How the war in Gaza is like the war on math education

The way my side lost the Math Wars is like the way we are losing the "home front" in Israel's fight for survival. The current discussion on the horror in discovering that people we thought should know better but do not know better, is one really important example. Please let me explain.

My side in the Math Wars (we never had a good name for ourselves) was comprised of university math professors, K-12 math teachers, mathematically sophisticated parents, and some people who served in policy positions in state governments (CA and MA). How on Earth did we lose the debate on math education? It's as if lawyers debated tort law with truck drivers, and lost.

The Math Wars began in the early 1990s with fights over textbooks, pedagogy, curricula, and teacher training. We wrote papers and op-eds, we presented to parents and politicians, we debated the Education Mafia. After several years of getting nowhere, I took a step back and wondered what the Hell was going on. We were experts in the field, and no one was listening to us.

In short, the collapse of math education was never a technical problem like the wrong textbooks or ineffective pedagogy---problems that are easily fixable. The one and only problem was the Education Mafia: that corrupt syndicate of the schools of education, the teachers unions, and the professional organizations like "The Dark Side of The Force" (my pet name for the NCTM, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics). 

In other words, it's not that America buys the wrong textbooks, it's that we hired the wrong people. We need astronomers but we hired astrologers.

No education reform is possible without reforming the Education Mafia, and the Education Mafia cannot be reformed. You cannot turn astrologers into astronomers. The only way is to get the Education Mafia out of education. But when I explained this to my comrades, my arguments fell on deaf ears. Understand: they did not refute me, they just did not respond. 

Now I had another mystery on my hands. Look, I may or may not be right, but after years of failure, you would think my comrades would be more receptive to an alternative discussion. That they were not, sheds light on allies who are not allies in Israel's fight for survival.

It turned out that all my comrades but one are on the political Left. To my knowledge, two are commited Marxists, the rest are "Yellow Dog Democrats". And the consequence is enormous.

You see, they are ideologically committed to the political structure of public education as it currently exists. They would never raise a hand against a union, and they want the continued existence of the "DOPE" (the U.S. Dept of Public Education). They want the Education Mafia to do the job of teaching children, but they want to tell the Education Mafia how to do their job. (We were painfully naive.)

In other words, my comrades, wonderful people that they truly are, are right about everything regarding the teaching of mathematics, and they are ideologically incapable of making it happen. The one thing that needed to be done was the one thing they could not do. They wanted to persuade the Education Mafia, not fight it.  We were doomed from the start.

Now consider the political fight for Israel. There is just too much about Israel and its fight for survival that violates Leftist dogma. And you can see how hard it is for our erstwhile allies to see through that.

In math education, everything is clear, and obvious, and present. You can read a textbook, you can walk into a classroom and watch the teacher, you can talk to the students. There is nothing abstract about it. My comrades know when the Education Mafia talk shit about math education. And they still can't see through their ideological blinders.

On the other hand, Israel is far away geographically, linguistically, and culturally. The Muslims are even farther away. It's difficult for any American to really know what's going on in the Middle East. It's ever so much harder for them to know that people like Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer, Andrew Napolitano, and Owen Jones are talking shit about Israel in Gaza. 

Thanks to the blizzard of propaganda blowing out of the Left, it is impossible to talk facts and logic when discussing Israel. It is more understandable, if not any less disturbing, that people we thought and hoped were our allies cannot see through their ideological blinders.  

We must find a way to help our erstwhile friends and acquaintances see through Leftist ideology to the justice of the Israeli cause. Otherwise Israel, and Jews all over the world, are going to pay a heavy price.

Whatever we have been doing up to now is not it.

Math Wars Redux

 According to this article about math education in the San Francisco public schools, students are falling behind, parents are upset, and the Education Mafia don't give a shit. In other words, in 30+ yrs of the Math Wars, absolutely nothing has changed.

Precisely, the Education Mafia don't care about your concerns. They do care a lot about the GAP in academic achievement between 

• high achieving White and Asian students on the one hand, and 
• low achieving Black and Brown students on the other. 

If the Education Mafia could reduce the Gap by raising achievement, they would gladly do that, but whether achievement rises or falls is a matter of utter indifference to them, just so long as the Gap diminishes.

