EssayNovember 17, 2021

U.S. Soccer Is a Saul Alinsky Plot, As Is College Ed. More Broadly

By Rob Smith·November 17, 2021

The Screaming Weasels, my U-13 girls soccer team, were undefeated. All the girls had nicknames; such as Big Foot Blankenship, Caterpillar Cowles, Mary Poppins, Alligator Allie and Bulldog Miller. Every Tuesday at practice, I handed out that week’s edition of the Screaming Weasel Gazette which reported on the previous Saturday’s game with inspirational insights on how to conquer our next opponent. One particular edition was noteworthy. In it I told the girls that we had the opportunity to make history. Should we shut out Fisher (our opponent), we would accomplish something that no other team in the storied history of Richmond Rec League soccer had ever done, perhaps no other team in the history of the world. An undefeated and UNSCORED UPON season!

On game day (and yes, I had the girls wear black eye grease), the City could not figure out how to turn off the sprinklers on all the fields. ½ of one field was dry, so the City decided to move the nets in and we played on a short field. This was an injustice of epic proportions. Fisher was a cheater team. All their girls were about 6 feet tall and looked like prison guards. No doubt some had extensive rap sheets. They were way older than 13. The short field made it easier for the Amazon women to score. We held them off until late in the game with about 1:20 to go. I wanted this bad. I was wrought with anxiety. If we could just hold on, history would remember us for time memorial! Suddenly, one of their 6’ 2’’, 200 lb. chain smoking criminals smacked a rocket towards the right side of the goal. I think I saw my life flash in front of my eyes. It was over. My dreams dashed. My heart sunk. Despondency enveloped me like a misty fog on a London morning. Then, out of nowhere, little Katie Cowles appeared. The 97 mile per hour cannon ball struck her right in the gut. She caught it. We won. Katie is 31 now. Every time I bump into her, I give her a big hug and thank her for the epitaph that will surely be on my tombstone: “Here lies Rob Smith, Coach of the Screaming Weasels, Undefeated and Unscored upon.”

I mentioned all this because I was a good coach. A coach is nothing more than a teacher. You know why I was a good teacher? I was a good teacher because I was a good teacher. That’s it. I never played soccer. I think it is a Euro-socialist sport. Anything clove cigarette smoking Frenchmen like, I don’t. I think the unfortunate fact that American children play soccer is likely some sort of Saul Alinsky plot. “Let’s teach the American children to play soccer so they will never learn how to throw a ball with their hands!” Obviously, if you can’t throw a ball, you can’t lob a hand grenade into a commie foxhole.

My point is our whole education system is predicated upon the belief that a bunch of government and quasi government employees (teachers) can make children learned and successful. You can’t train someone to be a good teacher, you either “have it” or you don’t. Success bubbles from the ground up, seldom can it be dictated from above.

Capitalism has been accurately described as “creative destruction.” Market forces destroy underperforming businesses and economic concepts and create new business and economic models that not only work, but more importantly consumers want. However, when the government gets involved “to help” a situation, it retards change. Its rules and regulations thwart creative destruction. More notably, the incredible amount of money thrown at teachers and administrators creates a selfish status quo resistant to change. Society gets stuck in a paradigm, thinking that education must be administered in its current form. Even more disturbing, our society puts too much emphasis on the value of a sheepskin from an “institution.” We have a cram down system instead of a bubble up system.

The world needs visionaries. It needs people who are unafraid to speak the truth. So here I am. When I was at the University of Virginia, I remember some national accrediting agencies had ranked our English Department No. 1 in the nation and our History Department No 5. As a liberal arts guy, these were my fields of study, and as a 20-year-old, I mistakenly thought this made me special. None of it matters. It is all a crock and indeed a scam. My experience is many of our nation’s esteemed faculty members know less about their fields of study than a multitude of regular guys I know with regular jobs, unaffiliated with academia. I have met many a graduate of a fine institution duller than dishwater and shockingly ignorant of matters of civic importance. I have met plenty of electricians, auto mechanics and plumbers who are extremely well read and well suited to carrying out civic responsibilities. Our society makes the mistake of thinking that all learning occurs on an ivied campus between the ages of 18 and 22 and a sheepskin from the “top down” institution is proof that one is “smart” and thus deserves preferential treatment in life. Accrediting agencies decide which universities are the best, and these universities spend enormous amounts of money to gain favor with these agencies.

It was recently reported that Yale has more administrators than undergrads. In most disciplines, all that is necessary to be learned and knowledgeable is to read books and talk with smart people. This might shock the Ivied Tower elite, but smart people abound everywhere. School houses and universities started because there were a dearth of books and knowledgeable people to teach. Students had to travel to a “place,” and be packed together in a group in front of a “teacher.” Today, we have the “Library of Alexandria” on our phones and anyone can listen to an astute academic lecture of their choice while strolling through Central Park. A year at Yale costs $82,000, but what if one can become just as well educated, indeed more so and not spend a nickel in tuition?

Those of us who have started businesses from the ground up have an innate, perhaps even a visceral sense of what it should cost to achieve a desired objective. We are wired to seek out and slay wasteful spending. The costs to be considered “well educated” is absurd and totally out of line with reality. Read books and talk to smart people. History is full of people who did just that: Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Watt, Dickens, Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, Twain, Melville, Van Gogh, the Wright Brothers, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Ford, Truman and the list goes on. The idea that one has to be a PHD to teach college students is as silly as Nick Saban attending coaching school to learn how to be a football coach. Our modern education system is much like a medieval guild designed to have monopolistic control over “education.” It is a crock, a scam and a scandal.

I recently had a revelation with my son. Despite going to a tony private school, he was a horrible student. He just didn’t care. In college (Ole Miss), he was more interested in booze, chasing women and breaking things (that’s kind of a genetic predisposition in our family). However, once he turned 25, I noticed a change, he was devouring books (history, philosophy, literature, business and finance) and wanting to discuss them. I asked him why wasn’t he like this in school. “Dad, I hated being told what to do and what to study.” It made me think. Why go to “Veneble U” and be forced to declare a major and to take two years of fluff classes just to get the coveted degree? What’s wrong with the consumer designing his own curriculum?

As you may know, despite my universally acknowledged bad character and pettifogging ways, I am still the smartest man on the planet and one who can predict the future with amazing accuracy. It’s not that I am clairvoyant, it is a supernatural abundance of reason and logic that gives me these gifts. The education bubble is about to burst. You heard it here first folks. The damn is about to break. The woke “Hate America” virus that has spread throughout the academic world has “woke-en” up parents to the sham. What parent wants to break their back working and saving money for college to have anti-intellectual leftist pap crammed into their kids’ heads by arrogant know-nothings? Students are saddled with debt they never shake off. If the $ 368,000 spent on a 4-year Yale degree was invested at a 6% annual return, it ends up being $4.5 million at retirement age. Think how many jobs and new businesses can be created with the enormous influx of capital created by changing the education paradigm. We have reached the tipping point. It is now apparent that much of academia teaches kids what to think instead of how to think, and much of what they do learn that is constructive and beneficial can be learned without the enormous costs. The paradigm of how education is administered, huge public high schools and 4-year colleges using the cram down method is about to give way to the bubble up method where parents and students design their own platforms for learning. There will be an incredible shake up in academia. It’s coming and it’s coming sooner than you think.

Trust me, I am always right. The last time I was wrong about anything was 1980. I predicted the USA Olympic hockey team would beat the Russians 3-2. The actual score was 4-3.

First published at realclearmarkets.com.