Oh, I do looooves me some Steven Pinker! That man can get away with arrogance like nobody’s business.
I agree with pretty much everything he said in that article. I do have to wonder if I agree with him because my own kids would be better off judged by SAT’s than by EC’s. I don’t think so – he certainly has the science behind him.
My one little nit-pick (not really relevant here – sorry!) is that Pinker lumps in arts such as music and dance with sports as purely recreational, while editing the school paper is educational. Schools that offer music and dance majors obviously view these subjects as having educational merit. I think activities like music and dance can be done as recreation or education. To my knowledge there are no schools that offer a crew or football major (at least not officially), so yes, these sports would be recreation.