With a hat tip to the TV series, "Star Trek", I call this overarching commitment to reducing the Gap, "The Prime Directive" of education.

Of course, it is impossible to raise achievement and reduce the Gap. Raising achievement can only increase the Gap. The only possible hope for reducing the Gap is to bleed academics out of the schools. And that, dear friends, is how, after many years, we reached the point in our historical development where students graduate high school unable to add fractions or construct an English sentence.

One remaining question is why was my side, in the Math Wars, singularly ineffective in altering this trajectory of failure. After all, my side was comprise of math professors, teachers, mathematically sophisticated parents, a few hangers-on like myself, and even a couple of people who held important positions in state government. 

We were all painfully naïve.

The central organizing doctrine of our strategy was to keep the Education Mafia in control of the schools. I.e., we wanted the EM to do the job, but we were going to tell them how to do it.

Words fail me.

In my own defense, I can only say that when I joined the fight, late in the 1990's, it had already started with a remarkable group of professors and parents in CA, Mathematically Correct, who were deep into textual criticism. I thought that was the battlefield.

It was only some years into the fight that I began to understand we made a terrible mistake. The problem was never the textbooks. The problem was the people choosing the textbooks.

When I started making this point, I got the same response from my comrades-in-arms as we got from the Education Mafia when we criticized their "sources and methods": Silence.

The ideas of the Education Mafia are intellectually vacuous (just think of Whole Language reading instruction), so they had nothing to gain, and potentially a lot to lose, by engaging with us, so they did not engage. But, why were my own comrades giving me the silent treatment? Eventually, I could not deny evident reality.

All my comrades-in-arms are personally wonderful and professionally accomplished people. And, if not out-and-out socialist (at least two were self-avowed), most 

• lean pretty hard towards the political Left, 
• are deeply committed to the doctrine of centrally planned education, and 
• are highly sympathetic to labor unions. 

Including, inexplicably, the teachers unions and other "professional" organizations like the NCTM, to whom I refer as "The Dark Side of The Force".

In other words, my comrades were politically the same people as the Education Mafia, except they were right about math education. And there's the rub.

The problem of education in general, and math education in particular, was never technical. Education is never going to be solved by 

• the right textbook, or 
• the right curricular structure, or 
• some magic pedagogical bullet. 

The education problem is a political problem. For children to win, the Education Mafia have to lose. But, if the Education Mafia, and the anti-Education Mafia, are cut of the same political cloth, winning was never in the cards.

Personally, I learned a lot in my 20+ yrs in the Math Wars, much of that redounding to the benefit of my son and to the children of some of my friends. So I can't be sorry about that. But, I greatly regret we had no effect on the public schools.

Centuries from now, when future historians start to tell the story of the collapse of the American Experiment, that narrative will begin with the collapse of public education.

Big Pharma Is Fucking With Us

I am now persuaded there is something wrong with Big Pharma in the U.S. 

I know, I know, I am very late to the party, but it's really not easy to understand the pharmaceutical business because nothing is what it seems. However, every once in a while, the curtain gets pulled back, and for a moment you catch a glimpse of "how the sausage is made." It is not a pretty sight.

Something like that happened a few years ago when "Pharma Bro", Martin Shkreli, raised the price of EpiPens by more than 500%. The solution was to put Shkreli in jail. The old USSR used to put people in jail for "economic crimes", so I feel sure there is a better way. At any rate, I can do a bit of curtain pulling, myself.

Several of my friends are smokers. I am deeply sympathetic, and I never nag them about it because I am well aware nicotine is the single most addictive drug in the human ecosphere. More addictive than cocaine or heroin. Besides, smokers know what they are doing to themselves and most want to stop, but very few can manage it permanently. It is a serious problem.

In the world of nicotine, there are alternatives to smoking:

- nicotine patches,
- nicotine gum,
- vaping, and
- nicotine nasal spray.

It is vaping that opens the door to some interesting analysis. 

There are vapers who "roll their own". I.e., quite legally, you can buy various kinds of nicotine liquids and flavor additives to mix your own vaping liquids. Some vapers even rebuild their cartridges, which burn out much like a light bulb. Rebuilding a cartridge is like replacing the filament in a bulb. However, I will not discuss cartridges.

