Miguel Perez sent me this email, entitled “the curious case of my education.” Reprinted with his permission.
Hi, I am sharing my case with you, because I feel it epitomizes some of your points against current education.
I was born in Spain, in 1988, went to public school and it was a disaster. I was diagnosed with severe ADHD, and was unable to finish middle school. I came to China, where I faked my high school diploma to get into college. I studied Chinese language and literature there, and set the record of my whole university, being, to this day, the only international student there to have passed HSK6 (the highest Chinese language state examination).
Then I won “bridge to China” by the Confucius Institute, also faking to be an university level student, since I couldn’t compete otherwise.
Later I also won the bronze medal for the Chinese language and culture Olympics of one of the four biggest cities in China (Shenzhen).
I have been a TV personality, and tv commentator on Chinese TV stations, being somehow famous in my city.
I also have managed to do business on my own, and to this day I have run a little trading company for 6 years. I am 32, and I own two houses which are already already cleared of debt.
How can I have been able to compete in business lacking the important educational skillset taught in school? And that is in addition to having some brain handicap. Either I have been really lucky, or the skillset taught in schools is quite useless for productivity.
Does society have a right to cut people with difficulties like me from developing a work specialization through twelve long years of arduous obedience to qualify for it? Since advances in cognitive science show that specific intelligence is not completely related to general intelligence, does the system have a right to deprive people of the right to develop specific capabilities and skills without demonstrating first some general intelligence in twelve different school subjects? Not mentioning people with ADHD, and dyslexia, is this a form of discrimination for people with low general intelligence that could demonstrate aptitude at some narrower skills or tasks but get deprived of the opportunity by design?
Also, I have run some experiments with driving license examinations, a knowledge similar to school learning, and I have found that for most people, the knowledge that allows them to pass an examination is precisely the knowledge that fades with time, realizing that most people can’t pass again the same car driving theoretic examination just a year after having passed it. I wonder if a similar experiment has been run with academic subjects, but I hypothesize that it would obtain the same results: Content that is not used daily is forgotten, and only very general knowledge remains of a subject after a year of learning it. So, do we teach exactly the kind of knowledge that gets forgotten and use it as a barrier for other types of knowledge?
These are questions that I hope you may address more fully in your work.
Thanks so much,
Miguel Perez Fernandez
READER COMMENTS
MarkW
Jun 1 2021 at 11:15am
I wonder if a similar experiment has been run with academic subjects, but I hypothesize that it would obtain the same results
Yes, Robert Frank discussed this issue in an old blogging heads episode. (the issue is discussed in the first few minutes). As far as I know, though, the fact that after just 6 months, students who’ve taken an intro Econ course are indistinguishable from students who’ve never taken a course has not been more widely published or extended. Which is crazy! What could be more important than the fact that intro courses have zero lasting effect!? But at the same time, you can imagine why this is not a result that universities or the academic community would want to publicize or promote. I suppose it’s another case of “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Lawrence
Jun 1 2021 at 12:58pm
I am a less extreme example of this. In K through 8 I was a terrible student – basically the ‘problem kid’ of my class. Teachers wanted me on Ritalin (thankfully my parents refused). In high school I started to get interested in some of the subject matter, and to appreciate the effects my efforts would have on my future. So I did well enough to get into university. Then I got an engineering degree, worked for a while, then back to school and got a law degree. Now I’m a senior in-house counsel at a large multi-national.
I can’t see my elementary school years as anything but a waste of time and a big source of grief for me and my parents in what was otherwise a great childhood. I was simply not suited to sit still for hours on end listening to anyone talk (although in my free time back then, I was an avid reader, including sucking up any science related book I could get my hands on). To this day, I can’t learn anything by having someone lecture at me. The first halfway interesting point they say and my mind goes to it and rests on it, follows its implications for ten minutes, missing the whole point of what they are talking about.
Floccina
Jun 1 2021 at 2:44pm
Me to. I failed 1st grade twice and second grade once. I was only kept back once because they did not want me to so much older than the other students, I think today they call it social promotion. I got better grades as I went on, including college.
john hare
Jun 1 2021 at 6:50pm
6th grade drop out. Back to night school at 19, but passed a GED before earning any credits. Some engineering and held a high B at night while working 60 hours. IMO, enjoyment of reading plus a basic grounding in math with take the motivated a long way.
Phil H
Jun 1 2021 at 11:22pm
I’m sure BC has worked this out more fully in other places, but it’s worth pointing out that this argument seems a bit misdirected. The fact that some students don’t get on with education probably means that schools should be more flexible; but the problem here isn’t with the education system. It’s with excessive credentialism by employers.
Even if the education system was massively reformed, it wouldn’t alter the social situation if employers still demand school certificates. And these employers are mainly private entities. Of course, it doesn’t suit the ideology of this website to notice that private organizations are getting stuff wrong, so BC focuses on what the education system does wrong.
Now, there are plenty of problems to work on in the education sector, so it’s all good. But the worry that Perez and Caplan express is an interaction between education and employers, so it’s bigger than just this one area.
KevinDC
Jun 2 2021 at 10:26am
You are right about one thing – Caplan has indeed covered that in other places, most obviously in his book dealing with the subject. But one point at least seems worth following up on here. You say:
This misses the point made by Buchanan in his classic observation about how order is defined in the process of its emergence. That is, employers aren’t excessively concerned with credentials in a vacuum. Employers started demanding more in the way of credentials in response to a variety of government policies designed to encourage more people to get said credentials – massively increased subsidization of public education, government backed loans for the same, etc. Before the government began pushing so hard to put as many people through the educational system as possible, and higher education in particular, employers weren’t anywhere near as demanding of credentials. So your claim that “Even if the education system was massively reformed, it wouldn’t alter the social situation if employers still demand school certificates” is precisely what Caplan disputes in his book (and elsewhere). Employers only started demanding school certificates en masse after government began massively promoting and subsidizing the acquisition of those certificates. Interestingly, this topic was briefly touched on when Caplan was interviewed by Vox for his book:
robc
Jun 2 2021 at 10:58am
How much of the credentialism is because of the private companies wanting it and how much is because they have no choice?
Griggs v Duke.
James
Jun 3 2021 at 8:24pm
As KevinDC points out, this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For instance, it would be much simpler and more efficient to employ some kind of aptitude test when screening prospective employees than to insist on a credential that takes years to acquire, and may be only tangentially related to the job requirements. But that’s been illegal for the past 50 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
Monte
Jun 2 2021 at 1:49pm
The old adage about finding a job you love applies with equal measure to academics. Primary education is foundational and should remain compulsory. However, secondary education should be (if you’ll pardon the expression) re-imagined. Why should high school students who despise math, science, or English grammar and struggle with it be required to take it in order to graduate? Why shouldn’t trade schools be considered a viable alternative for those students if, as Prof. Caplan argues, the education system is a waste of time and money? Otherwise, they’re simply parroting what they’re taught without the benefit of retention. After all (and I don’t mean to disparage economics), the following epigraph found on page 55 of Paul Samuelson’s Economics at the beginning of the chapter on The Elements of Supply and Demand states:
You can make even a parrot into a learned economist – all it must learn are the two words “supply” and “demand.” Anonymous
There’s always time later in life as an adult to obtain a college degree if and when the passion to pursue one boils to the top.
Monte
Jun 2 2021 at 1:55pm
13th edition
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