A great idea has surfaced for blowing the claims for early childhood intervention out of the water. Congressman Jared Polis has proposed creating securities whereby people could invest in early childhood education and participate in the eventual returns. I think we all ought to get behind this idea, and thereby prompt some unsentimental hedge-fund guys to take a hard look at the claimed returns for early childhood intervention and the data that are being used to support those claims. I predict their technical conclusion will be ”You can’t be serious.” Maybe someone will pay attention to them.I think we should have a Fantasy Football league for schoolchildren. I'll play versus Bill Gates. He can pay for all the early intervention for his draft choices that he wants if he'll pick, say, the Hungarian Gypsy kids while I pick the Hungarian Jewish kids, he picks the Untouchables while I pick the Parsis, and so forth. A dozen years from now we'll compare test scores and settle our bets. C'mon, Bill, ante up!
The funny thing is that nurturism becomes ever more our ruling ideology all the while naturism becomes our hobbies. Fantasy football is pure selectionism. There is no coaching, no training, no nothing. Just pick the players who will come up with better statistics and you win. And it's huge these days.
