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L:
Doug, in our recent conversation on global
warming, you made some critical remarks about modern education.
I know that wasn’t mere drive-by disparagement – can you tell us
why you’re so hard on teachers today?
Doug:
Sure. Since the school season started recently, it’s probably a good
time to talk about schools and education.
L:
School season? Is there a bag limit on how many schools you can take down?
Doug:
[Laughs] Well, I think that most of the money that’s spent on so-called
education is, if not wasted, definitely misallocated.
There was a book
written a few years ago called something like All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I
have to admit I never read the book, but the title resonated with me –
I think there’s a lot of truth behind the notion. To me it implies that
a person should have absorbed basic ethical values, and an understanding how
to relate to other people and animals, by the time he’s six years old.
Those are the most important things anyone can learn, and should be the first
things one learns. But it doesn’t seem any institution, and fairly few
parents, think to teach them.
But the first
thing to do is to ask: What is education?
L:
Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?
Doug:
Education is the process of learning how to perceive and analyze reality
correctly. That would include subjects like ethics, science, history, and
important literature.
L: What
about logic? You’d have to include logic.
Doug: Yes,
definitely. All things of that nature. The ancients developed the idea of
liberal arts, which had a different meaning to them than our current usage.
The root of "liberal" is "liber," meaning free. So
the liberal arts were subjects that a free man – as opposed to a slave,
or a menial – was assumed to be acquainted with. They were divided into
the arts and the sciences. The idea was, these things gave you the tools of
thought and the building blocks of culture. They were distinct from the
mechanical arts – which were means of earning a living. You’d
learn the mechanical arts as an apprentice.
Put it this way.
The quality of a person can be determined by how he relates to three critical
verbs: Be, Do, and Have. The classical liberal arts show you how to
"be" – they help form your essence, your character, your will.
The mechanical arts show you how to "do"; they are important, but
really are just acquired skills. As a consequence of what you are, and what
you can do, you "have" – acquire goods and money and
reputation.
But it seems
pretty clear that most people have the sequence totally backward. They want
the "have" part, the material goods, but they don’t
understand it flows as a consequence of being something and having the
ability to do something. Having things is trivial. It’s why trailer park
trash will win a million-dollar lottery and wind up back on the dole a year
later.
I fear that most
of what kids get today, whether in grade school, high school, college, or
post-grad, is not education. It’s training.
Entirely apart
from that, it seems to me that most institutions degrade as time passes. They
naturally and inevitably become constipated, concrete-bound, and corrupt.
That certainly appears to have happened to education in the U.S., and
probably most other countries.
I’m sure
you’ve seen that eighth-grade test from 1895 that’s been floating
around the Internet for some years. Snopes.com has a go at debunking
it, but they don’t claim the test isn’t
real, and it does cover a lot of basic stuff few people today know anything
about. What every educated person should know may change from age to age, but
the basics of thinking, and its application to language, science, etc.
are enduring. And there are certain minimums of knowledge that everyone
should have. The U.S. education system is not delivering these basics, which
are the tools for living.
Training is
different. Training is rote learning with a view towards productive behavior
in the future. It’s what you’d learn on the job, as an apprentice
laborer. This would cover most high school and college courses, which are not
designed to produce educated young people but useful employees, ready to
enter the labor force. But they don’t even do that well.
I’ll go
further. Most schools today are state schools, or if they are not state
schools, they teach state-approved curricula. There’s an implicit
orientation to train the kids to be good little cogs in the wheel, as in
obedient subjects, and as opposed to independent thinkers and citizens.
That’s probably the most important reason not to send your kids to a
state school.
Homeschooling is
a great alternative, though so many homeschoolers are religious fanatics,
they’ve given the whole idea an unfortunate and undeserved aura of
nuttiness. And in my view, filling your kids’ heads with all sorts of
religious superstition is no better than filling their heads with statist
superstition. What they need is a classical education in the liberal arts
– starting in grade school.
L: Do
you really think homeschooling has such a bad reputation? Aren’t
homeschooled kids burning up the track at the spelling bees, geography bees,
etc.?
