In Denmark, 27% of public school (0-10th grade) spending is on special education, which targets about 7% of students. It has seen large increases in recent years given the explosion in various diagnoses.
One place I feel your case against education is weak is in its assumptions about what happens if we massively cut back on educational institutions.
Often, I think there is a relatively strong case to be made that a well designed alternative system that allowed corporations to use all sorts of various tests and metrics in hiring would be superior from a purely economic POV [1]. But it seems to be missing the point when you focus on education as the issue when we can't even reform the legal system to the point where alternative measurements of employee quality are actually being offered by testing companies.
As such, I fear you aren't comparing like to like. Absent all those reforms I fear that we would end up with a system that's equally bad but without the positive externalities.
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1: I also have concerns about principle agent problems w/ convincing parents to pay for important quality of life benefits for children once decoupled from economic value.
So your argument basically boils down to the idea that government spends money better and more efficiently than private consumers do, and that government workers are more moral than private citizens/businesses.
You’ve clearly never heard of (or perhaps understood) public choice theory, nor in particular taken a look at the public school system in inner cities.
No, my case boils down to the fact that changing the system for how we train people doesn't change what people vote to spend money on. If you replace universities with some other system people are going to vote in loans and grants for that new system, there will be government capture in that system etc. You can't compare the idea libertarian model system against the real world university system because that's not what you getnif you eliminate the funding.
If you mean earlier ages well I think whatever you did people would insist on the government funding day care during that time. Honestly I care less about that age but the same problem arises that you can't assume no education and no subsidies are the same thing ...might be worse subsidies.
Re: college the private consumer is large choosing to pay to send their kids to college when they can. To the extent the government is involved it is primarily by allowing students to take on debt that is much harder to be discharged than in normal bankruptcy. Yah it pays a some grant money too and one can argue whether it should but that's not really the main point of the case against education and is also meeting other political demands that don't disapear w/o the current education system. Moving to just especially hard to discharge the student loans (hell allowing them to automatically garnish all future wages) which expand choice wouldn't change the paradigm much relative to the current mix.
So the current system for higher Ed also largely reflects the revealed preferences of people when allowed to borrow sufficiently against current earnings because given the current equilibrium it is a good choice for most people. Bryan has good points about this being largely because doing otherwise is correlated with negative signals but that's a different claim and doesn't show individual irrationality. Indeed if you're so convinced by individual choice just look at how many people do choose those loans.
A move away from grants to loans is a tweak not Bryan's broad case against education.
Your argument is quite muddled, as you go back and forth arguing about fully taxpayer funded K-12 schools and sometimes heavily subsidized, sometimes lightly subsidized higher ed.
If taxpayers got their money back (the idea!) rather than have it go to government for the money currently spent poorly on public education, odds are high it would be spent more wisely.
[*Not* Caplan’s asserted idea here, but if parents got vouchers to send their kids to whatever K-12 school they chose/preferred, the inherent competition in the system would result in better outcomes at lower cost, surely in aggregate and for the very large majority of students, most especially in the poorest areas.]
Re universities, first let’s be clear: Bryan is NOT suggesting banning private universities. On that front he merely points out that a huge fraction of the value of going to such universities is their signaling value. To his suggestion to reduce most or all of the public subsidies to these institutions you have offered no serious critique.
His argument about what *individuals* should do is *not* focused on upper middle class families with resources, nor on the (20%? 30%) of motivated students, its is on less motivated students, and on the obviously bad idea of taking out loans for an education if you don’t get the degree, and on taking out loans for a “crap” major at a less-than-elite institution. Are you seriously suggesting any of these points is incorrect?
Are you suggesting that spending less to subsidize public college funding - for those not completing their degrees, or those pursuing “crap” majors at less-than-elite institutions- is a bad idea? If so, based on what logic or evidence??
And if you understood *anything* about economics, let alone rationality, the fact that people choose to pursue heavily subsidized things does NOT mean it is the case that providing those subsidies is a good idea, let alone that everyone is making the correct choice.
Bryan is not leaning on irrationality for his argument in the case of public policy re: higher education (though clearly, as you yourself acknowledge, many people *are* making bad choices today), even as he gives wise advice (wise for *many*, not all) to people about what their better choices would be.
And finally, your argument that “you can’t change the system to/towards what Bryan’s advocating, because ‘people’ will vote in different bad things about how to spend other people’s money…” is no legit argument at all, imo. By this logic, no better ideas can ever be promulgated, because someone else will just propose and put in other bad ideas. 🙄
> And don’t forget all of the brilliant minds that go into academia, then work on pet projects that deliver zero real-world value.
Well that made me laugh. When I met my husband in math grad school that was precisely his plan. “Get paid for life to solve brain teasers”. He was not shy about the fact that advancing human knowledge was orthogonal to his plans.
The reviewer is an idiot who claims that the racial skew against blacks and Hispanics is due to evil teachers racist bias. This allows Bryan to skate once again away from the serious problem with his book--he never once mentions race.
The reality is that test scores in Bryan's world would result in the vast majority of blacks and Hispanics not qualifiying for investment in education. They'll be kicked out into the real world at age 12, while the bulk of whites and Asians would be deemed worthy of government funding.
Never mind the fact that this is really shitty, especially given that Bryan is an open borders nut who wants tons of unskilled labor that will drive wages down even further for the kids he doesn't deem worth educating. His little nirvana would end up with most Hispanics and blacks on the street at an early age and that's politically impossible to achieve. it'd be hilarious if it wasn't irritating that no reviewer has pointed this out and Bryan is allowed to trumpet a proposal that would instantly be held as racist on its face if anyone bothered taking it seriously.
Oh, by the way? Putting low IQ kids on the street at an early age will increase *crime* by a lot, too. Everyone will really like Bryan's ideas when they realize that. For example, when the Chicago teachers went out on strike in 2012, Chicago residents overwhelmingly sided with the teachers because they wanted the kids off the streets.
If we sent kids to work at 12 once they were demonstrated to have an IQ unworthy of college, we'd be sending close to 80% of blacks and 60% of Hispanics. So it's completely unworkable, even if it were a good idea, which it's not, because as I point out he either lied about or didn't understand his data.
Hi! Reviewer here - my point was that test-and-track systems unnecessarily create high-leverage places where racist individuals can do a lot of harm. I'm not saying that all teachers are evil or racist, nor am I saying that this accounts for all or a part of racial skew in test statistics. Just that test-and-track is strictly worse than the alternative of "allow kids to explore possible career paths and find the one that best matches their interests, abilities, and market need"
"my point was that test-and-track systems unnecessarily create high-leverage places where racist individuals can do a lot of harm. "
No, test and track is precisely *not* where "racists can do a lot of harm" since the kids are tested on actual demonstrated knowledge and ability.
