The Liberal Order

The Eroding State of K-12 Education In the U.S.

Take an AP U.S. History class in most any school across the U.S. and you will do little, if any, real analysis of history. Instead, you will memorize dates, places and people. My daughter had to memorize all the U.S. presidents in order of their term, and also their party affiliation. It was totally useless and a waste of time. 

It is exercises like this that drive students to abhor learning. By the time I get them, and I force them to think critically and analytically, most struggle with it, but are at least grateful that the class is somewhat interesting and not more of the same.

Here is a good explanation of what's taking place and why this struggle is only getting worse.

Let me use as an example my own AP course, U.S. Government and Politics. I served several times as a reader for the examination that follows the course. In that capacity, I read the constructed responses that make up half of the score of a student’s examination. I saw several problems.

First (and I acknowledge that I bear some culpability here), in the AP U.S. Government exam the constructed responses are called “free response questions” and are graded by a rubric that is concerned primarily with content and, to a lesser degree, argument. If a student hits the points on the rubric, he or she gets the points for that rubric. There is no consideration of grammar or rhetoric, nor is credit given or a score reduced based on the format of the answer. A student who takes time to construct a clear topic sentence and a proper conclusion gets no credit for those words. Thus, a teacher might prepare the student to answer those questions in a format that is not good writing by any standard. If, as a teacher, you want your students to do their best, you have to have them practice what is effectively bad writing— no introduction, no conclusion, just hit the points of the rubric and provide the necessary factual support. Some critical thinking may be involved, at least, but the approach works against development of the kinds of writing that would be expected in a true college-level course in government and politics.

My students did well on those questions because we practiced bad writing. My teaching was not evaluated on the basis of how well my students did, but I felt I had a responsibility to prepare them for the examination in a way that could result in their obtaining college credit.

I would like to believe that I prepared them to think more critically and to present cogent arguments, but I could not simultaneously prepare them to do well on that portion of the test and teach them to write in a fashion that would properly serve them at higher levels of education.

This is why I'm a ardent proponent of true school choice—schools create their own curricula and parents sort by their own choice based on content and the reputation of the various schools. Make the funding based on the number of students who are attracted to a school and subsequently served by that school. We need more experimentation through spontaneous order and rid ourselves of the command and control mandates that have been the history of U.S. education since the late nineteenth century.

Merry Christmas . . . and a book recommendation.

Merry Christmas!

And may I recommend a book currently receiving a lot of positive press right now, from my esteemed colleague Adam English. I have read only an excerpt from The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus: The True Life and Trials of Nicholas of Myra, but am waiting to read the rest of it now. Here's a nice review from the Wall Street Journal.

Evolutionary Social Order and the Polarization of Our Political System

In the first instance, it is probably true that in general the higher the education and intelligence of individuals becomes, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values. It is a corollary of this that if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and ‘common’ instincts and tastes prevail.

 F. A. Hayek. The Road to Serfdom. London, 1944: page 102

There is a lot of talk that over the past decades we in the U.S. have become more polarized politically. For example, Kevin Drum makes that argument here, and Edward Luce does so here. And you can read through a whole lot more here.

I don't buy the argument that we're becoming more polarized; we've always been polarized. It's just now we disagree greatly along different margins and principles. For example, here is historian Richard Rehn discussing the election of 1800: 

"While the Federalist press accused the Republicans of being 'filthy Jacobins' and 'monsters of sedition,' the Republican press denounced the Federalists for being 'Tory monarchists' and 'British-loving aristocrats' and the president for being 'a mock Monarch' who was 'blind, bald, toothless, querulous' and 'a ruffian deserving of the curses of mankind.' By the late 1790s both President John Adams and Vice-President Thomas Jefferson came to believe that they had become the victims, in Adams's words, of 'the most envious malignity, the most base, vulgar, sordid, fish-woman scurrility, and the most palpable lies' that had ever been leveled against any public official."

The issues over which they were discussing might seem a bit trite now, but the tone was as vitriolic then as we perceive our tone to be today. What's changed is that our preferences and ideals differ from that of 1800. So in a sense we perceive it as more vitriolic today, but I doubt it.

Our disagreements today might not enjoy as wide a consensus as in times past, but that's not because we're less willing to cooperate and compromise today relative to times past. What's happening is that today we have new preferences and ideals over which we are arguing, and as Hayek noted in the quote above, these differences today are of a higher order and are therefore likely to find less agreement.

