Introduction

I've long been skeptical of the blog world, mostly because I have a tendency to spend too much time reading the comment sections specifically looking for comments that will challenge what I believe. In theory that can be an admirable activity, but it turns out that the quality of the discourse coupled with an inability to leave challenges unanswered often means I end up gaining little more than a headache. I don't like to shy away from challenging questions, but I've decided that I should be careful about where I seek input. And somehow, despite my qualms about headaches and wasted time, I find myself drawn to write and to connect.

I've picked this title to give homage to a favorite essay of mine from Frederic Bastiat entitled Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas which is translated as "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Unseen." The driving point of Bastiat's essay is that we too often look at the immediate effects of actions and policies, and fail to take into account many important repercussions in our judgements of what is good or bad. This insight drove me to pursue further study in economics, but has applications almost everywhere I look. Clearly I am neither the first person nor the smartest person to be struck by how universally biased or blind we can all tend to be. Sometimes this failure to recognize what is unseen is strategic (as when we emphasize what we want others to see in a debate), sometimes it is accidental (and that is what much of education is meant to correct) and oftentimes it is rational!

However, though there are people in every field who recognize the importance of that which is unseen, I find that all too frequently, the first critique that comes to mind when anyone promotes some theory or policy or point of view is that they are only looking at what is seen, and missing something which is unseen. And so the driving force behind this blog is to be continually on the lookout for the unstated assumptions and the unseen repercussions of thought and action.

But this choice to follow Bastiat's advice can carry me anywhere, and I get the impression that a blog ought to have a theme if its going to survive. So the theme is Education. There are something like 3,000+ blogs out there on education, but I still hope that I can add some marginal value to the discussion. I am interested in almost everything about education; I guess I have a thousand questions, a good number of working hypotheses, and maybe a couple of answers. In particular I want to ask about the formal education systems and to investigate all that is seen and all that is unseen. I'm looking for answers to my questions from about any angle imaginable - hopefully I can make the questions worth answering.