THE TECHNOCRATIC ILLUSION

William Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (New York: Basic Books, 2013) ("The conventional approach to economic development, to making poor countries rich, is based on a technocratic illusion: the belief that poverty is a purely technical problem amenable to such technical solutions as fertilizers, antibiotics, or nutritional supplements. We see this in the [World] Bank's actions...; we will see the same belief prevalent amongst other who combat global poverty, such as the Gates Foundation; the United Nations, and US and UK aid agencies." "The technocratic approach ignores what this book will establish as the real cause of poverty--the unchecked power of the state against poor people without rights..." "By this technocratic illusion, the technical experts unintentionally confer new power and legitimacy on the state as the entity that will implement the technical solutions The economists who advance the technocratic approach have a terrible naiveté about power--that as restraints on power are loosened or even removed, that same power will remain benevolent of its own accord..." "What used to be the divine right of kings has in our time become the development right of dictators, The implicit visioning development today is that of well-intentioned autocrats advised by technical experts what this book will call authoritarian development The word technocracy (a synonym for authoritarian development) itself is an early twentieth-century coinage that me ands 'rule by experts..." "The technocratic illusion is that poverty results for a shortage of expertise, whereas poverty is really about a shortage of rights. . .  This book argues that the cause of poverty is the absence of political and economic rights, the absence of a free political and economic system that would find the technical solutions to the poor's problems, The dictator whom the experts expect will accomplish the technical fixes to technical problems is not the solution, he is the problem." Id. at 6-7. In reading this book I kept thinking about the efforts to provide quality education to underprivileged children in the US, and how this problem also suffers from a technocratic illusion: No Child Left Behind, the Common Core, charter schools, the move from an education-model to a business-model, etc. I also though about the slow death of legal education with it so-called "Best Practices," "Practice Ready," and "Experiential Learning." It all works well for administrator, but it is intellectually deadening for both teachers and students. We are training a generation of Babbitts: materialistic anti-intellectual conformists. Woe be the students! Shame on us as educators!!).