" I'm not saying that all teachers are evil or racist, nor am I saying that this accounts for all or a part of racial skew in test statistics. "
Actually, you said precisely the second part and implied the first here:
" when schools have done this in practice, it was usually pretty racist in practice even if in theory it could be done in a meritocratic way. "
This is a clear statement that testing and tracking was in PRACTICE racist and yes, you implied that the racial skew was entirely due to that.
In reality, if you take tests out of the process then the "exploration of possible career paths" is a factor of adult advice--parents, who might think college is a waste of time and money, or all those racist teachers you think are IN PRACTICE screwing up meritocracy. Far better to use tests as a clear determinant--although the tests can't be prepped for.
Moreover, if you don't set test standards, then it's a flat out guarantee that two things will happen. First, blacks and Hispanics won't choose professional careers in racially felicitous numbers, it's *far* more likely that, rather than racists knocking kids off the advanced path, there will be well-meaning people pushing less than able kids onto it. And either teachers will fail unprepared kids--again creating racially problematic patterns--or they will be pressured to pass kids. Guess what? That's exactly the case we have right now.
So no, it's a really foolish idea to think that letting kids choose *without* setting some sort of standard will lead to anything other than what we have right now.
Overall, your review wasn't terrible, but the assumption that there are all sorts of racists in the education system just dying to fuck up life for blacks and Hispanics was really offensive. It's not just insulting, it's not just stupid, it's just flatly wrong.
“You make a good point, but the harsh reality is that most humans aren’t cut out to be entrepreneurs.”
Bryan, I agree with every one of your criticisms of the critique (ok, I plead nolo contendere re: parents vs schools pushing mal-diagnoses of kids, and schools worrying about being sued), but this is the one I disagree with.
His Silicon Valley point is not that people need to be entrepreneurs, but that in Silicon Valley - in particular at startups, but to a large degree for tech jobs even in some/many larger companies - you need not be an entrepreneur yourself, and reality of skills is more important, even at a younger age, than the signaling value of education, when the company is small and/or the team within a larger company is small and run by a results-oriented leader.
> And don’t forget all of the brilliant minds that go into academia, then work on pet projects that deliver zero real-world value.
But that's what we want to have, that's what the fat tails argument is _about_. Academia is not there to provide real-world value, it is there to provide knowledge. These are sometimes correlated and sometimes not, but there is no need to nudge academia towards practicality, it's not what it's for.
You’ve changed the topic pretty severely, but since you went there: Bryan didn’t suggest that all of academia delivers zero real-world value, just that part of it does.
To pick the easiest example, “grievance studies” deliver *far* less than zero real-world value, they deliver quite negative real-world value to society. And I suspect other than for a handful of students who become grievance studies professors or succeed at becoming moderately highly paid grievance activists, they add negative real-world value for most of the students who major in it.
To be fair, it’s likely a relatively tiny number of “brilliant minds” that go into grievance studies, but the basic point still stands.
I don't think you get the core of my objection. I say that applied value is _the wrong metric to evaluate science_. To the extent grievance studies are bad, they are bad because methodologically and scientifically wrong, not of any trickle-down effects (that would be like blaming Project Manhattan scientists for deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Clearly I don’t understand what you are saying then, and you’re certainly not making it clear.
To repeat, Caplan in that one line you cite didn’t claim that the totality of academia has no value. He said no more and no less than that ONE of the problems with our education system today is that many smart people work on projects that don’t add value to society. But that is NOT his core argument in his case against Education (the education system we have today).
And he surely was not speaking of all “science” with that claim!
Further, he did NOT say “real-world value” equals “practicality”. Perhaps there is where you got confused.
And now speaking only for myself, all of grievance studies and the large majority (NOT all, just most!) of the “social sciences” (other than economics, where it’s hard for me to put a percentage on it) in academia today are political ideologizing, NOT science.
What’s the evidence for this: “Without free public schools, I’d expect we would return to a world where many more families would only have one working parent.” The opposite claim “free market in daycare will make it cheaper and parents will have more flexibility deciding between outsourcing fun and staying home” is more plausible.
I probably agree with you, but it matters greatly whether or not you presume current tax dollars spent on K-12 education are returned to taxpayers/parents or not!
-"A lot more abuse” seems pretty paranoid to me. Until recently, it was common for teens to have part-time jobs, and abuse of teen workers was a minor issue at most. Abuse is a lot worse when you’re stuck in a classroom than when you can quit anytime. And teens are notoriously prone to quitting.-
Are you seriously comparing the two? Teens couldn't just quit back then; that's a modern luxury.
I started working summers when I was 13 because I hated organized children's programming the way some people hate organized religion. I earned $200 a month working from 8 AM to 3 PM, with no connections to help me or advocate for me. Despite the challenges, I'm really glad I did it.
However, it's important to recognize that for a 13-year-old, quitting a job and finding other options isn't always easy. Such situations can be ripe for abuse. I also think it's incorrect to assume that these environments weren't abusive in the past.
The 13 year old can’t just quit and find another job while his parents continue to pay for his existence, just as they would were he enrolled in school?
Yes I am. The counter case is the kid is in school, which requires having zero income and so presumably the parents or guardians are paying for him. I don’t think anyone was advocating for kicking 13 year olds out of the house, just not making them waste time in school.
The assumption that all 13-year-olds are taken care of by someone is misguided. Working 13-year-olds aren't typically mowing lawns in nice neighborhoods for $15 an hour; many are exploited. Without school, most children would lack protection and education, facing even greater risks.
I was underpaid because my parents weren’t able to advocate for me, despite being wonderful parents. Things were worse in the past, not better.
For the comparison to hold, we are holding all else equal. The abuse is stemming from the lack of resources, causing the kid to not have bargaining power. The solution is to increase the resources, not to ban him from working and shove him in school.
I confess that I thought I understood your point and now I'm not sure I do. I thought you were saying that things are easier now than they were then. Are you? If so, that strengthens Bryan's case.
What seems pretty clear to me by now is that Isha is saying that in less well-developed countries with poor institutions and “different” values, things are better today than in the past, but much exploitation of children still exists.
What the rest of us are saying is that in the U.S. (and arguably most other rich Western countries) Bryan has a point, or at least that nothing that Isha wrote above has credibly contradicted any of Bryan’s points.
Maybe I am too ignorant to have a useful opinion, but here I was trying to say that nothing has changed. Where there is an opportunity to exploit people, people will be exploited. The category of children who would benefit by not being forced to go to school strongly overlaps with the category of children who have parents who can advocate for them in any case.
I'm all for figuring out what is necessary to survive, flourish, and practical in learning to contribute to our society e.g. reading, grammar, arithmetic, science, develop natural talents, and how to self-study for physical, mental, and emotional health and growth. It would seem there are many ways to achieve this, but the underlying requirement would be a supportive environment, safety, and demonstration by adults of acceptable moral standards, and attitudes of continuing lifelong education.
Caplan’s argument makes sense to me only in the wake of the progressive’s successful assault on education. There was once a time when good grades and a high school diploma meant something. The bearer could read and write well, do fairly complex math, and knew the country’s history and how its government worked.
