The Case Against (excessive) Education

Bryan Caplan

is an entertaining writer, as I have both strongly disagreed with many of his policy proposals as well as nodded my head in agreement in what would be considered some very radical approaches. I started his “The Case Against Education” expecting I would agree with most of it, and I was both right and wrong.

The crux of Bryan’s thesis is that very little actual educating is done in schools, and it largely signals other things irrelevant to academics like conformity and perseverance. Very little that is taught in schools is actually necessary for jobs and the amount of benefit an education gets is far inflated due to selection bias (people who get a Master’s degree would likely do fine even without a Master’s degree, due to the caliber of people who go for said degree). The nuance, though, is that even if education is a waste of time purely from a skills standpoint, it still makes financial sense from a selfish standpoint. Even if socially the benefit of such an education on job skills is a net negative given the time and money it costs, it makes a person more money in the long term. So far, so good.

Of course, just about every higher education bureaucrat would shake her head and explain how Caplan completely missed the point of an education, which isn’t to just prepare them for a job but to learn critical thinking skills as well as expand their horizons to other possibilities. Caplan also has an answer to this, explaining how abysmally students actual learn and remember easy facts from American history, Geography, and other subjects. If you remember skits from late-night talk shows from times past where they interviewed random people from the streets about simple trivia, you know the type. There’s also the inconvenient fact that you can’t really teach critical thinking, as it’s mostly a function of IQ and domain knowledge. Most teachers don’t acknowledge this, as it gives them the sads.

Still, this part I would push back on a little. While it’s pointless to force everyone to read Shakespeare, there is an argument that, just as language has been codified to allow easy transmission of ideas, there needs to be a mechanism to transfer CULTURAL artifacts between people so complicated topics can be addressed in more efficient ways. When there is a cultural context to conversation, there is far less likelihood of confusion. E.B. Hirsch’s excellent book “Cultural Literacy” shows how necessary it is to have a common schema in which to reference and communicate. Note that this goes far beyond work, to things such as interacting with the general population and civic tasks like Jury Duty or voting. Overall, his general idea is correct, that educational institutions are doing a terrible job of transferring cultural artifacts to the next generation and is mostly wasting their time. I would argue this is a case of lousy pedagogy rather than simply the nature of things. There’s no reason why any student shouldn’t know basic facts like what century the Civil War happened except by total incompetence on the part of the staff.

Another counter-argument is that of course there is a benefit outside of the sheepskin effect, as otherwise they would just give I.Q. tests and hire based on that. The obvious response is to bring up Griggs vs. Duke Power and state this is explicitly illegal, but he counters by saying that it would still make financial sense, even if they are fined. While the fines are small on paper, he enormously underestimates the ability of the Federal Bureaucracy to destroy corporations that don’t play ball with their mandates. As anyone who has read Caldwell’s “Age of Entitlement” will tell you, our Constitution is now The Civil Rights Act, and woe to anyone who goes against the new state religion. The reason why companies don’t do the obvious is because anything with a hint of racial discrimination will send the full power of the Feds down that company’s throat, and it’s not worth the risk. They learn to play ball. Add this to H.R. hires straight out of the most insane parts of academia and see how stuck a corporation is. Yeah, fines are small because they know it’s suicide to fight that beast.

Now comes the most interesting, controversial, and bulletproof argument he makes. There is way too much school. A few years back I remember how smug people were, explaining how we were the most educated people in history, with more people going to college than any other time. They don’t say that anymore. As schools dumb down their curriculum more and more to pass students who have no business being there, along with kneecapping the best and brightest in the name of equity, it’s become a total anti-intellectual horrorshow. He goes as far to say child labor would be an improvement for a lot of these kids, and it’s hard to argue, especially in the failing schools where they are forced to take kids who only disrupt other’s learning.

It’s practically a truism that when you accept people who aren’t fit for the task, you have to lower standards to get enough to pass. Imagine if it was like a few generations ago when most people never graduated High School, but the rigor of upper middle school was, in many ways, more rigorous than a high school education. Imagine if we accelerated and let slower kids fall behind so the smarter could flourish. Maybe a better idea would be to let the slower kids not suited to academics start learning a trade at 14, and become full tradesmen by the time they are 16? Maybe High School would be equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree today, so only the very top 10% or so even need college? What would be lost other than years of boredom? What gains there would be when young people have four years of their life back? For those interested in cultural transmission, if you can’t inoculate them with basic facts after eight years, you’re never going to teach them anything.

I’ve seen this with Homeschool families I’ve known, where one child would be simply not capable of keeping up with the rigors of school but is excellent with his hands and apprentices with carpenters when he turns 16. On the corollary I know someone who is exceedingly academic and entered college a year early. Both are happy and both are making the best use of their best years. As homeschoolers, we need to take full advantage of this, as we are not constrained by the stifling years of school required by the school system, but can forge our own path based on our own assessments of our children’s skills.