For reference, you may want to keep the cocaine market in mind. Now, I do not have direct experience of this, but unless you have been living under a rock for the last 20 yrs, you must have a pretty good general idea about this product. (Newspaper articles, maybe you know somebody, maybe you have been treated at a party, etc.)

In Brooklyn, NY, in AD 2022, I hear that you can buy a gram of cocaine for something like $125. Because at no point in its life cycle is cocaine legal, the street product is certainly adulterated. With what and by how much is hard to know. For the sake of argument, let's suppose your gram is only 50% cocaine.

Furthermore, your price depends upon how much you buy. Even casual users might buy an "eight ball", 1/8 oz or 3.5 grams, in which case the price will go down a bit. In this analysis, let's suppose you pay $100 for a gram of powder which is really only 1/2 cocaine. Therefore, let's say cocaine costs in the neighborhood of $200 per gram. That is our reference point.

Now, consider cigarettes. Although cigarettes contain widely differing amounts of nicotine, the research says a smoker burns away most of it. The actual amount of nicotine absorbed by a smoker ranges from 1.1 mg to 1.8 mg per cigarette. Let's say 2 mg of nicotine per cigarette (you will see why, in a moment).

Typically, there are 20 cigarettes in a pack, so one pack actually delivers 40 mg of nicotine, or 0.04 grams. In NYC, a pack of cigarettes costs around $15. Therefore, a smoker pays $15/0.04g or $375 per gram of nicotine.

Nicotine gum comes in 2mg and 4mg pieces (there may be other strengths). Right now at CVS you can buy a box of 170 pieces of gum, 2mg nicotine per piece, for $75. This means $75/0.34g which is $221/gram of nicotine.

Also available for smokers who want to quit is nicotine nasal spray. This product is typically available in 10 mL bottles of 1% nicotine solution. That means each bottle contains 0.1 grams of nicotine.

In Canada, you can buy this product for $50 per bottle. That is $50 for 0.1 grams, or $500/gram of nicotine.

Via eBay, it looks like you can buy Nicorette nasal spray from the UK for about $320/gram.

In the U.S., you need a prescription for nicotine nasal spray---the same 10 mL of 1% nicotine solution. You can see what's coming. At CVS, you can buy one pack of 4 bottles of Nicotrol NS, or 0.4 grams of nicotine, for $514.31. This works out to $1,285.78/gram.

Finally, we come to vaping. But, not really vaping, just the supplies for vaping. If you were a roll your own vaper, you can buy 120 mL (4 oz) of a 10% nicotine solution (there is no dust so you don't need a mask, but you better wear gloves when pouring) for $40. This means $40 for 12 grams of nicotine, or $3.33/gram.

If you wanted to mix your own 10 mL bottle of 1% nicotine nasal spray, you would need $0.33 worth of nicotine solution. You can buy 10 mL empty nasal spray bottles on Amazon for $1 to $5 per bottle, depending on the type of bottle (glass or plastic) and how many you bought. So, you could formulate your own nicotine nasal spray for less than $1.50 for 0.1 grams of nicotine. That works out to $15 per gram.

Let's review:

                   cigarettes: $375/g,
                           gum: $221/g,
Canadian nasal spray: $500/g,
          UK nasal spray: $320/g,

          US Nasal spray: $1,285.78/g,

Cocaine: $200/g. 

DIY nicotine nasal spray: $15/g.

I guess what I am saying is there is one difference between the tobacco companies and the pharma companies on the one hand, and the drug dealers on the other. They all get you hooked on their products then gouge you mercilessly for it. But, Big Tobacco and Big Pharma are way more shameless about it.

In other words, your cocaine connection has more integrity than the mofos of Tobacco and Pharmaceuticals.

Whoopie Goldberg and the Uses and Abuses of "Race"

Poor Caryn Johnson, aka Whoopie Goldberg, never had a chance. The word "race" has been in the English lexicon for centuries, and always had a fluid meaning, depending on time and place. Traps were just waiting to ensnare the poor dear.

Race entered English from the French "racine", meaning root, as in what are your roots, as in: where do you come from and who are your people. It was often a synonym for tribe or clan, meaning a group of people with a common ancestor; a clearly biological sense.