After millennia of argument and debate, humankind came to agree a lot on the most basic of social laws that we accept as "natural" today — "[We] shall not steal," and "[We] shall not murder," we better appreciate and understand the importance of property rights. But that only occurred over time, and as we've further evolved socially, new issues arise and our wants and preferences further evolve. What they fought over in, say, 1800 is largely settled and we're now debating along different margins. The divergence of ideals and opinions today may seem greater than in times past, but those arguments back then were likely just as vicious. It's just that today we've come to accept the outcomes of those previous debates and are now debating new issues.

And this is such an important thing to keep in mind when discussing any social order. At no time did someone rationally construct the rules and institutions needed for a peaceful and prosperous social order. Such rules and institutions evolved over time and emerged out of vicious debate, much like what we in this country are experiencing today. The debates have high stakes, but maybe not so much today as in times past; I don't know. What we do know is that societies that choose well go on to secure largely peaceful and prosperous orders, while those that don't languish in poverty and strife and disorder. So far, those living in the developed world benefit from people in the past choosing well. People living in the latter never evolved to accept the basic rules and institutions to which those living in the developed and advancing countries already adhere and largely take for granted.  

Thoughts on the movie "Lincoln"

Overall it was a good movie and Daniel Day Lewis will certainly earn a nomination for best actor. It depicted well the animosity and acrimony present in the U.S. Congress at any time, but especially before, during and right after the Civil War. It also includes at least two scenes where main characters (Lincoln and Stevens) compromise their positions (and principle in the case of Stevens) in order to obtain enough votes to pass the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Lastly, it also exposed well the lobbying and rent seeking prevalent at the time and with any political enterprise.

My complaints, however, include the following:

1. Had it not been Spielberg, the film would not have received the overwhelming positive reviews it has received. It's a good movie, but it's not great.
2. It was too long; Spielberg could have cut at least 20 minutes from the film and not have made a difference. 
3. The whole focus of the movie was on the racial issue and none on the other issues of the day, including the economic issues and balance of power that were also major causes of the Civil War.
4. Other than Lewis, and possibly Jackie Earle Haley and Gulliver Mcgrath (but kids are rarely nominated for Oscars, much less win), the acting was largely mediocre with a bit too much overacting (Hello Sally Field!).

I wish I had waited for it to come out on DVD. 

George McGovern, an enlightened Senator, perhaps?

Former Senator George McGovern died today at age 90. After retiring from the Senate, McGovern opened a bed and breakfast, which drove him into bankruptcy within a year. He noted after that episode:

In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business. … I wish that during the years I was in public office I had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better senator and a more understanding presidential contender. … To create job opportunities, we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities.

This is advice that should be heeded by every politician from all parties.

The Poverty of State Collectivism - Government School Edition

In a market capitalist system properly conceived, in order to make me better off I have to make you better off relative to what anyone else is offering you with similar resources. Competition forces me to continually improve on quality at any given price, which also means discovering ways of producing the same quality at reduced cost, and therefore reduced price. Failing to do so, I go out of business and people quit dealing with me.

Why does this seem so foreign to government school bureaucrats and those with egalitarian mindsets?

Annica Eriksson, the head cook at the Falun school, received an order from the municipality to decrease the quality of her cooking after it discovered she served a variety of 15 vegetables and freshly baked bread to students each day. The municipality claims that these offerings are “unfair” to students at other local schools, who consume meals of a lesser quality, The Local reported.

School choice (and I mean total school choice - free schools from any state mandates, including curriculum requirements) forces schools to compete for students by continually innovating and discovering ways to serve students' needs rather than the interests of teachers and public school bureaucrats.

This egalitarian ideology has had tragic consequences, leading to mass murdering of millions of people around the world throughout the Twentieth Century. This is not to say that forcing the lunch lady to reduce the quality of her meals is going to lead to mass genocide in Sweden. But egalitarianism is a slippery slope, and if it's important that something as trivial as school lunches be equal, and you're willing to force one school to degrade the quality of its lunches so students at other schools don't feel slighted, you're probably pretty far down that slope. 

Here is an old post on the travesty of choice in North Carolina schools. 

Price Controls and Gas Lines

Don Boudreaux reminisces about price controls on gasoline and having to wait in line for twelve hours just to purchase some back in 1979.

I worked at a gas station in high school at that time. I, too, remember those days well.

