Why General Education Programs Should be Eliminated

Stephen Kershnar

Against General Education

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

May 12, 2019

           

Most universities have a general education program. This program requires that college students take classes in a smorgasbord of subjects outside of their major and supporting fields. They often must take classes in English, foreign language, gym, hard sciences, history, math, social sciences, etc., although these requirements are sometimes satisfied by classes in other departments such as communication, education, and women’s studies. General education classes often include introductory classes in communication, creative writing, psychology, and sociology. 

Some elite universities have little or no general education program. This includes universities such as Brown (14^th best university), Amherst (2^nd best liberal arts college), and Grinnell (11^th best liberal arts college). Universities in some countries, such as Great Britain, have little or no general education requirement. This is one of the reasons that it takes three years to graduate from them rather than four as is typical of American universities. Other elite universities have or had a general education program that focuses on the Western cannon in art, history, literature, music, and philosophy. This includes Columbia and the University of Chicago (tied for 3^rd best). Few general education programs have such a focus.  

The argument against the general education program is that if, on the whole, a program is bad for students and makes the world worse, then a university should not have it. On the whole, a general education program is bad for students and makes the world worse.

The reason such programs are bad for students can be seen in Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s 2013 book: Academically Adrift. They found that roughly half of the students gained no general-reasoning and writing skills in college. Roughly 40% gained only a modest amount of these skills. Only 10% gained significant skills. As Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness argue in their recent book, Cracks in the Ivory Tower, improving skills in these areas is one of the leading goals of a general education program and likely the leading one. They argue that this is especially true for English composition classes. They point out that most colleges require such a class. Even when students improve their skills in one area, this improvement does not, in general, transfer to other areas. Experts such as Richard Haskell, Douglas Detterman, Terry Hyland, and Steve Johnson conclude that there is little evidence of a transfer of learning from one subject to another.

The lack of skill-development and transfer is a problem given the high cost of college to students and taxpayers. Consider the cost to students. For example, it costs more than $20,000 per year to attend a SUNY school (tuition, room, board, and fees) as well as giving up a year of income. On one estimate, in the U.S., government at all levels spends half a trillion dollars per year on higher education. States shovel money into higher education. For example, each year New York spends $8,600 per college student (13% more than the state average). As a result of these costs, requiring an extra year of college so a student can complete a general education program is a significant cost to him and taxpayers.

In addition, the educational opportunity cost of this program is high. It can, and often does, prevent a student from completing a second or third major, taking more practical classes (consider, for example, computer or accounting classes), or missing out on classes that really interest him (consider, for example, classes on World War II or human evolution). Because the harm to students is not outweighed by a benefit to others (that is, a positive externality), the program makes the world worse.  

Bryan Caplan, author of The Case Against Education, argues that an example of this is the foreign-language requirement. He argues that less than 1% of Americans are fluent in a foreign language (that is, speak it very well) as a result of high school or college classes. This despite the widespread requirement that students study it in high school and college. Even if you lower the bar below fluency, only 2.5% of the population speak a foreign language well due to classes and this likely overestimates the percentage.

As Unz Review’s Steve Sailor points out, in 2011 for high school students roughly one thousand scored a 5 (top score) on the French AP test despite the fact that millions of students took French for years. In contrast, roughly 40,000 students earned a 5 on the advanced AP calculus test. Sailor points out that only about 8,000 students nationwide scored a 5 on a foreign language (specifically, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish). Thus, he concludes, foreign language teaching is ineffective. Even if it were effective, though, it’s hard to see why this subject should be given priority over advanced classes in one’s major or a subject one loves.

As Brennan and Magness point out, general education programs have additional bad features. First, because students are made to take these classes, departments do not have as strong an incentive to ensure these classes are well-taught. This can be seen in that departments often dump these classes on adjuncts (faculty not on the tenure-track) and junior tenure-track faculty. Second, an enormous amount of energy is put into fighting over these programs. Because students are being forced into such classes by administrative fiat rather than because they want to take them, it makes sense to spend a lot of time squabbling over administrative favor. The fights over whose classes are included in the program and how they are included are often little more than turf-protection. Third, students are more likely to cheat in classes they don’t enjoy and they’re less likely to enjoy classes they’re forced to take.  

In summary, general education programs harm students and make the world worse. They cause students to spend tens of thousands extra on college, prevent them from taking classes that they value or would enjoy more, and weaken the incentive to ensure that such classes are well-taught.

Heaven Can Wait

Stephen Kershnar

Heaven is Boring

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

April 28, 2019

            Recent Easter services and gatherings celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. His resurrection led to his later ascension to heaven. Christians assume that heaven is good for him and, thus, worth celebrating. Jews and Christians view heaven as good for us as well. The question is whether heaven would be good for us. 

