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The Kitchen Round Table

a thought piece from Parent.org

"experience vs expertise - is evidence based policy good policy?"

Welcome to The Kitchen Round Table. You have received this because you are on a database of people we consider interested in this area of thought. Unsubscription details are at the bottom. KRT is a short political thought piece from Parent.org, an organisation dedicated to giving parents a voice.

Imagine you are at a business conference...

...and there are two speakers you can choose between listening to.  One is Jay Light.  If you haven't heard of him, Jay is the Dean of the Harvard Business School and probably the font of all wisdom on business - eminently qualified to tell you virtually everything you need to know about how to run a successful business.  The other speaker is a geek who dropped out of university to fool around making a computer "operating system", whatever that is.  Bill Gates is his name.  Whose speech would you attend? 

Why is it that we we are drawn to experience over expertise?  Perhaps it is because expertise often simply doesn't give us useful knowledge to work with, or inspire us. 

The problem with evidence is....

...that when experts set out to prove something they inevitably answer the questions they ask, which is not always as helpful as it seems.  You only have to visit the Families Commission website and do their latest survey, "attitudes to family violence", to appreciate how misguided evidence collection can get.  The very first question asks you to identify what form of family violence you think is most common.  While the answers include the obscure option of "financial abuse towards elderly" as a form of violence, blatantly missing is the "don't know" option.  Since a great number of the people who participate in these surveys probably, and thankfully, have no experience of family violence the evidence  being collected is going to be way off reality but is, apparently, going to underpin a joint MSD/Families Commission campaign to change attitudes and behaviours to family violence.  It seems to this writer that the object of the exercise is to make family violence seem as widespread as possible which leads to the dangerous possibility that we begin to consider this abhorrent activity a cultural norm. 

So what does experience offer?

Last year in the Dominion Post Chief Youth Court Judge, Andrew Becroft, casually mentioned that the Youth Court Judges had noticed that a common denominator amongst the boys appearing before them was that very few of them played team sports.  While this was just an anecdotal observation any fool can see the investment potential of this pearl of wisdom.  Apparently it costs around $100,000 a year to imprison a child like Bailey Kururiki Jnr.  If we applied that same money to children's sport we could help thousands of children have the key experience that may turn them from becoming a tax burden to a tax contributor by learning respect, gaining self esteem and cultivating ambition.  This would both boost our GDP and reduce our tax spend on Police, Justice and Correction.  Judge Becroft is graciously trying to put himself out of a job!  Since we have seen absolutely no inclination by government or opposition parties to act on this observation and produce policy making it easier for kids to play team sports, through funding equipment, encouraging coaching and so forth we can only assume that Judge Becroft's opinions are not "evidence based" enough to be incorporated into policy.  Bit of a shame really - Most Kiwis would prefer their tax dollars to go on boots and balls rather than bars on windows.  If we want our boys to grow up to be respectful, safe men one of the simplest things we can do is make children's team sports important, accessible and an expected childhood experience.  

What experts and evidence cannot do.

Experts and evidence invariably focus too small and often focus on the symptom rather than the problem.  You just can't generate evidence from a big picture or a big question like "why is the need for CYFS growing?"  You can look an isolated symptoms, like family violence, and generate a plethora of anti violence programs, but underlying any issue of violence is almost always issues of stress and esteem.  If the environment that parents operate in is constantly undermining their self esteem with negative messages and increasing stress by offering no support, all the programs in the world cannot offer long term help because at the end of the day parents have to operate in that failure focused environment and every day it grinds away at them.

Bottom line.

Social policy should to be informed by evidence and expertise but not necessarily based on it.  Social policy should always be based on the bigger picture, history and common sense, the experience of those who have tried and failed and those who have tried and succeeded.  We need to stop focusing on the minutiae of dysfunctional parenting and examine the bigger picture - the environment all parents operate in.  If we refocus that environment from failure to success, chances are in a generation or so most of the problems that we are frantically seeking evidence to help us understand will have sorted themselves out.

The Kitchen Round Table will come to you every few weeks, building on this idea of creating a better country by creating a better environment for our parents to operate in, so if you want some fresh thinking about social and economic issues look out for your next KRT.   Parent.org is a national lobby group promoting this common sense approach to building a better society.  We are a-political, non religious, non-prescriptive.  We simply believe that by creating an environment the encourages successful parenting New Zealand will become a better place for everyone.

Next edition – "Section 59 amendment - well, knock me down!"

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