[schlumpf]

Rephrase that juxtaposition as "teach everyone to read" and "only admit the top 1% [to elite universities]". Now you have gone from potentially contradictory normative statements to an uncontroversial description of the educational systems in most countries today.

Public education was a bastion of American liberal democracy [0]. But adult literacy is not merely an egalitarian project. It was and is an important source of average labor productivity gains. At the same time businesses practice elitism where it, too, is consistent with the profit motive.

I'm not sure what's to be gained from hiring C+ English graduates to staff the New York Times, nor from hiring 55th percentile CS grads to bootstrap your next startup. Let a business hire the best employees for the job to maximize marginal productivity, and by all means keep teaching people to code where it can raise average productivity.

[0](http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/334)