One of the easiest ways to spot bias
is to listen for one side's buzz terms. If you hear
"pro-choice" you're listening to the pro-abortion
side, and pro-life means one is on the anti-abortion
side (unless the same speaker says both).
So, when the newscaster on CNN refers
to "investment in education" instead of
"expenditures on education," you know
he is so liberal he doesn't know he's using Libspeak.
Since only Libspeakers have been reporting
the news, those for more Federal spending on education
get away with a really childish trick.
They know that the more years of school
a person has, the more money he makes, ON AVERAGE.
They then say that education alone has produced
all that extra income.
Meanwhile, back on earth, you can
do the same thing with almost any expenditure. The
more expensive the car a person owns, the more money
he is likely to make. The bigger the house he was
raised in, the more likely he is to have gone to
college and graduate school.
In other words, by exactly the same
statistical process by which we justify "investments
in education," we could justify an "investment"
in a limousine or a home in Beverly Hills.
If your parents spend more money on
education, it means that they are probably richer.
If your parents spent more on their home, it probably
means they were, ON AVERAGE, richer and just plain
smarter than people who have smaller homes. Their
kids will then be smarter and make more money.
It's too bad the "investment
in education" logic is so silly, because it
would be wonderful if it worked. It would mean that
education is magic, and that any moron could be
made a brain surgeon by "investing" money
in training him. It would mean you wouldn't even
have to be human to make millions. You could take
a horse, a duck, or a puppy dog, give them the magic
training and they would be able to make all that
money.
It takes training to develop somebody's
natural talent. But you have to have the talent
first, and that is what all education statistics
leave out. A psychologist writing a column was recently
asked if you have to be SMART to be a "gifted
child." The implication was that if he said
you had to be born smart to be "gifted,"
he would be anaziwhowantstokillsixmilionjews".
OH, no!, said the good doctor, you
could be born retarded and still stand just as good
a chance of being "gifted" as one of those
smart kids.
You can see that this sort of logic
leads straight to silliness.
The fact is that education or training
is used to develop the gifts you already have. You
are paid not only for training, but for BEING TRAINABLE.
Being trainable, in turn, is a matter
of genetics. Hitler believed in genetics, so our
entire national policy is rooted in the idea that
anyone who mentions innate intelligence is anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
For those who make their living in
education or other supplements to genetics, this
is a wonderful label. It means that those who sell
social sciences like education or psychology or
sociology can say that they can cure anything. They
don't say you can hire ducks and make them brain
surgeons, but they say you can do absolutely anything
else by "investing in education" or financing
other social programs.
And if you disagree with them, they
shriek that you are anzaiwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
All of our silliest misconceptions are defended
by that label.
Until we stop screaming "HITLER!"
and begin to apply logic to education policy, it
is going to keep failing, no matter how much you
"invest" in it.
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