IBTP!
Sowell rules!
The same could be said about Freepers and the Pajamamedia outdoing “professional” journalists. Dan Rather wishes it weren’t true. Now some of us are focused on Obama’s birth certificate forgery and the MSM is in deep silence/whistling past the graveyard mode.
A child who is home schooled, on average, is a different kind of child than one who goes to government schools.
Most important, the child who is home schooled has highly motivated parents. The child shares the genetics and the values of the dedicated, hard-working parents. Many kids in the government schools, on the other hand, have absent and/or unmotivated parents.
It’s not necessarily the teachers who are bad, it’s the self-selection into homeschooling or into government schools that makes the difference.
“When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession”
That is why acting is not a profession. If a 9 year old girl(Tatum O’Neil) or a first time actor practicing physician(Dith Prang)can win the ultimate of awards, how difficult is that “profession”.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the paradigm and geopolitical/culture under which the public education system was created and nurtured expired a LONG time ago.
Public schools are obsolete.
Radio killed the Rock Star and the Internet (supercharged by google) killed public schools. They just don’t know it yet.
I know a student who was majoring in chemistry and wanted to teach chemistry in high school. Despite having taken rigorous chemistry, math and physics classes for her chemistry major she was still required to take a bonehead science class for teachers in order to get her teaching degree. Sadly a student who only took this bonehead science class would be fully qualified to teach high school chemistry in many states.
No wonder our students do so poorly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A few years ago here in Wisconsin a home-schooled kid won the national spelling bee. A Wisconsin paper then interviewed a Wisconsin public high school teacher for his reaction. He sneered that someone memorizing a bunch of words didn’t prove anything. You can bet that if it was one of his students, the school would probably have erected a statue of the student. After reading the teacher’s comments, I would have loved to kick him right where the sun doesn’t shine.
Another “home run” by Thomas Sowell!
Incidentally, central planners setting 24 million prices is not exactly unique to the Soviet Union. The US tried something similar to this with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s NRA c. 1933, which was so heavily pushed that parades were staged to publicize and promote it. Fortunately, it was struck down by the SCOTUS a few years later and hasn’t been revived in that particular form since, although government price controls have been implemented from time to time since then.
Homeschooling ping!!!
Because we've been public-schooled, and can't seem to imagine anything different. Plus there's the free baby-sitting angle. Other than that, I'm at a loss.