But also, race often meant ethnicity. The English would speak of the English race, the Welsh race, the Scottish race. There are no biological differences between these groups of people. Rather, they differ in languages and customs, thus an entirely socially constructed meaning.

Sometimes, both meanings apply. For instance, tribe is a biological concept, but the importance of tribes is a socially constructed concept. That's what we mean when we say some societies are tribal and some societies are not. I.e., as a matter of biology, tribes always exist---your distant relatives always exist---whether you pay attention to them or not is a social matter.

In the 19th century, it was natural for biologists to want to construct a taxonomy of people, just as they had constructed taxonomies of plants and animals. If you can distinguish between deciduous and evergreen trees, between elms and maples, between dromedary and Bactrian camels, between lion and tiger cats, between wolves and dogs, etc., it seemed obvious you should be able to distinguish between peoples. These would be classifications, based exclusively on biology, and much bigger than tribe or nation. Biologists adopted the word "race" to this purpose, turning it into a term of art. I.e., biologists used the word differently from everybody else.

In the early 20th century, however, came the Nazis and other very unscientific people who tried to use the biological meaning of race for their own purposes, with horrific results. After WWII, the backlash was extreme, with similarly horrific results, if on a smaller scale.

I.e., the modern Leftists make the same kind of mistake the Nazis made, by confusing culture and biology.  Where the Nazis believed everything cultural was biological, the Leftists believe everything biological is cultural. The Nazis denied culture, the Leftists deny biology.

Once the Left denied biology in race, despite the evidence of their own eyes, it was but a small step to deny biology in sex, despite the evidence of their own eyes. Race, like sex, is whatever the Left say it is. Unsurprisingly, the Left define race in a manner convenient to their political agenda.

Let's review. Over the centuries, race has had both a biological meaning and a socially constructed meaning, sometimes both at the same time. The biological meanings are different, depending on who is using the word and why, and the social meanings are different, depending on who is using the word and why. You can see the problem.

Whoopie Goldberg is an obviously intelligent woman, but of limited education. While she is familiar enough with the modern Leftist definition of race, she is unaware of its arbitrary, self-serving nature, and she is wholly ignorant of its other meanings and uses. She certainly knew nothing of how the Nazis used the word. And that is how she got into trouble opining on the Holocaust. The poor girl did not know what hit her.

In her defense, Whoopie Goldberg is not any more ignorant than the other girls on "The View". In a better world, "The View" would not exist, at all.

Paul Krugman's Smoking Gun

This article is the smoking gun. Paul Krugman is a hack.

Nobody thinks the Nobel Laureate is a dummy. But, a lot of smart people have been scratching their heads for a long time over many of the strange things Krugman asserts in his non-technical writing, which seems so obviously partisan. My own theory is that political correctness is the only way this mildly autistic genius gets laid. 

I am not the only one to think so. First, 

"Anyone who has been paying attention will notice that a lot of economists are Aspies." Then,

"Turns out his wife is one of those light skinned black people [blue-eyed and long-haired], not unlike Rev. Wright, who are very angry. In fact, it seems that it was she who pushed him over the edge into becoming the crazy ass conservative hater he now is...What also stands out from the profile is just how Aspergery the guy is."

It remains that you cannot just wave away his arguments, preposterous as they are. But, to paraphrase Boris Shcherbina, this time "he made a mistake". Because he is smart, because he has always been able to push people around, intellectually, he has gotten careless. This time he writes an op-ed of evident banalities and "deepities" ("...a statement that is apparently profound but actually asserts a triviality on one level and something meaningless on another." Dennett explains.)

Let's go briskly through the article.

- Build Back Better "is primarily a plan to invest in America's future". 

Every politician always says this about every plan. Krugman does not say why it is different this time.

- It's for the children. Every politician always says this about every plan. 

Krugman does not say why it is different this time.

- Climate Change. 

Is a boondoggle.

- "There's every reason to believe that these investments would be highly productive." 

Like every boondoggle.

- "There’s overwhelming evidence that helping disadvantaged children makes them much healthier and productive when they reach adulthood."

Circular argument. He cites another baseless NYTimes article as his basis. 

- The prospect of civilizational collapse. 

Appeal to hysteria.

- Reducing dependence on fossil fuels. 

