Category: Education

My favorite genre of takes is the Counterfactual Identity Swap (CIS). The way the CIS works is you take an event in the news and you speculate on what the event would be like if the identity of the actors involved were different. Unsurprisingly, the CIS always proves that the take-maker is correct about whatever… Continue reading Counterfactual Identity Swap

I’ve been saying for some time now that, if the Left is going to push for more student benefits, it needs to do so under a pro-welfare banner, something it has not really done. My piece in Dissent on this topic features my latest rehash of this point: If we are actually going to push… Continue reading Are Students Workers or Nonworkers?

Conor P. Williams has a piece at 74 million that purports to be a simulation of what critics of Teach for America must be like. Apparently, in Wiliams’ view, they are coffee shop elite hipsters. As far as this genre of writing goes, Williams’ piece is not particularly funny, insightful, or well-executed. It comes off,… Continue reading Welfare Schools and Psychoanalyzing Education Reformers

In Dissent, I explained the case against free college. The short of it is that, because of who attends college and what kind of colleges they attend, free college is simply not an egalitarian benefit. To me, that calls into question the entire benefit category. What precisely is the point of subsidizing goods that poor… Continue reading The Argument for Free College

Conor P. Williams has a piece at 74 million that dabbles in a genre I’ve been meaning to comment on for a while. The nut of it is suggested by the title: Liberals Push to Correct Inequality — Just Not If It Involves Opening Up Our Neighborhood Schools. Now I have little faith that liberals… Continue reading The Left Wing of the Fundable