Japan or Mexico?
Would you rather have the birth demographics of Japan, where 98% of children are born to married parents… but demographers warn their fertility rate is so low that it faces an irreversible “death spiral” of population decline OR of Mexico, which presently has enough kids to qualify for replacement rate… but over 2 out of 3 children are born to unwed parents?
Email me your answer and why. In my small survey of friends, I’ve been surprised by a fairly even split.
You should go ahead and reply now before you’re corrupted by my own response but… I’m with Japan. My feeling is that intact families, even small ones, have a greater positive social impact and I’d rather try to convince them to have more kids (and contemplate additional selective high-skill immigration) than try to evangelize lasting marriage to generations that have gone without it.
Note that part of the reason Japan has fewer kids is because, compared to the rest of the world, the Japanese spend a disproportionate percentage of their income on raising kids, in particular on extensive, private after-school educational programs -- a human capital investment that I think is quite admirable, even if it also means that families unfortunately feel like they cannot afford to have as many kids. The Economist also argues that Japan’s birth rate is now comparatively better than its East Asian neighbors because housing is relatively deregulated: setting aside the prospective wealth benefits of renting, the ease of living in a house is correlated with a higher birth rate.
When I look at this selective list of countries, I am disturbed that the countries with the greatest percentage of children born out of wedlock come from a Christian heritage - yes, many of them have far fewer adherents to the faith today, but I also wonder whether too many people have interpreted the theology of forgiveness as a theology of license. Compare to South Korea or Japan, with percentages below the typical margin of error: I wonder what we might learn from East Asian family values.
The more culturally familiar nation is Israel. As the Economist reports, “If an Israeli woman has fewer than three children, she feels as if she owes everyone an explanation - or an apology.” Israel has both a healthy birth rate as well as under 10% of children born out of wedlock. Their picture is a bit complicated by the super-fertile Ultra-Orthodox who have a lot of children but don’t work - but even their secular population has been gaining in fertility - and the Economist speculates that it is precisely because of their enduring strong family structure.
I’ve previously reviewed What to Expect When No One’s Expecting and am sympathetic to the pro-natalist point of view… but I think sometimes demographers miss that a society oriented around whole families has a better shot at renewal.
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When I want the definition of a word, I often first consult the 1828 dictionary of the Schoolmaster of the Republic: Nathaniel Webster. It’s often quite literary, and recently I discovered his definition for marriage: "The act of uniting a man and woman for life.... marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the parties engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity, till death shall separate them. marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity, and for securing the maintenance and education of children."
Today’s successor dictionary isn’t quite as stirring: “a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law… an intimate or close union”
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Friend sent me this "Founder Quote of the Day" from John Adams: "I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet, so zheir child can get a double mastectomy when zhey turn 8."
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If you believe this poll, modern America is where the most famous people are celebrities and politicians, and where Morgan Freeman is more popular than Einstein, Jackie Chan is more popular than George Washington while religious leaders and business titans and inventors and actual social contributors merit hardly any attention at all. Indeed, as a general rule, those who impersonate the accomplished are more famous and better liked than the accomplished. I would love to see what an equivalent poll would have revealed in 19th century America. (And note: I am embarrassed that I do indeed recognize everyone in the top 100.)
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You’ll note a different format to today’s email - starting out with a variety of items that have been lately on my mind and ending with a briefer set of excerpts and comments on a book I’ve recently read. I am certainly going to continue to do deep dives of books with terrible comics but I am experimenting with this format to ensure a regular stream of content.
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Have you seen this movie before? The New York Times reports that “Bank of America is offering mortgages for first-time homeowners that do not require down payments, minimum credit scores or closing costs in a program that aims to boost homeownership rates among first-time Black and Latino buyers.” It usually doesn't end well. Bonus: this particular scheme is probably illegal.
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I am frankly disgusted by the jury’s decision in the Parkland shooting case. The fact that your mom had a substance abuse problem when she was pregnant with you should not spare you from facing capital punishment for murdering 17 people. Some heartbreaking quotes from Reuters:
"I'm disgusted with our legal system. I'm disgusted with those jurors," said Ilan Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa Alhadeff was killed. "... What do we have the death penalty for?”
