UC Berkeley, California’s tuition-free education fueled its position as, today, the world’s fifth greatest economy. [Photo Credit: Iowa Department of Education (“Here is the original well of an 1800s school house located near Shellsburg in Benton County.”) And see, Tom Morain, “One-Room Schools,” Iowa Pathways, Iowa PBS, undated, https://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/mypath/one-room-schools (“The first schoolhouse in Iowa was built in 1830 in Lee County.”)]

Educators’ freedom is as essential to our economy as to our democracy and our “pursuit of happiness.”

Chinese journalists explained to me the freedoms they have – so long as they don’t use the wrong words.

Fortunately, the Iowa Commissar of Acceptable K-12 Vocabulary does not understand education.

Some years ago, I was asked to speak to Iowa’s National Issues Forum high school students at the Herbert Hoover Library. I shared a basic general semantics tool: “What Do You Mean and How Do You Know?” (Asking yourself and others, “What facts brought you to the verbal generalizations you just used?” and, “What were your sources supporting that conclusion? Why do you believe them reliable?”) The technique was successfully used by a couple Metro High School teachers after that talk, became the subject of a doctoral dissertation, and a published book.

Teachers should ask their school board’s lawyer about HF 802's restrictions. But as I read it, teachers are free to present, or better have students find, historic facts about African-Americans’ lives during the last 400 years; answer students’ questions; ask students, “How do you know?” and let them draw their own conclusions and generalizations. In other words, teaching them “how to think” and evaluate research. Like Chinese journalists, Iowa’s teachers still have their freedom to teach – just so long as they don’t use the Commissar’s forbidden words and phrases.

Ralph’s dad understood education. So do Iowa’s teachers. It’s just a little more challenging to teach, or do journalism, within an authoritarian dictatorship.
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Nicholas Johnson, Iowa City, is the author of Columns of Democracy and What Do You Mean and How Do You Know? Contact: mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org

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SOURCES Regina M. Abrami, William C. Kirby, and F. Warren McFarlan, “Why China Can’t Innovate,” Harvard Business Review, March 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-cant-innovate (the full last paragraph reads, ““The problem, we think, is not the innovative or intellectual capacity of the Chinese people, which is boundless, but the political world in which their schools, universities, and businesses need to operate, which is very much bounded.”)

Courtney Vinopal, “2 out of 3 Americans believe U.S. democracy is under threat,” PBS, July 2, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/2-out-of-3-americans-believe-u-s-democracy-is-under-threat

“City on a hill.” Matthew 5:14; Ronald Reagan’s use, “A Vision for America,” Nov. 3, 1980, “City upon a Hill,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_upon_a_Hill

Amy Meadows, “How to Install Piling for a Beach House,” https://www.ehow.com/how_7891751_install-piling-beach-house.html

Democracy’s supporting institutions. Columns of Democracy (2018)

Jefferson’s epitaph. “Jefferson’s Gravestone,” Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, Jefferson Monticello, https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/jeffersons-gravestone (“Before his death, Thomas Jefferson left explicit instructions regarding the monument to be erected over his grave. In this undated document, Jefferson supplied a sketch of the shape of the marker, and the epitaph with which he wanted it to be inscribed:

"... on the faces of the Obelisk the following inscription, & not a word more:

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia

"because by these," he explained, "as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered.")

12,000 Iowa schools. “A walk through Iowa’s one-room schoolhouses,” Iowa Department of Education, https://educateiowa.gov/walk-through-iowa-s-one-room-schoolhouses (“more . . . than any other state in the union”)

Tom Morain, “One-Room Schools,” Iowa Pathways, Iowa PBS, undated, https://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/mypath/one-room-schools (“The first schoolhouse in Iowa was built in 1830 in Lee County.”)

California tuition-free education. Lilia Vega, “The history of UC tuition since 1868,” The Daily Clog, The Daily Californian, Dec. 22, 2014, https://www.dailycal.org/2014/12/22/history-uc-tuition-since-1868/

“Economy of California,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California (“If California were a sovereign nation (2019), it would rank as the world's fifth largest economy, ahead of India and behind Germany.”)

Theodore R. Breton, “The Role of Education in Economic Growth: Theory, History and Current Returns,” Educational Research, v55 n2 p121-138 2013, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1036518, (“The paper presents evidence that education has direct and indirect effects on national output. Educated workers raise national income directly because schooling raises their marginal productivity.”)

What do you mean? What Do You Mean and How Do You Know? (2009), ch. 5, p. 49

Use in Metro High School. Although the author used the Metro experience as a major part of the book, Metro was presented as an anonymous high school. Jane Bolgatz, Talking Race in the Classroom (2005)

The law prohibiting reference to such words and phrases as “systemic racism” originated as House File 802, and can now be found, as enrolled, at https://tinyurl.com/myesry7j

Samantha Hernandez and Ian Richardson, “Iowa Poll: More than half of Iowans oppose new law limiting certain concepts from racism, sexism training,” Des Moines Register, June 29, 2021, https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2021/06/29/iowa-poll-law-targeting-critical-race-theory-schools-ban-teaching-some-racism-sexism-concepts/7720792002

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Deaths Data

For the 2009 fall semester the University asked me to add to my teaching load one of what it was calling "First Year Seminars." These were small-section classes for entering first years taught by selected professors from a variety of colleges and departments, with subject matter of the professor's choice.

