Optimizing Children

In this episode

The connection

A parent studying a genetic report card to predict a child's height is acting on the same impulse as one enrolling a second-grader in an AI school that claims to hack education in two hours a day. Both chase the promise of a perfectly engineered kid. What emerges from two pieces published this week—Brigida D'Agostino in Noema and Lexi Churchill in ProPublica—is how eagerly companies step up to profit from that desire. D'Agostino looks at the pricey market for embryo screening before birth, while Churchill tracks a private school chain tapping into taxpayer vouchers after state regulators rejected it. Read together, they reveal a market built on bypassing rules to sell the illusion of control.

Brigida D'Agostino leaves you staring at a strange image: a mobile phone displaying a genetic report card for an embryo, treating a future child's height and IQ like settings on a thermostat. It is a striking picture of how companies sell parents the illusion of total control. Turning to Lexi Churchill’s reporting up next, you see that exact same sales pitch applied to the next stage of childhood. Churchill tracks a chain of private schools promising to hack education using artificial intelligence, claiming kids can finish their academics in just two hours a day. The technology changes from DNA screening to AI tutors, but the underlying assumption is identical: childhood is a product you can optimize for maximum efficiency. What really jumps out when you put these two stories together is how these businesses operate when experts push back. D'Agostino points out that medical boards call embryo screening unproven, a warning the clinics simply ignore. Churchill tracks a nearly identical pattern. When state charter boards rejected the AI school for being experimental, the founders didn't change their curriculum. They just found a backdoor through taxpayer-funded vouchers. Read alongside each other, the pieces reveal a market that treats regulatory rejection not as a stop sign, but as a minor detour on the way to cashing in on parental anxiety.

What lingers here is the sheer exhaustion of trying to buy certainty. Whether it's a genetic report card predicting a future child's height or an algorithm promising a genius in two hours a day, the market is eager to sell the illusion that a life can be perfectly engineered. It turns raising kids into a high-stakes purchase, a race to bypass chance entirely. But if every trait is selected in a lab and every lesson is optimized for maximum efficiency, what room is left for a child to just be ordinary?