Michael Lissack Today almost any observation or its opposite-can be taken as a pithy en- capsulation of everyday, garden-variety common sense. Why for example do the seats seem to get smaller as the airplanes get larger? And why does voice mail seem to double the time it takes to complete a telephone call? Perhaps the answer is what has been called the “revenge effect.” the process by which an indifferent nature seems to get even with us lowly humans by twisting our cleverness back against us. While facing unintended consequences from our mucking about as we try to make things better is hardly a new phenomenon, technology has magnified the effect to the point where we now have to weigh the potential consequences of our actions more carefully than ever before. Common sense can lead us to conclusions that are at variance with the way we think the world should work-ways based on beliefs we create from a life- time’s worth of observations and experience. The problem is that there is often a Grand Canyon-sized chasm between what we think and what is real. The text which follows begins by trying to highlight some of the inter- esting features in that chasm. The instances of theft are numerous. That they are everywhere in the public sector is the “gestalt” (or sense of the whole) I wish the reader to come away with. From this base I move on to propose another way of looking at the world -- an effort to reduce the complexity by means of an over-riding goal, a focus on improving the quality of life. Creating that focus will require new ways of thought and new tools. Our present method of dealing with that arcane arena known as public policy simply does not work. Public school teachers and service personnel, for example, have per- suaded legislatures everywhere that seniority rights, credential require- ments, and restrictive work rules are more important than guaranteeing that our children are prepared for their futures. We can’t even make them feel safe in the place where we expect their learning to occur. How often does a mother fear her child is afraid to go to school because “They have guns and knives at school”? One in four in ten graduates of public high schools can’t read at grade level. Students are stabbed and principals threatened. How many of our urban children will go live with relatives in other neigh- borhoods or states, or even try to flunk eighth grade, to avoid the terror of
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