Sometimes people object to medicine’s being used as an analogy for education. They point out that there are many differences and many ways in which the two areas of policy are not comparable. It is always possible to attack an analogy in this way, simply because analogy works by comparing two things that are alike in some ways, but different in others. Those who wish to understand and appreciate the analogy focus on similarities, while those who wish to undermine it focus on the differences. To complain that the analogy doesn’t work because there are important differences between its component parts, is to to complain that it doesn’t work because it is an analogy. Unless analogy is completely avoided as a method of reasoning, there will always be tensions which can be exploited by opponents.

Medical analogies have many uses when examining education. They serve a corrective purpose. Our culture…