The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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Similarly, in the article “Wrong Answer”, Rachel Aviv tells the story of the Atlanta cheating scandal through the narrative of Damany Lewis, a math teacher who cared deeply about his students (Aviv 1). Parks Middle School in Pittsburgh, Georgia was expected to meet state standards on the Georgia assessment, the Criterion-Reference Competency Test (Aviv 8). If they did not, the teachers and the administrators faced public embarrassment, absence of raises, dismissal, and the possible dissolution of the school (Aviv 17). Step by step, he gets sucked into the data-driven obsession with test scores, thinking that if he raised the children’s test scores, it was a victimless crime (Aviv 18). He knew that his students had needs that were even greater than their test scores, but the law’s absurd requirement that scores had to go up year after year drew him into a widespread conspiracy to falsify test scores (Aviv 4). Instead of suffering consequences that were inevitable, Lewis, along with other teachers, cheated by surreptitiously obtaining the answers to the test in advance and erasing student answers, to be sparingly and artfully replaced with correct ones (Aviv 10). The cheating began in 2006, but each subsequent year it had to escalate in order to keep up with Annual Yearly Progress, required by No Child Left Behind (Aviv 10). In 2010, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents found, after more than two thousand interviews, that forty-four schools had cheated (Aviv 17). Now, many of the teachers and administrators were suffering the consequences, including firing and criminal prosecution (Aviv 16).

Weber says that our world is increasingly controlled by formal rationality, as demonstrated in “Wrong Answer”. Weber would explain that the teachers cheated because they felt like they were doing what best for the students and the school. Whereas the system deemed it immoral. What is acceptable seems to become increasingly narrow, which is to the fault of the system of bureaucracy, not the people (Bureaucracy 234). The people in office creating these requirements don’t understand the difficulty in obtaining the desired results as all they see are facts and numbers. Each office has their own responsibilities, therefor occupants of these offices must be “without regard with persons” (Bureaucracy 215). They are unable to deal with people with their own uniqueness, and must treat everyone equally. This system essentially blinds the top of the hierarchy from viewing what is truly occurring, causing trouble for the lower end of the hierarchy (Bureaucracy 197).

Generally, beyond this case, these kinds of scandals are rare events that don’t occur often. Institutions are forced by higher ranks to meet certain requirements despite the lack of resources or opportunity to do so. This just further exemplifies Weber’s ideas about bureaucracy and its constraints as a system. Bureaucracy is more fair and efficient, but at what cost? In bureaucracy, there is a tendency to use objective metrics to increase efficiency, but this results in losing sight of the people. It creates a lack of recognition of extenuating circumstances. The danger of this is putting someone in prison who doesn't deserve it is unjust.