Rule 5: Teach More Practical Arts

Liberal arts instruction produces liberals. Done right, this can mean classical liberals, which is rather nice. Classical liberalism can be delightful if buffered with enough Christianity and common sense. Liberal arts done poorly produces a different sort of liberal: the kind that loves government programs but still believes in freedom of expression and a few other freedoms. Liberal arts done really badly produces Marxists, Wall St. Occupiers, woketards, and truculent baristas with massive student loan debt.

Some conservative intellectuals have been calling for a renewal of the true classical liberal arts, a re-appreciation of the Western Canon, and so forth. They have some good ideas. When we teach the liberal arts, we should do it right. But frankly, I think our biggest problem is that we are trying to teach too much liberal arts, and the results are calls for excess bureaucracy, socialism, Marxism, a falling away from Christianity, and shit tons of gibberish.

The reasons for these failure modes are many, and so this chapter is going to be a bit of a ramble. But I can give you a starting point to keep in mind as I follow the twisted threads of how our educational system systematically fails: the liberal arts were not meant for the masses originally. The liberal arts were meant for those with liberty, the gentlemen of the ancient world. When we became a republic we divided out the powers and privileges once limited to the gentry, so it made sense to give the masses a more gentlemanly education. And our forebears made it sort of work --with the help of lots of beatings. But they never succeeded in fully mixing equality and the liberal arts.

Today, our government is more frantically egalitarian and we no longer issue teacher paddles to maintain order. The results have been catastrophic: massive child abuse, overflowing prisons, an epidemic of mental illness, an inversion of sexual mores, and an impending end to America's leadership on the world stage.

Fortunately, solutions exist, and many are the sort of solutions which can be mandated from above: metrics, schedules, curricula, and facilities. I believe most teachers and students will enjoy these solutions in the long run.

But before I get to those solutions, I'm going to take you through a tour of the problems. These problems run very deep, so deep that this is one area where merely winding back the clock will not work. (Completely pure Reaction by definition is a strategy for failure. If we go back exactly to where we were, we simply recreate the conditions that got us in the mess we are in today. Our educational system is one area where we need some differences in our do-over.)

A Recipe for Envy

I have a confession to make: I was a terrible athlete during my school years. When it came time to pick teams, I was generally last. Thanks to a gluten intolerance that I was unaware of until years later, I was scary thin. I even ordered one of courses advertised in the comic books in order to build muscle. The course called for eating mass quantities of protein. Milk has protein so I consumed it in excess, which did build me a bit of muscle but also did bad things to my endurance thanks to the saturated fat. Finally, I am a science nerd. I focus my mind to do what I do well. I stink at dividing my consciousness into multiple channels whether it be conversations at a party or player movements on the basketball court. Only in racquet sports, where focus is key, and strength and endurance requirements are limited could I play a respectable game.

Yet somehow I managed to get mostly A's in physical education. This was wrong, very wrong! I should have gotten D's and F's in physical education. Either that, or there should have been no grades given at all—in physical education or in mathematics, etc.

The thinking back then was that physical education was for Building Character. Grades were thus based on attitude, following the rules, and how hard you tried. To hand out low grades based on lack of talent (physical prowess) was considered unfair -- for PE class. For mathematics, on the other hand, grades were based on output. Getting the right answers produced A's, even if produced with a smartass attitude and little effort.

This lackadaisical approach to grading PE (as well as music and art), couple with more rigorous grading for the core academic (and IQ correlated) subjects was meant to emphasize the importance of academics. Such an approach might well work in a wealthy suburban school filled with children of knowledge workers. But in a mixed socioeconomic class school, the result is social stigma and/or bullying for the academically successful.

The winners in PE class or in extramural sports get objectively measured by reality and recognized by peers. They earn coolness points. The winners in academics get judged by the authority figures. They earn teacher's pet points—considerably less valuable!

The mighty but not mighty smart deserve some teacher's pet points—reminders that they can be valued members of society. And the mutant smarty pants types need to feel the occasional sting of a bad grade, so they can deal with the future stress of competing with peers when they go to a good college, or enter the workplace.

In the rough neighborhoods of our inner cities, envy-driven bullying can be downright dangerous. There's a whole bunch of poor Black kids who are hiding their intellect for reasons of survival. Their only way out is enrolling in a brutally authoritarian KIPP school or the equivalent, thanks to deluded egalitarians who shudder at the thought of allowing charter schools to be selective. This dynamic throws off the IQ stats and gives the Human Biodiversity crowd some naughty numbers to play with. Not good!

Stupid Grading Tricks

My high school required all teachers use the same mapping from percentage grades to letter grades, and that mapping was tight. 95-100% was an A; 88-94% was a B; Anything below 75% was an F. Such a grading system may be appropriate for subjects where perfectionism is the goal -- such as grammar, punctuation, and accounting. But for optimal learning of new material, this grading system was absolutely terrible. You cannot attempt challenging problems and maintain a high percentage success rate at the same time. And even for simple rote memorization, Piotr Wozniak discovered that optimal learning comes from taking quizzes when 20% of the material has been forgotten.

