I find this one especially amazing given that Professor Olson has been trying to kill the misattribution since 2000; some lies are just incredibly persistent.

If you’ve ever watched committee hearings, the thing that drives me crazy is the like 5 minutes of welcome/thanks/posturing that goes on for each congresscritter’s introduction… usually about how they’ve been advocating for having this meeting for years, and are so glad the witness(es) could make it, etc.

My thinking in this vein keeps coming back to a desire to implement some coarse-grained majors at the high school level. Start to figure out where people are headed earlier on, and emphasize those strengths. While this might feed into Slouka’s perceived problem re: emphasis, I think this is more likely to make education on the average pareto positive for most students. Right now, if a student is simply bad at math, they are forced to continue to do it, which in turn ingrains a sense of disgust for educators who “make” you do “stupid” and “hard” stuff. I suppose this runs counter to what I just said about being broadly educated, but there’s a balance, and I think emphasizing one’s individual skillsets will help make the overall experience better.

It amazes me that so much internet discussion is so awful; it’s never been easier to do the research that would make for well-informed, productive policy and political discussions.