American Idyll, Chapter 2

 Chapter 2 is about the notion of an "average" American. I won't attempt to summarize it because it's a very dense chapter, full of summaries of other writers' summaries of the history and how they responded to it. I'll just note two big takeaways:

1) The "average" American is an artificial construct. While I'll go to the mat arguing that standardized tests are useful for carefully-defined purposes, they aren't everything, and they certainly don't tell you everything that you need to know about people. People with scores in the center of a distribution are a hugely varied bunch by every measure other than scores, and I reject any technocratic effort to shepherd all of them into a small number of paths. For that matter, I reject any effort to shepherd people anywhere else in the distribution into a small number of paths. A score may rule out a few things from a huge range of options, or add a few more things to a huge range of options, but there's a huge range of options in any case.

Much of what she is reacting to is efforts to over-use scores.

2) Test scores can be used for elitist purposes, but she notes that humanities education was actually critiqued as being unsuitable for the non-elite, and hence some commentators looked down upon humanities rather than looking down on the non-elite. If you celebrate the middle then you'll look with suspicion upon subjects for the elite. If you celebrate the elite you'll look with disdain on those not prepared for elite subjects.

I wish that the debate about "academic" versus "vocational" education wasn't an either/or. People should study "traditional academic subjects" both because they provide useful insights for life AND because stretching the mind is worthwhile in its own right. We can study Shakespeare for insights into power, relationships, etc., but let's face it: There are plenty of other ways to learn about those matters. First and foremost we study Shakespeare because the plays are delightful. We study disordered materials in physics in part because they are useful, but for many applications all you really need to know is a few parameters that engineers already know how to measure.  We also study disorder because it is fascinating.

People should stretch their minds. People should also learn how to do useful things. The real world requires both. Some might focus on one more than the other at a particular stage of life, but why does it have to be either/or?