But between grade inflation and social promotion, by which students were sent to the next grade even though they hadn’t learned the material, good grades and a diploma now mean very little.
So, how did serious students distinguish themselves from those who were simply there for twelve years? They went on to college. But progressives have similarly devalued university diplomas.
So, on to graduate school. But now a graduate degree is becoming proof of toxicity. Someone with an advanced degree in grievance studies is not anyone I want to hire. And grievance studies are creeping their way into even STEM classes.
Today, how do non-toxic, well educated people distinguish themselves from the crowd?
Regarding 12–18-year-olds in the workplace, Caplan writes, "They may not be very mature, but they’re mature enough."
Actually, putting them in the workplace would greatly improve this. Under the current system, 13-year-olds have most of their social interactions with other 13-year-olds, and their chief exposure to adult values comes from parents and teachers, whom many of them are starting to disrespect, following the example of the coevals who dominate their social life. Put them in a mixed-age environment, though, where they're not subject to peer pressure from fellow early-teens, and they're more likely to acquire values from people who're older and wiser.
Thank you for your thoughtful response! Let me start by sharing how much I appreciate you taking the time to engage with a random reader on the internet. This has been a real pleasure for me and has encouraged me to reach out to other authors whose work I enjoy; I hope it inspires others to do likewise.
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It’s really hard to change one's mind, particularly when one’s personal and professional identities are wrapped up in a particular stance. This book and discussion has made me seriously consider the question “are you sure this whole system is worth saving?”, and while my answer is still yes, I am grateful for the prompt and we’ll see where time takes me.
As a parallel, while I am going to respond to some of the points you make, I wanted to center what my hopes were in reaching out to you in the first place. While I don’t expect to change your mind overall, my hope is that this conversation will prompt two things to consider:
1) Education is a really big Chesterton’s Fence. It would be really bad if we dismantled it and found ourselves with less ability to discover vaccines or a higher rate of child abuse. I recognize that this is a fully generalizable argument against changing anything, and that actually the consequences could be the opposite! I know that countenancing concerns like this in a book or political argument makes the argument less effective, but if you’re serious about advancing this policy I’d ask that you think deeply about these potential downsides and how to mitigate them. The one I’m most concerned about is in a world with greater parental choice (up to and including just paying parents money and having them choose what to do with it) how you handle situations where the desires of the child differ significantly from the desires of the parent.
2) There are exciting possible visions of what the education system could become. I’m personally excited to create a system where children spend more time exploring genuine interests and finding what lives at the intersection of what they’re good at, what they enjoy, and what can support their economic well-being. I think this looks like lots more electives and internships at the middle and high school level. There are other potential visions - I particularly like the visions explored in Neil Postman’s The End of Education and Peter Gray’s Free to Learn. Perhaps you look at these and think “nope, still not worth saving,” but maybe they’ll inspire some hope.
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To the specifics - I’ll focus on the areas where we disagree that align with the above goals.
*Entrepreneurship*
To be clear, when I say “entrepreneurship” my definition expands far beyond silicon valley startups. This little-e entrepreneurship includes people selling craft goods on Etsy, self-employed refrigerator technicians, farmers, physicians running a small practice, etc. - roles where the gap between provider and customer is minimized. And while credentials might be helpful in impressing a potential customer, happy reference customers matter much more. The argument is that a world with more little-e entrepreneurship places much more emphasis on skills over credentials, not that credentials are worthless.
*Test-and-track*
I concede that doing a full lit review is more of an investment than I’m willing to make :) But, I will point out that the inclusion of “after 1970” (versus pre-civil rights act) somewhat validates my argument: test and track creates high-leverage points where racist people can do a lot of harm.
And I’m not opposed to having kids take tests to help them assess their abilities! But the correlation between e.g. one’s SAT Math score and one’s ability to be a professional software engineer is not 1.0. Perhaps our disagreement is one of degree: I am opposed to the _tracking_, where an adult tells a child what they can or cannot do based on a test, versus saying “hey - it looks like you’re pretty good at these things and less good at those things - perhaps you should try out X elective or apply for your next internship in Y field?” And if the child is adamant that they want to be a doctor or youtube streamer or civil engineer even if their test scores say otherwise I’d rather have them try it and fail (in a fast, low-stakes way, ideally in early high school) rather than having an adult tell them they can’t.
*School should be fun*
Agreed! Or at least more fun than currently. I think learning will always require pushing through some un-fun parts (practicing scales, memorizing kanji, etc.) but that’s okay. Lot’s of reformers (including me!) have ideas on how to change what happens in schools so that they inspire joy. My bet is that a well designed school actually is more fun and satisfying to a young person than pure structureless freedom.
*Fat tails*
I want to reemphasize that I’m looking at fat tails from society’s perspective, not the perspective of the individual. I thought the book’s case on the individual side was pretty complete; I felt this was a missing consideration from the societal calculus. I admit to not having done the spreadsheets, so perhaps the real response to me is “shut up and calculate,” but my argument for the fatness of the tails (again from a societal standpoint) is the absolutely _massive_ impact of some discoveries and inventions (dwarf wheat, mRNA vaccines, etc.)
And careful with your assumptions - I am in a Japanese course right now! And have an O-Chem textbook I’ve been meaning to get through, I recently worked through a book on modern physics, etc. - enrolling in 30 courses over the next four years sounds wonderful if I had not other obligations :)
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To return to the top - thank you for the book and for this opportunity; hopefully you found some of these points interesting to reflect on.
What great discussion. You must all drop by next time I roast a lamb - late October.
Most of the bad could be addresses by getting government and unions out of schooling. Governments over regulate and unions have morphed from guaranteeing good wages for good workers to feather bedding for wastrels. (a generalist common not for all). Self ordering will take time but will produce better results in time.
As for the need of a degree - if employers demand you need a degree - you will need to produce a degree. Right now there are five types degrees Trade (lawyers, accountants etc.), Technical (chemistry, engineering, etc.) The Arts (english, music, theatre, etc.), Wastrels (peace studies, ethnic studies, etc.) and Thinkers (philosophy, ethics, economics, etc.) I would hope all degrees would get a good dose of Thinking classes.
We must also cut Federal student loans program to the core. Why do state schools require federal money? Why do schools with billion dollars endowments require federal money - let them bet on or support their own students. Also generously support the arts and art students. They make not become rich, but life is richer with them
Last - a college degree is not for all, that's just fine. But education and ongoing education is essential.
I feel there is overindexing on what a 12/14/16 etc. year old "wants" or "feels miserable" with. As well as missing some of the purpose of what education is for.
Sure, most 14 year olds could be laborers. Instead of reading Euclid or Virgil. They are sure to learn something. But we already had that for most of our existence. And thought the better of it. It's called civilization.
Due respect, if most 14 year olds in U.S. public schools were in fact reading Euclid or Virgil - and paying attention to what they read - Bryan’s case might be different.
Further/separately, while you *might* have a point if their proposed alternative was day laborer, if instead they learned a trade, for a large majority of them both they and society would be substantially better off.
