Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

Check out this quote from today’s Wall Street Journal story about the painful teacher layoffs occurring around the country due to budget shortfalls. Let me know if you see anything strange about it. Mr. Bafia is defending the seniority system, which is used in most school districts to determine who gets let go. Last hired, first fired, in other words. As opposed to an alternative, which NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and others have proposed--which is to consider teachers’ performance as one relevant factor when figuring out whom to let go (another way of saying, hey, this job is really important. Let’s at least consider the interests of the students in the classroom when we make these decisions):

“We don’t want to go back to the ‘50s or ‘60s, when people were laid off because of the color of their skin or because a woman was pregnant,” said Glenn Bafia, executive director of the Seattle Education Association, a teachers union.

OK, this quote captures something really unusual and important about the strange culture of American public schools. First of all, to state the obvious: No, we don’t want to go back to the ‘50s and ‘60s when people were laid off because of the color of their skin or because a woman was pregnant. We also don’t want to go back to 1910, when women couldn’t vote. Or to 1945, when African-Americans were segregated into “separate-but-equal” schools and train cars under the authority of the Supreme Court. That would be no good at all.

Here’s the thing: There is no chance of going back to such a time just because we start considering effectiveness when we have to lay off teachers. If Mr. Bafia had said, “We don’t want to go back to the time of slavery,” surely this WSJ reporter would have asked a follow-up question (like, “What are you talking about? Why would this lead to that?") and included the response. Or cut the quote altogether. But for reasons I do not entirely understand, this quote was allowed to stand without any context.

So allow me to add that context here. The fact is, there are layers upon layers of state and federal laws that make it illegal to terminate people’s jobs based on the color of their skin or the fact that they are pregnant. Or, to quote the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects individuals against employment discrimination on the basis of race and color as well as national origin, sex, or religion. It is unlawful to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race or color in regard to hiring, termination, promotion, compensation, job training, or any other term, condition, or privilege of employment.

Amen to that. And to this:

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions constitutes unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII, which covers employers with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments.

Thank God.

Now, why are some teachers and their union reps still talking as if these laws are not on the books? And what to make of this quote from Lynn Nordgren, president of the Minneapolis teachers union, also from the WSJ story today:

“[S]eniority gives us a fair way of saying how do we lay people off in a way that’s equitable.”

Equitable to whom? Equitable to the kids in the school? If not, why not? Aren’t the kids the main purpose of the school? Or are the schools built to provide stable, permanent employment for adults?

Ms. Nordgren says that poor-performing teachers are already being let go in Minneapolis. I hope that’s true, but it is not even close to reality in the vast majority of American schools. In a 2009 report called the Widget Effect, which analyzed 12 diverse districts in 4 states, half of the districts studied had not dismissed a single tenured teacher for poor performance in the past five years. None had dismissed more than a few.

Instead, consider what happens in New York City every day. Six hundred teachers who have been accused of misconduct or incompetence report to “work” every day, sitting in six special rooms around the city doing nothing. They punch a time clock and then they go to sleep, play cards or chat. Let me say again: 600 teachers. Why? Because in the upside down world of education, the city’s contract with the union requires that any charges against them be heard by an arbitrator and, until the charges are fully resolved, they continue to get paid and accrue their pensions and other benefits. (To read the best story ever written on upside down world, in my opinion, check out Steven Brill’s 2009 New Yorker story on the ”rubber rooms.")

The combined laws of New York City, New York state and the United States of America are not good enough for the people responsible for teaching children in New York City. So here we are, in upside down world, where the people getting discriminated against--systematically, without regard to the effects on their future earnings and happiness--are the short people we like to lovingly call “the future.”

Disaster after disaster has shown that regular citizens are the first-responders, so it’s nice to see federal reports acknowledging this reality. The recently released, first-ever Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report places a much-needed emphasis on a resilient and psychologically prepared public:

“Despite our best efforts, some attacks, accidents, and disasters will occur. Therefore, the challenge is to foster a society that is robust, adaptable, and has the capacity for rapid recovery. In this context, individuals, families, and communities—and the systems that sustain them—must be informed, trained, and materially and psychologically prepared to withstand disruption, absorb or tolerate disturbance, know their role in a crisis, adapt to changing conditions, and grow stronger over time.”