First, it was not uncommon for someone to pull up to the pump after waiting in line for three or more hours to say, "Fill it up." After about ten to fifteen seconds, the pump would stop - it was filled. 

"It didn't even take a gallon." I would say.

A typical reply was, "Oh, I know. I wanted to fill it up today because I knew I couldn't get gas tomorrow and didn't want to run out."

In a stroke of genius, President Jimmy Carter signed into law that, in order to allocate gasoline more efficiently, you could buy gas on odd numbered days only if the last digit of your license plate was an odd number, and on even numbered days if it was an even number. People responded accordingly.

Also, being partial to females, it was also not uncommon to either turn the pumps back on for an attractive female (Come on, I was a teenager.) or to extend the time we were open in order to permit an attractive female to get gas. It's called allocation by seller preferences.

Lessons to be Learned from the Chick-Fil-A Fiasco

I'm not getting in the middle of this other than to say that the responses of the moronic mayors (Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, Edwin Lee of San Francisco, and Thomas Menino of Boston), who supposedly serve the interests of all residents of their cities not just the majority, were despicable. As Voltaire stated, "I disapprove of what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." This should be the response of any politician, but these guys instead took on the typical politician's stance, falling to the ground and kowtowing to their political base rather than standing up for principle and defending the rights of even those with whom they disagree, as they swore to do when they took office.

But the primary lesson is for managers to refrain from putting the reputations of their companies they manage and own on the line by making political statements. Although Chick-Fil-A is privately owned, a CEO of a publicly traded company jeopardizes the investments of shareholders.

The other lesson is the response Mr. Cathy's statements generated. They appeared to have backfired. But then again, here is an interesting history of boycotts.

But beyond their commercial effect, boycotts, even losing ones, have a way of highlighting a cause. They connect individuals to larger political forces that otherwise feel abstract and distant. For Chick-fil-A, that means the broader question of gay rights. Huckabee’s consumer action could generate more debate about same-sex unions than a ballot initiative would have -- and far more direct reflection on individual responsibility and agency. The boycott and counter-boycott gave consumers a stark choice, and a clear connection between their actions and their beliefs. 

Things Are Only Getting Better

In addition to the increase in real incomes explained in this post, referencing Steven Landsburg's post here, we really don't have a good measure of real incomes through time because the CPI is not necessarily an accurate  measure of price changes. 

For example, while looking for a news story from 1984, I ran across the following newspaper advertisements.

Here are the prices of these items converted into June 2012 dollars using the CPI.

Is it really meaningful to say that the price of a standard television set (and 19" was pretty standard back then) increased about 116% between 1984 and 2012? Is the quality of one of these sets even comparable to the quality of an average television set sold today? On Amazon, you have nearly 100 different television sets you can purchase new in this price range. My guess is that all are higher quality, but I'm not sorting through them all to verify that.

If there was any meaningful way to control for quality diffferences, the real price of a television set today would be significantly cheaper relative to one sold in 1984. This is true for most goods and services sold today. This means that real incomes are even higher today relative to 1980 than that calculated using raw CPI data.

I love the reference to the wireless remote. That was a big thing back then, yet something we take for granted today. My first Beta video recorder/player (yes, a beta player) had a wired remote with a 6-foot cord. If you wanted to fast forward remotely, you had to be pretty close to the television set. Oh, and the dog eventually chewed through the wire. So it was eventually a wireless remote, but rendered useless.

Mass Murders Without Automatic Weapons

Bolstering my earlier argument, Brian Palmer provides some relavent evidence.

According to data compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass murder in the United States during the 20^th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects, and bare hands, which killed 4.52 people per incident. Fire killed 6.82 people per mass murder, while explosives far outpaced the other options at 20.82. Of the 25 deadliest mass murders in the 20^th century, only 52 percent involved guns. 

The U.S. mass murder rate does not seem to rise or fall with the availability of automatic weapons. It reached its highest level in 1929, when fully automatic firearms were expensive and mostly limited to soldiers and organized criminals. The rate dipped in the mid-1930s, staying relatively low before surging again in the 1970s through 1990s. Some criminologists attribute the late-century spike to the potential for instant notoriety: Beginning with Charles Whitman’s1966 shooting spree from atop a University of Texas tower, mass murderers became household names.

Emphasis mine.

Again, eliminating one means of satisfying their actual end will not put an end to, or reduce the incidences of, mass murders. If the end is notoriety, then only after the media stops satisfying it are we likely to see a reduction.