And be clear that Bryan, were he king, is not mandating that all 14 year olds work and not go to school, merely that they have the *option* to do so - and that the U.S. stop pouring *enormous* amounts of resources into public schools which deliver a poor return on that investment for taxpayers and for a very large portion of students as well.
Is there something special in the water in Singapore, Holland, Estonia, Denmark, or any of the high performing countries, that is absent in the United States? Are these very different places comprised of teachers and students and parents with special abilities? Should 14 year olds in these countries pick up a trade too? Or just those in countries that perform poorly?
You can of course choose to limit your theory to a special case, but it might be worthwhile testing it more broadly.
I don’t understand your point, you’ll need to explain.
All of the countries you have named are small and largely homogeneous cultures. All but Estonia are fairly rich.
But as an aside, yes, it’s likely the case that for somewhere between 40% and 70% of 14 year olds, picking up a trade would be highly worthwhile for them and for their society.
That said, to repeat, I am most familiar with the U.S., and to repeat, the point is that it should be an option, NOT a requirement, for the students, and Bryan is NOT saying we should eliminate schooling for those 14 year olds who want it. Especially if it is high quality schooling. And perhaps it is in some or all of the countries you cite. But in the U.S. in most inner cities, public schooling is anything but high quality.
A couple of asides: The causation from small or homogenous to high performing is not obvious to me. The best performing school districts in the US are not particularly homogenous, but do correlate with high income/wealth. Also, school districts have varying levels of autonomy. Even if you assume all policies are set at the state level, all but 5 states have fewer people than does Holland.
I do get your point about high school being a choice, and that you are not mandating behavior one way or an other.
The modern compulsory schooling regime, in place for over a hundred years now, and much older in New England, was a response in part to coercive child labor (see Avondale Mills Alabama for eg).
We are now talking about ages 14-17, a 3-4 year time range, and our difference boils down to whether compulsory schooling should end at 16/17 or 14.
Say Joe here is a 14yo, and not cut out for school or the schools he can attend are no good. Now in your world Joe, or his parents, or his teachers, or his tax payers decide that he'd be better off, say, learning to fix plumbing. In my world he'd stick around in school till he's 16/17, and try to learn some literature, trigonometry, chemistry, civics, and so on. Even though by some calculation he'd be better off being a plumber right away.
I'd pick the second option, it removes the chance of Joe being coerced, gives him some chance of completing high school and maybe showing aptitude for college. Who knows, Joe might take an interest in medicine. It's almost impossible to get a medical degree once you have opted out of schooling at 14. But you can always switch to plumbing at 17.
Well, we agree fully re anyone who actually IS trying at age 14.
As well as anyone in a school actually pushing most kids to read Euclid and Virgil and pushing them to learn the other things you suggest (well, other than “civics”, which in the U.S. today is nothing more than hard leftist ideologizing).
Unfortunately most children do not fall into either group, even as of course some do.
A lot of Bryan's data is wildly misrepresented or even a flat out lie.
He uses very old NAAL data (2003) to declare that Americans aren't taught well. But there's two problems.
1) The NAAL survey was done in 1992 and 2003. If you compare the data and disaggregate by age, it's clear that reading scores of high school students performance declined only slightly and quant stayed constant, while college level performance cratered. This is almost certainly because colleges began accepting unqualified students (mostly black and Hispanic). Given that high school students changed dramatically in population during this time--more immigrants, fewer dropouts--it's remarkable that high school scores didn't drop dramatically. You can see the data here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2018/08/31/the-case-against-the-case-against-education-toe-fungus-prevention/
2) He uses the NAAL data as evidence that K-12 is falling down on the job, but in fact the NAAL tests *adults who live in America* which includes a lot of immigrants. So without pulling out immigrants educated in another country, his data is useless.
When you disagregate the non-native speakers, Americans do much better: only 9% are below basic. And from 1992 to 2003, American native speakers *improved* their performance.
3) While Bryan doesn't consider blacks and Hispanics worth educating unless he thinks they're smart enough, the fact is that from 1993 to 2003, we saw significant increases in black and Hispanic high school performance (https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2018/12/01/the-case-against-the-case-against-education-average-was-always-over/). That's dropped recently, of course, but if there's one thing the pandemic showed it's that academic performance is *better* with school than without. And he wants to piss all that away.
Set an academic standard for college, sure. Develop methods of training that end college involvement for current professional positions (teaching elementary school, nursing) sure. But putting 12 year olds on the street to work in a grocery store even if Caplan wasn't also going to flood their world with adult competition?
It'd be monstrous if it wasn't obvious that it's just facile mental masturbation.
Well, your first couple points started out fair enough, and even seem plausible, but when you shift to the blatantly false assertion “Bryan doesn't consider blacks and Hispanics worth educating unless he thinks they're smart enough”, you destroy 100% of your credibility.
Limiting the discussion solely to U.S. citizens, are you *actually* claiming that K-12 public schools do a better, or even as good, job now as they did 20 and 30 years ago? Got data to back that up? Because test scores from even upscale suburban schools indicate the opposite. And if you do have data showing that inner city schools have actually improved for the children of American citizens, I’m all ears…
"Limiting the discussion solely to U.S. citizens, are you *actually* claiming that K-12 public schools do a better, or even as good, job now as they did 20 and 30 years ago? Got data to back that up?"
Until the pandemic, yes. NAEP scores are conclusive on this point. They dropped slightly during the Common Core era--ironic, since it was the reformers convinced that schools were terrible who insisted on Common Core. Since the pandemic, no, but then the very fact that scores dropped during the pandemic demonstrates that despite your conviction that schools aren't teaching anything, oh, hey. They are.
"“Bryan doesn't consider blacks and Hispanics worth educating unless he thinks they're smart enough”"
This is indisputably true. It's the whole point of his argument. Now, what you *should* be saying is that no, Bryan doesn't consider *anyone* worth educating unless he thinks they're smart enough, which is true, but the reality is that his definition of "smart enough" would include the vast majority of whites and Asians, a far lower percentage of Hispanics and almost no blacks, and if anyone were actually taking his proposals seriously, he'd be in serious shit for proposing to stop educating blacks and Hispanics.
Inner city schools have indeed improved, again using NAEP scores.
Again, don't use Bryan as any sort of expert on education. He has very little idea what he's talking about.
In Denmark, 27% of public school (0-10th grade) spending is on special education, which targets about 7% of students. It has seen large increases in recent years given the explosion in various diagnoses.
https://www.kl.dk/momentum/arkiv/2023/23-kun-omkring-hver-syvende-elev-fra-specialtilbud-faar-taget-en-ungdomsuddannelse
One place I feel your case against education is weak is in its assumptions about what happens if we massively cut back on educational institutions.
Often, I think there is a relatively strong case to be made that a well designed alternative system that allowed corporations to use all sorts of various tests and metrics in hiring would be superior from a purely economic POV [1]. But it seems to be missing the point when you focus on education as the issue when we can't even reform the legal system to the point where alternative measurements of employee quality are actually being offered by testing companies.
