PART II: THE MORAL EDUCATION OF A HATE PROFITEER

Mark Zuckerberg is undoubtedly Exeter's best-known alumnus. When I tell people about the school here in South Africa, I mention his connection for immediate recognition. That his fame is turning to infamy should be of concern to those responsible for his moral education. 

The Exeter/Facebook connection runs deep. "The Facebook" is the name for the "Photo Address Book." It is the directory with the face of every student, teacher, and administrator on campus. For decades, The Facebook has been a core part of every Exonian's life. It is as central as, say, the phone book in pre-Internet days. 

The toxicity of Mark Zuckerberg's brainchild is increasingly unmistakable.  Facebook has poisoned public discourse to such a degree that it threatens to bring down the American experiment in self-governance. Growing internal discontent shows how employees find themselves morally compromised implementing Zuckerberg's "values." An advertiser boycott shows that, as one outspoken defector observed, "I’m not alone in being upset about Facebook’s willingness to profit off of hate." 

Are the issues with Zuckerberg's company a reflection of his personal values? He has a majority stake in the stock that essentially gives him autocratic power - an extraordinary position for a "public" company. According to Roger McNamee, an early investor/proponent of Facebook "There is a core team of roughly ten people who manage the company, but two people – Zuck and Sheryl Sandberg – are the arbiters of everything.”

Facebook marks a malignant turn to the Internet. The dream we once had has now turned to a nightmare. During the halcyon days of the Dot Com era, I covered the rise of "New Media" for trade publications in the media business. I explained to broadcasters what the upstart Internet might mean. I had an extraordinary beat speaking with visionaries about how this could be a force for good. I was quite aware of the shadow possibilities, too.

Imagine for a moment how different things could be if Zuckerberg's company aimed to serve the public good as its primary goal? What if, instead of this "willingness to profit off of hate," he embraced the values represented by Exeter's motto, Non Sibi. How would such a Facebook operate? It might be run like Wikipedia, a public charity funded by contributions. A core function wouldn't be looking for ways to leverage our personal information for profit. Instead, it would be to encourage civic participation while protecting our privacy. Zuckerberg's Facebook is geared to fueling confirmation bias, deepening polarization and prejudice. What if it sought to expand our horizons by connecting us to people and ideas beyond the narrow confines of the familiar? 

But I digress...

Zuckerberg's lifework has become a force for evil, a product and instrument of "knowledge without goodness." But what of his moral education at Exeter? 

A Hidden Change  

When I arrived on the Exeter faculty in 1991, a dozen years after I had graduated, I didn't realize a fundamental change had occurred. The school's rules for students as written were different from the rules as enforced. My contract stipulated it was my duty to report if I witnessed students breaking major rules. My first year, I had the dubious distinction of turning the most kids for such things. How did that happen? Was it just my luck, or were colleagues looking the other way?

One such incident resolved the conundrum. In the dead of night one evening, I happened to wake up and look out the window towards a student residence across from my dorm. I saw a student leave the building. Being out after hours is a major offense. So I followed protocol. I called security and met them outside. This wasn't anything I wanted. I was sleep deprived, had a class to teach in hours, and a long day to follow. Suddenly I had a major new task tossed on the "to-do" pile. But this was a crucial part of the job. We were there to enforce these boundaries. This point was explicit in my contract. 

When the security guard arrived, he surprised me with an unexpected question. 

 "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked. 

I explained this wasn't about what I wanted. We had a protocol and would follow it. So we called the dean on duty. A search for the missing student went forward. He was confronted for the rule violation when he turned up. Then he faced consequences in the discipline system. That meant I had to invest time in various administrative duties like writing up a report. When all was said and done, the dorm head for the errant student surprised me with a statement as out-of-place as the security officer's question. "Next time, be sure to call me first," he said.

So the rules varied depending on which faculty were involved. In one grotesque instance, a colleague inserted himself into the proceedings inappropriately. For whatever reason, he took it upon himself to attempt to "rescue" the students up for action in a case centering on dishonesty. Suddenly it was about politics and personalities rather than the student's observed behavior. Whatever value that might have been extracted from this experience was lost. 

After, I had a few words with colleagues about how this had destroyed a crucial opportunity in our moral education. The massive investment in student and faculty time was wasted - or worse.  We taught an immoral lesson. What you do isn't as important as who you know. What could we do to prevent rogue adults from offering such a toxic education again? Rather than discourage this, the particular colleague's mismanagement was legitimized. He was granted official status as an adjunct to a dorm. Of course, he did this again - played favorites regardless of the boundaries. This led to peculiar, demoralizing discipline decisions with unjust outcomes. 

What Would John Phillips Do?

A shadow over the Academy 

This is the moral education I saw several years before Mark Zuckerberg arrived on campus. I would imagine this had only become normalized over the intervening years. What would John
Phillips think of his part in educating our modern Alcibiades? He founded the Academy just as the American Experiment was getting underway. I'd like to think he'd have shut it down and pursued other interests if he knew his work was destined for this.

After the recent felony arrest of a (newly) former faculty member, maybe people are willing to consider the need for fundamental change. Reading the affidavit, it portrays a school that is simply irresponsible. Forget in loco parentis. They're loco, lousy parents. 

