Cruel to Be Kind: A Neopragmatist Approach to Teaching Statistics for Public Administration Students

Many public administration students harbor doubts about their ability to learn statistics. Adoption of a tenet of neopragmatism can realign statistics with students’ cognitive interests and frame it as a method to advance social progress away from cruelty. This approach is rooted in John Dewey’s fusion of educational philosophy with scientific method and Richard Rorty’s postmodern upgrade of classical pragmatism. Neopragmatism recognizes that there are linguistic and contextual challenges to social science research, and that statistics is “translating” what happens around us into a language based on the math logic that is actually common to many of our social phenomena. This eases students’ arithmophobia so they can see the greater challenge as analyzing governance issues to take advantage of the explanatory powers of statistics. Students then focus on figuring out the words, rather than the numbers, that are necessary to improve administrative decisions and reduce cruelty in the world.