Doug:
Perhaps it depends on which circles you travel in. You homeschool, and
you’re not religious, so maybe you see things differently. But my sense
is that the media portrayal tends to emphasize the religious homeschoolers,
and perhaps rightly so, since they constitute (I believe) the majority of
homeschoolers.
But I’ll
give you a good reason to favor homeschooling, regardless of who most
homeschoolers are. I had a good enough time in school and I generally enjoyed
the social interaction with the other kids. But it was a misallocation of my
time; there’s little of value you can learn from other kids. It’s
simply a bad idea to put your kids in an environment where they spend most of
the day associating with young yahoos, many or most of whom have a lot of bad
habits. The average school is full of unrefined young chimpanzees. Sure, kids
need to learn how to work together and socialize, but school is not the only,
and certainly not the best, place to do that.
Another reason is
that every class, like a group traveling together, tends to move at the pace
of the slowest kids in the group. An environment tailored for the lowest
common denominator bores the smart kids to tears – or trouble. I was
perpetually bored and distracted by the "one size fits all" program
of my schools.
It’s the
same in college, which was an even more serious misallocation of four years
of my time – and a bunch of my parents’ money. And it’s
much worse today, in either current or constant dollars.
Like most of my
friends, I’d end up cutting a lot of classes, because I’d stayed
up too late the night before. When I did go to class, I’d fall asleep
half the time. And even fully awake, my mind would wander and I
wouldn’t take good notes, so then I wouldn’t bother reading the
notes. Of course you learn stuff, but I think it’s mostly through
osmosis. Entirely apart from the fact that the profs varied greatly in
quality.
Most people go to
college today because they actually think someone is going to give
them an education, when in fact, an education is something you have to give
yourself.
You absolutely do
not need a college to do that. The old saw about "Those who can, do, and
those who can’t, teach" is all too true. Professors can’t
educate anyone, though a few of the good ones can help motivated students
educate themselves. But the college business is now structured like a
manufacturing business; Aristotle and Seneca wouldn’t know what to make
of it.
L: My
Webster’s dictionary says the word educate has two roots: e-,
"out," and ducere, "lead, draw, or bring." In
other words, to draw out, or bring out what’s in the student’s
ability to grasp and remember – not to cram whatever the teacher thinks
is important into the student’s head.
Doug:
That’s what "education" today fails to do – and why
it’s such a waste of money. There is no point at all in going to a
college today, unless you’re looking to learn a trade. Or, perhaps, because
the people you meet in college might be of some future benefit to you. In
other words, it’s pointless unless it’s Harvard, Princeton, Yale,
or the like. Because of the classes? No. It’s because the kids that go
to such schools are the most intelligent and ambitious "up and
comers" – so the connections you make and the patina you get at
these places can open a lot of doors.
But if you look
closely, the very best and brightest – people like Bill Gates or Steven
Jobs – drop out, or don’t even go.
I would suggest
that a parent thinking of allocating $40,000 to $50,000 per year for four
years of college education instead grubstake their kid with that same money.
You could even make it a fraction of that, to be put into actually doing
something, like starting a business or trying out different investment
strategies, and get a lot more experience and knowledge for your kid as a
result.
You certainly
don’t need a college to gain knowledge. For example, there’s an
outfit called The Teaching
Company that hires the very best professors in the world in
all sorts of subjects to deliver superb audio courses. I listen to these
things all the time in the car. I watch the ones that have important visual
components on my computer, and I can go back and repeat anything I
don’t understand clearly – when my mind is receptive to it.
It’s much more effective than going to college would be, and
it’s vastly cheaper. Superior in every possible respect.
Another thing
I’d do if I had a college-age kid is plan out a travel schedule.
He’d have to spend at least a month in a dozen countries and report on
what he does there. Travel may be the single best type of education, at least
if done with a method and an objective.
There are many
ways to get an education besides going to college – and going to a
second-rate, third-rate, or community college is a complete waste of time and
money. It serves no useful purpose whatsoever.
