Stephenson's "Small-Sample Doctrine"

William Stephenson
The Play Theory of Mass Communication
(1987 edition)
(orig. 1967)

[10]

A METHODOLOGICAL ADVANCE

... For over a century social scientists have been concerned with the fundamental problem of what should be the basis of measurement in their science. In physics there are units of weight and length, time and mass, and these suffice for all measurements. In the social sciences, when these units cannot be used, recourse is made to other devices either of an ad hoc nature (different therefore in every study) or else systematically constructed, as scales of intelligence, attitudes... These scales are based on the large-sample theory and the Theory of Error... Psychologists understand this very well, for a branch of their work, called differential psychology, is fashioned upon this methodology. The principle is important: it supposes that if we wish to measure a person's intelligence (for example), a test is made and applied to a large sample of individuals from a parent population. According to the theory of errors, the scores gained by such a large sample, for a suitably constructed test, will tend to be normally distributed. The scores—whatever their units may be—can be transformed to standard scores, which are pure numbers whose mean for the test is 0 and whose standard deviation is 1.0. ...then, any test one cares to make for the parent population of individuals...can be systematically reduced to standard scores, the same pure numbers for everything so measured. ...

Stephenson, PTMC—Postulates

William Stephenson
The Play Theory of Mass Communication
(1987 edition)
(orig. 1967)

1. Play is distinguishable from work.
Play is disinterested, self-sufficient, an interlude from work. It brings no material gain. (Prizes are for show; amateurs play for fun, professionals for money.)
Work is not disinterested, is not an interlude in the day for most people. It produces goods, services or ideas, etc., by application of effort for a purpose.

2. Much work and play is subject to social control, and some, instead, is a matter of convergent selectivity.
Social control is the way in which cultures function from the standpoint of involuntary, categorical imperatives. (It is said that everyone must work, that idleness is sinful, that work is a duty and one's salvation, and so on.) Social control induces conformity, consensus, and established custom or is an outcome of such cultural conditions.
Convergent selectivity is relative freedom from social control, tending toward individuality of choice in behavior. The behavior is more voluntary. Convergencies may be chaotic, as in a gold rush; or they may be ecstatic, as in mountain-climbing. All are directed toward individuality and self-existence.

3. Work and play which are subject to social control are supported by inner belief systems, that is, latent or inner beliefs of individuals, formed by childish introjections and early internalizations in primary group (home) situations. One's religious, political, economic, and other important values and beliefs are fixed early in life and are thereafter largely immutable.
Conditions of convergent selectivity are of a more superficial nature and concern fads, manners, fashions, taste, and the like. Moral and ethical sanctions are largely bypassed, no issues are involved, no deep controversies, but only more or less acceptable difference in taste or minor matters of opinion.

4. Public opinion is subject to social control; advertising, drama, art, and so on involve convergent selectivity.

5. The self is differently involved in conditions of social control and convergent selectivity. I distinguish self from ego. The former is overtly attitudinal, and the latter a matter of mental structure.
Self-attitudes are developed largely in interactions under social control. (The boy who wins a prize at school adds to his self-stature thereby, and almost all that we are in selfhood respects is given to us in relation to social controls.) But the self so put upon us is to a degree false—a façade only. The person has to be what custom or status demands of him.
Convergent selectivity is an opportunity for the individual to exist for himself. Such existence is experienced as enjoyment, contentment, serenity, or the like. Certain free aspects of self are possible outcomes of convergent play.
The mass media, plays, art, and the theater generally offer opportunities for convergent selectivity. The self so involved is enhanced. There is an increase of self-awareness—typical, for example, of the mountain climber. There is no gain in social or material respects but much gain in one's self-existence.

...

7. Ordinary life would be impossible without communication, in school, church, business, on the farm, and so on. ... It is important, however, to distinguish between that part of communication supporting social control and that part of it offering opportunities to convergent selectivity.
... Communication in conditions of social control is a "mover" in national and individual development: it informs a nation of its work, its five-year plans; it teaches literacy and technology; it develops industry and extends markets. Further, it is involved in all urbanization, industrialization, and educational growth.
Mass communication, literature, drama, and the like serve instead for sociability and self-existence. These are vehicles for communication-pleasure—directly in the enjoyment they enjoin, and indirectly in the social conversations they support.

