{"id":60198,"date":"2020-09-30T06:49:44","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T11:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=60198"},"modified":"2020-09-30T06:50:40","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T11:50:40","slug":"60198","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=60198","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The author of the book wants free college<\/em> which means he wants the old marxist canard of ‘equality of outcome’ which results in nothing more than\u00a0 the ‘lowest common denominator’ i.e. stupid<\/em><\/strong> printed on all diplomas in invisible ink.<\/p>\n

\n

A Book with a Kernel of Truth\u2014and a Grain Silo of Nonsense<\/a><\/p>\n

Every so often, a leftist thinker breaks free from the orthodoxy to point out that policies favored by \u201cprogressives\u201d can have adverse consequences. When that happens, it\u2019s worth paying attention.<\/p>\n

We have such an instance with the publication of\u00a0The Cult of Smart<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Fredrik deBoer, a writer and one-time academic whose work has appeared in leftist publications such as\u00a0The New Republic<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Jacobin.<\/em><\/p>\n

He proudly proclaims his Marxism, saying that what all good Marxists want is a better, more equitable world. While he sees a lot to complain about\u2014America still allows capitalism, after all\u2014his particular target in the book is the way our education system overemphasizes academic credentials. We excessively reward those who are good at getting them at the expense of people who lack academic ability.<\/p>\n

DeBoer calls his book \u201ca prayer for the untalented\u201d and it strikes a sympathetic chord as he discusses his efforts at teaching students who just aren\u2019t smart. It isn\u2019t their fault that they aren\u2019t academically inclined, the author argues. Some kids are blessed with smartness and some aren\u2019t. Moreover, it is folly to pretend that the answer for those who aren\u2019t is to find better schooling that will turn them into smarties. That is a break with most of deBoer\u2019s fellow leftists who have boundless faith in our education system to solve any problem, provided that we give it enough money.<\/p>\n

We push students who are lacking in academic ability to stay in school, taking classes that make them miserable, and then we tell them that they need to go to college unless they want to be regarded as failures. But the process of getting into and then through college is also a hardship for those students.<\/p>\n

America has developed \u201cthe cult of smart\u201d and for kids who aren\u2019t smart, \u201cIt is pernicious, it is cruel, and it must change,\u201d deBoer writes.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter to him that his fellow progressives are the architects of our education system and often its greatest beneficiaries. In fact, he has harsh words for the well-heeled leftists who play the smartness game for their own children, such as those who were caught cheating and bribing in the Varsity Blues scandal. Nor does it matter to deBoer that it was President Obama who declared that the United States must set a goal of leading the world in the percentage of people we put through college.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s give deBoer credit for his willingness to dissent from the leftist party line on the imperative of maximizing \u201ceducational attainment.\u201d He even seems to at least dimly grasp a point that Thomas Sowell has been making for many years, namely that our education system is not designed for the benefit of the students, but rather for the benefit of the teachers and administrators who get paid whether their students succeed or not.<\/p>\n

I agree wholeheartedly that we should stop forcing young people to stay in school when they hate being there. DeBoer suggests that we should consider allowing them to leave formal schooling at age 12 and that\u2019s a good idea, since the \u201cunsmart\u201d might very well learn things they find interesting and useful outside of classrooms. (Thomas Edison, after all, was a terrible student and left school after only a few months.) We should also do all we can to stop the college degree mania that compels so many young Americans to spend huge amounts of time and money in pursuit of credentials that they don\u2019t really want and which often do no more than open the doors for work they could have done while still in high school.<\/p>\n

Another weakness in the book is that deBoer greatly overstates his case that America is inhospitable toward the \u201cunsmart.\u201d
\nHad deBoer bothered to look at writings by people he regards as his philosophical opponents, such as Thomas Sowell, Charles Murray, Richard Vedder, and other conservative\/libertarian education critics, he\u2019d have discovered that his case against our wasteful and unfair education system has already been made. His book would have been stronger if he had melded his own insights with the criticism of those writers.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, he cites none of them and offers only vague, impressionistic statements about what he thinks people on the right believe about our schools. That\u2019s why it is hard to take The Cult of Smart seriously as a work on education policy.<\/p>\n

