There’s a serious conditioning problem in responding at greater length to bad arguments than to good arguments.
I am generally sympathetic to your position on both education and healthcare, so I don’t think I have much to learn by engaging with it, at least not with this kind of evidence. As I complain below, Caplan does not propose anything. I may engage elsewhere with your vague proposal.
As to the particular Caplan articles. Yes, foreign language instruction in the US is a disaster and should be dropped, or narrowed or something, but I don’t believe that the comparison to Europe is pure revealed preference. As to Algebra 1, meh. He talks in terms of cost-benefit comparison, but doesn’t offer any alternatives. If the purpose of school is babysitting, teaching conscientiousness, or IQ testing, then it doesn’t matter much what subjects you teach. Maybe if math is more unpleasant than other subjects, that’s a strike against it, but he describes foreign language as also painful.
If I were making micro-changes to the US curriculum, I might require several years of math without requiring any particular level for graduation. I think that there is a serious problem of people moving on without understanding the prerequisites. If you want to get people out of school earlier, then, sure, a lot of them shouldn’t reach Algebra 1.
Whether the study Caplan cites is a good measure of the benefit of the class depends on what you think the purpose of the class is, which depends on what you think the purpose of school is. But I certainly don’t think school is very consciously designed around any goal, let alone the three I suggest, so, yes, it could achieve these goals better, or at least more cheaply.
There’s a serious conditioning problem in responding at greater length to bad arguments than to good arguments.
I am generally sympathetic to your position on both education and healthcare, so I don’t think I have much to learn by engaging with it, at least not with this kind of evidence. As I complain below, Caplan does not propose anything. I may engage elsewhere with your vague proposal.
As to the particular Caplan articles. Yes, foreign language instruction in the US is a disaster and should be dropped, or narrowed or something, but I don’t believe that the comparison to Europe is pure revealed preference. As to Algebra 1, meh. He talks in terms of cost-benefit comparison, but doesn’t offer any alternatives. If the purpose of school is babysitting, teaching conscientiousness, or IQ testing, then it doesn’t matter much what subjects you teach. Maybe if math is more unpleasant than other subjects, that’s a strike against it, but he describes foreign language as also painful.
If I were making micro-changes to the US curriculum, I might require several years of math without requiring any particular level for graduation. I think that there is a serious problem of people moving on without understanding the prerequisites. If you want to get people out of school earlier, then, sure, a lot of them shouldn’t reach Algebra 1.
Whether the study Caplan cites is a good measure of the benefit of the class depends on what you think the purpose of the class is, which depends on what you think the purpose of school is. But I certainly don’t think school is very consciously designed around any goal, let alone the three I suggest, so, yes, it could achieve these goals better, or at least more cheaply.