The Coordination Problem
We need to coordinate even before we collaborate, and rules and conventions are excellent means of doing so.
The notion that public education should have as at least one of its primary goals the centering on and cognitive equipping of individuals to "be successful" in the real world is, like many things in education, widespread, unexamined, and, with its usual aspirational zeal, subtly out of sync with reality.
The most obvious problem with this notion is that it trades one blank canvas for another. We are admonished to not treat individuals as blank slates, passively awaiting the world to write on them—true enough—and almost simultaneously enjoined to imagine that the social world itself is a blank slate for individuals to eventually write on, which is patently false.
What public education should do is enable groups of people to engage in joint cognitive coordination. Public education serves the "we," not the "I." Once again from the Friths:
Two people are passing each other in a narrow passage. How can they avoid bumping into each other? Simple as the problem seems, it poses a puzzle. Each person has two options: dodge left or dodge right. Looked at from a bird's-eye view, they should dodge in opposite directions, but how can this be achieved without them reading each other's minds to discover which way they are intending to dodge?
How do groups, herds, or hunting packs coordinate their actions so smoothly and effortlessly? One way to achieve a good outcome is the spontaneous adoption of the leader and follower roles. If one agent makes his move sufficiently earlier than the other, then a collision is likely to be avoided. The first to move takes the role of leader, and the other person now has sufficient information to choose his or her move appropriately. But sometimes each might wait for the other to go first; and other times, both try to make the first move. These are not efficient strategies for smooth passing.
Another way, for humans at least, is to follow prior rules or conventions. A simple convention for solving the passing problem is "Keep left." Arbitrary rules that have been agreed upon in advance and have become part of convention for a society are powerful forces for coordinating activities of all kinds. Through conventions, people can coordinate their activity without the need for constant negotiation and explicit agreement. This is because their expectations are aligned so each individual believes that everyone will follow the rules (Gintis, 2010). Conventions can be very arbitrary and local. For example, when riding on an escalator, people in Tokyo stand on the left (passing on the right), while people in Osaka stand on the right. Some time ago, people in Copenhagen entered buses in the front, in Aarhus at the back. Such conventions are themselves examples of the need of people who live together to align with each other. At first, these are conscious and explicit strategies that have to be communicated and then followed. But eventually, they become automatic habits. . . .
We need to coordinate even before we collaborate, and rules and conventions are excellent means of doing so. They avoid anarchy and ensure that the common interests of those working together remain a priority.