Magical thinking. No one anywhere has ever done any such thing, apart from nuclear energy, which they deprecate.

Finally, the hobgoblin of scoundrels: the ad hominem,

- "I guess reporting conventions require that journalists pretend to believe that Republicans have good-faith objections..." 

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman is a hack.

Q.E.D.

Student Loans Are Not Like Other Loans

Student loans are not like other loans.

Imagine you are a retailer of women's clothes and you want to finance your winter inventory. You have been in business for a while and you know what to buy and how much of it. You prepare financial statements that accurately represent your current financial condition and that predict, reasonably well, what will happen, financially, in the next three months. 

Based on your informed analysis, you think a commercial loan of a certain size is a good idea. With that loan, you will run your business, make enough money to pay back the loan and, with any luck, there will be some money left over (what we call "profit").

At the bank, you argue your case to a loan officer who knows how to read financial statements and who has pretty good knowledge of the retail business in your area. 

A commercial loan, therefore, is the embodiment of that old expression: Two heads are better than one. If that bank officer agrees to make the loan, it means two people believe the loan is a good idea: you and the loan officer. 

More, two people have skin in the game. If you cannot pay back your loan, that would be bad for you and bad for the loan officer. And, if enough loan officers make enough bad loans, it would be bad for the bank, as well.

You want to run your business. The bank wants to run their business. Everybody wants this loan to happen. But, it has to be a good loan. A bad loan is bad for everybody.

Student loans look nothing like this.

Most college-bound students have no clear idea if they will even succeed in college. They have no clear idea what degrees they will earn or what they will do with their degrees, once they graduate. They have no clear idea of the commercial value of their degrees. Most college-bound students look nothing like the retailer applying for a commercial loan.

Even more disturbing, there is no loan officer, because---and you really have to wrap your head around this one---nobody cares if the student will be able to pay it back (government guarantees, you see). The college not only does not care if the student pays back his loan (they are not the lenders), they do not care if the student graduates. For the college, every admission is a financial success. They will make money for as long as the student is enrolled and pays his fees. When the student graduates or drops out---it really does not matter which---they just admit another student.

In the world of student loans, the borrowers know nothing. The lenders care nothing. Only students have skin in the game. Nothing about education loans look like commercial loans.

If the education loan market worked anything like the commercial loan market, a prospective college student who needs to borrow money would have to talk to a loan officer who has excellent knowledge of the education market. The student would present real educational credentials (nothing about playing football or working in soup kitchens) and the loan officer would have an excellent idea of that student's chances of success in college.

By the way, colleges already know which students are likely to succeed, and which not. They just don't care. That is why more and more colleges are eliminating the need for standardized tests, which they ignore, anyway. The tests just get in the way of profits. 

And, that is why about half of all students who matriculate for the first time will leave college with nothing, after spending a considerable amount of time and money. And, about half the students who do graduate, finish college only after a lot more time (five or six years, not four) and a lot more money than they anticipated spending. For most students, college is a high risk gamble. And, for many students, it is a disaster.

Furthermore, the education loan officer, if he existed, would have an excellent idea of the market value of the student's intended degree. Oh, you want to spend $50,000 per year, for four years, to earn a degree in lesbian dance theory, from Podunk U? Good luck to you, but I am not giving you any money, since there is no chance you will pay it back. Even if you do graduate.

Colleges may know that many of their degrees are commercially worthless, I am not sure. I am sure the data are out there. I am just not sure anybody cares enough to compile it. But, if education lending were a sane credit market, believe those data would be compiled, just as commercial banks compile a mountain of data on all the various industries.

So, how can the education loan market even exist in its present form? It's the government, dear boy, it's the government. Any time something insane is happening in what should be a well organized credit market---like people getting mortgages they can't afford---you have to know that government is involved, in one way or another.

As things now stand, only students are hurt by loans they cannot pay back. So, why do students take out these loans, in the first place? Friends, there has been a massive, decades-long propaganda campaign run by the Education Mafia and abetted by government. This propaganda is the central element of the Politico-Educational Complex, now running on nearly $2 Trillion of student debt.

From the time they are in elementary school, children hear one message loud and clear: Go To College! It does not matter which college, it does not matter what you study, it does not matter if you have the interest or the aptitude, just Go To College. They hear it from their teachers, they hear it from their parents, and from their friends and neighbors. From everybody they trust, starting from when they are very young, students hear: Go To College. So, they go.