8. Convergent communication, being communication-pleasure, serves mainly as a "fill" in mass communication. The "important" communication concerns social control matters. The "fill" serves to maintain status quo position, since it serves no "work" purposes. It pleases, entertains, and projects fashions and fads. It is basically aesthetical, and amoral, a-ethical. Its function is not to relieve anxieties but to increase the sum total of self-existing possibilites.
(The "human interest slant" given to popular "news" put the reader in the position of a confidant, reflecting inner-experience, inducing reverie about himself and so on—all pointed toward more existence for oneself.)

9. Culture develops in play, and play enters into social control and convergent selectivity situations alike. But the play in religious practices, the armed forces, the law courts, in diplomacy, professional practices, is always more or less subject to internalized belief systems; deeply held values, loyalties, needs, and ethical matters are everywhere evident.
The play in convergent selective situations is at best indifferent to such values, needs, and beliefs.

10. There are correspondences between social character and social control and convergency. Traditional and inner-directed forms of social character, such as Riesman describes, are formed in relation to social controls. Other-direction, instead is fashioned more by convergent selectivity; it is characterized by communication-pleasure.

11. The mass media, in much that pertains to social control as well as convergent selectivity, do not communicate truth or reality but only a semblance of it—of a fictional, representational, or charismatic character. Reaching the truth is a matter for science, technology, reason, and work. Charisma, imagery, and fiction are characteristic of convergencies.
But this is not to be despised. On the contrary, reality is so complex that its symbolical representation is essential to give it meanings that ordinary people can appreciate. Politics is conversation about freedom, democracy, liberty...issues which need bear little relation to ongoing real conditions or legislative actions. But all these can be good fun, that is, good communication-pleasure.
(pp. 192-195)

What is a bit bizarre about all of this, despite Stephenson having prefaced it with seemingly every available caveat, is that it seems not so simple to really draw the line between communication-as-mover and communication-as-fill. Or, perhaps it is not possible to draw this distinction generally, but it is (potentially) possible to draw it with respect to particular individuals, and just maybe groups too, based on their apperceptive profiles, i.e. what they are apt to notice and what they are apt to ignore.

That being as it is, who could deny that music education now takes place almost exclusively in contexts

supporting social control
?

The final victory of access over elitism cannot be merely to carve out a place for the arts in amongst the elite social control mechanisms.

Rather, arts education must at some point take in the realm of

convergent selectivity
,

of the

fill

which

serves no work purposes
,

which is

basically aesthetical, and amoral, a-ethical
,

and most of all indeed, whose

function is not to relieve anxieties but to increase the sum total of self-existing possibilites
.

If Stephenson is so much as in the ballpark here, then one obvious implication of his theory is that the education system (the whole thing, not just music) is a social control mechanism through and through, one which was designed by and for the internalized belief systems of people who are long dead; this then would explain a good deal (not all) of its present dysfunction. Of course we have been hearing this for almost as long as there has been public education, and usually not from the most reliable or disinterested sources. But that doesn't mean it cannot be true now.

Where I personally really start to have trouble here is with the statement that

reality is so complex that its symbolical representation is essential to give it meanings that ordinary people can appreciate
.

First off, from the bird's eye view, the main reason that social reality is now too complex for even extra-ordinary people to grasp has nothing to do with media per se; rather, it is that we today suffer from towering edifices of, in Talebian terms, connectivity without responsiveness. When it is impossible to know the consequences of your actions, it is impossible to act ethically. Not even an ideal media can resolve this problem in its present complexity, and so media is ultimately just another sideshow to the far broader (ultimately broad) issue of recovering humane conditions of scale, materially and psychologically. (No, I'm not holding my breath.)

Moving to the level of national and regional institutions, and notwithstanding the above, I do think Stephenson underrates how the mass media intentionally withholds great swaths of reality which are in fact rather simple and easy-to-appreciate but which conflict, one way or another, with the media's commercial imperatives. If you've grown skeptical or numb in the face of such statements as this, Matt Taibbi's recent book Hate Inc. is worthy of your attention, even if he does gild the lily just a bit.

Finally, considered on the local and microsocial levels, the statement is really just a slightly dressed-up version of the lie that tells the truth trope which prevails in middlebrow literary circles, and as such is subject to all of the same critiques. (See this massive thread for a head start.)

Stephenson is correct that play is essential to a humane existence; but he does not adequately consider that playing with social reality is inherently distorting of that reality and that this cannot, no matter how much fun we have or how hard we try to be mindful about it, truly be free from ethical and moral ramifications. Playing with social reality is playing with fire. It's much safer to play with, say, artistic abstraction or low-stakes athletic competition. Perhaps Stephenson thought he was being pragmatic here. I would contend that such a statement is only truly pragmatic in service of elitism itself.

