In other news, I’m launching a new series of posts at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice on the crisis in the education reform movement. Longstanding tensions are becoming an open rift that threatens to bring down what has become a politically very successful movement.

On the one side are technocrats, who bulid centralized systems of control that reduce education to no more than reading and math scores. On the other side are advocates of choice and decentralization, who typically offer little positive vision for what education is for.

In the introduction, just published, I survey the argument that I will unpack over the course of the series:

• The technocratic approach will be a disaster, not only because the technocratic system will be undermined by ignorance and corruption (although that, too, is important!) but because technocracy is based on a false, materialistic understanding of the good life for human beings.
• To effectively counter technocracy, advocates of choice and decentralization must stop thinking that choice (“let a thousand flowers bloom”) gives them a hall pass to get out of talking about the purpose of education – involving potentially divisive questions about the good, the true and the beautiful, and what it means to be human.
• In a society where we have freedom to disagree about the transcendent, we must not try to make public policy that avoids the transcendent, but ground public policy – above all education policy! – in transcendent commitments that justify our freedom disagree about the transcendent.

The series proper will launch right after Friedman Legacy Day on July 29 and will run once every few weeks through the fall. Watch this space for updates; in the meantime, I welcome your thoughts as always!