As such, I fear you aren't comparing like to like. Absent all those reforms I fear that we would end up with a system that's equally bad but without the positive externalities.
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1: I also have concerns about principle agent problems w/ convincing parents to pay for important quality of life benefits for children once decoupled from economic value.
So your argument basically boils down to the idea that government spends money better and more efficiently than private consumers do, and that government workers are more moral than private citizens/businesses.
You’ve clearly never heard of (or perhaps understood) public choice theory, nor in particular taken a look at the public school system in inner cities.
No, my case boils down to the fact that changing the system for how we train people doesn't change what people vote to spend money on. If you replace universities with some other system people are going to vote in loans and grants for that new system, there will be government capture in that system etc. You can't compare the idea libertarian model system against the real world university system because that's not what you getnif you eliminate the funding.
If you mean earlier ages well I think whatever you did people would insist on the government funding day care during that time. Honestly I care less about that age but the same problem arises that you can't assume no education and no subsidies are the same thing ...might be worse subsidies.
Re: college the private consumer is large choosing to pay to send their kids to college when they can. To the extent the government is involved it is primarily by allowing students to take on debt that is much harder to be discharged than in normal bankruptcy. Yah it pays a some grant money too and one can argue whether it should but that's not really the main point of the case against education and is also meeting other political demands that don't disapear w/o the current education system. Moving to just especially hard to discharge the student loans (hell allowing them to automatically garnish all future wages) which expand choice wouldn't change the paradigm much relative to the current mix.
So the current system for higher Ed also largely reflects the revealed preferences of people when allowed to borrow sufficiently against current earnings because given the current equilibrium it is a good choice for most people. Bryan has good points about this being largely because doing otherwise is correlated with negative signals but that's a different claim and doesn't show individual irrationality. Indeed if you're so convinced by individual choice just look at how many people do choose those loans.
A move away from grants to loans is a tweak not Bryan's broad case against education.
Your argument is quite muddled, as you go back and forth arguing about fully taxpayer funded K-12 schools and sometimes heavily subsidized, sometimes lightly subsidized higher ed.
If taxpayers got their money back (the idea!) rather than have it go to government for the money currently spent poorly on public education, odds are high it would be spent more wisely.
[*Not* Caplan’s asserted idea here, but if parents got vouchers to send their kids to whatever K-12 school they chose/preferred, the inherent competition in the system would result in better outcomes at lower cost, surely in aggregate and for the very large majority of students, most especially in the poorest areas.]
Re universities, first let’s be clear: Bryan is NOT suggesting banning private universities. On that front he merely points out that a huge fraction of the value of going to such universities is their signaling value. To his suggestion to reduce most or all of the public subsidies to these institutions you have offered no serious critique.
His argument about what *individuals* should do is *not* focused on upper middle class families with resources, nor on the (20%? 30%) of motivated students, its is on less motivated students, and on the obviously bad idea of taking out loans for an education if you don’t get the degree, and on taking out loans for a “crap” major at a less-than-elite institution. Are you seriously suggesting any of these points is incorrect?
Are you suggesting that spending less to subsidize public college funding - for those not completing their degrees, or those pursuing “crap” majors at less-than-elite institutions- is a bad idea? If so, based on what logic or evidence??
And if you understood *anything* about economics, let alone rationality, the fact that people choose to pursue heavily subsidized things does NOT mean it is the case that providing those subsidies is a good idea, let alone that everyone is making the correct choice.
Bryan is not leaning on irrationality for his argument in the case of public policy re: higher education (though clearly, as you yourself acknowledge, many people *are* making bad choices today), even as he gives wise advice (wise for *many*, not all) to people about what their better choices would be.
And finally, your argument that “you can’t change the system to/towards what Bryan’s advocating, because ‘people’ will vote in different bad things about how to spend other people’s money…” is no legit argument at all, imo. By this logic, no better ideas can ever be promulgated, because someone else will just propose and put in other bad ideas. 🙄
> And don’t forget all of the brilliant minds that go into academia, then work on pet projects that deliver zero real-world value.
Well that made me laugh. When I met my husband in math grad school that was precisely his plan. “Get paid for life to solve brain teasers”. He was not shy about the fact that advancing human knowledge was orthogonal to his plans.
The reviewer is an idiot who claims that the racial skew against blacks and Hispanics is due to evil teachers racist bias. This allows Bryan to skate once again away from the serious problem with his book--he never once mentions race.
The reality is that test scores in Bryan's world would result in the vast majority of blacks and Hispanics not qualifiying for investment in education. They'll be kicked out into the real world at age 12, while the bulk of whites and Asians would be deemed worthy of government funding.
Never mind the fact that this is really shitty, especially given that Bryan is an open borders nut who wants tons of unskilled labor that will drive wages down even further for the kids he doesn't deem worth educating. His little nirvana would end up with most Hispanics and blacks on the street at an early age and that's politically impossible to achieve. it'd be hilarious if it wasn't irritating that no reviewer has pointed this out and Bryan is allowed to trumpet a proposal that would instantly be held as racist on its face if anyone bothered taking it seriously.
Oh, by the way? Putting low IQ kids on the street at an early age will increase *crime* by a lot, too. Everyone will really like Bryan's ideas when they realize that. For example, when the Chicago teachers went out on strike in 2012, Chicago residents overwhelmingly sided with the teachers because they wanted the kids off the streets.
What exactly do you mean with racist?
If we sent kids to work at 12 once they were demonstrated to have an IQ unworthy of college, we'd be sending close to 80% of blacks and 60% of Hispanics. So it's completely unworkable, even if it were a good idea, which it's not, because as I point out he either lied about or didn't understand his data.
Sounds based.
Hi! Reviewer here - my point was that test-and-track systems unnecessarily create high-leverage places where racist individuals can do a lot of harm. I'm not saying that all teachers are evil or racist, nor am I saying that this accounts for all or a part of racial skew in test statistics. Just that test-and-track is strictly worse than the alternative of "allow kids to explore possible career paths and find the one that best matches their interests, abilities, and market need"
OK, "idiot" was intemperate.
"my point was that test-and-track systems unnecessarily create high-leverage places where racist individuals can do a lot of harm. "
No, test and track is precisely *not* where "racists can do a lot of harm" since the kids are tested on actual demonstrated knowledge and ability.
" I'm not saying that all teachers are evil or racist, nor am I saying that this accounts for all or a part of racial skew in test statistics. "
Actually, you said precisely the second part and implied the first here:
" when schools have done this in practice, it was usually pretty racist in practice even if in theory it could be done in a meritocratic way. "
This is a clear statement that testing and tracking was in PRACTICE racist and yes, you implied that the racial skew was entirely due to that.
