At the micro level I agree with Caplan: if you do poorly in high school you probably don't enjoy the academic mode of skill acquisition and your ability to gain

At the micro level I agree with Caplan: if you do poorly in high school you probably don't enjoy the academic mode of skill acquisition and your ability to gain from more academic instruction is limited. There are other ways to learn. On a longer term level I think he's missing the more important question. Being able to function in academic settings is a strong predictor for a variety of important outcomes: income, health, happiness, social and political power. Why do some individuals do better in academia than others? If it's because of innate factors(genetic laziness?), then by all means, Ayn Rand and social evolutionize away. If it's because of bad parents, bad teachers, bad state policy(and a tiny smidge of poor genetics to top it off) then we should probably focus on fixing those social problems. I am inclined to believe the latter case. The #1 thing I find distasteful about Caplan's stance on education, as well as his co-blogger Russ Roberts' for that matter, is that I believe it punishes children for the sins of their parents.