Stephenson's caveats:

None of these [postulates] is axiomatic. The postulates are not analytic propositions, capable of precise definition. All instead are synthetic complexes with excess meaning. Theorems or hypotheses cannot be derived from them in any logical order.
(p. 192)

Well, okay. But it's not too sporting to offer up such a detailed analysis while maintaining that none of it is axiomatic.

Stephenson, PTMC—Work and Play and Work

William Stephenson
The Play Theory of Mass Communication
(1987 edition)
(orig. 1967)

The child at play, Freud writes, is like a poet; both "rearrange things" in their worlds "to suit them better." Both child and poet distinguish between the real world of painful emotions, frustrations, hurts, and obduracies, and the play world, where these real-world fears and hurts are transmuted into humor, pleasure, and delightful wish-fulfillment. Play is escape from what goes on painfully in the real world. That something of the kind occurs is certain. But Freud overlooked the other half of fantasy, which "rearranges" not only things but the self to suit itself better. The self may grow, develop, and restructure itself in daydreaming and fantasy. The emotions that we did not realize we were capable of, the very things that Freud set out to explain, are an intimation of a growing self, of rearranging within oneself, rather than transmogrifications of painful experiences. Freud saw only mental sickness in daydreaming. The child wants to feel "grown-up," and thus plays. The adult gives up such playing, he thinks, but may daydream instead. We all create fantasies, as long as we live; but, for Freud, the more "normal" we are the less daydreaming we do. I would rather say that the more we work and live by work, in Freud's inner-directed world, the less we have time for daydreams. But by the same token the development of self is likely to have stopped when we lose ourselves in work.
(pp. 200-201)

This is an odd turn near the end of the book. Suddenly Stephenson has performed the same historically-specific pigeonholing of

work

from which he has been seeking the whole time to liberate

play
.

Would it not be better put to say that truly

losing oneself

in

work

affords one much the same potential for

development of the self

as does the ideal of

subjective play
?

And by way of much the same process?

It seems to me that the anti-ideal of work to which Stephenson appeals here, to work as pure necessity imposed on the self from without by the dark forces of social control, this anti-ideal need not be accepted ipso facto, and indeed is not accepted now nearly as readily as it was in 1967. Work-as-pure-necessity sounds terrible, sometimes it is actually terrible, but it is still possible to lose yourself in it, to be constructively "rearranged" in and through work, whether or not the overall experience is pleasant or even tolerable. This, at least, has been one of my enduring takeaways from several stints in the security industry, and from inumerable musical engagements which had me pining for my old TSA job by the time they were through. I can't really manage pure play-escape either, though I suppose it's time to accept that I'm in the minority (while nonetheless holding out stubborn hope that this reflects a culturebound rather than an essential condition of humanity). The maintenance lady at the Resort who enviously tells us we're "working at playing" is not all wrong; and it is precisely this rare opportunity for balanced playwork which I so value about the job from which I've been furloughed for the past year and a half, much to the incomprehension of both co-workers and outside acquaintances who know just how individualistic and self-regarding I am.

Stephenson again:

No doubt all this can be projected upon the poem [Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock], metaphysical, Freudian, Marxian, and the rest. But I would agree instead...that the poem is largely unadulterated fun. ... The incident is trivial, but the human delight is enormous. ...

Instead of dull Marx, nasty Freud, or ponderous metaphysician, all dealing with problems in the real world, Pope gives us a poem to play with in the mind, with joy, wit, fun, delight, freedom...all in step in unalloyed fantasy.

This is subjective play, regarded as pure communication-pleasure. Pope wrote with no thought of hurt or gain...he was having fun, as a child has when it plays. If we are so minded, and so open to joy, reading the poem gives us the selfsame satisfactions. And this is the core of our theory.
(pp. 199-200)

So the poet was merely

having fun, as a child has when it plays
?

This commits precisely the fallacy Sennett warned against in his Debussy anecdote. It is as if the obvious speciousness of so many accreted interpretations has cowed the author into an equally severe overeaction in the other direction.

One can only hope that somewhere between the too-knowing interpreter and the blissfully ignorant child there is a whole world of what can only be called adult self-development, conspicuous by its absence here just as it is in most academic/educational settings.