OK, but how do we get there? One of the Review’s five homeland security missions is “Ensuring Resilience to Disasters,” but the report is vague at best--a nice fantasy island but no map pointing the way:

“Individuals and families must be prepared to care for themselves for a reasonable period of time after a disaster—some experts have suggested the first 72 hours—and assist their neighbors, reserving scarce public resources to assist those who are injured, incapacitated, or otherwise unable to care for themselves.”

Yes, but we have known that for a long time. How do we motivate people to do this? The report mentions community disaster response programs such as Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and other Citizen Corps programs, and those are promising notions. But for now, they are not nearly as big, creative and well-funded as they would need to be to make a major difference. As this Newsweek story points out, the U.S. hasn’t put up the “funds necessary train ordinary citizens to handle disasters and terror attacks”.

It’s one thing to say the public must be psychologically prepared and another thing to say how. Most of us are so busy trying to survive our day-to-day lives, it’s hard to imagine that rhetoric alone will make much of a difference. As things stand, we are dramatically less resilient (and thus more vulnerable) than other developed nations. As Newsweek notes:

“After the 7/7 attack on the London Underground, which killed 52 people, Londoners, recalling their pluck during the Blitz, gamely showed up en masse the next morning for their daily commute. The Israelis make a point of rebuilding blown-up cafés in a matter of days after an attack; similarly, they return to targeted bus lines the day after a bombing. The message is clear: we’re not going to let terrorists break our spirit. Had America rebuilt the Twin Towers in the first years after 9/11, they would be standing tall today as symbols of defiance. Instead, when I drive by Ground Zero, still a gaping pit, I wonder how we would react if New York were hit again.”

That particular story places the blame mostly on politicians (hence the title: “Terror Begins at Home: Fearmongering politicians are scoring cheap political points at the expense of the American people."), and there’s no doubt that such shameless politicking represents part of the problem. But surely there’s more to it than that.

After all, the UK and Israel have, per capita, about as many opportunistic, divisive politicians and sensationalist media outlets as we do. One obvious difference is that they have had more practice with terrorism--and they may be more sophisticated in their attitude as a result. But that can’t be the whole answer either. Advanced human civilizations are capable of evolving to counter new threats without having to experience them on a routine basis. This is the mystery--and the conversation we should be having, even if it’s uncomfortable.

Our brains are wired to fear threats that cause us dread--which is an actual term of art in the risk business. Dread represents all of our evolutionary fears, hopes, lessons, prejudices, and distortions wrapped up in one dark X factor.

In my book, I tried to condense a lot of risk research into one shorthand equation for dread:

Dread = Uncontrollability + Unfamiliarity + Imaginability + Suffering + Scale of Destruction + Unfairness

As I read about the Toyota story, about cars accelerating uncontrollably and Toyota executives watching it all in slow motion, I can’t help but notice that this is a perfect storm of dread. Toyota has a very big problem, if that wasn’t already obvious. In addition to the actual, literal problem of a small number of cars going haywire, there is the psychological problem--which may be the bigger one.

A brief status check:

*Uncontrollability: Off the charts.

The brain does not like things it cannot control (which is partly why we fear airplane crashes so much more than car crashes). The idea that your car might suddenly become uncontrollable is, well, scary.  To make matters worse, Toyota has not conveyed a consistent message about how to fix the problem--and regain control. The company started off blaming floor mats for the problem. Then, in January, Toyota conceded that there were two separate problems--floor mats, in some cases, and sticky pedals in others. Then there’s this, from an AP story today:

LaHood, in an interview with The Associated Press, defended his department’s handling of the Toyota investigation and said the Japanese automaker was “a little safety deaf” during its probe of the problem. The company was so resistant, LaHood said, that it took a trip from federal safety officials to Japan to “wake them up” to the seriousness of the pedal problems.

*Unfamiliarity: Medium to high.

Most of us are not familiar with how car acceleration works--particularly in modern, high-tech vehicles in which electronic systems now control many functions that used to be handled mechanically. Toyota denies that the electronics are at fault here, but critics of the company are not so confident.

*Imaginability: On the rise.

Thanks to 911 calls like this, in which an off-duty California Highway Patrol Officer asks the dispatcher to pray for him and his family as his Lexus screams towards oncoming cars, we can now imagine what it would feel like to be in this situation. Imagining a threat can make it feel more likely than it actually is.

