Education, Personal Responsibility, and the Fundamental Attribution Error

George Will argues that Democrats are making a mistake by framing the country's failing education system as a civil rights issue rather than a crisis of minority families. He's probably right that in this particular circumstance (an address by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan) the administration is taking a safer line with their base because critiquing the performance of families is politically difficult.

However, the President hasn't shied away from appropriating some of the conservative rhetoric on parents' personal responsibility, as for instance in his speech to the NAACP in July 2009. Additionally, he's been a big supporter of the Harlem Children's Zone which takes a comprehensive approach to improving the well-being of kids by giving everything from classes to families expecting children to mentorship and other forms of support once they enter school. This approach aligns more with a recognition that impoverished parents are less likely to create assets for their kids not because they lack the will but rather because they lack those assets themselves. Check out this short discussion between two professors regarding scarcity of time as a tax on the "mental bandwith" of single mothers. The political discourse of personal responsibility that Will dances around too often falls into the fundamental attribution error - assuming that a negative outcome is the result of an individual's personal failing alone rather than a product of circumstances. So many of our policy debates, domestic and foreign, would benefit from some more empathy - not sympathy, but the ability to put yourself in another's shoes and really understand their mental calculus.