For my own major, physics, taking on some hard problems without adequate instruction is an essential part of the learning experience. One of my undergrad professors used a 20 point range for A, and a 15 point range for B and C. (I cannot remember if they had Ds or went straight to F from C at my alma mater.) That professor was the hardest professor in the department. Even with that wide grading range, often the entire class would fail a test, and he would give the identical test again a week later -- and still there were C's. And this was for the physics majors, so the bottom IQ in the class was in the US Senator range.

For my high school with the tight grading system, the IQ spread in a class could be pretty high, even for academic track classes. (It was a small rural school.) The tight mapping between number grades and letter grades was an impossible aspirational goal. Many teachers cheated. They gave out Extra Credit assignments which allowed the mathematical absurdity of scoring over 100%. Or some would apply a nonlinear mapping between percent correct and "number score" -- effectively grading on a curve.

All this cheating on the part of the teachers was a poor lesson in ethics for the students. Grading on a curve, however, was arguably worse: it made villains of those who Broke the Curve. Yes, we had yet another lesson in envy and Zero Sum thinking -- great training for future liberals of the socialistic variety.

Sisyphus and Self Image

Letter grades are dispiriting. They display how well you are doing with respect to some moving target: your peers, state standards, the current textbook, or Teacher's Mysterious Whims. With the possible exception of Curve Grading, the underlying metaphor is that of working on an assembly line -- not exactly thrilling fun.

For the bright there is nowhere to go beyond A+. For the not so bright, it's a struggle to maintain a C. "Oh boy! I'm average!" shouted no student ever. Each test received, each report card, is an exercise in humiliation, in dishonor. For those living in an honor culture, the latter factor is a very big deal.

There is a path out of this dishonor: be Cool and stop trying. You cannot fail if you don't play the game. Better yet, question the validity of the game. Disrespect the authorities while you are at it. Best of all? Disrupt the game; be the Class Clown, or be a bully. The entire class slows down. Standards drop.

Now then, who lives in an honor society these days? How about The Projects? The welfare ghettos? The rough neighborhoods? There might even be a racial correlation. Yes, we have another source of naughty numbers for the scientific racists to play with. And since a high concentration of such disruptive students pulls then entire school down, the Social Justice Whiners get some Disparate Impact to complain about. "More money!" they cry. But more money is not the solution.

The problem is that letter grading is not compatible with dysfunctional honor societies, unless harsh measures are taken. We used to use harsh measures. Aspiring class clowns and bullies got whacked—as often as necessary. Dunce caps and other forms of humiliation were applied to those who didn't study. Staying after school was an available therapeutic punishment. And if none of that worked, there was always the expulsion option.

During my elementary school years I experienced the last gasps of the old solution in action. Teachers were issued regulation paddles. Hard cases were referred to the assistant principal—a former Marine drill sergeant who could be terrifying when he wanted to be. We had over 30 children per classroom and our textbooks and desks were old and falling apart. Yet learning happened.

Integration threw a monkey wrench into that solution. Allowing teachers and administrators to administer corporal punishment requires a great deal of trust between parents and the system. That level of trust goes down with Diversity, and way down when the diverse groups have a rather ugly history. Meanwhile, modern fuzzy, cuddly, progressive notions of child rearing have made spanking suspect, even for parents. Better to have kids beaten by bullies or buggered in prison when they grow up than to be spanked by parents or authority figures -- according to the latest science.

Today, we have new forms of abuse to replace the paddles. As school standards have dropped, the government has resorted to desperation measures. Since young children are more easily intimidated, academic training has been pushed back to preschool. Cram as much academic training as possible before the kids get older and unruly. And I hear that schools are cutting back on recess. Good-bye childhood! Hello teaching to the standardized tests. I hear some schools are cutting back on art and music instruction as well.

There is a better way, and a fundamentally different grading system is an important part of it. But before I get to it, I will build the case for some other fundamental changes. For the time being I'll leave you with a duct tape fix: segregate classes by ability and grade every class independently. This would give the not so bright the opportunity get an A. Honor can be preserved without pulling the class down. Also, it would make it possible to subject the brightest to some real challenges without causing others to flunk

But this fix is imperfect at best. Students will compare, and if the top students see the dull witted getting similar grades, the grading system loses credibility. Grade Point Average becomes meaningless.

Grade Point Average is Anti Capitalist

Capitalism and competition go together. Yet here I am trying to defend the self-esteem of those who lack my particular talents. How is that reactionary? Or even conservative?

The answer is that capitalism is a particular kind of competition. I don't have a Toyota toothbrush, and I don't eat General Electric grass fed steaks. I don't shop for cars at Food Lion, and I don't eat lunch at Bed Bath and Beyond. I don't look for luxury products at Dollar General, and I don't expect low, low prices at Nieman Marcus.

