Latest Read: The Education Myth by Jon Shelton

My latest read is The Education Myth by Jon Shelton. It's a very detailed walk through education and economic policy in the US, starting in early US history but mostly focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries. I'm not going to walk through every point, just note two things;

1) His basic critique is one that I echo: US policymakers have focused pretty much exclusively on education as improving workers, rather than focusing on creating more opportunities for work. Yes, teaching a man to fish helps him feed himself, but are there healthy fisheries for him to ply? Good harbor infrastructure? Functioning markets in which to sell his catch? Are there alternative careers if fishing isn't his comparative advantage?

The government cannot do all of this (or arguably most of it) but to the extent that they do play a role, it has to be something broader than just trying to train people without regard for the world they're being trained to move in.

2) Near the end, on page 179 he notes that while research has shown that states with good educational investments tend to have less income inequality, the causality isn't clear. Maybe states that invest in social spending across the board have less income inequality AND more educational spending because those two priorities tend to go together in a lot of Americans' values systems. Or maybe greater economic security leads to more desire to invest in education. An individual can climb relative to others via education, but it's not clear that a society can equalize itself via education. If anything, the conditions that lead to learning require economic development before you can get more kids to spend more time studying.