In reality, if you take tests out of the process then the "exploration of possible career paths" is a factor of adult advice--parents, who might think college is a waste of time and money, or all those racist teachers you think are IN PRACTICE screwing up meritocracy. Far better to use tests as a clear determinant--although the tests can't be prepped for.
Moreover, if you don't set test standards, then it's a flat out guarantee that two things will happen. First, blacks and Hispanics won't choose professional careers in racially felicitous numbers, it's *far* more likely that, rather than racists knocking kids off the advanced path, there will be well-meaning people pushing less than able kids onto it. And either teachers will fail unprepared kids--again creating racially problematic patterns--or they will be pressured to pass kids. Guess what? That's exactly the case we have right now.
So no, it's a really foolish idea to think that letting kids choose *without* setting some sort of standard will lead to anything other than what we have right now.
Overall, your review wasn't terrible, but the assumption that there are all sorts of racists in the education system just dying to fuck up life for blacks and Hispanics was really offensive. It's not just insulting, it's not just stupid, it's just flatly wrong.
“You make a good point, but the harsh reality is that most humans aren’t cut out to be entrepreneurs.”
Bryan, I agree with every one of your criticisms of the critique (ok, I plead nolo contendere re: parents vs schools pushing mal-diagnoses of kids, and schools worrying about being sued), but this is the one I disagree with.
His Silicon Valley point is not that people need to be entrepreneurs, but that in Silicon Valley - in particular at startups, but to a large degree for tech jobs even in some/many larger companies - you need not be an entrepreneur yourself, and reality of skills is more important, even at a younger age, than the signaling value of education, when the company is small and/or the team within a larger company is small and run by a results-oriented leader.
> And don’t forget all of the brilliant minds that go into academia, then work on pet projects that deliver zero real-world value.
But that's what we want to have, that's what the fat tails argument is _about_. Academia is not there to provide real-world value, it is there to provide knowledge. These are sometimes correlated and sometimes not, but there is no need to nudge academia towards practicality, it's not what it's for.
You’ve changed the topic pretty severely, but since you went there: Bryan didn’t suggest that all of academia delivers zero real-world value, just that part of it does.
To pick the easiest example, “grievance studies” deliver *far* less than zero real-world value, they deliver quite negative real-world value to society. And I suspect other than for a handful of students who become grievance studies professors or succeed at becoming moderately highly paid grievance activists, they add negative real-world value for most of the students who major in it.
To be fair, it’s likely a relatively tiny number of “brilliant minds” that go into grievance studies, but the basic point still stands.
I don't think you get the core of my objection. I say that applied value is _the wrong metric to evaluate science_. To the extent grievance studies are bad, they are bad because methodologically and scientifically wrong, not of any trickle-down effects (that would be like blaming Project Manhattan scientists for deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Clearly I don’t understand what you are saying then, and you’re certainly not making it clear.
To repeat, Caplan in that one line you cite didn’t claim that the totality of academia has no value. He said no more and no less than that ONE of the problems with our education system today is that many smart people work on projects that don’t add value to society. But that is NOT his core argument in his case against Education (the education system we have today).
And he surely was not speaking of all “science” with that claim!
Further, he did NOT say “real-world value” equals “practicality”. Perhaps there is where you got confused.
And now speaking only for myself, all of grievance studies and the large majority (NOT all, just most!) of the “social sciences” (other than economics, where it’s hard for me to put a percentage on it) in academia today are political ideologizing, NOT science.
What’s the evidence for this: “Without free public schools, I’d expect we would return to a world where many more families would only have one working parent.” The opposite claim “free market in daycare will make it cheaper and parents will have more flexibility deciding between outsourcing fun and staying home” is more plausible.
I probably agree with you, but it matters greatly whether or not you presume current tax dollars spent on K-12 education are returned to taxpayers/parents or not!
-"A lot more abuse” seems pretty paranoid to me. Until recently, it was common for teens to have part-time jobs, and abuse of teen workers was a minor issue at most. Abuse is a lot worse when you’re stuck in a classroom than when you can quit anytime. And teens are notoriously prone to quitting.-
Are you seriously comparing the two? Teens couldn't just quit back then; that's a modern luxury.
Because quitting is, as you say, "a modern luxury," doesn't that justify Bryan's claim that there would not be much abuse?
I started working summers when I was 13 because I hated organized children's programming the way some people hate organized religion. I earned $200 a month working from 8 AM to 3 PM, with no connections to help me or advocate for me. Despite the challenges, I'm really glad I did it.
However, it's important to recognize that for a 13-year-old, quitting a job and finding other options isn't always easy. Such situations can be ripe for abuse. I also think it's incorrect to assume that these environments weren't abusive in the past.
The 13 year old can’t just quit and find another job while his parents continue to pay for his existence, just as they would were he enrolled in school?
You're assuming his parents pay for his existence in the first place.
Yes I am. The counter case is the kid is in school, which requires having zero income and so presumably the parents or guardians are paying for him. I don’t think anyone was advocating for kicking 13 year olds out of the house, just not making them waste time in school.
The assumption that all 13-year-olds are taken care of by someone is misguided. Working 13-year-olds aren't typically mowing lawns in nice neighborhoods for $15 an hour; many are exploited. Without school, most children would lack protection and education, facing even greater risks.
I was underpaid because my parents weren’t able to advocate for me, despite being wonderful parents. Things were worse in the past, not better.
For the comparison to hold, we are holding all else equal. The abuse is stemming from the lack of resources, causing the kid to not have bargaining power. The solution is to increase the resources, not to ban him from working and shove him in school.
The problem with adding children to the workforce is that it doesn't empower them; it empowers those who seek to exploit them.
I confess that I thought I understood your point and now I'm not sure I do. I thought you were saying that things are easier now than they were then. Are you? If so, that strengthens Bryan's case.
What seems pretty clear to me by now is that Isha is saying that in less well-developed countries with poor institutions and “different” values, things are better today than in the past, but much exploitation of children still exists.
What the rest of us are saying is that in the U.S. (and arguably most other rich Western countries) Bryan has a point, or at least that nothing that Isha wrote above has credibly contradicted any of Bryan’s points.
As in most cases, context is everything.
Maybe I am too ignorant to have a useful opinion, but here I was trying to say that nothing has changed. Where there is an opportunity to exploit people, people will be exploited. The category of children who would benefit by not being forced to go to school strongly overlaps with the category of children who have parents who can advocate for them in any case.
I'm all for figuring out what is necessary to survive, flourish, and practical in learning to contribute to our society e.g. reading, grammar, arithmetic, science, develop natural talents, and how to self-study for physical, mental, and emotional health and growth. It would seem there are many ways to achieve this, but the underlying requirement would be a supportive environment, safety, and demonstration by adults of acceptable moral standards, and attitudes of continuing lifelong education.
Caplan’s argument makes sense to me only in the wake of the progressive’s successful assault on education. There was once a time when good grades and a high school diploma meant something. The bearer could read and write well, do fairly complex math, and knew the country’s history and how its government worked.
