#I never know whether it is polite or impolite to tag Scott or Freddie in posts like this.

[bambamramfan]

Freddie is a good writer and Scott is a good writer (and Freddie just wrote a passionate defense of Scott this week) so reading Scott admire and then tear apart Freddie’s book is an enlightening read. It has a lot of interesting points and only two more-heat-than-light controversial parts...

So I’m gonna be a jerk and just talk about the controversial parts. Sorry. (You should really read the review AND the book for its good points though.)

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One: what is this weird double bind with group genetic differences in IQ? If IQ should not be determinative of your moral value, if we should value underachievers just as much as Harvard grads, why would we have such problems even discussing the subject of whether different races have different IQ averages, or so I read this piece as asking?

Obvious answer A: because individuals aren’t averages, and whenever any society starts agreeing about an average of a group in any way that isn’t 100% equal, people wildly over generalize about every single individual in that group as fitting the stereotype. We aren’t being truth-seeking when we refuse to acknowledge the average difference, but dear lord it is one hell of a lot better than what happens to members of group X every time you come to a consensus that on average group Y is better at something.

More important answer B: because moral value is not an abstract category separable from social power. One can imagine a society that admits people with Inny Belly Buttons are just smarter than people with Outies. Not just particular individuals, but as a group. But said society still wants everyone to be well off. To achieve this, the Innies are put in charge of political institutions (and academic and corporate ones), with the clear directive to get good results from everyone using their meritocratic superiority.

We all know what that society will look like very shortly. The word often thrown around is “colonialism”, or white man’s burden if you’re being really snarky. None of us are unbiased and selfless enough for their group of people to be put in charge of everyone else, and to not begin distorting matters to their benefit. (That is sort of the point of anti-meritocracy arguments.)

So trying to solve for “are their group differences in IQ” leads to two very big problems. And it’s unclear what benefit you would get from finding group differences in IQ. So people don’t do it.

This is not the most truth-seeking behavior. But the two really big problems are real and should be considered for “why the public discussion on the left moves this way.”

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Two: Freedom from Child Prison. I mostly agree with Scott about his view of schools. I don’t think he’s entirely right - his social world somewhat selects for the people who hated school and so downplays the experience of people who liked it, so his estimate of the total and average suffering is off. But yeah, there is a lot of forced suffering going on with schools, and we should try to stop it.

I don’t really know how to do this. Pandemic has shown that a lot of parents really aren’t equipped to be with their children 24/7. Now on some level it would just be nice to admit that child prison is more for the parent’s sake (and our economic productivity) than what the kids are learning. And if you made me King of America that’s one thing I’d quickly try to act on, just I think the actual solutions are very complicated and Scott’s quick sketch of solutions are fairly blithe.

In a less passionate but more consistently true statement I would say: the way we organize school right now only works if you ignore the preferences of the student, and if we had to be even a little accountable to kids than we would get a very different system. Defending the current system (which is not the same as working within the system to make lives better) basically requires saying children’s preferences should not have any say in decisions this big. Which some people feel! But most people left of center don’t, or at least would not admit.

But where Scott really goes off the rails is equating “charter schools” with “kids being free.” I hate to break it to him, but many charter schools are more authoritarian and hellish than public schools. SPECIFICALLY SUCCESS ACADEMY. But SA isn’t even the worst. Freedom to try things like “treating your kids like they are basically in the military” is what charter school experimentation is all about.

Some of the charter schools also try more freedom-leaning structures. (They are not as represented among the “success stories” of charter schools though.) And yes in theory, your parents getting to pick what child prison you go to might mean you have some more say in the school and marginally more freedom. But well, “parents who don’t trust your judgment picking what prison you go to” just isn’t the same as not going to prison. If prison abolitionists were met with someone offering a compromise “okay, the victim of your crime can decide which prison you go to”, they would not really think that meets or even approaches their goals. It might even be a good idea, but I would not channel all my rage at prisons into people who argued against the victim-choosing thing.

(I suspect this leap of logic was caused by the increasing hate towards home-schooling in some political circles, and the rationalist community getting defensive about home-schooling lately, and the obvious basis for alliance between home-schooling and charter schools. Which all makes sense, but most of the time is going to mean fuck all to the kid stuck in third period PE.)