Freddie’s gatekeeping

From Freddie deBoer, You Can and Should Blame Young People When They Act Like Lazy Cheaters, Actually. His article went massively viral, with 600 “likes,” so clearly it resonated with many people. But here, imho, he comes off as out of touch or a ladder-puller, having already widely succeeded at life and is now admonishing “today’s generation” when they want a taste of the success he has enjoyed, or for rejecting or pushing back against a rigged game. He writes: It’s true: the conditions people are born into shape the range of choices available to them, the kid from the under-resourced district and the rich private school kid are not standing at the same starting line, and incentives are real and powerful and a society which builds a maze and then punishes the rats for taking the shortcut is a society engaged in an elaborate exercise in bad faith. All of that’s true! The problem is that none of it implies that the individual student who chose to cheat did not choose to cheat. And if…