Talking Education with Corey Angelis and Matthew Nielsen
Two interviews on *The Case Against Education* during the dark days of Covid
What libertarian is doing the most to actually move U.S. policy in a libertarian direction? My favorite answer: Corey DeAngelis, executive director of the Educational Freedom Institute, who is plausibly the Great Man who tipped the scales for universal school choice in multiple states. Read all about it in his soon-to-release The Parent Revolution!
Back in 2020, Corey, together with EFI board member Matthew Nielsen, interviewed me twice on education. Both interviews happened during the dark days of Covid, but I doubt any of us foresaw the silver lining. Namely: When public schools stopped even providing daycare, many parents and taxpayers finally stopped believing in public schools. Centuries overdue, but I’ll take what I can get.
Three further thoughts on Corey and school choice:
Corey’s incessant Twitter taunting of teacher’s union officials who send their kids to private school partly inspired my essay on hypocrisy versus Social Desirability Bias). Pointing out your opponents’ hypocrisy is rhetorically mighty even though it’s intellectually shaky.
A typical DeAngelis tweet When I wrote The Case Against Education, I was only mildly enthusiastic about school choice, because I saw little difference between public and private curricula. Covid showed me how wrong I was. Private schools may not be much better at teaching, but at least they swiftly reopened in response to consumer demand. Schools may not teach much of practical value, but at least they normally provide daycare for busy parents.
If you follow Corey’s social media, you’ll see a striking confirmation of my Simplistic Theory of Left and Right: The left is anti-market, the right is anti-left. The left doesn’t love public education because they think it out-performs the market. With a few honorable exceptions, the left loves public education simply because it isn’t the vile market. The flip side: Corey and other school choice advocates didn’t win over conservatives by convincing them that free-market schools would teach kids more effectively. They won over conservatives by exposing public schools’ leftist fanaticism on wokeness and Covid.
And now, I give you our two interviews. Back in 2020, Corey was not yet a national figure, but I think you’ll see his brimming potential.
P.S. Buy his book, it is both informative and funny.
Interview #1: The Case Against Education
Interview #2: Education Austerity & COVID-19
Did you get the wrong link in the text "The Parent Revolution" at the end of the first paragraph? It went to a YouTube video that didn't discuss the book.
In the case against education you acknowledge that college graduates do pay back their schooling and then in life time earning outperform non college graduates.
I am curious does that data reflect current inflated college prices including the cost of living during college that students now tend to finance because the federal government garanteed student loans and now banks will loan college students an additional 40k on top of tuition per year?
Also, if the public sector hadnt expanded so much would college students still outperform non college students, a lot of degrees go directly to work for government and school systems?
Third if we extracted the earnings of the top .5 percent of earners from the data do college graduates still outperform non college graduates after paying for college?