How will they pay for college? Don't worry about that. The government (who will do nothing to hurt you, of course) makes money available, and it will all work out in the end, trust us. So, young people sign on the dotted line.

If you think this all sounds preposterous, if you think I am a crackpot, I totally understand. But now, let's hear your explanation for nearly $2 Trillion of student debt, much of which was used to pay for worthless degrees (or no degrees at all), much of which will never be paid back, much of which is poisoning people's lives. You have to explain the kind of debt that means a generation of young people will not buy cars, not buy houses, not even get married and have children---because they cannot pay back debt that is breaking their backs. In other words, extraordinary events require extraordinary explanations. You've heard mine, I'll wait for yours. (I'm not really holding my breath.) 

Finally, before we consider possible solutions, think of the individual with a back-breaking student loan. He is not an idiot. He was not trying to cheat anyone. A young and terribly inexperienced person was depending on people he trusted to guide him. He thought he was doing everything right. 

Instead, everything has gone wrong. He is certainly not living the life he expected and that he thinks he deserves. He thinks, with considerable justification, that he is the one who has been cheated. And he is angry. Very, angry. Consequentially angry. He, and some 40 million people just like him. And they vote.

What to do?

I hope it is clear, at this point, that the young people taking out those ill-advised student loans are not the bad guys. They were not stupid or irresponsible, they were young and inexperienced. They were not trying to defraud anybody. Indeed, I think they are the primary victims in a confidence racket, run by institutional players, that transfers money from poor people to rich people.

Should these young people have known better? I suppose I have to say yes. And, however we solve this problem, it will have to cost them something, if only to make sure future students consider student loans with more care.

However, the real bad guys are the colleges. They knowingly admit students unlikely to succeed, and they offer worthless degrees at astronomical prices. Colleges are the major beneficiaries of the student loan racket. In one way or another, they have to pay a price. So, where to begin?

The First Rule of Holes states: Stop Digging. Meaning, the first order of business is to stop creating new student loans. This is the easy part. Starting, say, November 1, 2021 all new student loans can be discharged in bankruptcy. Now, watch that market dry up.

As part of draining this financial swamp, it would be great to do something about college admissions. I would like to see all colleges come with a money-back guarantee. There is a lot to unpack, here, but the basic outline would be something like the following.

A student who has not graduated should get his money back on demand. In return, his transcript is wiped clean. It would be as if he never attended.

Do not imagine this is cost-free to the student. Sure, the student will get his tuition back, but room and board, transportation, textbooks, lab fees---that money is not coming back. And then, there is all the time the student spent at that college. He is not getting that back, either.

Finally, note that if the student wants to start over at another college he would have to start from scratch because he does not have a transcript. He would have no credits to transfer. 

The student is spared from possibly ruinous debt, but he doesn't get out of it unscathed. This should make students think harder about taking out student loans, and about going to college, at all, but not destroy their lives.

The cost to the colleges may seem obvious, but there is more to it. Colleges will quickly notice which students are more likely to demand refunds, and they will quickly notice which degrees are returned more often. Fairly quickly, I predict, colleges will stop admitting students unlikely to succeed, and they will stop offering commercially worthless degrees.

As for graduated students, many people do not understand the worthlessness of their degrees until they try to get a job. Therefore, a graduated student should be able to ask for his money back within, say, four years of graduation.

When the graduated student asks for his money back then his transcript is wiped clean and his diploma is revoked. As with the undergrad, the graduated student does not get back his time or his ancillary expenses, which are considerable. He also has to explain to prospective employers what he did for four (or five or six) years. None of this will be easy, but at least we are not destroying their lives with unmanageable debt.

Now, some people may object on the principle that you can give back credentials but you cannot give back an education. It looks like students could game the system and get a tuition-free education. 

Not to worry, there is plenty of evidence---it's a virtual certainty you have see some of it yourself---that a college education, per se, is worthless. That is why, for example, the average college student spends less than twenty hours a week---including class time (!)---on education related activities. You might think college students learn nothing because they put no effort into it, but the truth is just the reverse. Meaning, students respond rationally to college.

