Mesa-Optimization is Destroying Education
In 1976 the social scientist and cyberneticist Donald T. Campbell developed a principle, now known as Campbell’s Law, that would later become one of the most reliable diagnostics of institutional decay. When any quantitative indicator is used for social decision-making, he warned, it becomes a target for manipulation. As the pressure to meet that target grows, the measure itself begins to lose its connection to the underlying reality it was meant to evaluate, which “will distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” American education has become Campbell’s most dramatic case study. Today’s gifted high school graduates will be greeted by a rude awakening when they sit down for their university’s mathematics placement exams. Instead of acing the test, as they are accustomed to, they are likely to discover that the problems presented are completely alien to them, and find themselves placed in a remedial math program to relearn concepts they should have mastered in m