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Next, let's have a look at that affidavit and what it reveals about the institutional failures it portrays.

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Twitter @EUnafraid.

MARK ZUCKERBERG'S MORAL EDUCATION: PART I

The way life's supposed to be

Labor Day Weekend, and the living is easy. Well, except for the pandemic...and the arrest of a longtime faculty member. These will overshadow Opening Assembly on Thursday. 

So it's high time to soldier on with this blog. 

To be honest, I've had to step away for my own wellbeing. It is important for these truths to be told. But it comes at a terrible emotional cost. I often wonder how much happier I would have been if I had simply walked away from the place and never looked back. As an alumnus who had served on the faculty, I had seen the realities. Most people simply refuse to believe them. With this arrest - and the grotesque spectacle of a criminal trial to come - maybe we have come to a moment of truth. Perhaps we will finally get the truth necessary for  authentic reconciliation.  

To unpack the behind-the-scenes revealed in the arrest affidavit, you need to have some context. Before we go there, let's start over on a different tack. Future historians may attribute the Academy's most famous living alumnus for something more than founding Facebook. He might be remembered instead for being a key figure in the destruction of the American Experiment in self-governance. Is he an aberration or an archetypal product of the "Exeter Experience"?  

Zuck: Augustus or Alcibiades?  

There is a long-standing tradition of holding teachers accountable for students gone bad. Ancient Athens found Socrates responsible for the monstrosity that was Alcibiades. The master's most prominent student played a pivotal role in destroying the democracy. Whether deliberately or inadvertently, Socrates empowered his traitorous self interest. Plato devoted much of his career to understanding how it was possible that his great moral teacher enabled such immorality. 

Zuckstyle hair

Now, the monstrosity that is Mark Zuckerberg threatens to do the same to the United States. "Zuck" likes to think of himself as something like Caesar Augustus. But that's just narcissistic self-delusion. Alcibiades is the better parallel. So how did this product of Exeter's vaunted moral education go bad? 

There is a deep misunderstanding about how the Academy achieves its mission: 

"Above all, it is expected that the attention of instructors to the disposition of the minds and morals of the youth under their charge will exceed every other care; well considering that though goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous, and that both united form the noblest character, and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind." 

But how to achieve this? 

Back when I was on the faculty in the early 90's, Principal Kendra Stearns O'Donnell seemed interested in that question. She asked to meet with the Religion Department to find out. I was excited at the prospect. As the Assistant School Minister and Instructor in Religion, it was a rare opportunity. The Principal was seeking our counsel on how best to carry out the school's moral mission! 

I am not sure that I can adequately express my disappointment with what happened. It turned out that the Principal was simply looking for some platitudes and soundbites to spice up her fundraising efforts. So we had been called into service to polish the appearance of providing a moral education. But what was the reality? 

You don't have to look far to get what John Phillips believed. He describes the difficult task in the very next paragraph following the oft cited passage above. Here's what the instructors need to do to accomplish this: 

"It is therefore required that they most attentively and vigorously guard against the earliest irregularities. That they frequently delineate in their natural colors the deformity and odiousness of vice, and the beauty and amiableness of virtue. That they spare no pains to convince them of the numberless and indispensable obligations; to abhor and avoid the former and to love and practise the latter; of the several great duties they owe to God, their country, their parents, their neighbors, and themselves. That they critically and constantly observe the variety of their natural tempers, and solicitously endeavor to bring them under such discipline as may tend most effectually to promote their own satisfaction and the happiness of others. That they early inure them to contemplate the several connections and various scenes incident to human life; furnishing such general maxims of conduct as may best enable them to pass through all with ease, reputation, and comfort."

Just so much talk?

In other words, you spend a lot of time working with kids to keep them on the strait-and-narrow.

So the moral education at the Academy does not reside in the Religion Department or in any academic studies. Helping adolescents advance into adulthood boils down to a very simple dynamic. The adults in the community establish and enforce boundaries. The adolescents test them. This tension/conflict/energy, properly guided, enables children to effectively enter into adulthood and the responsibilities that go with it. This is where they can learn goodness. 

For this to work, the adults have to agree what those boundaries are beforehand and then be evenhanded in enforcing them. Perhaps the single most toxic thing any adult in the PEA community can do - short of outright criminality - is to play favorites. This is especially true in matters of discipline. What happens when personalities instead of rules/principles applied to observed behaviors determine responses to rule-breaking? The students receive a toxic education. They learn that it doesn't matter what you do. What matters instead is who you know and how to cheat the game.

Some might cynically suggest this Machiavellian pedagogy is a better, more honest preparation for life than a rule/justice-based understanding. Great. But that isn't what John Phillips intended. Somehow, this cynicism passing as morality is what apparently guides Zuckerberg. So, if he is a product of Exeter,  then the education it offers has come completely off-the-rails in terms of being faithful to its mission.

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Next up in Part II, a postmodernist rendition of Crime & Punishment. I'll talk about what happened late one night when I inadvertently happened on some rule-breaking. My would-be Raskolnikov? A PG sneaking out after hours.  

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Tips? Suggestions? Comments? Drop a line to: contact (at) ExeterUnafraid (dot) com

Twitter @EUnafraid.