Oh, I forgot to mention that the professor who wanted me to read more Kozol insisted that the reason schools in East St. Louis are bad is because they have to spend all of their money on leaky roofs. In fact, he seemed to truly believe that the only reason schools in Greenwhich CT have better educational outcomes than those in East St. Louis is that the Greenwhich schools have more money to spend while schools in East Louis have to divert precious dollars to fixing leaky roofs and the like. I have no doubt that they have more money to spend, but the notion that school spending is the only variable in educational disparities is so absurd I thought only staffers on West Wing still believed this stuff. Yes, I know liberals are more empirical because Jonathan Chait says they are, but my empirical studies of liberal empiricism keep spitting out contradictory findings.

Anyway, is Kozol the guy responsible for starting this whole liberal mantra about leaky roofs? I mean how leaky could they be? Did roofs in the 19th century not leak? What is it about leaky roofs that are so deleterious to educational achievement? How many useless classroom computers must our children go without in order to pay for these repairs? Maybe we could use the computers to plug the leaks? Could we use some old TRS-80s to do it?

(Yes, yes, I’m still responding to Chait — if I ever leave this airport)

(Note to the Young’ns: TRS-80s were the hot computers when I was a little kid. Good times, good times)