Assorted Musings

• My generally libertarian orientation is being sorely tested by Big Tech and Big Credit. Generally speaking, I think it's a bad idea for the government to step in and regulate businesses (beyond, of course, protections against obvious crimes such as fraud and intellectual property theft) -- but what else are we to do when we're faced with large corporations who have locked down almost total control of our principal communications network? As revealed by the deplatforming of Alex Jones (who's an idiot) and Sargon (who most assuredly is not), Google, Twitter, Facebook, Patreon, Paypal, et. al. now have almost unlimited power to silence dissenting voices -- and honestly, I'm pessimistic that the Rubin/Peterson crusade to find a work-around is going to come to much. It may in fact be time for politicians to step in and demand an Internet Bill of Rights that will outlaw political discrimination on social media. It's one thing to allow businesses in meat space to discriminate based on belief; it's another thing to allow owners of our digital public square to do the same. The latter threatens our norm of free speech and should be aggressively countered.
• Lately, I've also been mulling over how we can fix education, as so many things worry me about the status quo. The ideas I've brainstormed include:
• Making the college admissions process far more transparent and objective. Schools should tell students which high school courses, grades, and minimum entrance exam scores indicate solid preparation to succeed -- and if they must include essays in their applications, those essays should be academic rather than personal to keep things 100% identity-blind and avoid discrimination against the less well-off and/or extroverted.
• Urging schools with large endowments to set up academies in low-income areas to identify talented-but-disadvantaged strivers and offer them classes to bring their academic records up to the aforementioned minimum standards. It's cruel to simply admit students who don't have the grounding to succeed at elite universities because muh diversity, inclusion, and equity. Give them the right foundation before they get to campus.
• Releasing the pressure valve on the whole college thing by 1) selling alternatives like career and technical education as equally admirable and not as consolation prizes for academic failures and 2) giving students an additional chance to prove their competence by instituting an exit exam for all college graduates so that where one goes to college will matter less. I want students in high school to feel free to take more risks instead of acting like dutiful resume-building automatons.
• On a completely different topic: how do we properly introduce more diversity into our geeky properties? Don't worry, grasshopper: I have thoughts on that too.
• Number one, stop denying that good female and non-white characters have existed for a while and do have fanbases. Back in the 90's, people were skeptical about Benjamin Sisko at first -- but now he's beloved. Why? Because he's a freaking bad ass -- but also because he's a three-dimensional character with a family, a tragic past, hobbies, etc. that have nothing to do with his skin color.
• Which leads me to number two: If the only thing you know about your new diverse character is that he or she is gay/trans/non-white/female/disabled/whatever, then you don't have an idea that people will grow to love. Put some more thought into your creations, for God's sake, and don't just skate on the identity angle.
• Number three, don't force your diverse character to spend every issue/episode/story tackling the issues-du-jour that everyone associates with his or her identity group. Let these characters have thoroughly unrelated adventures so they can display their universally heroic traits.
• Number four, don't assume everyone in identity group X thinks or behaves in the exact same way. Treat characters in identity group X as individuals, not as representatives. Have you considered, for example, writing a gay monarchist? Because I happen to know one in real life, and she's definitely very interesting.
• Number five, portray other cultures honestly. I'd give my right arm for, say, a Muslim superhero who isn't wholly Westernized and progressive. Can you imagine how fascinating that would be?
• Number six, don't steal existing properties. If you're concerned that your diverse character won't get attention if he or she isn't attached to an established IP, introduce your character in said IP in a supporting role and work on developing audience demand for a solo title by heeding bullets one through five above.

And with that, I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I shall return in 2019!

Mike Rowe Is Right

In college, I was the sort of student who routinely went above and beyond. For my neurobiology seminar, for example, I didn't just read the chapters I was assigned in Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat; I devoured the entire book and several others besides. After taking a freshman-level survey course in American history, I went a little mad and started reading everything I could acquire on the life of John Adams. And for my final project in developmental psychology, I deliberately chose the hardest option because I wanted the challenge.

I'm not sharing this to brag. I'm sharing this to make clear how much I enjoyed college and how much I appreciated the opportunity to go. And yes: For those students who wish to dive into the life of the mind or who have certain professional ambitions, college is a fantastic - and sometimes even necessary - option. But just as we shouldn't equate health insurance coverage with health care, we shouldn't equate universal college with universal education.

Mike Rowe has attracted bile from the left for making the same point in a series of excruciatingly polite posts (see here and here) responding to Bernie Sanders and his supporters, but he is 100% correct: It is foolishly utopian and economically wasteful to promote college as the only viable path to prosperity and happiness. How do I know? Because sadly, I participate in the college racket.

Okay -- maybe I'm being unfair to myself (and to my workplace). I also offer remedial instruction in all four core academic subjects. But a large chunk of my job revolves around college. Editing application essays, providing admissions counseling, prepping students for the SAT -- these are ever present services whose availability is featured prominently in all of our promotional materials. And I've grown to hate it -- just a little. I hate what the rat race does to my students -- especially the C students with below-average SAT scores. Often, I'm tempted to recommend NOVA: "It has guaranteed admissions agreements with most schools in the Virginia system, you know. And you don't have to take the SAT to apply." But thanks to our college mania, that kind of practical suggestion feels verboten. Indeed, when I was an adolescent twenty years ago, "NOVA" was a threat: "If you don't get good grades/study for the SAT/finish your college applications, you're going to end up going to NOVA."