Another weakness in the book is that deBoer greatly overstates his case that America is inhospitable toward the \u201cunsmart.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, there are many possibilities for them to lead successful lives even though we put them through a lot of needless schooling. You don\u2019t have to be smart to make it big in sports or entertainment. You don\u2019t have to be smart to make a comfortable living in many trades where educational credentials aren\u2019t (yet) essential. DeBoer writes as if those who are not \u201csmart\u201d are consigned to miserable, Hobbesian lives, but if he talked with some carpenters, tile layers, or auto mechanics, he\u2019d find that they live quite happily, even though bragging about their education isn\u2019t in the mix.<\/p>\n

At the same time, deBoer acknowledges that plenty of smart people struggle. That is especially true of the many Americans who get advanced degrees but can\u2019t find anything better to do than low-paying adjunct professorships. Being smart is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for success.<\/p>\n

All in all, deBoer\u2019s case against \u201cthe cult of smartness\u201d is not very convincing. It\u2019s not much ado about nothing, but much ado about a small problem.<\/p>\n

In our markets for talent, people who aren\u2019t smart can do well, but we should stop putting obstacles in their way. We should change our education system so that young people aren\u2019t pushed onto paths that are bad for them. We should also open up more avenues for success by eliminating governmental policies that often get in their way, particularly minimum wage laws and occupational licensure regulations.<\/p>\n

But deBoer is not interested in such tinkering.<\/p>\n

His solution to the \u201ccult of smart\u201d is to adopt communism. You read that right. Our author is a dedicated lifelong Marxist who wants an America (and world) where markets are gone\u2014educational markets, labor markets, housing markets, and so on. He advocates universal basic income so everyone can live with dignity, universal government-supplied health care, guaranteed government jobs for those who want them, good housing for all, and the rest of the full socialist agenda. All of that would be paid for with high taxes on the rich and by printing money, which advocates of \u201cModern Monetary Theory\u201d claim is nothing to worry about.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s the real reason for deBoer\u2019s book. Like so many \u201cprogressives,\u201d every real or imagined problem with our society becomes an excuse for expanding the scope and power of the government. He wants to fasten us into the yoke of Marxism\u2014from each according to his ability, to each according to his need\u2014because our governmental education system is flawed.<\/p>\n

Part of deBoer\u2019s \u201csolution\u201d to that flaw is to adopt \u201cfree college\u201d as favored by Bernie Sanders. Evidently, he doesn\u2019t see that one reason why the unsmart have such trouble is that credential inflation blocks them off from many good job prospects. If we make college \u201cfree,\u201d credential inflation will just ratchet up more and make their lives harder still. Scholars on the right and the left have been arguing since the 1970s that subsidizing college has that bad side effect. Too bad that ratcheting down government interference holds no interest for our author.<\/p>\n

It also seems not to occur to deBoer that our \u201ccult of smartness\u201d produces a great deal of value for everyone, including the unsmart. Take away the incentives and efficiency of capitalism and we will have fewer job opportunities and less innovation. Almost everyone would find that a very high price to pay so that a Marxist intellectual can indulge his fantasies.<\/p>\n

Fredrik deBoer believes that we \u201csuffer\u201d due to what he calls the cult of smart but has no idea how much more we\u2019d suffer under his utopian vision.<\/p>\n

We should focus on the problem he identifies\u2014bad educational policy that works against those who aren\u2019t academically talented\u2014and forget about his ruinous solution for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The author of the book wants free college which means he wants the old marxist canard of ‘equality of outcome’ which results in nothing more than\u00a0 the ‘lowest common denominator’ i.e. stupid printed on all diplomas in invisible ink. A Book with a Kernel of Truth\u2014and a Grain Silo of Nonsense Every so often, a … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-education-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60200,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60198\/revisions\/60200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}