Posted on 08/19/2008 1:01:58 PM PDT by jazusamo
When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession.
If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited.
Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master's degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student— which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12.
Nevertheless, we continue to take seriously the pretensions of educators who fail to educate, but who put on airs of having "professional" expertise beyond the understanding of mere parents.
One of the most widespread and dramatic examples of amateurs outperforming professionals has been in economies that have had central planning directed by highly educated people, advised by experts and having at their disposal vast amounts of statistical data, not available and probably not understandable, by ordinary citizens.
Great things were expected from centrally planned economies. Their early failings were brushed aside as "the growing pains" of "a new society."
But, when centrally planned economies lagged behind free market economies for decade after decade, eventually even socialist and communist governments began to free their economies from many, if not most, of the government controls under central planning.
Almost invariably, these economies then took off with much higher economic growth rates— China and India being the most prominent examples.
But look at the implications of the failure of central planning and the success of letting "the market"— that is, millions of people who are nowhere close to being experts— make the decisions as to what is to be produced and by whom.
How can it be that people with postgraduate degrees, people backed by the power of government and drawing on experts of all sorts, failed to do as well as masses of people of the sort routinely disdained by intellectuals?
What could be the reason? And does that reason apply in other contexts besides the economy?
One easy to understand reason is that central planners in the days of the Soviet Union had to set over 24 million prices. Nobody is capable of setting and changing 24 million prices in a way that will direct resources and output in an efficient manner.
For that, each of the 24 million prices would have to be weighed and set against each of the other 24 million prices. in order to provide incentives for resources to go where they were most in demand by producers and output to go where it was most in demand by consumers.
In a market economy, however, nobody has to take on such an impossible task. Each producer and each consumer need only be concerned with the relatively few prices relevant to their own decisions, with coordination of the economy being left to supply and demand.
In short, amateurs were able to outperform professionals in the economy because the amateurs did not take on tasks beyond the capability of any human being or any manageable group of human beings.
Put differently, "expertise" includes only a small band of knowledge out of the vast spectrum of knowledge required for dealing with many real world complications.
Nothing is easier than for experts with that small band of knowledge to imagine that they are so much wiser than others. Central planning is only the most demonstrable failure of such thinking. The disasters from other kinds of social engineering involve much the same problem.
Surgeons succeed because they stick to surgery. But if we were to put surgeons in control of commodity speculation, criminal justice and rocket science, they would probably fail as disastrously as central planners.
Agreed, it is the DUTY of the parents to educate their children.
And if the burden of an improperly educated child fell on the parents, as it should, and as it would without our welfare/social safety hammock,
children would be educated.
Sounds like a very good example of the elitism that exists in education.
Not surprising. I tend to think that parents have been gifted by God to teach their own kids. That’s pretty tough to compete with, professionally trained or not.
We homeschool. We can do in a couple of hours what takes a government school all day.
This is fun: http://www.fredoneverything.net/Indians.shtml
And this is even better. And it is eight years old!
http://www.equaljustice.ca/cgi-bin/forum.cgi/noframes/read/11645
Exactly...Many many politicians would be up the creek without the enemedia, the Net is slowly changing some of that now. :)
Authorized, equipped, and commanded to.
Deu 11:18-21
Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
My daughter has home schooled her three and she fortunately lives in a district that assists in home schooling, it kind of makes it the best of both worlds.
Great article. Reminds me of 1 Corinthians 12:21.
“And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.”
I would disagree with Sowell on this. The reason the millions of individuals, firms and families do better than central planners is the individuals, firms and familiers are much greater experts on their tastes, income and profits than any central planner could possibly be.
So the experts are right in this case, it is more matter of confusing who the experts are. Central planners can not possibly be more expert in your life or firm than you are.
The goal of central planning is not to provide the individual with what they want.
On the contrary, it is to force choices onto the individual that the planners deem to be superior to the choices that the individual would make if free to do so.
Road to Serfdom - FA Hayek
LOL! So true, so true and well put by you in re Mr. Sowell.
Without hesitation I would agree.
Great editorial!
(a) professionals do so poorly, it isn't hard to best them.Which one do you think is the case? Homeschooling children not just for minimum standards but for excellence and high achievement is a task that is nearly beyond the capability of a family with two wage earners. Homeschooling that feeds on an "I can do it myself" attitude may easily deprive itself of one of the lessons of economics that even Sowell must know very well: division of labor.
(b) amateurs do so well, making professionals obsolete.
The best professors I had made their money in the real world, then taught as an afterthought. They knew when to throw theory in the textbooks out the window.
Most of the home schooled kids my family has met have been very strange kids. Their academic attainments vary but I would guess that as a group they are significantly better than average.
The social weirdness is another thing, but maybe it sorts itself out when the child becomes an adult and enters the world of work and society.
I think home schoolers probably learn better because of the lack of harmful peer influence, but not all peer influence is harmful and some may even be essential in developing a normal personality.
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