Real-life Trolley Problems

All this talk about reopening schools is feeling like a real-world trolley problem.  So-called “trolley problems” are ethical dilemmas in which people are asked whether they would flip the switch to divert a train if it would make the train hit one people instead of five.  Or what would people do if it was the same situation, but they had to push one person off a bridge, sacrificing one person to save five?  Scientists have found that while 90% of people say they would flip the switch in the first problem, only 10% of people would push someone off a bridge.  They have also found that we decide with different parts of our brains, and that this is evidence of internal conflicts within our brains between frontal lobe logical reasoning and more deeply-embedded, emotional parts of our brains that make taking another person’s life taboo.  Balancing the good of the many with the good of the few is not a simple process and it can be something that glitches our brains, particularly as more specific, hands-on action is required from us.

Decisions about reopening schools are thrusting us all into real-life trolley dilemmas.  If in-person school is better for most children, is it worth taking the risk that some children might get sick and that about 1 in 1000 might die?  Should teachers accept the risks of being on the front lines of reopening the economy, even if it means that some will certainly die alone, on a ventilator?  On the other hand, if online instruction is a safer option that works well for a subset of students, is it worth requiring that even if it is not good for many students, and even if it is totally unworkable for our least advantaged or most vulnerable students?  Should we allow individual families to choose their level of risk, even if doing some might negate the collective actions of others?

As we all debate these scenarios that are no longer the hypothetical domain of psychology classes, maybe it’s worthwhile to take a step back.  Many scholars have criticized the trolley problems as too hypothetical, and other scholars have found that what people say they would do doesn’t always match what they do in a virtual simulation or with mice.  Perhaps in our current situation, the reverse is also true.  If we are debating what is supposed to be a hypothetical scenario in terms of what we should actually enact next week, there is a bigger issue at play.  Who feels comfortable pulling the lever and making a choice that could cost lives?  Who is prepared to take responsibility for these morbid calculations?  And what if they underestimated?  

Instead, we should be asking ourselves why we are being forced to make these choices in the first place?  Why do parents need to choose between paying their bills and caring for their children?  For that matter, how did our economy get to the point where two people NEED to both work in order to even have a shot at a middle class life?  Some of us who are not THAT old can remember a time then one of our parents was able to stay home, which would have meant that supervising us while we learned online wouldn’t have been as big of a deal logistically.  If schools really are the lynchpin of our economy, and if our economy can’t “reopen” without our public schools, why have we been underfunding them for years and attacking them as “failing?”  And why are the same teachers who have constantly been criticized for “notdoing their jobs” (while having to do more and more jobs) now being declared to be “essential workers,” you know, like grocery cashiers, (people tell us this as if it were somehow a compliment), and then told that we need to line up to make the sacrifice -- for the good of the country, of course.  Not to mention that parents need free babysitting, businesses need cheap workers, and people with investments don’t want their stock portfolios to take a hit.

If we find ourselves debating about trolley problems, we’re having the wrong debate.  There is something seriously wrong with arguing about whose “needs” take priority, who should benefit, and who should willingly lie down on the tracks and take the hit.