Catholicism and some parts of Protestantism argue that some people go to hell for all eternity. See, for example, Catholic Catechism 1035. In fact, some lines of Christianity assume that that many people have gone to hell and will continue to do so, although what causes them to go varies depending on the theory. People might deserve hell because they are unrepentant sinners or wicked (see, for example, Pope Pius X’s view), fail to help the downtrodden (Matthew 25:41-43), reject God’s love, sin against him, or hate him (see, for example, Pope John Paul II’s and C. S. Lewis’ views), or not receive salvation. On a side note, there is an interesting issue as to whether people who have never heard the Christian gospel or not been cleansed of original sin go to hell. 

            The problem with this worldview is that it is unclear whether it is good to go to heaven. This is unclear for two reasons. First, as philosopher Thomas Talbott argues, it is unclear whether most people in heaven would be happy knowing that some of their loved ones are in hell. Hell is thought to a place (or, perhaps, state) that consists of everlasting destruction (Thessalonians 1:9), a lake of fire (Revelation 20:13-14), blackest darkness (Jude 13), burning Sulphur (Revelation 20:10), or the devil endlessly tormenting people (Revelation 20:10). An American mother would have a hard time enjoying a well-deserved Caribbean cruise if she knew that ISIS captors were brutalizing her daughter, a captured soldier. If this is correct, how could the same mother enjoy heaven knowing that the same daughter, albeit an unrepentant sinner and atheist, was suffering far worse things in hell than what her ISIS captors did to her?

If the mother knew her daughter deserved to be in hell, this might make her even sadder. She might be sadder because she thought she failed her daughter or because she resents that her daughter were not blessed with a better life as are so many others.   

            Philosopher William Lane Craig argues that God might erase memories of loved ones sent to hell from the minds of those in heaven. This solution is cruel. How many mothers would want the memories of their daughter erased even if she was an unrepentant sinner? Also, a person’s memory of her loved ones could be erased from her mind only if her most treasured memories were erased as well. She would no longer be able to remember her life’s most touching moments, triumphs, and epic failures. This is a steep price to pay for heaven. It’s similar to saying that an adult immigrant may come to the U.S. but only if computerized technology is used to erase memories of his earlier life.   

            Second, it is unclear if heaven is good for people who go there. The late philosopher Bernard Williams argued that immortality is boring and, as a result, it would eventually become intolerable. Williams implicitly argued that whatever goals a man might have (for example, fall in love, raise children, gain knowledge, help the downtrodden, etc.), life would become boring after trillions of years of pursuing them. For example, a man who wishes to pursue fatherhood in heaven would have to raise countless children or his children would never grow old. As a result, he would be changing diapers or teaching basic mathematics billions of times. Whatever other goals he had (for example, spend time with friends or teach students) would also become tedious. By the trillionth year, life would be intolerably dull. Even pleasures such as sex and food would be unsatisfying if that were that all someone’s life was about.  

Consider the movie Groundhog Day. Phil relives the same day again and again. Some days he was successful in terms of his love interest, friends, and enemies. Somedays not. He could remember many of the previous days. After a while, reliving the same day again and again would be tedious. How many times can one report on the stupid groundhog? How many millions of times can he succeed or fail in making progress in winning the heart of his love interest before it gets old?

Even if heaven didn’t involve endless repetition of the same day, it would eventually consist of Phil endlessly pursuing the same handful of goals or trying to connect to and have fun with the same handful of people. By the billionth time, Williams argues, this would be dull. Alternatively, there might be an ever-changing churn of new people into Phil’s life. The churn would also become boring. By analogy, rock god James Hetfield of Metallica reports that eventually concerts and one night stands become boring. And he didn’t do them a million times.

  

Philosopher John Martin Fischer points out that a person might have different mixtures of projects, love interests, and friends and the ever-changing mixture would keep life interesting. Talbott posits that life in heaven might become like projects in which we have flow. Flow occurs when a person is fully immersed in an activity, completely focused on it, and greatly enjoying it. Still, it is hard to see why we would have a flow-like experience for activities we’ve already done a billion times. Also, many outward projects (consider, for example, giving money to the poor, healthcare to the sick, or comfort to the suffering) would be unavailable in heaven because people aren’t poor, sick, or suffering (except, perhaps, when they think about their loved ones roasting in hell).

Even if there were such hard luck cases in heaven, without flow, helping them would eventually get to be boring. Also, no one wants to lose self-awareness for millions of years. Part of what makes momentous events take our breath away is awareness that such wonderful things are happening to us.

