Triage is a battlefield
concept out of World War I.
A medic brings a severely
wounded man on a stretcher into the medical tent. A uniformed physician makes
an initial prognosis. The man on the stretcher will probably:
1. Live, no matter what
2. Die, no matter what
3. Survive, but only if he gets immediate treatment
2. Die, no matter what
3. Survive, but only if he gets immediate treatment
If the prognosis is either
one or two, the physician has the medic put the stretcher in a corner. If the
assessment is number three, the wounded man gets care.
There are limited resources
in a medical unit. They should be allocated wherever they will have a
statistically significant outcome.
It would be cruel to those
in group three to waste resources on those in groups one and two.
This is economics in
action……………
Those who speak on behalf of "the wounded in general"
cry out: "Unfair! Everyone deserves the same amount of help."
Wherever this outlook prevails, there will be more deaths. Those in group two
will all still die, and more of those in group three will die.
The critics of triage shout: "That doesn't matter. We must
treat all men by the same principle." But this a self-defeating principle.
There will be more battlefield deaths.
TAX-FUNDED EDUCATION
Kids in the ghetto are
statistically doomed if they stay in the public schools. These schools should be
closed. They will not be closed.
Kids in middle-class suburbs
will get mediocre educations, and will fail, flourish, or bump along in life,
irrespective of their formal educations. These schools should be closed.
Kids in academic charter
schools will either fail, enter the upper middle class, or else perform
magnificently, based mostly on personal contacts they make in formal education
settings. These schools should be closed.
The best policy is to close the
schools.
In other words, I am not
talking about triage for the kids. I am talking about triage for the schools.
The public schools are in group two. They are likely to die, no
matter what. The only economically relevant question today is this: "How
long will voters authorize the tax money required to keep them on life
support?"
GROUP THREE
Salman Khan's Khan Academy educates over 25 million students free of
charge. This will go to a hundred million soon enough. It is clear that the
public school model has failed.
There can be equivalent programs for every worldview and every
parental budget. The Ron Paul Curriculum is an example. For under a million
dollars, any group could get a K-12 program online within 12 months. If the
teachers are willing to work for a piece of the action, you don't need a
million dollars.
Can there be electronic grading? There can be for middle-level
programs: not charter school. If there are no essay exams, a computer program
can grade exams. In community colleges, this has been done for a quarter
century. Essay exams need teachers. But essays were abandoned a quarter century
ago. Doubt me? Watch this.
Within 20 years, algorithms will replace all teachers except for
those who help retarded kids who will barely be functional, no matter how much
someone spends on them.
POLITICALLY CORRECT EDUCATION
Tax-funded schools are a means the establishment uses to place
limits on what is considered intellectually respectable. It is all about
political correctness. It has been ever since the Puritan oligarchs in
Massachusetts made local tax-funded, pastorally-policed education mandatory in
every village, beginning in 1642. The General Court (legislature) passed this
law in 1642.
That the selectmen of every town,
in the several precincts and quarters where they dwell, shall have a vigilant
eye over their brethren and neighbors, to see, first, that none of them shall
suffer so much barbarism in any of their families, as not to endeavor to teach,
by themselves or others, their children and apprentices as much learning as may
enable them perfectly to read the English tongue, and knowledge of the capital
laws, upon penalty of 20 shillings for each neglect therein; also, that all
masters of families do, once a week, at least, catechize their children and
servants in the grounds and principles of religion."
Five years later, the General Court added this:
"It being one chief project
of that old deluder, Satan, to keep man from the knowledge of the Scriptures...
and to the end that learning may not be buried in the grave of our
forefathers... It is therefore ordered... that every township within this
jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty
householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all
such children as shall resort to him, to write and read... And it is further
ordered, that where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred
families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the masters
thereof being able to instruct youths so far as they may be fitted for the
university."
A little less than two
centuries later, tax-funded churches ended in Massachusetts (1833), but
tax-funded schools continued. Horace Mann, a Unitarian lawyer, was put in
charge of a new state department of education in 1837.
They are the model today. These are established churches. There are dogmas, all
Darwinist. There is a priesthood: state-certified teachers. There are
seminaries: universities. State schools function as centers of social and
intellectual control, just as they did in 1642.
But, as in Massachusetts after 1800, these established churches
are losing members. They are less and less influential. There are institutional
alternatives. The voters still vote to fund them, just as voters did in 1800.
But the handwriting is on the wall: "You have been weighed in the balance
and found wanting."
Tax-funded schools are like the wounded man on the stretcher who
has been assessed as dying, no matter what.
ADVICE TO PARENTS
What should you tell the parent of a child in the inner city
ghetto? "Either move the family or else move the child into the home. Get
him a cheap computer, and let him learn online at the Khan Academy."
What should you tell the parents of a child in the suburbs?
"Get the child educated online."
What about the parents of a very bright child? "Get him
online at MIT, Harvard, or any of the universities in Coursera." Let them
imitate the parents of Ahaan Rungta.
Ahaan Rungta and his family
moved from Calcutta, India, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 2001, the same year
MIT announced OpenCourseWare (OCW), a bold plan to publish all of MIT's course
materials online and to share them with the world for free. Little did his
parents realize at the time that their two-year-old son -- already an avid
reader -- would eventually acquire his entire elementary and secondary
education from OpenCourseWare and MITx, and would be admitted to the MIT class
of 2019 at the age of 15.
"When I was five years old my mom told me 'there's this
thing called OCW,'" says Rungta, who was homeschooled. "I just
couldn't believe how much material was available. From that moment on I spent
the next few years taking OCW courses."
CONCLUSION
"Doctor, what should we do
with this man? He is delirious. He keeps talking about being in the front
lines."
"Put him in the corner,
nurse. Give him a shot of morphine. That should reduce his pain."
"You mean there is no hope
for him?"
"I mean we cannot afford to
operate on him. Just give him morphine. Let him be comfortable in his last
hours."
Tenure is morphine for state
education. It will not be needed much longer.