From Sutton-Smith's introduction (1987):

We live in a world in which the economic distinction between play and work exercises its own evaluational coercion; where the scientific distinction between object and subject also exercises its epistemological coercion over the way we come to think about play. But, to the contrary, the movement of players in and out of play is often much more indistinct...
(p. xiii)

[Stephenson] would find little disagreement if he stated that the individual purpose in all of this is self-enhancement. There is not much power to the "explanation," however, since little is known about self enhancement. Stephenson does stress the importance of the player's freedom of choice in self-enhancement and that concept has become a salient twentieth-century way of defining a person at play: Play is something one does with freedom, or when one is moved by intrinsic motivation. This was also a major point made by Huizenga.

The problem with this stress on freedom of choice, however, is that it is also a culturally-relative reflex to our traditional distinction between work and play—assigning pain to the former and pleasure to the latter. ... Since the event of philosophical, political and poetic romanticism at the turn of the Nineteenth century, Western culture has idealized the freedom supposedly found in art and play... The contrary case would seek to show that although modern play is not usually seen as an obligation, its players are often coerced by their own addictions to the excitements of gambling and contests of a physical or intellectual nature. Inner compulsions may still exact what society may not longer require. None of this need deny that subjective play is what mass communication is about, though it does suggest that we need to modify Stephenson's defense of his position.
(pp. xiv-xv)

The most serious recent critique of Stephenson's work is simply a reiteration of the view that he overlooks the great extent to which the public is manipulated through the mass media, something of which he is quite aware. He does not suggest that this does not occur only that, even if it does, the populace is also engaged in mass communications for the purposes of its own play. It is a fact that those who are addicted to certain kinds of play are made vulnerable by their own enthusiasm... They are exploited...but they are still at play. Once we divorce play from the romanticism of free choice and idealistic notions of value, there is less need to see any contradiction between a player's addictions to his or her own excitements and the efforts of others to manipulate those needs for their own profit.
(p. xvi)

Stephenson, PTMC—Building a Culture

William Stephenson
The Play Theory of Mass Communication
(1987 edition)
(orig. 1967)

Parts of this book are veritably littered with sigmas and derivatives, reflecting an avowed "preoccupation" with methodology. The layperson nonetheless can find their way into Stephenson's basic thesis rather easily by way of some of his own public opinion research, which he shares.

e.g. Senator McCarthy's approval rating was virtually unaffected by his censure.

e.g. In the U.S. Stephenson finds there are two completely contradictory definitions of "democracy" each of which perseveres in rather total ignorance of the other.

Tragically, as in so many such inquiries from this era of social science, the total political polarization of the 2010s is already fully visible, awaiting only the structural evolution which would enable it to ramify into full-blown feedback loops. It is already visible, and I think Mr. Methodology also explains it quite well.

Without having to deny that inner-direction has its roots in history the facts for other-direction suggest more immediate causal agencies. ... New Yorkers moving to California or Texas want to behave like everyone around them; they do so in terms of the trivia of modern consumer goods—cars, homes, dress, barbecue pits, swimming pools, and the rest—not out of any sense of shame but out of dissonance, followed by self-expansion, self-respect, and self-expression. They change their ways, and their social character follows suit. Whether their deeper value-systems fall in line as well is another matter; our own view is that it would be well to recognize that early internalizations remain untouched.
(p. 83)

In short, Stephenson proposes that

Inner-direction, as it is described by Riesman, is dependent upon inner beliefs, upon early internalizations which fix the person's character. ... Other-direction, instead, is much more in relation to mass communication—to what is "popular," to new experiences, to fads, and so on.
(p. 80)

And again,

There are some who look with an uneasy eye at these mass pleasures; behind them they see the lurkings of "hidden persuasion" and "tyranny over the mind"... Mankind, these critics feel, is being painlessly put to sleep... This, it seems to me, is a jaundiced view. I suggest, instead, that often it is the very beliefs that mass communication cannot change that keep mankind out of step with the times.
(p. 1)

I wonder if today we do not suffer much cognitive dissonance on this last point, despite the fact that this is exactly what we think we see when we look across to the other side of the present political divide. In any case, such a conclusion permits neither of the extreme positions on Media Effects to which we have become unhappily accustomed.

Advertising has been blamed for social effects that belong, instead, to the contrary principles of social control.
(p. 203)

...why television can sell soap but not, it seems, citizenship. The reason lies in the part played by mediating mechanisms in advertising; in between the advertisement on the one hand and the consumer who reads it there are the facilitating factors of supermarkets, shopping habits, and the ready availability of spending money which make it relatively easy for a consumer to be "sold" a new brand of soap. It is the absence of such mediating institutions that makes it very difficult for a society to "sell" citizenship.
(p. 204)

Or indeed, for band directors to sell practice.

