Get Rid of the Gimmes, Whether Small, Medium, Large, or EXTRA Large

As far back as 2009, I wrote about "gimme pens" and the like, and how easily we can be influenced by even the cheesiest tchotchkes. A study conducted with third- and fourth-year medical students indicated that even small gifts -- clipboards and notebooks -- had a measurable impact on how the students viewed competing drugs.

Thanks to humans' astonishing capacity for self-delusion, most of us are sure that we wouldn't be influenced by such gifts, even though they might be. The solution, I said then (and still think now), is to get rid of them all.

Now if a $0.50 pen or a $2.00 clipboard can have an effect on your attitudes and behavior, what do you think a $60,000 visit to Australia might do?

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

For a couple of months now, I've been following a story on inquiries into trips offered by the "Pearson Foundation", the not-for-profit arm of Pearson Education, the big publisher. In October, the New York Times' Michael Winerip wrote about trips that state education commissioners have taken to various countries to "get ideas for improving American public schools" ... and to meet with senior Pearson officials. In late December, the Times' Winnie Hu reported that New York's attorney general Eric Schneiderman is investigating whether the Pearson Foundation "acted improperly to influence state education officials by paying for overseas trips and other perks." And yesterday, Winerip showed that it's not just the state commissioners who have benefited from the Pearson Foundation's interest, but even some local school superintendents, too.

According to Winerip's account, six months after a Kentucky school superintendent took a Pearson trip to Australia "to exchange ideas on creating schools for the 21st century" (and to admire the kangaroos in Canberra!), she was voting on which of three companies should win the bidding to run the Kentucky state testing program. Even though CTB/McGraw-Hill submitted the lowest bid (and not by a few dollars either, but by $2.5 million), the committee recommended .... Pearson!

Are you surprised? Me, neither.

According to Mark Nieker, president of the Pearson Foundation, "It just is not true that the Foundation’s support of conferences attended by education officials has the purpose of helping Pearson corporate to win contracts."

Instead, he insists, the purpose of the Pearson Foundation-sponsored trips (oops, I almost said "junkets"!), is part of the foundation's "long-term commitment to foster a productive dialogue between education leaders from the United States and some of the world’s best-performing and most improving school systems."

And you know what? I bet he believes that.

Just as I'll bet that the Kentucky school superintendent honestly believes that her trip to Australia didn't influence her decision on the school-testing bid.

But -- given that nasty little self-delusion thing -- that doesn't mean that what they believe is true.

In previous lives, I've worked on both sides of the aisle. As a car-company employee, I would receive "Christmas baskets" and the like from suppliers. Did it make me feel friendlier towards them? At the time, I'm sure I would have said, "Of course not," in an affronted tone. But in retrospect... I'm not so sure.

On the other side of the aisle, working for advertising agencies and research suppliers and consulting firms, I'd make those little gifts. I enjoyed taking a client out to lunch, and making it clear that we appreciated their business. But would I have done it if I thought it wouldn't help us get more business from that client in the future? Again, at the time, I'd have been insulted by the question. In retrospect....

Winerip quotes the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators -- through whom the Australia trip was organized -- as saying that the group would no longer go on Pearson trips: "Given the climate in public education today, we won’t go on trips."

I don't think it's the "climate" that should make him re-think the trips policy. I think it's the ethics.