Lower Standards

Donella Meadows’ article “Our Damaging Drift to Low Performance” (Commentary, Sept. 10) is timely and right to the point. In a world that is going to present more and more skilled competition, our disappointing standard of performance in education, production and politics will cost us dearly.

Meadows’ answer to the problem is also right on, but does not speak to the underlying causes. Insisting on higher standards will not influence people who have lost interest in the product. Setting high goals in school will only work when both teachers and students feel rewarded and appreciated, conditions that have suffered tragically from spending cuts and a waning of public interest in education.

It is well-known that loyalty, job satisfaction and maximum productivity are a function of two-way communication, appreciation and the sense that we are an important cog in the whole process. Why should workers at any level be interested in the quality of their product when the attitude of the powers that be is an increasingly overweening focus on “profit at any human cost,” getting away with whatever you can” and “every man (or woman) for himself”!

Politically, finally, we are so inured to corrupt, self-serving politics that we quickly lose our energy for ferreting out the truth, joking, instead, about crucially important issues and forgetting that we are (were?) the bastion of democracy in the world. Again, if people don’t feel heard or attended to, and if politicians believe their well-being is dependent upon goring only those oxen belonging to the disempowered, both the process and the product will suffer, buried in the mire of self-interest.

ALLAN RABINOWITZ, Los Angeles