Recently I wrote "Adaptability and Government" and "Redundancy as a Protective Measure", mentioning the tendency of government regulation to render systems inflexible and vulnerable to market instabilities. Similarly, in "The Inherent Disappointment of Authoritarianism", "The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Management in Government Enterprises", "Bureaucracy Revisited", "Bureaucratic Management and Self-Policing", "Liberalism", "The Right Way" and "How the Government Corrupts Relationships", I wrote about the way government regulation inevitably is based upon the assumptions of specific individuals about what is right, what is the best way, and those assumptions tend to create systems which are not responsive to change, and handle poorly situations which differ too greatly from the assumptions, or which arise from unexpected circumstances.

Earlier this morning, as I was thinking about my past, this point came to mind, as I thought about my high school Civics class. (Yes, this is the post I mentioned forgetting in the second postscript to "Brief Follow Up To Two Earlier Posts". Somehow I was reminded of it by reading some unrelated paragraphs of a book I had at hand, and so, fortunately, it will not remain forgotten forever.)

I will grant that high school¹ is a trivial example to use to illustrate government, but in this case, it so closely mirrors the principles I want to illustrate that I can't resist examining it.

Let me explain what happened before I get to my point. I am not sure how it works in other schools, or even in Maryland now, but at the time I left private for public school, public school students took a test in late September of their junior year, called the "citizenship test", which they had to pass before receiving a diploma. It was a laughably easy test. if you ever read a newspaper or watched the news, had ever come close to a history class of touched a copy of the Constitution, you could get a 70% and pass. I think the hardest question was where felony crimes were tried in Maryland. (We are one of the three common law states which do not use the standard names for the traditional three tiered system of courts. In fact, we are unusual in having four tiers, with two different appellate courts.) And the teachers themselves recognized this. When I asked if I needed to do anything to prepare for this test, the advisor told me not to worry, it would be a breeze, in his words².

Perhaps I should explain. Normal students took Civics in 10th grade, then, at the start of 11th, they would take the associated citizenship test. It was a good system, at least a sensible order of events, unless one happened to enter the system between 10th and 11th grades. As I did.

I left my private school³ at the end of 10th grade and began attending public school. As a result, I had never taken the Civics class in 10th grade. However, as I was enrolled in 11th grade at the start of September, they scheduled me for the citizenship test at the end of September. And, here's where it gets really silly, as I had to take Civics to prepare me for the test, they enrolled me in Civics during the first semester of 11th grade. That's right, I would get about 3 weeks of the course to prepare me for the test, and then about 13 weeks afterward, also nominally preparing me for a test I already passed.

And that is why I think this is such a perfect example of why government regulation is so dangerous, and not just from the obvious outcomes of regulation. In this case, the system was set up with the assumption that all students would follow the normal path through the system, entering at Kindergarten and graduating after 12th grade. There were also allowances made for those entering later, they would take civics and then take the test. The problem was those who entered the system immediately before the test was scheduled. They threw off the system and ended up taking prep classes for a test they had taken.

Nor is that all, the assumptions and lack of planning for errors, which I have often pointed out as weaknesses of government. ("Planning For Imperfection",  "In Praise of Contracts",  "Production and Consumption ", "Capitalism and Its Consequences ", "Clarifying a Reality of Capitalism", "The Irrationality of Government Redistribution") This system also exposes another problem, one I mentioned in discussing public education ("Reforming Education", "You Don't Drown in a Glass of Water - Vouchers Revisited", "Why Vouchers are not the Answer", "Never Ascribe To Evil, A Discussion of Education"). The system is more interested in keeping the process impartial and uniform than whether the system makes sense. It would have made sense either to have my take Civics and then take the test the next semester or year, but I was an 11th grade student, so I had to take the test in September. Similarly, if I had to take the test then, it would make sense to put off Civics, see if I failed the test, and if I did, then enroll me in the class and test me the next year. But the system needed to be uniform. I could not postpone the test, and I certainly could not be excused from the class. I had to do both, even if the sequence made no sense.

Oh, I know, this is a minor complaint, and it cost me little, other than wasting a half year I could have spent actually learning something, but I do like it as an example. This sort of rigidity, and the general principles underlying such rigid unthinking responses, tell us a lot about government. And so I think it is a good illustration of the way government thinks, or sometimes doesn't.

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1. Not that education is trivial, I have argued that topic in my many posts on educational bureaucracy and vouchers (all cited above). But, as far as the specific content and the absurd policies by which education is conducted, it may seem a rather insignificant topic. But, as I say in the essay itself, this topic fits the subject so well that even a trivial example is worth pursuing.

2. Sadly, I met some who were not only forced to retake this test, but take it three times. I believe there were two or three tests per year, and since you started taking it in your junior year, I suppose, conceivably, you could have up to six tries. And yet I had heard of a handful who had to delay graduation due to this or one of two other tests required for graduation.

3. At the time I had some complaints with my private school and convinced my parents to let me try public school. After less than a semester I was ready to leave. I had an offer of early admission, and a scholarship, to a state university, but thanks to a public school bureaucratic tangle (which I described in a note to "Inversion of Traditional Values")  I could not attend. In the end, I dropped out before the end of my first semester in public school and attended community college for a year before going to a real university (and receiving a GED).