If he’s really doing what you’re saying then he’s being a dishonest hack; there’s not much you can do, other than trying to make him commit to and defend specific positions rather than sweeping generalities that allow him to equivocate between Head Start and Harrison Bergeron at will. A dishonest hack will, of course, refuse to engage on the specifics – but a skilled dishonest hack will make it easy to not notice.

The government is obliged to treat all citizens equally. Why should it work to undo the benefits that my wife and I have labored so hard to provide? Why should it offer more to children whose parents have not taken the trouble?

I think it’s interesting that the answer that came immediately to my mind – that children are not morally responsible for the failings of their parents – doesn’t seem to have even occurred to D’Souza. If that’s the moral superiority of the religious, I want none of it. (And of course government shouldn’t work to undo the benefits – it should work to spread the benefits. Those are two different things unless you see the benefit as purely positional and all of society as a zero-sum game.)

Well it is certainly true that there is a lot of ground to cover between making no commitment to improve the opportunity of the least advantaged and Rawl’s principles on the matter… I’m not really sure where I stand on the issue, though, I think it’s clear that the level of inequality of opportunity that we currently see is unjust. D’Souza seems to be located much further down the spectrum. My personal view is that he is trying to use an argument against a much stronger version of equality of opportunity than anyone is actually advocating to argue that we shouldn’t really do much more than we already are. And I’m actually more interested in how one would combat that in a rhetorical sense than anything else.

All that said, I agree with you that some other principle is more important than equality of opportunity, but I wouldn’t say it was “minimal” or “adequate” opportunity, I would say that it was elevating the prospects for a flourishing life of those whose prospects are least (a more perfectionist version Rawls’s difference principle).

I think that is the core of the disagreement. Your answer is the Rawlsian answer; providing adequate opportunity to everyone is an alternative definition of justice—a more traditional one.

I (and mpowell, and D’Souza) are arguing that providing adequate opportunity equally to all is more appropriate than trying to equalize. I KNOW that’s not just in the Rawlsian sense; assuming Rawlsian justice is the agreed-on justice system seems to me a mistake in this context. ((Although not in the paper.)

That’s a good point you make about maximizing the opportunities of the least advantages a la Rawls. Also, for pointing out that you can regard equality of opportunity as competing with other values. Perhaps sticking with ‘equality of opportunity’ is the best path.

What I am really trying to get at is a way of easily addressing the complaint that D’Souza makes. It is really quite obvious when you think about it the right way, but I have heard similar arguments enough that it seems some people do struggle to understand. (or maybe their misunderstanding is not wholly unintentional!)

Daniel—I’m glad to see, looking back, that I didn’t say anything negative about the effects of Perry, or the studies. I’m not at all sceptical about those studies. I, and I think a lot of other people, am bemused at the way they are used to support funding for, for example, half-day 4 year-old kindergarten, or even full day 4K provided through existing day care facilities (start talking about universal 4K and, immediately, the local day care providers fear for their market and say “we can do that”). Part of the problem is that no-one really knows what the Perry teachers were doing (which is why the radio documentary is so interesting). Heckman knows all this and is not only very clever but also very careful—lobbyists for 4K are often not so careful (and rarely so clever).

But this is a strawman that D’Souza is attacking. Our concern for the wellfare of the disadvantaged is really about observing enormous systematic disadvantages that these kids face. I think what we are really targetting is a minimum opportunity for everyone. When every kid receives proper nutrition through the school system or because his parents are paid a living wage, nobody is forced to live in an exceptionally high crime neighborhood and poor kids attend schools that are at least as well funded as those attended by rich kids, then we can talk about the degree to which we should back off our expectation of equality of opportunity because otherwise we would be interferring with parent’s ability to go ‘above and beyond’ in their efforts to do the best by their kids.

Maybe equality of opportunity is the wrong phrase to use. It certainly gives the libertarians some ammunition (not really sure if they’re actually persuading anyone outside their clique, though), but it is really quite poorly defined. I think it is a minimum of opportunity that is a more accurate way to describe what we’re seeking.

Let me offer a simple answer that should be near and dear to anyone who considers themselves a free market libertarian: because those children will be the ones feeding you, clothing you, housing you and giving you medical care when you are old, while your children are pursuing better careers than working on farms, in mills or taking care of old people.

In the first place, the systems are less rigid then they seem on they outside. I had several friends in (sort of) graduate school who started at a low vocational track and worked their way up.
Second, the conveyor-belt you describe also works the other way round: whena smart kid from a poor background gets sorted into a high level of high school, she will get good support and perhaps more important the expectations to continue to a high level of tertiary schooling (keep also in mind that tertiary schooling is in general more subsidized than in the US). But of course high-class children get on the good tracks in disproportionate numbers.

I personally believe that the system should be more flexible, with later sorting ages. But other systems, including the US, are not doing a that great job either in providing fair, classless education opportunities. I guess the real problems go much deeper tahn the implemented structure.

just to show that this idiotic mistake happens to the best of us …

Well fair enough, but I’m going to believe James Heckman rather than you (or Henry or John). I think that the work done on the Perry Preschool program rises to a rather higher level than “claims” – people talk about it not so much because it’s a superfantastic magic preschool program, but precisely because it has had so much detailed longitudinal work done on measuring its effectiveness over such a long period of time. I mean really. Show me someone who won a Nobel Prize in part for proving that abstinence based sex education was effective, and then maybe you’d have a point.

For two reasons.

One is that children and their parents are two separate entities. D’souza seems to conflate the two. Without some egalitarianism in education, children are simply punished for the educational poverty of their parents, whether through fecklessness or simple lack of resources. In that pool of under-resourced kids there will be a few who, if given the chance, can really make a difference – your Bernie Frasers etc.

Following on from that, offering a decent education to all children doesn’t mean that you have just handed them a brilliant career on a gold platter. The outcomes will vary according to what the kids themselves make of it (barring serendipitous or tragic life accidents, I guess, which will always happen.) A kid given an identical start to D’Souza’s kid won’t have the identical endpoint and end up competing for exactly the same position.

See, in the end you come to the right conclusion