Education’s coconut cake problem
HARVARD PROFESSOR Roland Fryer has made a discovery with the potential to transform public education. To understand it, though, it helps to first hear a story about the conundrum of the coconut cake.
Fryer’s grandmother makes an astounding coconut cake, a magical confection of sweetness and air he’s loved since he was a kid growing up in Florida. Fryer wanted to learn to make the cake himself, but every time he pressed for a recipe, she gave him directions like “use a good amount of sugar, a little flour but not too much, and just a bit of baking powder.’’
She wasn’t hiding anything. He’d seen her make it, and the truth is that she works her kitchen by intuition, grabbing what she needs and pouring in what feels right. The secret of grandma’s coconut cake, it seemed, would follow her to the grave.
But Fryer had a thought. A few Thanksgivings ago he watched her while she made the cake, writing down everything she did. Every time she was about to drop an ingredient into the bowl, he stopped her and measured. It drove her a bit crazy, but he ended up with the recipe, and a piece of family history he can share with his own grandkids some day.
By day, the 34-year-old Fryer is a brilliant economist - among the youngest scholars ever to earn tenure at Harvard - who studies schools. And education, he realized, has its own coconut-cake problem. There are public schools that are