Typical-Minding and School Reform

[Epistemic Status: Derived from thoughts I had just after waking up. Probably incomplete and definitely lacking rigor.]

In fourth grade, after a considerable struggle, my parents managed to get me admitted to the district's gifted program. This program, like most others of its sort, was a bit of a joke. "Gifted" education consisted of taking us out of class for one day a week (they're smart, surely they can afford to miss a day of class and still do their homework!) to pursue topics of our own interest--not that we got a whole lot of flexibility in the matter. To be fair, most of the ideas I floated were terrible and demonstrated a real lack of grounding in the world, but what do you expect from the son of two Mensans dropped into the slag heap of public education? Anyway, we got most of a day off each week for "gifted" education...then half a day...than an hour each day...then an hour each day if we could find time in our schedule.

I haven't seen what special needs education looks like, but I imagine they have much the same problem. Maybe they get more attention--my impression is that most attention directed at both ends of the bell curve is focused on making sure we look and act normal, and special needs tend to be more visible than gifted. But in either case, the central notion is people should behave like everyone else, you shouldn't be different, egalitarianism.

The school district couldn't afford, politically though possibly financially, to take all the gifted kids and shove them in their own corner. That would imply they're better than everyone else, and deserve more attention. How dare you imply my Johnny isn't as important!

Similarly, there's not many options for dealing with special needs kids. There isn't enough money to give them the attention needed to sort out those with potential from the duds. You've basically got two choices: take all of them and shove them in a corner to be neglected (How dare you imply my Johnny isn't as smart as everyone else!) , or leave them in the general population, slowing everyone down.

It's not popular to say this, but people are different. Some are faster than others. Some learn in one way, some in another. Some top out in third grade and some are graduating from Harvard at the same age.

Most of them are in the middle. Our educational system functions okay for these people. But we should realize that some people are faster than others. I'd argue we should have different school tracts for the various segments of the population--three to five should do. In a sense, we already have this, through Honors/AP classes, "regular", and the more remedial courses.

Why can't we say this publicly? I've been particularly surprised by the resistance I get towards these motions, even among those who would benefit from such an arrangement. I've long wondered why.

Enter typical mind fallacy.

Many smart people naively assume that everyone else is just as smart as they are, provided you can poke and prod them the right way to make their inner intelligence show. There's some validity to this--certain people function terribly in environments that others do fine in--but some are just not as mentally capable.

At the other end of the spectrum, it's common to see assumptions that the gifted students aren't actually that much better, just catered to. I'd be just as good, they say, if only someone gave me a chance.

Typical mind fallacy is at play here. It's uncomfortable to admit that some people are just put together differently than you. It's even more difficult to admit that these people-not-like-you are still people, if history is any guide.

Telling people that they aren't like each other, and that some of them are better than others, is not really viable in a democracy. And thus we get our current school system, where only the very rich have the option of taking their children out of the cesspool of public schools and families are slaving against Moloch to live in better districts.

Maybe we should just admit that people aren't actually equal, and make an effort to live with that uncomfortable reality, instead of fighting it.

Thoughts About Libertarians

Contrary to what some parts of the internet might suggest, libertarians are actually a very diverse bunch. (We're also very good at setting up echo chambers, which is why it can be easy to think your brand of libertarianism is the only one worth mentioning.) Today I'd like to focus on one particular aspect: the epistemic beliefs that lead to their adopting the philosophy.

Before we continue, I would like to be clear that the two belief structures examined below are the not only ways that people become libertarians. I'm not even sure that they're the most common. But they are the most interesting to me right now, so here we are.

First, there are those who become libertarians because they believe it is the right ideology. By right I do not mean morally right, so much as pragmatically best. Morality is often intertwined, though, especially from a rule-utilitarian standpoint. This sort of libertarian believes capitalism is the best economic system, democracy is the best form of government yet devisedimplemented, and the Constitution works pretty well.

Second, there are those who become libertarians because they don't believe they know how to run other people's lives. They see libertarianism as the only option for not forcing a belief system on others. These sorts tend to be divided on capitalism and democracy and definitely biased toward anti-constitution anarchism.

I came to libertarianism from neoconservatism through the first camp. I was very confident in capitalism, but didn't find social conservatism (or religion in general) very appealing. Moral behavior without government enforcement was interesting but didn't seem very viable. It wasn't until discovering Objectivism that the possibility of morality in a godless universe was really presented to me in full, and thus becoming a libertarian became much easier.

Since that time, I've spent some time in that other camp, especially when those ideas are popular (for example, Gary Johnson's campaign in 2012 relied heavily on that rhetoric), though it wasn't a comfortable experience. In part, those arguments lack rigor. It's easy to say "I don't know how to run your life better than you do", but for a significant segment of the population, having someone else take over would be a vast improvement, from reduced responsibility/stress levels if nothing else.

A better argument would be to point out that, in the space of possible policies, most will do more harm than good. However, committing to the position of not-knowing is not a good move in the greater debate. Libertarians have long been able to switch between the two mindsets depending on what the conversation demanded. This is a pretty basic motte-and-bailey strategy, which the more rational subsections of the movement should attempt to avoid.

In all fairness, there's a possible middle ground between these two positions. The argument goes something like this:

The space of possible policies is incredibly huge, and it's very difficult to determine which are superior. This is true whether we're talking about macroeconomics or how to decorate your bedroom. Because this is so, we think people should be left to their own devices so that they can experiment with policies at their own discretion until they feel satisfied. However, I have opinions about what the optimal policies are.

The discerning reader will notice a problem here. Laissez-faire in the realm of personal lives is very different from laissez-faire in the realm of, say, fiscal policy. If you do a terrible job decorating your bedroom, that affects you and maybe your immediate family. If the economy crashes, that affects millions of people, sometimes quite significantly.

Good luck winning debates with that approach. To argue for hands-off economic policies, you should have evidence (or at least theory) that indicates doing so produces better outcomes. That's a bit more difficult and, I believe, the more rational thing to do.

Back to School--ish

It's a new school year! Except, well, I haven't had a term off since 2013. Summer classes have given way to something more closely resembling a proper academic load. Right now I'm signed up for Introduction to Aerospace Engineering, Computing for Engineers, Astrobiology and Russian Culture. Hopefully that'll hold, because I still haven't be formally admitted to the engineering school. I'm not buying textbooks till I find out.

Emotionally, I'm at a dead end. Getting to the fall semester was the extent of my thinking. Get through spring. Get through summer. Visit Mary in Minnesota. Start in the fall.

Now I need "goals" and "plans" again. For the time being, my plan is to go to class and stay on top of my schoolwork. I anticipate success: math and hard science classes were an academic drag, hoovering up far more time than they warranted. Now that I'm done on both counts, we can focus on what matters: spacecraft.

We're not doing that yet, but I've got Kerbal Space Program to sate me during these lower-level classes. We are building a drone this semester, which is more than Purdue can say.

Beyond that...I'm not sure. My professor for Intro to Aerospace was quite clear that he didn't believe engineering students have free time, period. Whether that's accurate is anyone's guess--but it's probably more accurate than not. All too many students come to college expecting it to be all fun and games, when really it's stress and all-nighters.

Was there really a time when I thought getting in would be the most ruthless part?