            We need to rethink Easter. If everlasting life would be miserable, boring, or require that God erase our most treasured memories, annihilation might be better. It might even be better for Jesus.

Reparations: Theoretical Failure

Stephen Kershnar

Why Reparation for Slavery is a Bad Idea

Dunkirk-Fredonia Observer

April 15, 2019

            Leading Democratic Presidential candidates support reparations for slavery or a commission to study reparations. This includes Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Julian Castro, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

            The argument for reparations is that if the government unjustly harmed someone, then it should pay them compensation. Since the U.S. government unjustly harmed current American blacks, it owes them compensation. The underlying notion is that slavery, Jim Crow laws, violence, discrimination, and hatred harmed current black people by denying them access to education, jobs, and loans. This broke up their families, caused them psychological problems, and impoverished them.   

            There are several objections to this argument. Historic injustices did not harm current blacks because it led to their creation. This objection rests on two assumptions. First, something that causes someone to come into existence doesn’t harm him. This is particularly clear if he has a good life. By analogy, a mother who creates someone doesn’t harm him if he has a good life as opposed to no life at all. Second, past injustices led to the creation of current blacks. Slavery, early Jim Crow laws, racial exclusion, and so on affected which black men and women reproduced with each other. If they had reproduced with other people, they would have had different children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on. As a result, current American blacks would not have existed.   

            Even if past injustices did not lead to the creation of current blacks, there is a further problem in figuring out how much compensation is owed. In tort law, compensation aims to put the victim in as good a position as he would have been in had the injustice to him not occurred. In the case of reparations, roughly, this involves figuring out how well American blacks would be doing had slavery not occurred. But if slavery had not occurred, American blacks would be living in Africa. Africa is poorer, more violent, and less free than America. As a result, American blacks would be much worse off had slavery not occurred. If slavery affected current blacks in a relevant way, then, it benefitted them.  

 

In figuring out how much compensation would be owed, another problem arises. American blacks are roughly 25% white. If one’s genetics or ancestry are essential to him, there is no world in which current black people don’t have white ancestors. Yet the scenario in which a quarter of blacks’ ancestors were white but racial oppression didn’t occur is so different from the real world that there is no way to figure out how well blacks would be doing but for slavery and related injustices.

Compensation gets further reduced if a victim’s suffering results in part from her own poor choices. This is true of some American blacks. Writing for the Brookings Institute, Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins point out that an American is unlikely to be poor if she graduates from high school, has children in wedlock and after age 20, and lives in a household in which someone has a full-time job. Also, according to a 2015 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, the average black high school 12th grader reads at the same level as the average 8^th grade white student. In inner city public schools, more than 90% of black high school seniors are not at grade level in math and more than 80% are not at this level in reading. If some of this poverty and poor performance is due to poor choices rather than past injustice, it is even more difficult to figure out how much money is owed.  

            For the above reasons, then, past injustices did not harm current blacks and, even if it did, the amount of compensation owed is nearly impossible to figure out. Still, it might be argued that reparations are owed because blacks have been denied inheritance. The case for reparations would then rest on the idea that the government owed money to slaves and victims of early Jim Crow oppression and their descendants inherited this claim to the money. Alternatively, compensation might still be owed to past blacks. Because they are no longer around, the debt can best be paid by giving their money to their descendants.

The sum descendants are owed would have increased astronomically because of interest (or investment), inflation, and compounding. Given these factors, each slave’s claim would today be worth at least a million dollars today and perhaps a lot more. 

            The notion of stolen inheritance, though, has its own problems. Again, the amount the government would owe to descendants is nearly impossible to figure out. Some injustices were performed by the federal government, some by state or local governments, and some by private parties. It is incredibly hard, if not impossible, to divvy up who did what. The problem gets worse because harms that result from omission do not warrant as much compensation as harms that occur from commission. To see this, consider a case in which a cowardly bystander watches a woman get assaulted by a motorcycle club, but does not call the police or take other preventive action. Because he does not contribute to the attack, he does not owe compensation. In many cases, the federal government acted more like the cowardly bystander than the attackers because it permitted other groups to commit atrocities rather than committing them itself.

Also, once the government gets into the business of paying off inherited claims for past injustice (consider, for example, its Central and South American adventures), the number of claims would be staggering.

            In short, reparations for slavery is a bad idea. Slavery and historic injustices didn’t harm current blacks. If reparations are owed, they are owed as inheritance. Even if inheritance is owed, and this is unclear, the federal government would likely owe only a small portion of it.