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.
The (sorely) lack of cultural education and critical thinking skills displays itself daily on social media and how most process the news they are fed. This is how we get Tik Tok videos mocking Confederates taken seriously as well as a string of other insults to American history that seemed to be understood not that long ago. The push to herd the masses into college inevitably turned higher education into, not an endeavor, but another racket to cash in on from various stakeholders.
Well written, but I've recently rabbit holed that past and it appears that during a multi generational time period that lasted until the 1930s (and didn't just end, it faded away and faded at variable rates depending on place) and began at some point long before then, despite there being much less *formal* education, it seems a far larger share of the population were well acquainted with Shakespeare (in some cases other books) and kept going throughout life, and it wasn;t just literature, hard sciences as well (and at the later part of the era, in some tough subject areas there not too much has changed since). So maybe this question is something very, very different than a question of choosing between exactly what we have now or nothing? Also, the value of IQ tests (especially since the early 2000s when the radically hanged in a way that was at the time stated to be for the purpose of making them easier to study for) really are questionable (not taking a stance here, just saying they really are questionable). I am super not a taleb fan but he's decent on this (but bizarrely doesn;t mention the tests being changed?) so I'll share a link: https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39
The (sorely) lack of cultural education and critical thinking skills displays itself daily on social media and how most process the news they are fed. This is how we get Tik Tok videos mocking Confederates taken seriously as well as a string of other insults to American history that seemed to be understood not that long ago. The push to herd the masses into college inevitably turned higher education into, not an endeavor, but another racket to cash in on from various stakeholders.
Well written, but I've recently rabbit holed that past and it appears that during a multi generational time period that lasted until the 1930s (and didn't just end, it faded away and faded at variable rates depending on place) and began at some point long before then, despite there being much less *formal* education, it seems a far larger share of the population were well acquainted with Shakespeare (in some cases other books) and kept going throughout life, and it wasn;t just literature, hard sciences as well (and at the later part of the era, in some tough subject areas there not too much has changed since). So maybe this question is something very, very different than a question of choosing between exactly what we have now or nothing? Also, the value of IQ tests (especially since the early 2000s when the radically hanged in a way that was at the time stated to be for the purpose of making them easier to study for) really are questionable (not taking a stance here, just saying they really are questionable). I am super not a taleb fan but he's decent on this (but bizarrely doesn;t mention the tests being changed?) so I'll share a link: https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39