Kerby Anderson
Earlier this month, I talked about the three hardest words for people to say. They are: “I don’t know.” It is especially hard for so-called experts to say those words. Often what we think we know is influenced by our bias. Good science and good research should always work to eliminate as much bias as possible.
Professor Philip Tetlock (University of Pennsylvania) has been systematically tracking the predictions of pundits, politicians, stock market gurus, and sportscasters. One of his more significant studies looked at politics. He evaluated government officials, political science teachers, and economists over a period of twenty years.
I might also mention that nearly all (96%) had postgraduate credentials. He quickly discovered that they thought they knew more than they knew. How accurate were their predictions? He said their predictions were no better than “dart-throwing chimps.”
He has acknowledged that the “monkey-with-a-dartboard comparisons come back to haunt me all the time.” He has developed a computer algorithm for all these failed predictions. But I can make it much simpler. What he has found is that most experts should really say, “I don’t know.”
Does that mean we should ignore any prediction from an expert? No, but it does suggest that we understand that many of these predictions are, at best, informed opinions. We should take them with a grain of salt.
We have been subjected to pundits telling us to “believe the science” when the science isn’t settled, and they lack scientific credentials. We have been told that a particular candidate or political party is a “threat to democracy” when that isn’t true. Some government officials warning about “misinformation” are guilty of spreading misinformation.
It is time to exercise discernment, especially when most experts aren’t any more accurate than “dart-throwing chimps.”

Kerby Anderson
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In a recent column, he asks, “Are Schools Really Politicized?” Most of us know that the answer to that question is yes. But many progressive writers don’t agree.
One of those writers is James Traub who has a book coming out next year on civil education. In an article in New Republic that he wrote previewing his book, he declared: “I Visited Dozens of Civics Classrooms. The Right’s Attacks Are Wrong.”
Who is right? Stanley Kurtz believes left-wing partisanship is a serious problem and has put out model legislation to take partisanship out of civics education. James Traub visited many classrooms and found them to be viewpoint neutral.
Both individuals concede that much of the civic curriculum today is written from a liberal viewpoint. Traub, for example, “acknowledges that the academic literature on teaching, statements from educational administrators, and social-studies standards in blue states are all pervasively leftist.” But then we are to suppose that none of that makes its way into the classroom.
Stanley Kurtz doubts whether “putting a famed reporter in a classroom is the best way to expose politicization. Teachers facing a reporter are bound to be on their best behavior. And highly politicized teachers are unlikely to host such an observer at all.”
By contrast, Stanley Kurtz provides numerous examples of what he describes as K-12 politicization. It may be difficult to detect because many teachers work to hide it from parents and administrators.
There surely are teachers who try to be politically neutral in civics classes. But you aren’t going to find those who are politically biased by sending in a notable author.