Education and Freakonomics

I am not a trendy guy. For instance, during the course of my life I have had approximately two haircuts: for the first twenty years of my life I sported a basic bowl cut, and now I have a #2. (This is according to Bud, the old-school barber I use whenever I return to Vermont - primarily because he only charges $8, and he doesn't allow anything with a Yankees logo in his barbershop. In Bud's barbershop a #1 is a crew cut and a #2 is anything else).

My ambivalence to trends extends to what I read, which tends toward a relatively eclectic mixture of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, almost all of which comes to me recommended by family and friends. I don't read mysteries, crime novels, or autobiographies of vapid, media-inflated celebrities, which rules out the vast majority of what is represented on various bestseller lists.

So I was a bit suspect when a friend loaned me Freakonomics, which has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year. I had heard the authors - Stephen Levitt, an innovative and iconoclastic University of Chicago economist, and Stephen Drubner, a writer for the Times and The New Yorker - interviewed about some of Levitt's more controversial conclusions, such as the correlation between legalized abortion and the drop in crime rates, but while his intellectual adroitness seemed refreshing, because of its popular success, I categorically dismissed the book as superficial.

I was wrong. Freakonomics is trendy for a reason: it is a provocative book that explores a series of intriguing questions, which share no real thematic unity but are asked and answered by a tirelessly curious mind. It's an exhilarating read, and I recommend it to those of you who thrive on conventional wisdom being challenged by original thinking.

Not only does Levitt explore why real estate agents sell their own homes for more money than they do the homes of their clients and why drug dealers live with their mothers, he also investigates the relationship between parenting and why some children do better in schools than others.

(When reading the next few paragraphs, please keep in mind a couple of caveats: first, these are generalities drawn from reams of data and as such are not necessarily true for individual families; and second, correlation is not the same as cause and effect - in other words, the fact that a mother waits until she is 30 years old to have a child does not, in and of itself, cause that child to do better in school - correlation only implies that two variables are related.)

Counter to conventional wisdom, Levitt finds that being a product of an intact nuclear family has no correlation to test scores, nor does a mother staying home with her children until Kindergarten, nor does attending Head Start, nor does spanking, nor does regularly reading to children.

Among the factors that Levitt identifies that lead to positive correlations between high test scores and a child's home environment are the following: highly educated parents, high socioeconomic status, the mother was 30 years or older when the child was born, and there are many books in the home.

In the process of isolating and analyzing a variety of familial variables and how they correlate with school achievement, ultimately Levitt concludes that good parenting is predicated not so much on "what you do as a parent; it's who you are" (p.175).

Before all you parents who are showering their children with extra- curricular math tutoring, flute lessons, speed reading practice, ski race coaching and Arthur Murray ballroom dance classes commit hari-kari, understand that none of Levitt's conclusions necessarily negate the value of active and positive parenting.

But the point he does make is that all the things that you do for your children - stay home with them, academically challenge them, or spank them - may not matter as much as being well-educated, economically successful, emotionally healthy, and intellectually curious.

And while this conclusion may be anathema to parents who are doing their best to provide every possible opportunity for their children, it is a powerful reminder that, as Henry Ward Beecher (early American theologian and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) reminds us, "Clothes and manners do not make the man."

Or as I like to paraphrase, "It's not the #2 haircut that makes the man."

--Steve McKibben
11/19/06