*Suffering: Not good at all.

Another similarity to a plane crash: the imagined moment of reflection. We realize that with this kind of risk, there may be a period of time between when we realize we cannot slow down and when the car comes rolling (or crashing) to a stop. That is a scary concept. The brain is wired to avoid suffering, which explains why we fear cancer more than we fear heart attacks--which we assume will come on with less warning and less suffering.

*Scale of Destruction: Could be worse.

This is one area which Toyota can use to its advantage. So far, the chances of this happening remain pretty small. And Jim Lentz, the president of Toyota USA, stressed this point on FOX today:

This sticky pedal is very, very rare, and it comes on over time. So, it’s not something that one day you get in your car and you start to have a throttle that starts to stick. It may be slow to respond, to come back. Eventually, it may start to be a little bit sticky or a little bit rough.

But the fact that the company has had to expand the number of cars facing a recall makes the problem feel less contained than it probably is.

*Unfairness: So-So

People buy Toyotas because they are a sure thing. They are safe, reliable and easy to drive. The acceleration problem is a direct affront to all those values. So the risk feels more unfair than if, for example, this were a problem confined to, say, cherry red high-performance race cars.

For now, the recall affects the following cars, according to Toyota. :

* 2005-2010 Avalon
* 2009-2010 RAV4
* 2007-2010 Camry
* 2008-2010 Sequoia
* 2009-2010 Corolla
* 2005-2010 Tacoma
* 2008-2010 Highlander
* 2007-2010 Tundra
* 2009-2010 Matrix
* 2009-2010 VENZA
* 2004-2009 Prius

If you’re a lucky owner, go here for more info. Usually, the more you know, the less you dread…

Just received the Polish paperback.. I like the dangling rope! Not too Hollywood, nor too Warsaw. As for the title, my handy online Polish-English translation service tells me that it means, roughly, “Survival Instinct.”

(Translator is at a loss to explain subtitle, aside from the obvious word for “catastrophe,” but we’ll hope for the best.)

When a man was stabbed to death early one morning on a NYC subway, a nervous passenger scrambled to pull the emergency brake, immediately stopping the train.  Another example of an average citizen averting a disaster?

Not exactly.

The New York Times reported this week that the emergency brake is not to be pulled during an emergency. Well, actually, the emergency brake should only be pulled during certain kinds of emergencies, and it’s up to you to know what constitutes an emergency and what doesn’t. In this particular instance, the immediate stopping of the train hindered the arrival of police.

You have to look for it, but New York City Transit’s website does provide an explanation:

“Use the emergency brake cord only when the motion of the subway presents an imminent danger to life and limb. Otherwise, do not activate the emergency brake cord, especially in a tunnel. Once the emergency brake cord is pulled, the brakes have to be reset before the train can move again, which reduces the options for dealing with the emergency.”

If you looked at this explanation before riding the subway, you might know you shouldn’t pull the cord for any little thing, but how are you supposed to know when something poses imminent danger to life and limb? Even the wording of that sentence is weak, considering a myriad of things could pose an imminent danger to life (and also to limb).

If the “emergency, but not all emergencies” brake cord explanation doesn’t make sense when I’m curled up on my couch, how can I be expected to know what to do when I’ve just been through something traumatic?  The brain doesn’t function well under stress, and we can’t be expected to instantly differentiate between different types of emergencies. Perhaps it would be better for the brake system to have an automated audio warning that goes off when you open a casing around the brake—reminding you that pulling it will leave the train stranded on the tracks.  Or maybe not.  But surely this is not the hardest problem humanity has ever overcome.  The bigger challenge seems to be that emergency plans are not written for the way our brains work (And the problem is hardly unique to the NYC transit system.  If you want to be prepared on Washington, DC’s metro, you’ve got to watch an animated video (only if you have flash, though) before you leave the house.).

Unfortunately, NYC Transit doesn’t see any confusion, telling the Times that the explanation is clear, even when the general public has no clue. The Times reports:

“Of 20 straphangers interviewed last month at the 14th Street-Eighth Avenue station, about half said that they had no idea when the brake should or should not be used. Those who knew that the brake should not be pulled in most situations seemed at a loss to explain when exactly it would be appropriate.”

From their lackluster response, NYC Transit doesn’t seem to think the pubic can do better, so why try.  And maybe that’s the real emergency.