Students do not pay for a college education, they pay for a college degree. It's the degree that signals prospective employers they should consider you for the job. So, you give back the degree and you give back everything. 

So, that is how we stop growing new student debt. It remains only to figure out what to do with existing student debt.

I do not see many options, here. The debt will have to be forgiven, mostly or entirely. The one thing I want to make sure of is that taxpayers do not eat all the debt. 

Most students have already been paying on their student loans, sometimes for years. So, former students have been absorbing plenty of pain. 

I think the people who most benefited from this educational Ponzi Scheme, the people who are most responsible for it, have to be made to absorb their fair share of the pain. In one way or another, the colleges must be made to pay.

The Schools Cannot Be Reformed

In a thoughtful, erudite essay in "The Atlantic" magazine, John McWhorter explains what NYC schools should do to help more Black students enter the vaunted specialized high schools.  I like John McWhorter, a lot.  He is a smart guy who usually has something interesting to say.  Not this time.

His analysis is correct and his suggestions are eminently reasonable.  The problem, as the kids are wont to say, is:  BTDT ("been there, done that).  It has all been tried, before.  All of it.  Result:  zero, zip, nada.

American public education has been in a state of continuous reform since John Dewey published "My Pedagogic Creed" in A.D. 1897, 122 years ago.  (Wikipedia describes Dewey as a "philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer.")  I mark the modern phase of education reform to 1957, when the then USSR simultaneously launched Sputnik into orbit and propelled the U.S. into the "Space Race".

With the paranoia of the Cold War, the U.S. turned on the taps and a torrent of money started flowing into an education system that, until then, could best be described as somebody's hobby.  Like an anabolic steroid, truly massive amounts of money made the schools of education consequential in a way they had never been before, and the teachers associations turned from amateur interest groups into powerful labor unions and the most effective political lobbyists in the country.

The public schools we have, today, are not the result of ignorance or inattention.  They are what the Education Mafia made them.  Professors of education dedicate their professional careers to studying education.  They hold colloquia and symposia, they publish peer reviewed papers, on the basis of which they design curricula, write textbooks, and train teachers. 

John McWhorter, intelligent man that he is, cannot tell these people anything they have not already thought of, long ago.  Which brings us back to NYC's specialized high schools and why Black students are statistically invisible in them.  There are only two possible explanations.  Either (a) there is something wrong with Black people, or (b) there is something wrong with the schools.

My money is on (b). 

With few exceptions, American public schools are educationally inert.  Let's be clear about what that means.  You are thinking, wait, Ed, we know some schools are better than others.  True, but not because of the schools, per se, but because of the students, themselves.  The students make the schools, not vice versa.  The children of wealthier, educated, professional (mainly White) parents bring more with them than the children of blue collar and welfare (mainly Black) parents.

One depressing, and unimpeachable, example is the work done by Todd Risley and Betty Hart, who demonstrated that by age 3, there is a 30 million word gap between the children of middle class professional parents and the children of welfare mothers.  Not just numbers of words, but also quality and diversity of the words (welfare children tend to hear the same words, over and over).  This is a consequential gap that only increases over time.

We desperately want the schools to compensate for these disadvantages.  They cannot.  In other words, the more a child depends on the schools for his education, the worse it will be for that child. 

To put it bluntly, we have hired the wrong people for the job.

This thought came to me some years ago during a discussion on academic placement.  I pointed out that, starting in 1st grade or kindergarten, a school needs to know only the child's birth date, and they can fully determine the entire arc of that child's educational career for the next 12 yrs.

How can this possibly be right?  The schools take into account nothing about a child's interests, abilities, and achievements over time.  Who does this?  Imagine going to a physician and, as you start to describe your pain, he stops you and says all he needs is your birth date.  On that basis he will know exactly how to treat you.  You would run away from that doctor as fast as you can.

I characterized this educational (mal)practice as "the astrological theory of academic placement".  Bingo!  Think of it this way:  we need astronomers to run our schools but we hired astrologers.  Astronomers are scientists.  Astrologers are superstitious charlatans.  And no amount of "reform" will turn astrologers into astronomers.

John McWhorter is pissing into the wind.  The schools, as they are presently constituted, cannot do what he wants them to do.  If they could, they would have done it, already.