When a new band teacher talks about building a culture within their program, they are talking about appealing to students' other-direction, i.e. appealing to the part of students that is susceptible to behavioral change. I suspect that even the humble high school band I passed through had several kids join up mostly to be with their friends; whereas to build a culture means kids practice because their friends practice. At that point, in theory, we are freed from the tyranny of the social control method. But this is not so easy to achieve. I think most band directors and even a majority of parents and administrators probably understand why, but few are willing to reckon with the loss of mediating mechanisms here, probably because the fact of such loss calls into question what is known, often pejoratively, as the relevance of high school band, of Mozart, of the bassoon, etc. And, if indeed we create what we need, then the fact that said mediating mechanisms have not been replaced probably means that most people's inner-direction can direct itself just fine without them. That is just reality. Add to this the fact that the usual extrinsic-benefit suspects are not exclusive to music, and you have a situation where music education can no longer be prescribed on universal grounds. Where it can be prescribed, though, is where its benefits are unique and exclusive to music; and so the task remains of exposing (ideally) all children to some version of music education, and then figuring out who really needs it.

In this latter task the lack of mediating mechanisms is no hinderance, and it might even be preferable. In these (admittedly rather stilted and academic) terms, one might observe that the reason most every kid in the 1993-94 Anwatin Middle School 6th grade beginning band was fired up to play saxophone or drums but tepid-to-frigid on all of the other options is due to the abundance of mediating mechanisms favoring the image (if not the reality) of the saxist or drummer, whereas the euphonium and the euphoniumist, e.g., enjoyed no such support.

This is too obvious of course, but it makes explicit the analogy I am attempting to salvage here, at which point various other observations Stephenson makes here could be illuminating for music educators in some less-obvious ways.

From Sutton-Smith's introduction (1987):

According to Stephenson the reader or the viewer of mass communication conducts a conversation with himself or uses his information for conversation with others. He participates in the community of gossip and value that is represented in the various media, and from all of this he gets a sense of self enhancement and improved morale. But his mind is constantly at work freely translating or transforming this material according to his personal predispositions. The play of his fantasy and his wishes are at work. This is an active and constructive constitution of the self. It is not just an escape, although it may be that as well.
(p. xiv)

I agree that this does happen. I don't see at all how we should simply assume that it is always happening, as Cultural Studies people seem to assume.

Unlike much of the rest of his work or ideological life, in this case the person is under less control. He can select the programs or the media he wishes or he can tune them out.

What if (s)he wants to create them?

More to the point, what if (s)he only ever wants to select and has no desire to create nor any awareness of the concept of creating and what distinguishes it from selecting? What if (s)he got through high school band without ever being asked to create, nor even to select for that matter? And/or what if (s)he subsequently believed (t)he(i)r 1980s-bred Cultural Studies professor that selecting and creating are morally and functionally equivalent and anyone who says they're not is a fascist? And, tragedy of tragedies, what if (s)he believed this precisely because it was consonant with so many early internalizations which are bound to remain untouched?

It seems to me, in such cases, and even in the face of the significant limitations already given, that it's time to get just slightly prescriptive, judgy, universalistic, etc., to go rather 1940s on shit vis-a-vis what this means for such people, why it could (potentially) mean badly for them individually, and why it (probably, and in either case) means worse for their social surroundings than it does for them. Per Stephenson, we cannot expect a social control regime to prevail here, and it would be well to recognize that early internalizations remain untouched by any such efforts. But if New Yorkers can get into grilling just by moving to Texas, maybe we can start by making high school band into a more Creative State. And maybe then we can at least do some good on behalf of the aforementioned social surroundings.

Jorn, modified: "Critique Selection is a secondary reaction to something primary which already exists. What one expresses through artistic creation is joy of life. Art is primary action in relation to the unknown."

(Tuning out would then be...tertiary? Now that is some thin ludic gruel indeed.)

Sutton-Smith—Intro to Stephenson, PTMC

William Stephenson
The Play Theory of Mass Communication
(1987 edition)
(orig. 1967)

from the introduction by Brian Sutton-Smith (1987):

The difficulty with the notion of subjective play is that there is very little systematic scholarship on how to think about it. Most modern play theory is about observable behavior, and even that which deals with subjective play...is largely about the way in which the possession of these competencies is of functional value in school or real life adaptation. It is not particularly concerned with their internal analysis; adequate description of subjective play is simply lacking.
(p. ix)

Is this perhaps
because
we describe only
what can be described
?

i.e.
because

subjective play

is simply

not so accessible

to
observation?

