Cognitive Dissonance (Not) Part II 
By Martin Harris

To an earlier generation, "The Black Swan" was a swash-buckling 1932 Rafael Sabatini novel of pirates and treasure ships, with, of course, the cutlass-wielding Tyrone Power and the bosom-heaving Maureen O’Hara in the 1942 movie. Now that’s forgotten, and "Black Swan" has become a recent term of art in economics, referring to a statistically-almost-impossible but nevertheless actual event like, for example, the 1987 single-day-in-October when there was a 23 percent drop in the Dow-Jones Average. The 2007 book by Nassim Taleb describes the phenomenon in detail. Black Swan events happen in politics as well, typically when a speaker solidly identified with a given ideology (and its supporting sub-principles) suddenly gives voice to just the opposite.

Invariably, in the non-economic world, holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously receives the shrink-speak label of "cognitive dissonance", and the dictionary definitions typically mention the discomfort, anxiety,  or mental tension in the mind of the holder. But what about those who hold such conflicting notions simultaneously with no apparent discomfort at all? Last week in this space I took note of the gentry-left exurbanites who are "into" (a little post-modern neologism, there) both smart-growth, an urban-development pattern which looks upon traditional lawns and gardens as land-wasteful sprawl-causes, and grow-it-yourself, which of course requires lot square footage beyond the building footprint which is needed for veggies or poultry-grazing or both.  They see no conflict between the two notions and give no indication of discomfort with them. And what about those in governance who, equally glibly, espouse concepts they more frequently oppose?

Historically, such statements aren’t rare enough to be Black Swan events. Consider, for example, the pro forma "I’ll keep us out of European wars" promises of Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt, or the "read my lips: no new taxes"  pledge of President Bush. As subsequent events showed, they knew differently at speech-time, and yet "cognitive dissonance" didn’t apply because they never even broke a sweat, either at pledge-time or at pledge-break-time. As highly-skilled politicians, they could easily advocate for two conflicting concepts simultaneously. 

But then there’s the recent case with Vermont’s new Education Commissioner, Armando Vilaseca, who surely desires to be considered an educator and not a politician. The 12 June 09 article in the Barre Times-Argus describes the Black Swan event wherein the Commissioner addressed yet another "study group", this one labeled The Workforce Development Council. He tossed out a few of the perennial educational-governance platitudes, like "school district reorganization" (the last re-organization, into Supervisory Unions, took place in 1912, and the rash of union high school construction took place in the 1950’s and ’60’s) and year-round schooling (the agricultural year is so, like, yesterday) and this Black Swan pronouncement: "We don’t need as many teachers as we have now". 

A charitable interpretation would be that he chose to mis-speak. Only a couple of years back, his predecessor, Richard Cate, had (far more typically) defended high teacher numbers on the grounds that the nation’s lowest class size had produced higher test scores (they didn’t and don’t, but that’s another set of facts usually left unrecited). No Vermont Governor, and no State Board of Education, in recorded State history, has ever advocated reducing teacher numbers, and given the voting clout of the educator-bloc, isn’t likely to do so, so it’s tempting to suggest that Vilaseca’s Black Swan no-cognitive-dissonance moment was a verbal anchor-to-windward in the unlikely event that overall voter resistance to ever-increasing school payrolls and spending, in times of ever-declining enrollment, might possibly make staff reductions politically unavoidable. It hasn’t so far, which suggests that a taxpayer uprising in the modern Vermont would be a Black Swan moment in its own right. As such, the Vilaseca one-time-only teacher reduction-in-force proposal is right up there with Vermont’s Socialist Senator’s statistically-improbable feat of winning an NRA approval for some similarly unrepeated wink-to-supporters verbal gymnastics on the Second Amendment. Far more likely to be repeated is Vilaseca’s criticism of  too-numerous school-board members. "One school board member for every 70 students", he complains, "indicates the scope of the problem". Yes, indeed, from the edu-crat perspective, there’s too much local control out there.

Conversely, about as non-Black-Swan as you can read are the stats contained in the Wikipedia entry on Vermont’s educational standing and State ranking. Here’s a sentence: "Vermont was named the nation’s smartest state in 2005 and 2006…however, when allowance for race is considered, a 2007 US government list of test scores shows Vermont white 4th graders performed 25th in the nation for reading [NAEP 229 of a perfect 500] and 26th for math [NAEP 247 of a perfect 500]". Not the best of all States in education, but halfway down the list.

Martin Harris is a former Chairman of Citizens for Property Rights.