You may wonder why I think this article has something to do with school reform.  It's because of this:

But human beings are also shaped by cultural and moral norms. If you’re Swedish and you have a chance to pull up in front of a fire hydrant, you still don’t do it. You’re Swedish. That’s who you are.

Walter Lippmann got to the crux of the matter in a speech 65 years ago. People don’t become happy by satisfying their desires, he said. They become happy by living within a belief system that restrains and gives coherence to their desires:

“Above all the other necessities of human nature, above the satisfaction of any other need, above hunger, love, pleasure, fame — even life itself — what a man most needs is the conviction that he is contained within the discipline of an ordered existence.”

People need the coherence their culture provides and value it even more than easy parking.

I can't think of a SINGLE successful school I've ever seen (especially those focused on educating disadvantaged kids) that hasn't created a successful CULTURE, rooted in "ordered existence."  KIPP calls it "KIPPnotizing" -- it's brainwashing in the best sense of the word, whereby children who, prior to coming to KIPP, typically have little discipline, direction or hope, but KIPP, in various ways, convinces them that if they buy into the KIPP system/culture, work hard and play by the rules, they WILL go to college and have choices in life.

 

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August 13, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

The Culture of Nations

By DAVID BROOKS

select.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/opinion/13brooks.html

Diplomats in New York rack up a lot of unpaid parking tickets, but not all rack them up at the same rates. According to the economists Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, diplomats from countries that rank high on the Transparency International corruption index pile up huge numbers of unpaid tickets, whereas diplomats from countries that rank low on the index barely get any at all.

Between 1997 and 2002, the U.N. Mission of Kuwait picked up 246 parking violations per diplomat. Diplomats from Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Mozambique, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Syria also committed huge numbers of violations. Meanwhile, not a single parking violation by a Swedish diplomat was recorded. Nor were there any by diplomats from Denmark, Japan, Israel, Norway or Canada.

The reason there are such wide variations in ticket rates is that human beings are not merely products of economics. The diplomats paid no cost for parking illegally, thanks to diplomatic immunity. But human beings are also shaped by cultural and moral norms. If you’re Swedish and you have a chance to pull up in front of a fire hydrant, you still don’t do it. You’re Swedish. That’s who you are...