L:
I’ve long thought similarly about what we call a "liberal arts
education" today. Paying lots of money to read literature with friends
seems patently silly, and to have someone tell you what some long-dead artist
really meant seems arrogant to boot. But there are also things like physics,
chemistry, and medicine. When I was a physics major at RPI, I was glad to
have all sorts of laboratories and machine shops at my disposal – stuff
I could never have built in my backyard…
Doug: I
totally agree with you on that. Aside from the patina and connections
I’ve been talking about, there are two valid reasons for going to a
university. One is to study a hard science. You can still learn these on your
own, but you’re right; it helps a lot to have the labs and so forth.
That’s worth paying for.
The second reason
is if you need a piece of paper that shows you’ve jumped through hoops
other people recognize. In other words, if you’re going into a trade,
like doctoring, lawyering, or engineering, for which you need a certificate
in order to be able to hang a shingle without getting arrested, that’s
okay because it’s necessary.
Well, maybe not
for lawyering – we have entirely too many lawyers in the world today.
They’ve turned from expert helpers to parasites at considerable risk of
overwhelming the host body.
Another degree I
would strongly advise anyone against getting is an MBA, which has,
regrettably, become a very fashionable degree. In our shop, if anyone applies
for a job, an MBA is an active strike against them. They’d have to come
up with a really good explanation for why they spent all that money and two
years of extra time to get something that serves no useful purpose
whatsoever.
It’s
amazing, when you stop and think about it. The professors who teach MBA
courses are not successful business people out making millions in the economy
– they’re academics! Successful business people with proven track
records wouldn’t work for their wages. These academics have no hands-on
experience and are teaching theories, most of which are based on completely
phony and fallacious economics.
Don’t get
conned into this gross misallocation of time and money. An MBA is worse than
useless. Only a fool would rather have one than the $100,000, the lost
income, and the two years of lost time and experience it costs.
L: I
guess that explains how I got this job, with no relevant papers.
Doug: Of
course – you’re not a dog or a horse, for cryin’ out loud.
We don’t need pedigree papers to identify talent we can see.
L:
Another example in which training is desirable, and not a corruption of
education, would be the military schools. Generals like rote, conditioned
behaviors.
Doug: They
do indeed. And soldiers need to learn practical skills, deeply ingrained,
that can keep them alive under very difficult circumstances. Military
academies are like advanced trade schools.
I very nearly
went to West Point. The only reason I didn’t is because I went to a
four-year military boarding high school. In those days, military boarding
schools were rather gruesome. I decided that I’d had quite enough of
shining shoes, marching in squares, and saying "Yes, Sir!" to
people I had no respect for.
L: Is
that why you’re an anarchist, Doug – was your response to that
training to go as far in the opposite direction as you could go?
Doug:
[Laughs] Well, let’s not say that I have a problem with authority. I
just have a problem with people telling me what to do.
L:
[Laughs] Okay, well, I get the criticism of higher education, and I see the
broad strokes of your proposed alternative educational strategy, but what
about younger children? You seem to be saying that the very idea of the
classroom is a bad one, public or private.
Doug: As a
matter of fact, when I got out of college in 1968, I needed a job – and
I got one: teaching sixth grade in Hobart, Indiana – the heart of Blues
Brothers country. I only did it for one semester, but one thing really
impressed me deeply: most of my co-workers were complete morons. They were
people Jay Leno would feature on his J-Walking videos if he’d ever met
them. They had so little knowledge of the world and anything that matters, I
was embarrassed to be called a teacher.
There are
exceptional teachers, of course, but by and large, they are not the best and
the brightest, they’re losers. I wouldn’t want to expose my
progeny, if I had any, to a random collection of people who want to be
government employees imprisoning kids for six hours a day.
L: Does
that apply to private schools as well?
Doug: As I
said, I went to a private military high school. Were my teachers any better
than others? I suspect they were – but can’t prove it. I’m
sure they are at some places, like Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, that pay
more and probably attract a better grade of teacher. But if anything is worth
doing, it’s worth doing well, and in education, that means doing it
yourself. Which means read, read, read.
L: So,
your general view is that homeschooling is the way to go for younger
children?
