Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Incentives Matter's avatar

With regards to 2. the description by Nick that you quote is actually more similar to the UK system. So you should be able to do some cross-national comparison to tease out more of the truth on the sheep-skin effects. I am sure there are lots of different systems round the world that can make for good tests of that and some of the other things going on with this topic.

Good job of covering the issue. I am generally on Caplan's side and is why I have been trying to change my own courses to include more practical stuff that can actually be useful, rather than just the signal.

Expand full comment
Daniel D's avatar

This was really good. Looking back at my own education, it could have easily been compressed at least in half without sacrificing anything worthwhile. I can still remember my kindergarten teacher forcing everyone to go over these stupid phonetics exercises that were entirely pointless for those of us who already knew how to read, so I started to read a book. She got very irritated that I was not following along with the rest of the class; and she ordered me to stop reading my book, so I could pretend to learn how to read at the same pace as everyone else. I couldn't articulate it at that age, but I knew right then that the whole thing was bullshit.

Expand full comment
53 more comments...

No posts