If a brilliant, eminent, and mainstream scholar of the 1960s could be right for such wrong reasons, the brilliant, eminent, and mainstream scholars of today could easily be mired in their own brand of motivated reasoning. Indeed, so could you. Or me. There’s no easy remedy, but the first step is being hyper-aware that we have a problem.
Tag: education
School Security Is Now a $3 Billion Dollar Annual Industry
US taxpayers spend nearly $700 billion each year on K-12 public schooling, and that eye-popping sum shows no sign of slowing. In fact, as more non-academic programs are adopted in schools across the country, the price tag for mass schooling continues to swell even as achievement lags.
The Novikov Experiment
About a year ago, educator and start-up engineer Lev Novikov bought a dozen copies of The Case Against Education and let them circulate around his school. Last week, he let me know what happened. Reprinted with Lev’s permission.
What Educators Can Learn from “I, Pencil”
For self-directed learners, their creative energies are uninhibited. They are not controlled by a mastermind or a group of omniscient rulers who believe they know what is best for others. Self-directed learners retain their creative spirit, that zest for learning which is so apparent in young children but is often eroded through years of forced education.
How School Districts Weaponize Child Protection Services Against Uncooperative Parents
In my advocacy work with homeschooling families across the country, I frequently hear stories from parents who decided to homeschool their kids because schools were pressuring them to comply with various special education plans, push medications onto their children, or submit to other restrictive procedures they felt were not in their child’s best interest. Even more heartbreaking is the growing trend of school officials to unleash child protective services (CPS) on parents, homeschooling or not, who refuse to give in to a district’s demands.
Fight for 15% More Low-Skilled Jobs
Instead of pressuring companies to raise wages, activists should instead pressure them to hire more low-skilled workers. Why not abandon the “Fight for $15” in favor of the “Fight for 15% More Low-Skilled Jobs”?
Gratis is Not Great
Almost every psychologically normal human is delighted to here about products everyone can enjoy free of charge. “The schools are free!” “Health care is free!” “Lunch is free!” According to basic welfare economics, however, gratis goods are almost automatically inefficient. Unless the marginal social cost of the product miraculously happens to be zero, setting a price of zero leads to socially wasteful behavior.
Voluntaryist Solutions to the Public Benefits and Immigration Problem
What’s a voluntaryist, who is a person who recognizes the criminal nature of governments, to do about the problem of immigrants exploiting public benefits? There are several possible solutions to this problem, many of which are consistent with the voluntary principle, that all human relations should happen voluntarily, or not at all, and many of which are not.
Harvard Study Shows the Dangers of Early School Enrollment
Parents don’t need Harvard researchers to tell them that a child who just turned five is quite different developmentally from a child who is about to turn six. Instead, parents need to be empowered to challenge government schooling motives and mandates, and to opt-out.
“Is It Political?”
When I mention what I’m writing, my dad often suspiciously asks me, “Is it political?” Here’s how I always want to respond.