But between grade inflation and social promotion, by which students were sent to the next grade even though they hadn’t learned the material, good grades and a diploma now mean very little.
So, how did serious students distinguish themselves from those who were simply there for twelve years? They went on to college. But progressives have similarly devalued university diplomas.
So, on to graduate school. But now a graduate degree is becoming proof of toxicity. Someone with an advanced degree in grievance studies is not anyone I want to hire. And grievance studies are creeping their way into even STEM classes.
Today, how do non-toxic, well educated people distinguish themselves from the crowd?
Regarding 12–18-year-olds in the workplace, Caplan writes, "They may not be very mature, but they’re mature enough."
Actually, putting them in the workplace would greatly improve this. Under the current system, 13-year-olds have most of their social interactions with other 13-year-olds, and their chief exposure to adult values comes from parents and teachers, whom many of them are starting to disrespect, following the example of the coevals who dominate their social life. Put them in a mixed-age environment, though, where they're not subject to peer pressure from fellow early-teens, and they're more likely to acquire values from people who're older and wiser.
Thank you for your thoughtful response! Let me start by sharing how much I appreciate you taking the time to engage with a random reader on the internet. This has been a real pleasure for me and has encouraged me to reach out to other authors whose work I enjoy; I hope it inspires others to do likewise.
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It’s really hard to change one's mind, particularly when one’s personal and professional identities are wrapped up in a particular stance. This book and discussion has made me seriously consider the question “are you sure this whole system is worth saving?”, and while my answer is still yes, I am grateful for the prompt and we’ll see where time takes me.
As a parallel, while I am going to respond to some of the points you make, I wanted to center what my hopes were in reaching out to you in the first place. While I don’t expect to change your mind overall, my hope is that this conversation will prompt two things to consider:
1) Education is a really big Chesterton’s Fence. It would be really bad if we dismantled it and found ourselves with less ability to discover vaccines or a higher rate of child abuse. I recognize that this is a fully generalizable argument against changing anything, and that actually the consequences could be the opposite! I know that countenancing concerns like this in a book or political argument makes the argument less effective, but if you’re serious about advancing this policy I’d ask that you think deeply about these potential downsides and how to mitigate them. The one I’m most concerned about is in a world with greater parental choice (up to and including just paying parents money and having them choose what to do with it) how you handle situations where the desires of the child differ significantly from the desires of the parent.
2) There are exciting possible visions of what the education system could become. I’m personally excited to create a system where children spend more time exploring genuine interests and finding what lives at the intersection of what they’re good at, what they enjoy, and what can support their economic well-being. I think this looks like lots more electives and internships at the middle and high school level. There are other potential visions - I particularly like the visions explored in Neil Postman’s The End of Education and Peter Gray’s Free to Learn. Perhaps you look at these and think “nope, still not worth saving,” but maybe they’ll inspire some hope.
—
To the specifics - I’ll focus on the areas where we disagree that align with the above goals.
*Entrepreneurship*
To be clear, when I say “entrepreneurship” my definition expands far beyond silicon valley startups. This little-e entrepreneurship includes people selling craft goods on Etsy, self-employed refrigerator technicians, farmers, physicians running a small practice, etc. - roles where the gap between provider and customer is minimized. And while credentials might be helpful in impressing a potential customer, happy reference customers matter much more. The argument is that a world with more little-e entrepreneurship places much more emphasis on skills over credentials, not that credentials are worthless.
*Test-and-track*
I concede that doing a full lit review is more of an investment than I’m willing to make :) But, I will point out that the inclusion of “after 1970” (versus pre-civil rights act) somewhat validates my argument: test and track creates high-leverage points where racist people can do a lot of harm.
And I’m not opposed to having kids take tests to help them assess their abilities! But the correlation between e.g. one’s SAT Math score and one’s ability to be a professional software engineer is not 1.0. Perhaps our disagreement is one of degree: I am opposed to the _tracking_, where an adult tells a child what they can or cannot do based on a test, versus saying “hey - it looks like you’re pretty good at these things and less good at those things - perhaps you should try out X elective or apply for your next internship in Y field?” And if the child is adamant that they want to be a doctor or youtube streamer or civil engineer even if their test scores say otherwise I’d rather have them try it and fail (in a fast, low-stakes way, ideally in early high school) rather than having an adult tell them they can’t.
*School should be fun*
Agreed! Or at least more fun than currently. I think learning will always require pushing through some un-fun parts (practicing scales, memorizing kanji, etc.) but that’s okay. Lot’s of reformers (including me!) have ideas on how to change what happens in schools so that they inspire joy. My bet is that a well designed school actually is more fun and satisfying to a young person than pure structureless freedom.
*Fat tails*
I want to reemphasize that I’m looking at fat tails from society’s perspective, not the perspective of the individual. I thought the book’s case on the individual side was pretty complete; I felt this was a missing consideration from the societal calculus. I admit to not having done the spreadsheets, so perhaps the real response to me is “shut up and calculate,” but my argument for the fatness of the tails (again from a societal standpoint) is the absolutely _massive_ impact of some discoveries and inventions (dwarf wheat, mRNA vaccines, etc.)
And careful with your assumptions - I am in a Japanese course right now! And have an O-Chem textbook I’ve been meaning to get through, I recently worked through a book on modern physics, etc. - enrolling in 30 courses over the next four years sounds wonderful if I had not other obligations :)
--
To return to the top - thank you for the book and for this opportunity; hopefully you found some of these points interesting to reflect on.
What great discussion. You must all drop by next time I roast a lamb - late October.
Most of the bad could be addresses by getting government and unions out of schooling. Governments over regulate and unions have morphed from guaranteeing good wages for good workers to feather bedding for wastrels. (a generalist common not for all). Self ordering will take time but will produce better results in time.
As for the need of a degree - if employers demand you need a degree - you will need to produce a degree. Right now there are five types degrees Trade (lawyers, accountants etc.), Technical (chemistry, engineering, etc.) The Arts (english, music, theatre, etc.), Wastrels (peace studies, ethnic studies, etc.) and Thinkers (philosophy, ethics, economics, etc.) I would hope all degrees would get a good dose of Thinking classes.
We must also cut Federal student loans program to the core. Why do state schools require federal money? Why do schools with billion dollars endowments require federal money - let them bet on or support their own students. Also generously support the arts and art students. They make not become rich, but life is richer with them
Last - a college degree is not for all, that's just fine. But education and ongoing education is essential.
I feel there is overindexing on what a 12/14/16 etc. year old "wants" or "feels miserable" with. As well as missing some of the purpose of what education is for.
Sure, most 14 year olds could be laborers. Instead of reading Euclid or Virgil. They are sure to learn something. But we already had that for most of our existence. And thought the better of it. It's called civilization.
Due respect, if most 14 year olds in U.S. public schools were in fact reading Euclid or Virgil - and paying attention to what they read - Bryan’s case might be different.
Further/separately, while you *might* have a point if their proposed alternative was day laborer, if instead they learned a trade, for a large majority of them both they and society would be substantially better off.
