Now I am not an expert on Geology or Volcanology by any means, but I do know that earthquakes are borderline impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy. Yes, if you live near a fault line, you will at some point experience an earthquake. That is as a good a prediction as anyone can come up with. Here, I will add some more insight… some will be big, some will be small.
Plate tectonics is not an exact science. We have thousands of potential earthquakes every day! The plates slide on top of the lithosphere with varying degrees of energy and size of movements. We cannot predict when a large shift will take place which yields in a large earthquake. All this being said, why is it that there are currently seven Italian scientists who are facing MANSLAUGHTER charges for not accurately predicting an earthquake that cost the lives of 300 people.
The deaths of these people are a tragedy, but you can’t point fingers at scientists and blame them for not predicting the unpredictable. This is laying the groundwork for a slippery slope of laying blame upon those who are experts in a particular field, yet still have things that occur outside of their control. What is going to happen is you are going to scare people out of the possibility of doing pure research anymore. If these seven people can be held accountable, how are the geologists in Japan going to start to feel with the tsunami that ravaged their country. What student in school is going to want to be a researcher if you can be facing criminal charges for not expecting the unexpected?
Imagine if we went after every expert for failing to predict something inside their field that is outside their control. Can you imagine how many beatings Al Roker would be given for rained out picnics? The thought is ridiculous and downright scary. And sadly it is not entirely new.
Look at education. We are constantly holding teachers accountable for things that are outside of their control. We use standardized testing as our basis for how well a teacher is doing their job, but what is this measuring stick we are using? A standardized test by definition is a test in which all conditions under which it is given are equivalent for all those who take it. But are the conditions really standard? Sure we can have similar room conditions and questions for all students, but we can’t standardize a home life. There is no bubble for kids to fill in when they have been beaten, or parents are divorcing, or they are hungry because there is no food in the house. Those items are outside of a teacher’s control. These are existing conditions that DO affect the outcome of the tests by which we are judging teachers. There are some states that are determining teachers jobs based on scores that they see without knowing the kids.
Does that mean teachers should have no accountability in students’ learning? They SHOULD most definitely have accountability, but it cannot be based off of standardized test scores, just as geologists shouldn’t be judged off of the number of earthquakes they are failing to predict. The biggest issue seems to be that we as a culture want to point fingers and assign blame when things go wrong outside of our control. We need to step back, take a deep breath, and let common sense come back to us. Hell, make that just sense… if it were common we would all have it.
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