Monsters
When somebody does something awful, my most immediate response is to wonder what was going on in their head that made that action seem okay. See, I believe that the vast majority of people try to do what they believe is right, what is in line with the rules for how the world is supposed to work. Even the most horrible acts are somehow, in their perpetrator's mind, okay.
Sometimes it's because that person's mind really is broken. When someone starts taking orders from the voice of Satan speaking through a dog, his perception of reality is so twisted that it's hard to imagine how he ended up in that dark and distorted place where it's okay to kill people you don't even know. But Son of Sam type killers are not the norm.
I don't think I believe in monsters. At least, I don't believe that monsters are somehow fundamentally different from the rest of the non-monstrous population. I think monsters are people who have found a way to see doing something monstrous as okay. And while I believe that each of us is ultimately responsible for our own choices, I also believe that as a culture, we grease the downward path to certain dark conclusions.
Humans are hardwired against killing other humans, and so the first step toward killing someone else is to see that person as not-a-person, not really human. A person, of course, is someone like me, someone who thinks, feels, reacts, believes as I do. Not-persons act out of some other set of impulses and motivations that I cannot comprehend.
Our culture is depressingly adept at labeling not-persons. Our entertainment narratives repeatedly hammer home that persons are white guys, and women and not-white guys are persons to the extent that they come close to the white guy. Our politics have become heavily infected with the idea oCURMUDGUCATION: Monsters:
Sweden vs. Nevada
Folks who are excited about Nevada's joyful embrace of choice-on-steroids might want to take a look at Sweden.
As my esteemed colleague Edushyster reminds us, the all-choice system experiment has been tried. Sweden has been creating an all-choice, all-privatized system for decades, and it has not gone well.
"It was in the early 2000s that the Swedish school system somehow seems to have lost its soul. Schools began to compete no longer on delivering superior quality but on offering shiny school buildings in shopping centres, and I think that’s the issue we are really seeing." Andreas Schleicher, OECD.
I am going to keep repeating this line until it starts to sink in:
The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing.
We have our own free-market education laboratory-- post-secondary education. As you may have heard, the cost of college has expanded like a hamster clamped onto a helium tank. There are a variety of suspects, all instructive.
One theory is that costs are driven up by the amount of money people have to spend. Student aid has been climbing, which has had the same effect on costs that you could expect if you went to a used car lot and announced, "Oh, I though I only had ten grand to spend on a car, but it turns out I actually have fifteen." (Hint: the salesman does not say, "Oh, put that extra five K away-- you won't need it for anything.")
Some analysts blame frills, like Schleicher's "shiny school buildings." Parents who drop their children off at schools far nicer than their own add anecdotal punch to this idea. Why do schools add frills? Because a frill is good, easy marketing, and because not all customers in the marketplace are driven by rational consideration of educational quality.
Other analysts have noted the increase in administrators. More money, more students, more facilities, more marketing = more people in charge.
All of this is predictable by the what I'm going to call the Jobs Effect, from an interview with Steve Jobs in which he observed that past a certain point, improving your product does not make you more
As my esteemed colleague Edushyster reminds us, the all-choice system experiment has been tried. Sweden has been creating an all-choice, all-privatized system for decades, and it has not gone well.
"It was in the early 2000s that the Swedish school system somehow seems to have lost its soul. Schools began to compete no longer on delivering superior quality but on offering shiny school buildings in shopping centres, and I think that’s the issue we are really seeing." Andreas Schleicher, OECD.
I am going to keep repeating this line until it starts to sink in:
The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing.
We have our own free-market education laboratory-- post-secondary education. As you may have heard, the cost of college has expanded like a hamster clamped onto a helium tank. There are a variety of suspects, all instructive.
One theory is that costs are driven up by the amount of money people have to spend. Student aid has been climbing, which has had the same effect on costs that you could expect if you went to a used car lot and announced, "Oh, I though I only had ten grand to spend on a car, but it turns out I actually have fifteen." (Hint: the salesman does not say, "Oh, put that extra five K away-- you won't need it for anything.")
Some analysts blame frills, like Schleicher's "shiny school buildings." Parents who drop their children off at schools far nicer than their own add anecdotal punch to this idea. Why do schools add frills? Because a frill is good, easy marketing, and because not all customers in the marketplace are driven by rational consideration of educational quality.
Other analysts have noted the increase in administrators. More money, more students, more facilities, more marketing = more people in charge.
All of this is predictable by the what I'm going to call the Jobs Effect, from an interview with Steve Jobs in which he observed that past a certain point, improving your product does not make you more