What is something you think is true that other people don’t, and why?

When I was going through school, despite being in accelerated programs, I think the curriculum was far too slow, laborious, and repetitive. Instead of the telos being valuable skills, or ‘how to think’, school often felt like a jobs factory mixed with daycare programs and social engineering.

When I graduated, I saw a lot of content about school choice that resonated with me, so that students would be able to find better matches for the curriculum and the environment where they’d want to learn. Yet, regardless of program, school still seemed to have a homogenizing effect: smooth people out, remove caustic components, send them on their way.

I think school currently follows a rights based approach where everyone has access to a certain minimum standard, which should presumably be enough to survive in the world. More progressive reformers think school should be more equalizing, and sometimes want to remove advanced math classes (harmful), or teach disadvantaged children at a charter school like success academy, or increase the amount of time that students are in school to improve literacy rates (also harmful). More conservative reformers think school should also teach traditional values (harmful) and to avoid teaching as much junk, in favor of teaching older literature, and more history.

Both visions of reform aim to move towards shaping children to be a specific way. I think that school should be a lot more laissez-faire. Students who wish to learn should, and students who don’t should not. I think, to that end, the speed and depth of topics is underwhelming and should be changed to focus not on the median, but on the excellent.

I think the approach of focusing little on the median, and instead focusing on the tail is much more likely to be a value multiplier. If you can take someone who’s super smart, and give them the tools they need to succeed, I think that’s much more valuable than spending a lot of resources on moving someone from below average to average. I think schools do comparatively little to help screen for smart kids, and this is to their detriment, and everyone else’s’.