And be clear that Bryan, were he king, is not mandating that all 14 year olds work and not go to school, merely that they have the *option* to do so - and that the U.S. stop pouring *enormous* amounts of resources into public schools which deliver a poor return on that investment for taxpayers and for a very large portion of students as well.
Your worry about curriculum and whether students master the material is well placed.
So lets look at PISA for example, or if you have a quibble with PISA, pick an assessment of your choice.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#cite_note-:3-30)
Is there something special in the water in Singapore, Holland, Estonia, Denmark, or any of the high performing countries, that is absent in the United States? Are these very different places comprised of teachers and students and parents with special abilities? Should 14 year olds in these countries pick up a trade too? Or just those in countries that perform poorly?
You can of course choose to limit your theory to a special case, but it might be worthwhile testing it more broadly.
I don’t understand your point, you’ll need to explain.
All of the countries you have named are small and largely homogeneous cultures. All but Estonia are fairly rich.
But as an aside, yes, it’s likely the case that for somewhere between 40% and 70% of 14 year olds, picking up a trade would be highly worthwhile for them and for their society.
That said, to repeat, I am most familiar with the U.S., and to repeat, the point is that it should be an option, NOT a requirement, for the students, and Bryan is NOT saying we should eliminate schooling for those 14 year olds who want it. Especially if it is high quality schooling. And perhaps it is in some or all of the countries you cite. But in the U.S. in most inner cities, public schooling is anything but high quality.
A couple of asides: The causation from small or homogenous to high performing is not obvious to me. The best performing school districts in the US are not particularly homogenous, but do correlate with high income/wealth. Also, school districts have varying levels of autonomy. Even if you assume all policies are set at the state level, all but 5 states have fewer people than does Holland.
I do get your point about high school being a choice, and that you are not mandating behavior one way or an other.
The modern compulsory schooling regime, in place for over a hundred years now, and much older in New England, was a response in part to coercive child labor (see Avondale Mills Alabama for eg).
We are now talking about ages 14-17, a 3-4 year time range, and our difference boils down to whether compulsory schooling should end at 16/17 or 14.
Say Joe here is a 14yo, and not cut out for school or the schools he can attend are no good. Now in your world Joe, or his parents, or his teachers, or his tax payers decide that he'd be better off, say, learning to fix plumbing. In my world he'd stick around in school till he's 16/17, and try to learn some literature, trigonometry, chemistry, civics, and so on. Even though by some calculation he'd be better off being a plumber right away.
I'd pick the second option, it removes the chance of Joe being coerced, gives him some chance of completing high school and maybe showing aptitude for college. Who knows, Joe might take an interest in medicine. It's almost impossible to get a medical degree once you have opted out of schooling at 14. But you can always switch to plumbing at 17.
Well, we agree fully re anyone who actually IS trying at age 14.
As well as anyone in a school actually pushing most kids to read Euclid and Virgil and pushing them to learn the other things you suggest (well, other than “civics”, which in the U.S. today is nothing more than hard leftist ideologizing).
Unfortunately most children do not fall into either group, even as of course some do.
And to remedy the "schools he can attend are no good", I'd learn from any of the high performing countries.
This is literally a meaningless suggestion.
> … dream of becoming professional athletes, and the school system in general and coaches in particular heavily encourage their pipedreams
See also music educators
A lot of Bryan's data is wildly misrepresented or even a flat out lie.
He uses very old NAAL data (2003) to declare that Americans aren't taught well. But there's two problems.
1) The NAAL survey was done in 1992 and 2003. If you compare the data and disaggregate by age, it's clear that reading scores of high school students performance declined only slightly and quant stayed constant, while college level performance cratered. This is almost certainly because colleges began accepting unqualified students (mostly black and Hispanic). Given that high school students changed dramatically in population during this time--more immigrants, fewer dropouts--it's remarkable that high school scores didn't drop dramatically. You can see the data here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2018/08/31/the-case-against-the-case-against-education-toe-fungus-prevention/
2) He uses the NAAL data as evidence that K-12 is falling down on the job, but in fact the NAAL tests *adults who live in America* which includes a lot of immigrants. So without pulling out immigrants educated in another country, his data is useless.
When you disagregate the non-native speakers, Americans do much better: only 9% are below basic. And from 1992 to 2003, American native speakers *improved* their performance.
(cite for all this here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/the-case-against-the-case-against-education-how-well-are-americans-educated/)
3) While Bryan doesn't consider blacks and Hispanics worth educating unless he thinks they're smart enough, the fact is that from 1993 to 2003, we saw significant increases in black and Hispanic high school performance (https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2018/12/01/the-case-against-the-case-against-education-average-was-always-over/). That's dropped recently, of course, but if there's one thing the pandemic showed it's that academic performance is *better* with school than without. And he wants to piss all that away.
Set an academic standard for college, sure. Develop methods of training that end college involvement for current professional positions (teaching elementary school, nursing) sure. But putting 12 year olds on the street to work in a grocery store even if Caplan wasn't also going to flood their world with adult competition?
It'd be monstrous if it wasn't obvious that it's just facile mental masturbation.
Well, your first couple points started out fair enough, and even seem plausible, but when you shift to the blatantly false assertion “Bryan doesn't consider blacks and Hispanics worth educating unless he thinks they're smart enough”, you destroy 100% of your credibility.
Limiting the discussion solely to U.S. citizens, are you *actually* claiming that K-12 public schools do a better, or even as good, job now as they did 20 and 30 years ago? Got data to back that up? Because test scores from even upscale suburban schools indicate the opposite. And if you do have data showing that inner city schools have actually improved for the children of American citizens, I’m all ears…
"Limiting the discussion solely to U.S. citizens, are you *actually* claiming that K-12 public schools do a better, or even as good, job now as they did 20 and 30 years ago? Got data to back that up?"
Until the pandemic, yes. NAEP scores are conclusive on this point. They dropped slightly during the Common Core era--ironic, since it was the reformers convinced that schools were terrible who insisted on Common Core. Since the pandemic, no, but then the very fact that scores dropped during the pandemic demonstrates that despite your conviction that schools aren't teaching anything, oh, hey. They are.
Data on NAEP historic scores here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2020/10/05/bush-obama-ed-reform-core-damage/
Or you can look it up on the site.
"“Bryan doesn't consider blacks and Hispanics worth educating unless he thinks they're smart enough”"
This is indisputably true. It's the whole point of his argument. Now, what you *should* be saying is that no, Bryan doesn't consider *anyone* worth educating unless he thinks they're smart enough, which is true, but the reality is that his definition of "smart enough" would include the vast majority of whites and Asians, a far lower percentage of Hispanics and almost no blacks, and if anyone were actually taking his proposals seriously, he'd be in serious shit for proposing to stop educating blacks and Hispanics.
Inner city schools have indeed improved, again using NAEP scores.
Again, don't use Bryan as any sort of expert on education. He has very little idea what he's talking about.