Capitalism is about carving out a niche where you or your business can profitably compete. Despite my rant against "Free Trade" I believe in Comparative Advantage. There are many different ways for a business to be valuable to customers. Likewise, there are many different virtues for potential employees to cultivate: cleverness, specialized knowledge, self motivation, pleasant disposition, charm, extroversion, endurance, physical strength, honesty, ability to read other people, willingness to work weird hours, willingness to do dirty jobs, endurance of unpleasant customers, ability to multitask, patience to do the same task repeatedly, and many many more. And if you want to work for a startup or start your own business, willingness to defer gratification is a biggie.

GPA is a one dimensional metric with authorities, not a market, setting the standards. This model is socialistic.

And since GPA is used for college admissions, high schools put the weight on the g-weighted subjects. (g is the "General Intelligence" supposedly measured by IQ tests.)

Liberal Arts = Bureaucratic Arts

A long time ago in a high school far far away I would from time to time ask my teachers, "Why do I need to learn this? What is it for?" The answer was often, "You will need it for college." I found the such answers unsatisfying at the time, but usually slogged along nonetheless. I expected to go to college. My family had academic traditions going back over a century. My great great grandfather had gone to West Point at the same time as Robert E. Lee; reportedly they were friends.

For those who have less Identity driving them to go to college "You will need this for college" is rather weak motivation. Back in my last couple years of high school I noticed a drop off in effort among many who had the smarts but not the college intent—especially the Black men. The Black (and White) women were much more prone to slogging on to the end.

Here, we have yet another source of naughty data points, but my personal experience indicates a weaker racial component. I saw the effect among Whites as well. (Still, doing a better job of answering the question "Why bother?" is a major component of the reforms I'm working toward. It's an opportunity to decrease inequality by lifting people up vs. pulling down the talented.)

Anyway, I did get into college, and a very beautiful and pleasant liberal arts college at that. I had a blast. Going to classes with people who actually wanted to be there was most refreshing. Professors had the power to eject any student who was even a little bit disruptive. And since the talent range was much smaller than public school, letter grading was actually meaningful. (That's what admission standards are for, by the way. It's not about Privilege.)

Still, questions would arise in my mind, especially about classes outside my major: "Why should I learn this? What is the practical utility?" Some of the answers I received were shocking to me: "The Liberal Arts are not about job training," "You will learn to do your job when you get to the workplace", "We are teaching the Higher Life of the Mind," or "You go to college to have something to think about when you retire."

Yep, the liberal arts were originally designed for the gentlemen of antiquity, men who had time on their hands thanks to wealth and slaves. This does not scale up to the rulers of a true democracy! Somebody has to do the mundane work!

With that being said, long before modern democracy, the liberal arts were taught to a larger class than just the gentry. They were taught to aspiring lawyers, clergy, and bureaucrats. (There was much overlap between these categories during the Middle Ages.) The liberal arts are the bureaucratic arts.

So, what happens when the system cranks out more bureaucratic arts degrees than there are bureaucratic jobs? Answer: you get calls for more bureaucracy! And this, my philistine friends, is why the universities, especially the humanities departments, have long suffered a hankering for socialism. If you are tired of seeing colleges cranking out professional protesters, Wall St. Occupiers, and truculent baristas, you need to add some practical arts courses to the core college curriculum.

Too Much Liberal Arts Lead to a Libertine Society

The liberal arts career path is a leisurely career path. This was fine for antiquity's leisure class. It also worked for aspiring celibate priests during the Middle Ages. But as a standard career path for sizable fraction of society, this is a model for moral disaster.

The biological urge to make babies cuts in years before the liberal arts model prepares people to support a family. Our society struggled hard enough to get men to postpone sex until 21 back in the old days, when a college degree was enough to get a real job quickly after graduation. After World War II, our corporations had a large appetite for white collar workers (aka bureaucrats) and they were willing to finish the training that colleges and high schools started.

Thanks to the dumbification of our high schools, it takes a Bachelor's degree to get jobs which once required just a high school diploma and decent grades. Today's Master's degree is becoming yesteryear's Bachelor's. And since we are sending people to college who aren't college material, many are taking 5-6 years to get what was supposed to be a four year degree. And since we are cranking out more degrees in the bureaucratic arts than there are bureaucratic positions, college is often followed by low paying internships. Thankfully, student loans and starter homes in safe neighborhoods have grown ever more expensive. It's party time!

Fornication before marriage has become the norm for our educated elite. And it's going to stay that way as long as we keep the age of viable middle class family formation pushed into the upper 20s and beyond. And since our educated elite has completely given up on certain traditional family values, our society's institutions have largely given up on any attempt at enforcing chastity. Look up the guidelines for sex education used in a majority of public schools. They're downright satanic.

And don't get too excited about a Supreme Court victory on the abortion issue. We might get it, but we still have the problem of an educated elite that has experienced the threat of a ruined career due to an unwanted pregnancy.

If you want our shrinking moral minority to become a moral majority again, start with making early family formation viable. Teach the practical arts at a much earlier age so the impatient don't need a college degree to start a career. And get the brats out of the way of those who truly want to learn, so that the grad school bound can be partway through their Bachelor's degree before they turn 18.

In Part 2 of this Rule, we'll look at a better paradigm than the liberal arts paradigm.