Skirting the Issue

Antithesis of the Critical Thinker: One who Skirts the Issue

Skirting, or going around, the issue so that one ends up discussing the issue from the peripheral is a common problem. A good way to illustrate this problem is to use a recent experience I had as an example.  

I had given feedback to the Traffic Police in Singapore on, among other concerns, a poorly-written traffic report.  I reproduce part of my correspondence below:

Another matter is the police report itself. As an educator and linguist, I find it surprising that an official report can contain so many grammatical and spelling errors, (a) lack of detailed sequence of events leading up to the accident and (show traces of) a cut and paste job, with phrases and clauses seeming to come from elsewhere.... And as a Singaporean and English educator in schools and tertiary institutions, I feel personally embarrassed that we can produce such poorly written official reports.

The reply from a Traffic Police officer to the above was as follows:

Thank you for being candid with your comments to the police report you have come across. There is indeed much space for improvement and also high public expectations in the ability of the organisation to produce professional documentation. I believe the Public Service do aspire to continue achieving greater standards in this very area through my personal witness of a variety of language and grammar courses made available to everyone as part of our choices within our training development. I believe we can only improve moving forward and this is also an integral part within this journey of professional service delivery.

What was the issue?  The issue was in relation to a particular official report that contained many errors in language usage.

What was reply?  Basically the officer was saying, "Hey, thanks for bringing that up and yes, we can improve. But guess what, your expectations are rather high.  We are already doing what we can through offering courses which are, by the way, `choices'. Moreover, whatever we do, we can only improve."

The officer did not deal with the actual issue of the poorly written police report.  What he did was to skirt the issue by:

• Acknowledging that, in general, that there is room for improvement, not that there is a need for improvement;
• Stating that there are high public expectations, and thereby, implying that these expectations are excessive and that, perhaps, it is unfair to expect their officers to live up to such `high expectations';
• Offering the information that courses to improve in the English language are already available, and these courses are options;
• Patting the Public Service on its back for `aspir(ing) to continue to achieve greater standards', meaning the standards are already great; and lastly,
• Reiterating they are `moving forward' and therefore, they can only `improve'.

The aim of this blog post is not to find fault with any particular officer or a public or government department.  Rather, it is to highlight what is turning out to be a common problem that pervades almost all walks of life.  We are fond of beating around the bush, and along the way, patting ourselves on our backs so as not to acknowledge the existence of a problem which we think might make us look less capable.

But the critical thinker will immediately zero in on the problem and tackle it head-on so as to find a solution.  Returning to the example given above, what the officer could have done was to acknowledge that the report was poorly-written and apologise.  Then, he could have gone on to add that his department will explore possible ways of solving the problem or he might even include some solutions.

In mid-week, we will look at an extract from a fictional work that will illustrate another instance of skirting the issue.  There will be questions to guide you to identify the issue and ways in which the issue is ignored through attention being drawn to other, albeit, related points.