The Rowe Show

The four point F.R.E.E. plan for children.

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On today’s Remnant—which happens to be more than a year in the making—Jonah’s joined for the first time by Ian Rowe, a senior fellow at AEI and the author of Agency (2022), which explores how young people can build strong families and take control of their destiny. Much of their conversation focuses on one of Ian’s primary interests, the success sequence, and whether it’s still valid in modern America. But plenty of wonkish musings are also mixed in on the importance of stable marriages, the achievement gap in education, and the values we should impart to our children.

Show Notes:

–Ian’s page at AEI 

–Ian’s book, Agency

–AEI’s special forum on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington

–The Remnant with Thomas Sowell

–Ian: “The Game of Life”

–Ian: “A Vision of Black Success”

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Comments (31)
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  1. Aaron H Frank

    Great pod! Thanks,

    Does the person who was lecturing Mr. Rowe about not being an ADOS know how black people arrived in Jamaica? Did she assume his ancestors immigrated on their own? The same is true of Trinidad, Hati, Cuba...

    Maybe a future podcast can discuss why the experience of ADOS is so different from Carribean descendants of slaves.

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  2. Kathywilk

    Such an interesting discussion and persuasive argument for school choice. Love the agency versus equity conflict. Will buy the book.

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    CynthiaW

    That was good.

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    BloggerBarbie

    Any chance of getting transcripts on these? I don't enjoy listening to podcasts and generally get my info from reading, but these do often sound interesting.

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  5. Davewoosley

    Good episode, but I gotta say I was a little disappointed this wasn't Mike Rowe.

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      CynthiaW

      Same.

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    Mkapnick

    I loved this podcast. Man, he is doing the Lord's work. Please have him back again!

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  7. BSamuel

    I have a family member that works with, not for, public school systems in a southern state with no teachers unions and I have pressed them on a steelman argument against charter schools and this is the best version:

    - Public schools, by law, need to provide education and complementary services to every child in their district. That includes a range from gifted children to the severely developmentally disabled. Charter schools can pick and choose which children they want to accept. They do not have the resources for special needs kids (and I include everything from ADD and dyslexia to profoundly developmentally disabled). If every high performing, or aspiring high performing, child goes to a charter school, that will leave our public schools with the kids that the charter schools can turn away, but they legally cannot.

    Not only that, but if a charter school expels a kid for whatever reason, it's back to the public school for them. And they can do this at will.

    So it boils down to the argument that if we had more charter schools, it would leave our public schools as little more than holding cells for special needs kid, kids with disciplinary issues and kids whose parents can't/won't navigate the process to enroll their kid in the charter school.

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    1. Aaron H Frank

      That may be true in the state and/or town where your family member lives but it is hardly universal. My state has statutory requirements to provide for the developmentally disabled but no requirements to do anything special for the gifted. I have even heard a now-retired principal say that to concerned parents of gifted kids.

      This was also true of the school system where I was raised which is still one of the largest public schools systems in the country.
      The flip side of this is that kids and their parents are being held hostage in schools that are not serving their needs because there is no alternative. How do we hold under-performing administrators and teachers accountable.

      We do not know what would happen if we had more charter schools because we haven't tried it so we don't know. At some point we might reach saturation for charters for the gifted and typical and people would create schools for the disabled.

      What we are doing with public schools now is not working for large masses of kids. Maintaining the status quo should not be an option.

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    2. Eazy-E

      Polling showed that in normal times (before the pandemic), 80% of parents were happy with their child's school. If 80% of parents are happy with the performance of the default choice public school, I don't think there will be a mass exodus of students if more options became available. Only parents who have a reason to dislike the traditional public school would even go shopping for an alternative.

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    3. Sjrubert

      Probably the best argument, but it still has tinges of Harrison Bergeron.

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    4. MLE

      Agree. While I enjoyed listening to Mr. Rowe and certainly feel that his intentions are genuine, my feelings about charter schools are mixed. I live in a Southern state with weak teacher unions. In the large cities, the charter schools are often excellent, but not always. There are a lot of fraudulent charter schools or charter schools that really stretch the definition of school. These schools are often in suburban or rural areas where there isn't strong, local journalism to uncover the poor education and poor stewardship of public funds and public trust.

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      1. Eazy-E

        I think this raises the perennial economics question, "What's the alternative?" Are the charter schools that much worse than the plausible alternative public schools in those localities, or do they all suck?

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  8. Payette

    This was a wonderful discussion! Thank you!

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    Anne W (Raw5254)

    This was really good, and so positive. We need more people like Roland Freyer, and not just for kids who are growing up under challenging situations. It seems as though schools have lost their purpose. Where I live, we have a perfectly nice high school. In fact, it’s fairly new, and the money they put into the auditorium alone was amazing. They rented it out for all kinds of community events. Now they are building a new school, and there’s a lot of emphasis on the football and track field. My guess is there will be a swimming pool and tennis courts, as well. This is NOT what we should be emphasizing. Too many kids are not learning even basic skills. When we say we’re “investing in our future,” this isn’t it.

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    Kevin Johnson

    This was great. I hope you can get Roland Freyer as a follow up. Hi suggestion that elite universities set up hundreds of academies to vastly increase the pool of minority kids who can compete for Ivy admittance deserves attention, I think. His research on education, crime, and racism is also intriguing. Wilfred Reilly is another good option.

    Thanks much.

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