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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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I've seen way too many instances of a team showing a marked improvement after a change in coach, platoons turning around/going to shit under a new CO or Top, and students doing better once they got a tutor, with my own two eyes to buy the claim that teaching is some sort of "special case".

The consistency with this is it is consistently inconsistent and consistently not scalable. Coaching, of course, is a zero sum profession. Wins and scholarships that go to team A are subtracted from other teams. Same with war. Tutors can't scale as well. Those tutors can't run a 100000 person zoom classroom and get similar results, thus what they are doing doesn't resemble public education at all.

...and none of what you've just written comes anywhere close to actually rebutting my point.

You say coaching is a zero sum game? what of it?

That "public" education bears no resemblance to effective education is not a mark against education in general, just the opposite in fact.

You say coaching is a zero sum game? what of it?

Means infinitesimal improvements can improve results significantly due to the zero sum nature of the game.

That "public" education bears no resemblance to effective education is not a mark against education in general, just the opposite in fact.

Sure, but we are still talking about scalable solutions because we are talking about population sized problems. I don't really see you proposing education interventions in a way that is testable without circling back to HBD winning. You cited that phonics was working for some black kids in California. That's great, but, does that mean A) We should do it for white kids too? If we did would they maintain the advantage? If so, HBD wins. If not, we go to B) If it doesn't work for white kids, but the other method keeps white kids ahead. We are back to HBD. Even if Phonics for blacks means equal reading skill for the other method, its still hbd, just one that doesn't mean there is an aboslute disparity and superiority, just merely diversity. The only way the culture argument wins is if phonics is the best for everyone, and it generates equal outcomes.