"It's pretty unreal that nobody paid attention to the facts of this case, that nobody can remember who a victim is and what they look like," added Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was killed. "I know every day because I see my beautiful daughter's face around our home and in my dreams and I miss her very much."
I may review it sometime in the future, but one of the better books I’ve read on this subject is By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment. Check it out.
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Last week, I gave a talk at Vanderbilt Law School to 40+ students about constitutional money. Lots of Q&A and fun to mix it up.
A sample:
"Why should we care about what the Founders thought about economics?"
"Because you’re in law school and they expressed those views in the Constitution. Of course I have another talk on how good their economics were!"
“Isn’t a fluctuating currency good to goose the economy?”
“If the definition of an ounce changed every year, that might require you to buy more ‘ounces’ of things and provide some stimulus - but is that really the world you want to live in? After your dollar has lost 9% of its value in the last year, do you feel more confident investing?”
"Couldn't the Founders just regulate the value of coins to be zero and then introduce paper money through interstate commerce?"
"Not according to the original public meaning of either clause! But hey the modern courts allow you to do anything.”
Altogether, there was a mix of intrigue, excitement, and hostility. But no boredom!
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Who knew that the Brazilian expat community was so rightwing? According to Columbia PhD student Daniel DiMartino, Bolsonaro won 55% of the Brazilian absentee ballots from the US.
Really, though, I just want to use this opportunity to plug the Brazilian movie Elite Squad and its sequel. The films are about Rio’s real special operations police force, designed to be an elite incorruptible unit that gets called on to handle the most difficult jobs: in the first movie, they are trying to clear the slums of druglords ahead of a papal visit. In the second, they turn their attention to corrupt politicians. These movies are quite violent and there’s not an especially fond appreciation for due process, but they’re worth seeing.
On My Kindle
Thinking about the next books that I really want to do my typical deep dive into, but thought I’d share some from a book I recently read called Market Education by Andrew Coulson. The book is bloated but has some gems. Overall, 7/10.
Excerpts and comments:
"That point is most sharply driven home in a letter from a prominent lawyer, outlining his views on education. He was born in the early sixties in a small town and lamented its lack of a high school, so he decided to found one himself. But rather than fully endowing the school, which he could easily have afforded to do, he decided to pay only a third of the necessary costs. He explained his decision in this way:
I would promise the whole amount were I not afraid that someday my gift might be abused for someone’s selfish purposes, as I see happen in many places where teachers’ salaries are paid from public funds. There is only one remedy to meet this evil: if the appointment of teachers is left entirely to the parents, and they are conscientious about making a wise choice through their obligation to contribute to the cost. People who may be careless about another person’s money are sure to be careful about their own, and they will see that only a suitable recipient shall be found for my money if he is also to have their own.
“The significance of this letter derives not so much from its content as from its context: as I mentioned, its author was born in the early sixties—not the early nineteen-sixties, or the early eighteen-sixties, but the early sixties of the first century A.D."
The part of the book that most interested me was its survey of schooling principles from ancient Greece through today.
The Spartans had a totalitarian educational system that seized children from parents to be trained by the state for war (and certainly not literacy). Perhaps the Spartan education system’s most unusual feature was its value orientation: children were intentionally underfed in order to encourage them to steal food. If they were caught, they were severely punished - but not for the act of stealing, but for the incompetence of being caught.
Coulson far prefers the Athenian model, which he notes produced a great deal that we still use in our current culture. In the younger years, education was a combination of practical (gymnastics) and cultural (literacy and poetry, especially Homer). Later, people would apprentice for a trade or hire a philosopher to teach them about the world. Thus the likes of Socrates could make a living. Unmentioned is the fact that the Spartans wound up beating the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War.