Even for my top performers, the college-or-else zeitgeist has had negative consequences. Just last week, I was talking to a very talented eighth grader about his high school options, sharing with him my own personal philosophy that it is better to get a B or a C in a course in which you're the dumbest student in the room than it is to get an A in a course in which you are the big fish in the tiny pond. He didn't believe me, and honestly? I couldn't blame him. The intensity of the college competition is so insane that it is liable to make anyone risk-averse. But is that the sort of mentality we really want to foster in our brightest kids? Is that the sort of mentality that will lead to scientific progress or technological innovation?

Here's what kills me: Leftists claim to be champions of non-conformity -- yet they're greeting Rowe's reasonable request that we boost alternatives to college with howls of outrage. Why? As you yourselves insist, people are not all the same. So why does your fanatical belief in everyone's right to bodily autonomy and personal expression suddenly disappear when education is the topic of discussion? It makes one suspect that you care more about lavishing perks on the professors and administrators in your constituency than about rearing self-actualized citizens.

We need to open the relief valve, stop pushing college as High School 2.0, and start celebrating some truly counter-cultural options. Apprenticeships, trade schools, free (or low cost) online courses paired with qualification exams -- if these were presented to students as equally valid paths to success, perhaps fewer would be pressured to serve time in a traditional university and more would be freed to take chances with their learning and embark on their adult lives without the anchor of student debt. If there were an actual free market in post-secondary education, perhaps professors would end up complaining less about mercenary students who poo-poo the pleasures of liberal learning and do the bare minimum to earn their credentials like good little automatons. If we actually listened voices like Rowe's, maybe - just maybe - my kids would like school a little more.

A Modest Proposal for Making College Admissions More Fair: Remove Subjectivity and the Glitzy Foofaraw

Recently, a group of over eighty top colleges and universities - a coalition which includes the Ivies - announced that it was developing a web-based platform that would provide free college admissions counseling to teenagers in an attempt to improve a process that favors affluent students above all others. As reported in the New York Times:

They said that the new online tools are meant to be one-stop shopping for information about financial aid, application requirements and more. Students could also use this online platform to interact with top schools, sending inquiries and receiving answers. 

The platform would include a so-called “locker” for creative work — essays, videos, drawings — that students would be encouraged to begin filling in the ninth grade, as a reminder that college is on the horizon. 

They could share those lockers with mentors. And come application time, they could upload its contents for admissions officers.

The goal behind this project is laudable. As a professional with over ten years of experience in test coaching and college admissions counseling, I agree that the current college rat race only intensifies our class divisions. And yes -- though I may be conservative in temperament, I think the worsening bifurcation between the richest and the rest is a real problem that requires a serious, thoughtful response. I'm skeptical, however, that this Coalition for Access, Affordability, & Success is going to succeed in its endeavor. While offering free resources to demystify admissions requirements seems like a good idea, the drift away from standardization that the "locker" represents will probably only make things worse.

Granted, my entire career is living proof that a bubble test like the SAT is coachable, as my students routinely see gains of 200 - 300 points after a typical summer intensive. How do my students and I accomplish this? We go back to the beginning and teach foundational skills in mathematics, grammar, and reading comprehension. Whatever topics our students have insufficiently mastered, we seek to fill in, even if that means going back to middle school and relearning fractions and decimals. It is in fact a tremendous lie to claim that you can get by on the SAT through strategies and "tricks" alone; in reality, only students who have real, translatable academic skills across the college-prep curriculum can succeed. True: Statistical research reveals that the SAT is an imperfect measure of college readiness that does correlate with economic status. But for a test students take on a single Saturday morning, it is remarkably valid, and its expectations are both objective and transparent.

Essays, portfolios, resumes, and other features of the more highly favored "holistic" admissions process, on the other hand, are incredibly subjective. And trust me: The more subjective a requirement is, the more easily it can be gamed by ambitious parents with a lot of money to spend. A student who attends a full course of SAT prep with me is still, ultimately, on his own when the day of the test arrives; I can't take the test for him or whisper sweet mathematical formulae in his ear. A student who comes to me for help with the Common Application Essay, meanwhile, has access to my advice and my editor's pen from the outline all the way to the final draft. I don't write the essay for him, mind, but the product that results doesn't really reflect the student's native writing talent; it is, instead, an amalgam of his talent and mine. In short? This latter assessment turns out to be more coachable than our hated standardized tests.

Alas, I don't think you can remove coaching effects completely without resorting to unacceptable coercion. Parents have an inalienable right to use whatever resources are at their disposal to prepare their kids for the college admissions process and beyond. I do think, though, that increasing standardization rather than decreasing it will help minimize the impact of family wealth. In particular, it may be wise for schools to do the following:

1. Lean even more on objective assessments that the students must take alone in a proctored testing center. Schools should even do the student essays this way in order to get a real sense of each student's academic writing skills.
2. Use essay prompts that don't ask personal questions. Today's essays solicit information about students' interests, hobbies, and experiences and consequently favor privileged, extroverted students whose parents can shuttle them to a wealth of enriching activities. Get rid of them and use more academically-oriented prompts instead. You could, for example, ask a student to respond to a reading selection or answer a long-form math or science question.
3. Follow the Khan Academy example and use endowment money to open up more Massive Open Online Courses that striving students can take free of charge to supplement local curricula that may be lacking in advanced placement opportunities. Said platforms can be used for test prep services as well.
4. Set benchmarks for admission that are binding and publicly available for review. If more students meet the benchmarks than there are seats, hold a lottery. 

Again, it's unlikely that we will be able to create a fully egalitarian system for college admissions -- but leaving things up to "portfolios" and the whims of fallible human beings is definitely a huge mistake.