I’m ending my seminar class on The Case Against Education with a game.  Students earn participation credit by volunteering to take a random Ideological Turing Test.  How it works:

First, roll a d20 (20-sided die) to determine the topic:

1. What was school like for you personally?

2. Why does so much education seem to irrelevant in the real
world?

3. “Locked-in Syndrome”

4. Transfer of Learning

5. Ability Bias

6. IQ testing, U.S. law, and the labor market

7. The sheepskin effect

8. Malemployment

9. Employer learning

10. Human capital, signaling, and ability bias: What’s the
correct breakdown?

11. What’s the selfish return to education?

12. What’s the social return to education?

13. What’s the best reason to go to college?

14. What’s the best reason not to go to college?

15. How much should government support education?

16. What kind of education should government support?

17. Social Desirability Bias

18. Child labor

19. Education as a merit good

20. Is education good for the soul?

Then, roll a d10 (ten-sided die) to determine the Perspective.

1. Bryan Caplan

2. David Card

3. Tyler Cowen

4. Fabian Lange

5. Eric Hanushek

6. James Heckman

7. Paul Krugman

8. Greg Mankiw

9. Barack Obama

10. Random GMU undergrad

The goal, as usual, is to accurately mimic the Perspective on the Topic.  Getting students to participate is normally like pulling teeth, but 15% of my class grade is based on participation.  So perhaps we’ll see fireworks…