Thoughtful Critique

After  rehashing a brief blog post on, among other things, a documentary about education that, for all Yeglesias knows, either does or doesn't improperly compare Finnish students to American students, Yglesias pivots to with a now patented

That said, this kind of thing can be taken too far.

What is being taken to far?  Reading blog posts? Making inapt comparison? Running down the teaching profession? Concern about syntax? Making informed critiques of badly thought out arguments about education reform?

There’s a newish library branch in my neighborhood that’s quite nice looking. I don’t think anyone expects its existence to transform the radically transform the educational experience of children living in the area.

No, of course not.  All kids have access to the computers, books, research material, low-cost or free enrichment programs, magazines, professional aid in finding books that libraries provide.  Well maybe one or two don't.  I betcha that the none of the parents of the kids will  benefit from the various programs the library runs for adult literacy, aiding non-native speakers of English improve their language skills, that tiny fraction of adults without computer skills gain them, or whatever other unnecessary public goods libraries provide their patrons.

And I bet reasonable people could disagree as to whether or not it made any real sense to build the library in the first place. But the library is there nonetheless, and the city is running it.

Damn it, if only the reasonable people who stood on either side of the issue had the opportunity to discuss the library it might not even be there to not provide the unneeded benefits to kids and adults.  Instead, the busybodies downtown crammed the library down his throat and then they have the temerity to run the damn thing; run it right into the ground, I bet.

So given that the city is running the library, we should try to run the library well. From the little things to the big things to the things that are core to the library’s function (deciding which books to stock) to the things that are peripheral (cleaning the floors in the bathroom) it all makes some kind of difference.

Yeah, hear that downtown busybodies no more reductions in funding due to Neoliberal, Reaganite, and Glibertarian tax policies.  Hire a janitor or two.  Oh and as by the way, I betcha that all those fancy rules and regulations about who is and who isn't a librarian are just to protect the librarian industry from fair competition.

And for any given quantity of resources allocated to the library, we should be doing our best to ensure that those resources are well spent. Whether or not there are other problems in the community that it’s beyond the capacity of the library to overcome, the public is still well within its rights to demand that the library be the best library it can be.

Yes, yes they are right to demand that. Although, as seems obvious from Yglesias' tone here, the state will screw it up because of, no doubt, its ignorance of market forces.

And that’s the real issue here. It’s great for skeptics about this or that proposed reform to how public schools operate to challenge the ideas on the merits. But the idea that it’s somehow unfair to be pressing for a more optimal allocation of resources is the flipside of destructive libertarian nihilism about the possibility of better-managed public agencies. And it actually makes less sense. If you want to argue (as I think liberals do) that it’s worth investing money in public schools, then you have to accept the corollary that the quality of the schools is important independently from other social issues.

Hear that Strawmen Liberals  whose voices ring in the confines of Yglesias' brain pan?  If you want to fix things stop just throwing money at things and start being more respectful of arguments for educational reform that hinge on turning schools into Olive Gardens.

Or get with the technology gurus, like Bill Gates who predicts that

Five years from now on the Web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university."
A year at a university costs an average $50,000, the Microsoft founder and Harvard dropout said last month. The Web can deliver the same quality education for $2,000.

 Don't just sit back and point to all the non-Harvards where education is cheaper or worry about who or what will be giving the lecture, hint: Robots, or what canned lectures might mean to the future of education:

Or point out that in any number of classrooms all across this land of waving wheat hard-working teachers, administrators, professors, and others are working to improve education through theory and praxis.  Be respectful, damn it.

He starts off with someone else's informed critique of a program for educational reform and then sternly warns of the dangers of spending on social goods without the stern discipline of market forces, and concludes that people who are concerned about educational reform need to be more knowledgeably when they criticize educational reform. See how it all hangs together?  I don't either.