On the one hand Huizenga's historical analyses show the multiplicity of play concepts throughout history and in language, but on the other hand, in his own criteria for play, he used the simplistic categorizations that are characteristic of modern approaches to play. ...

While [his] view is culturally relative and can be applied to watching television or reading a paper it would probably not have been so applied by Huizenga who saw contests as the major civilizing play form throughout history and was rather scathing about the world-wide "bastardization" of play forms in modern mass society. Presumably subjective play, with its vicarious and its apparently passive character (perhaps just its sedentary character), would not have appealed to Huizenga. He would certainly have had misgivings about calling the typical television watcher's interpolated activity a form of play. ...

[Conversely] For [Helen] Schwartzman [Transformations, 1978] play is a context of activity rather than a structure (with fixed spaces, times, rules and fixed emotions of voluntariness, joy, tension, differentness). It can occur anywhere, even during attendance on the mass media, and typically some transformation takes place in the receiver's mind within those media events.
(pp. ix-xi)

In hashing out a parochial academic issue, I think BSS has incidentally hit upon something with much broader implications, for which the specific issue of

play

is a fine proxy but hardly the only one.

Regarding my own pet issue of extrinsic and intrinsic benefits in music education, like-minded readers will recognize immediately that

observable behavior

and

functional value

have asserted a comparable tyranny over our efforts as well.

The final sentence above hones in on the corrective
:

if

some transformation takes place

then
clearly the involvement has not been merely

passive

;

only where
no transformation is

observable

is the interpretation
of
true passivity

available.

Leaving aside the devil's advocate question as to whether

some transformation

necessarily equates to the very specific positive

Transformations

which have been ascribed to arts education,

it nonetheless follows that:

in absence of *any*

Transformations

whatsoever
in the student,

such (any?) benefits have not been reaped
;

or at bare minimum,
if no one can prove they have been reaped then we may well be permitted our skepticism in those specific cases
,

especially since laboratory researchers seem to have no trouble whatsoever overcoming the limits of

observa[bility]

while at work in their (literal or proverbial) laboratories
;

and especially if the presence or absence
(and unfortunately it is most often the latter)
of even small

Transformations

of any kind
is

not quite so opaque to the context-dependent

observation

skills of
so-called
Practice-Led Researchers

(e.g. music teachers who also Can Play)

as perhaps it has been to non-practitioner social scientists
(and to music teachers whose Practice-Led Research involved little Practice and even less Research, and subsequently didn't Lead much of anywhere).

Oddly enough, I find myself in somewhat the opposite situation as BSS relates: the research is copious and effusive in its insistence that Music Makes Kids Smart, whereas upon embarking upon my most recent foray into small-group teaching I was warned only half-humorously by the band director who had engaged my services (and who incidentally was known to send mass emails linking to the most recent breathless study on the topic) that,

You're going to learn why teachers drink.

One candidate explanation for this inversion: perhaps social science and laboratory psychology have finally improved their methods to where it really is possible, now, to break through the wall of

observable behavior

and to finally access the glorious reality that music indeed engenders

Transformations

in everything and everyone it touches

(and that these

Transformations

are indeed of the positive variety).

This reality had already been, just by coincidence of course, loudly proclaimed for the previous 200 years by people lacking the slightest shred of scientifically-gathered evidence. But these days, anyone skeptical enough to dwell on that unfortunate history must be either a purblind empiric or a money-worshipping neocon.

I happen to think there is a simpler, classically conservative explanation
:

you get out of it what you put into it
,

and unfortunately no music teacher, social scientist, or play theorist, nor indeed any parent or guardian, has the one-hundred percent reliable magic formula to ensure that students put in anything at all. We do our Progressive best, because it's the right thing to do (I do believe that), but there is no full end run around the paradox of Individual Initiative.

What I find most striking about Stephenson's tack is that he proposes a broad, pragmatic typology of the self along precisely the lines that music teachers (among myriad others) are led to consider such questions of initiative. Instead of sorting individuals by their susceptibility to media influence, he instead proposes (I am stating this very crudely) that

everyone has

a part of themselves

that is

susceptible

and

a part

that is

not

.