My choice? General Semantics. It probably had not been taught at Iowa since my father's lectures in the 1940s and '50s, when it was said to have been one of the most popular among students, and chosen for broadcast throughout the coverage area of the University's AM radio station, WSUI.

My book, What Do You Mean? and How Do You Know? An Antidote for the Language That Does Our Thinking For Us [Prairie Lights; Amazon], created for that seminar, consisted of four chapters from my father's writing and eight of my own. (Two K-12 teachers, present for my presentation with that title at a Herbert Hoover Presidential Library event in 1997, used these ideas in their teaching "American History from the Perspective of Minorities and Women," which course was described in a third person's doctoral dissertation and subsequent book.)

This is not the time to attempt a full explanation of general semantics. Perhaps that should be saved for an essay on its relevance as a necessary first step toward the elimination of systemic racism. But this brief quote at the beginning of the first chapter may be useful:

"General semantics" is not about "semantics" -- as in the expression, "Oh, you're just arguing about semantics." It's not about "defining" words, their historical etymology, or cognates. General semantics deals with language as human behavior; for example, the disparity between what we say (that largely reflects what's going on inside our brain) and the "reality" we think we're describing -- and the consequences of that confusion.

With this long introduction, and short explanation, let's take a look at "what we mean" and "how we know" about the number of Iowans' deaths from COVID-19.

What Do You Mean?

For the most part we know what we mean by "dead," the word and the reality are fairly clear (though there is some ambiguity in cases of "brain dead" and other variations).

The official State of Iowa "Covid-19 in Iowa" site labels its data under "Current Cases": "Individuals Tested," "Individuals Positive," "Total Recovered," and "Total Deaths."

We can assume that "deaths" means an individual's death was in some way associated with COVID-19. If a person has tested positive for COVID-19, had symptoms associated with the virus, no other medical conditions weakening their immunity, and died, it would be difficult not to add their number to "total deaths." But what if they had not been tested before they died, but had one or more of the symptoms of COVID-19 at the time of death? Are they part of "total deaths"? What if (whether tested or not) they had COVID-19 symptoms that weakened their immunity, but also preexisting conditions (say, pneumonia)? Is whoever determines "cause of death" free to report they died of pneumonia and not record it as part of "total deaths" (from COVID-19)? In other words, does it make a difference in the counting whether someone has died from COVID-19 or just with COVID-19 -- along with, perhaps, many other conditions? [Chart credit: Nicholas Johnson, using State of Iowa data.]

Where and by whom, within the healthcare system, is the determination made as to whether a deceased should be counted among "total deaths" or not? Is there, somewhere, written instructions regarding these choices? Are they publicly available online? If so, is there any oversight of the compliance and noncompliance with these procedures and definitions?

How Do You Know?

There are powerful incentives for elected officials (state, county and local), meat packing plants, nursing homes, prisons, and other institutions to minimize their responsibility for the spread of this global pandemic, Americans infected, with the stresses it has created on our hospitals, healthcare workers, families and businesses of all sizes -- not to mention the more than 116,000-and-rapidly-climbing deaths of Americans.

The Iowa governor announced that nursing homes need not report cases or deaths unless they had an "outbreak" -- which she defined a three or more cases. The Nebraska governor explained that packing plants did not have to report at all. "Vice President Mike Pence encouraged governors on Monday to adopt the administration’s claim that increased testing helps account for the new coronavirus outbreak reports, even though evidence has shown that the explanation is misleading." "Pence Tells Governors to Repeat Misleading Claim on Outbreaks,"New York Times, June 16, 2020.

What is the process by which (and by whom) deaths -- in general, not just COVID-19-related -- are reported? Who reports, and to whom, when someone dies in a hospital, at home, or elsewhere? What oversight is there for these alternative reporting channels -- hospitals, long term living and nursing home facilities, funeral homes, those performing autopsies, police at the scene of an accident causing death, someone who dies at home?

Where can one go online to find, say, total deaths in Iowa for the past five years, by months? (The latest I found was 2017, broken out by conventional causes of death.) An alternative way to measure COVID-19-related deaths would be to look at Iowa's mortality statistics for February through June for 2016-2020. One would need to correct for variations in 2020 data from prior years' averages; for example, a decrease in deaths from automobile accidents during 2020 due to less driving during the pandemic. Having done that, it would be possible to see any increase in total deaths during those months in 2020 that could rationally be related to COVID-19. As such, it could be one way of confirming (or questioning) the State's official "total deaths" statistic.

At a time when trust is in increasingly short supply, one recalls President Ronald Reagan's advice, borrowing the Russians' expression, "trust, but verify." One of the first steps in verification is to ask the two questions, "What do you mean?" and "How do you know?"

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