Coulson is quite down on Rome, insisting that their achievements were all derivative of the Greeks - which, even if true, I wonder how much Greek culture might have made it to the British isles and the other frontiers of Europe without Rome. In the republican years, Rome’s elite were taught by Greek slaves, who didn’t exactly have stupendous incentives to be the best possible teachers because even freedom was a distant possibility. Later, the Empire subsidized teachers who would be properly pro-Empire, sparing them from taxes and even private liability, eventually paying them a direct subsidy to ensure their (and hopefully their pupils’ loyalty).
The Jesuits get credit for breaking an old mold: teachers were once given perhaps hundreds of students who would individually seek out their advice while the remainder might descend into chaos. The Jesuits instead insisted on group classes - but, importantly, the groups were not determined by age, but by skill. They also pioneered teacher specialization.
The Quakers developed a model, quickly adopted and expanded by the Anglicans and later by the French Revolutionaries, in which a single teacher first taught the smartest kids in class, then sent them off to teach everyone else, checking in with each group throughout day. Most appealing aspect? Cheap!
Before the state took over, the English had a very rich variety of schools, including those supported by various churches - but perhaps most interesting were ‘dame’ schools: where children were dispatched to learn from a local widow at her home.
Coulson laments the modern trend toward compulsory and standardized state schools detached from the discipline of parents carefully spending their own resources. In particular, Coulson argues that much of American public education has been enthralled with progressive pedagogies that, according to the best available research, just don’t work - abandoning synthetic phonics for guessing meaning, ignoring highly scripted direct instruction to instead attempt to embrace teacher creativity and children discovery. Coulson suggests that some of the smartest kids can thrive with more freedom, but others need a lot more help.
In the middle of the 20th century, American public schools moved increasingly toward trying to teach practical life skills, a trend Coulson hates and considers anti-intellectual. Of course, what caught my eye was that foreign language enrollment declined from 34% to 14% of students between 1910 and 1949. But such consideration was abandoned in the wake of Sputnik in 1956, where the federal government really started to get involved, mostly by trying to get colleges to dictate what would be best for advancing math and science. Coulson considers the subsequent activity a failure (because of the progressive methodologies embraced) and by the 1970s, standardized test scores actually start falling. The feds react by introducing minimum testing requirements earlier - but Coulson argues that simply led to schools teaching to the lowest common denominator. By 1994, the SATs scoring methodology was changing so that you could get a perfect score while answering multiple questions wrong.
Coulson spends a good bit of space talking about the Japanese system of education, where the public education system embraced direct instruction and better methodologies but, more importantly (and as mentioned at the beginning of this email), there is a massive private supplemental educational practice after school. Amusingly, there are even schools for stay-at-home moms so that they can be up to speed about what their children are learning.
"In 1841, Horace Mann, the godfather of American public schooling, promised: ‘Let the Common School be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged.’ In 1998, the Los Angeles County School Board voted to arm its public school police with shotguns." Needless to say, Horace’s utopian predictions haven’t panned out…
In the 1980s, Richard Feynman was asked to serve on California's mathematics textbook selection committee for public schools. Immediately he got asked to rate a book, he replied he couldn't because he hadn't read it. Publisher replied that no one had read it because it wasn't finished but still asked him to rate it so it could be approved for use. Bewildered, Feynman asked fellow committee members and, indeed, they had already rated it, and at a higher score than some books that were actually, you know, complete
Massachusetts implemented a reading comprehension test for prospective high school teachers in 1998 at an 8th grade reading level. 59% failed. Massachusetts then lowered the standard. Political backlash ensued, and standard was back up to 8th grade reading level
In 1995, a Philadelphia dad was notified that his 7th grade son was about to flunk all his public school classes. So he decided to take his son from his study period at end of the day and tutor him for 2 hours a day. By end of 11 weeks, son's average class grade had gotten all the way up to 86%. Naturally, Philadelphia prosecuted the boy and father for truancy
According to one study Coulson cites, most teachers view the nurturing and interpersonal aspects of job as more important than teaching academics - and teachers are less likely to report enjoying academic subjects than peers in the rest of the workforce.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this experiment in a little something different - as always, if you’ve enjoyed the newsletter, please forward it to someone else who you think might enjoy it as well.
Grant