Doug:
Exactly. Though I’m sure you’ll sympathize with me when I say
that I think toddlers ought to grow up for a couple years with wolves, so
they can toughen up a bit and learn some survival skills. Kids are way
overprotected these days. They are so isolated and insulated from reality,
it’s totally counterproductive. Sadly, it’s hard to find a good
wolf today.
So it’s
homeschool, then college only for technical trades and for the advantages of
an Ivy League pedigree. For most people, just reading books and then going
out into the real world and doing stuff is way smarter, cheaper, and more
productive. The difference between a properly educated kid, and one subjected
to conventional training, is the difference between the Arnold Schwarzenegger
character and the Danny DeVito character in the movie Twins.
And for
God’s sake, don’t send your kids to business school. Better they
should try some real businesses instead. Whether they succeed or fail,
they’ll learn much more.
L: But
this would unemploy hundreds of thousands of people in the education business,
who, according to you, are ill equipped for productive work. It doesn’t
sound like a politically viable reform plan, Doug.
Doug: The
ones who are any good would rise to the occasion and do something better with
their time. And those who are not… well, we need people to clean
toilets and sweep streets. At least they’d be away from our kids.
And all this dead
weight is expensive. I understand that the per-pupil cost of public schooling
in the U.S. is running $10,000 to $12,000 per year. And college is $40,000 to
$50,000 per year. There’s no reason, no excuse, for it to cost so much.
Teachers who are
any good could do as they did in ancient Greece and Rome, and solicit
students. They could teach in their houses, or in rented facilities, and
compete with each other. They’d have every incentive to strive for the
lowest-cost and highest-quality service – and they’d make more
money, because most of the money spent on so-called education these days goes
to administration and overhead. Not towards getting superstar teachers.
L: I
can imagine a future in which the best teachers are celebrities, rich
superstars. People would compete for spots in their classes. What would
someone with a real passion for astrophysics pay to be able to study with
Stephen Hawking?
Doug: That’s
exactly what I mean. And instead of having reason to conform, as teachers do
now, being members of unions, they’d have reason to excel. Unions have
a well-established interest in making sure no one stands above the average,
so they foment a culture that guarantees mediocrity. The whole educational
system in the U.S. needs to be flushed.
Unfortunately,
just the opposite is happening. The Obama people want to give everyone a
college education, probably including really useful mandatory courses in
Gender Studies, Global Warming, and Marxist Economic Theory. Why stop there?
Everyone ought to have a post-grad education as well.
L: Like
Luna, in Woody Allen’s Sleeper, who has a Ph.D. in oral sex?
Doug: Yes.
It’s insane. It’s another sign that the whole system in the U.S.,
not just education, is upside down and overdue for collapse.
L:
There’s no reforming such an entrenched system, supported by such
powerful unions and a population that believes it can and should be fixed. On
the other hand, the education system in the U.S. is such a dismal failure,
people are opting out their kids in droves. So, with reality-reality vs.
political reality, it could actually collapse. Maybe there is hope for a
future in which there’s real education, simply because the old system
implodes and disappears.
Doug: It
could happen. The U.S. Department of Education should be abolished. The
National Education Association building in Washington DC should be boarded up
or dynamited. No, better yet, cleaned out and sold on the market, so some
entrepreneur can put it to some useful business purpose.
L: It
could be turned into a brothel. It would be more honest.
Doug: It
would – you’d actually get value for your money.
L:
Investment implications?
Doug: I
expect I’ll expand on this theme in this month’s Casey Report, with an
examination of publicly traded online universities. They represent an
interesting trend. And our newest letter, Casey’s Extraordinary
Technology, is written by Alex Daley, who is something of a polymath. He
has deep expertise in all areas of technology, as well as lots of practical
experience in venture capital. I think he’s got a lot to say about the
implications of the continuing – and accelerating – computer
revolution on education. But we truly try to make all our publications
educational. We don’t just tout investments. We think it’s
critical our readers understand why we think something – not just take
our word for it.
L: And
when you can understand why something is happening, and pick out predictable
trends, there are opportunities to profit. Understood. Okay, well, thanks for
another interesting talk.
Doug: My
pleasure.
Doug Casey
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