The framework's predictions in [§9.9.3](<9.9.3 What is Predicted.md>) are read against the empirical and theoretical literature on education-system performance.

*First.* Educational under-investment correlates with downstream costs. The Heckman early-childhood-investment literature (Heckman 2006, 2013; Heckman and Masterov 2007) traces the return-on-investment pattern for early-childhood programs across justice, healthcare, and earnings outcomes. Chetty et al. on intergenerational mobility (the Equality of Opportunity Project) maps the educational-investment-to-mobility relationship across US Census data. The downstream-cost prediction is empirically confirmed across multiple metrics and decades.

*Second.* Privatized parallel-tier education produces stratification. The US empirical literature on school-funding inequality (Rothstein 2017; Reardon on income-achievement gaps) surfaces the stratification pattern. Putnam (2015; *Our Kids*) tracks the class-based opportunity gap and its propagation across multiple downstream domains. Bowles and Gintis (1976; *Schooling in Capitalist America*) provides an influential theoretical framework for the reproduction pattern, with later empirical literature confirming many of the stratification concerns without requiring the full Bowles-Gintis account. Comparative international research (PISA outcomes, Finland vs US comparisons) supports the claim that less-stratified systems can produce stronger aggregate outcomes.

*Third.* Outcomes track investment AND conditions. The educational-research literature broadly converges on the compound-effect prediction. Per-pupil-investment effects are real and measurable (Jackson, Johnson, and Persico 2016 on school-finance reforms producing measurable outcomes); family-and-neighborhood effects are real and measurable (Chetty et al. on neighborhood effects); the effects compound non-additively. Reform programs targeting one without the other (charter-only reforms; wraparound-services-only programs) produce smaller effects than holistic approaches addressing both, exactly as the framework predicts.

*Fourth.* Credentialing-only produces signaling inflation. The credentialism literature (Collins 1979; *The Credential Society*) registers the signaling-inflation pattern across decades. Job-requirement-creep studies record the empirical pattern of degree requirements escalating beyond actual job-skill requirements. The capability-versus-credential gap literature (employer-survey data on graduates' actual readiness) confirms the under-development side of the prediction. The two patterns track together as the framework predicts.

*Fifth.* Higher-education debt tracks insurance-industry extraction patterns. The US student-debt empirical record over the past four decades displays the structural-extraction pattern: tuition growth substantially exceeding inflation; aggregate student debt exceeding $1.7 trillion as of mid-decade; debt loads exceeding earnings-recovery capacity for substantial subgroups; political resistance to debt-relief proposals matching the framework's prediction. For-profit-college predation patterns (Cellini and Turner 2019 on for-profit-college outcomes) confirm the institutional-extraction prediction at the for-profit margin.

*Sixth.* Early-childhood investment produces highest returns. The Heckman curve is the empirical literature's name for the prediction the framework makes. Perry Preschool Project, Abecedarian Project, and Carolina Approach long-term followups confirm the long-run returns on early-childhood investment. The cost-benefit analyses converge on the early-childhood-investment-dominance pattern.

*Seventh.* Extraction patterns at every scale. The for-profit-college default-rate and low-completion-rate empirical record traces institutional-scale extraction in higher education. The testing-industry empirical record (College Board governance; ACT/SAT preparation industry) surfaces extraction at the admissions interface. The textbook-pricing empirical record maps extraction at the materials-supply interface. Individual-scale extraction (academic dishonesty patterns; credential fraud) tracks the institutional-scale patterns as the framework predicts.

*Finland, relational-skills evidence, and ADHD outcomes.*

*Finland and the Nordic countries.*

Finland's National Core Curriculum names the purpose of education explicitly as supporting students' growth into humanity and ethically responsible membership of society, not credential production. Its curriculum is organized around transversal competencies that cut across all subjects: learning to learn, taking care of oneself and others, managing daily life, critical and creative thinking, and participation in building a sustainable future (Finnish National Core Curriculum 2016). Financial literacy is embedded in mathematics and social science from Grade 7. Social and emotional learning is not an add-on but a fundamental component. Northern European comparators (including Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands) rank high in financial-literacy measures, with financial education integrated into curriculum in varying forms. Australia has embedded financial literacy in a broader wellbeing framework since 2014. These are not coincidences. They are confirmations of the same structural prediction: the countries that take the political maintenance obligation seriously also take the educational one, because they are the same obligation. The educational system is the upstream condition for every other structural capacity the shared structure requires.

*Relationship-pattern evidence (Gottman, Rosenberg, attachment research).* The evidence on what makes relationships fail names specific patterns. Gottman's research identified four communication patterns (contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling) as the most consistent correlates of relationship breakdown across multiple longitudinal samples (Gottman 1994; Gottman and Levenson 2000); the widely circulated *over-90%-accuracy* figure has been criticized as reflecting retrospective overfitting rather than out-of-sample prediction (Heyman and Smith Slep 2001), and the structural argument here rides on the identification of the patterns themselves rather than on any specific predictive figure. These are not personality defects. They are learned patterns. They can be unlearned. They can be taught against. A subject who knows what contempt does to a relationship, who can recognize when they are being defensive rather than responsive, and who knows how to make and receive repair attempts is structurally more capable of maintaining the relationships the shared structure depends on. Rosenberg's framework of Nonviolent Communication (2003) names the same capacities at the level of daily exchange. Attachment research (Bowlby 1969; Ainsworth 1978) traces the relational patterns that form in early childhood and shape every relationship that follows. All of this is teachable. The reason it is not standard is not because we do not know how. It is because the educational system is organized around content domains and credential production, not around bringing subjects to the thresholds they actually need.

*OECD on social-and-emotional implementation gaps.* Finland's integration of social and emotional learning as a fundamental curriculum component (not an add-on) is the clearest confirmation. The OECD's 2023 survey found that over 90% of school leaders globally say developing social and emotional skills is a core objective on par with academic achievement. The same survey found that implementation is uneven, and that teacher training in these areas drops sharply as students get older, precisely when the relational stakes are highest (OECD 2023). The gap between stated intention and actual implementation is the structural failure in miniature. The conditions of participation include relational capacity. A shared structure that does not bring subjects to that threshold is failing at its most basic maintenance obligation: the one that makes shared political life possible.

*ADHD outcomes and the structure-mismatch confirmation.* ADHD is associated with significantly elevated rates of accidents and all-cause mortality (Dalsgaard et al. 2015; Barkley 2015), with the excess mortality especially tied to unnatural causes. The framework predicts that at least part of the harm is downstream of upstream conditions (structures designed around a narrow cognitive template, weak accommodation, and poor fit between cognitive architecture and institutional demand) rather than the cognitive architecture alone. The empirical record supports that direction without requiring the section to assign a single causal share to biology, comorbidity, treatment access, or institutional mismatch.

*On theoretical convergences.* The framework converges on conclusions independently reached in: capabilities-approach educational theory (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2011 on capability-development through education), critical pedagogy (Freire 1968), Deweyan progressive education, sociology-of-education research (Bowles and Gintis; Bourdieu on cultural capital), and developmental psychology (Vygotsky on the zone of proximal development; Piaget on developmental stages). The convergence supports the robustness of the conclusions.

*What does not confirm the framework.* Strong-form market-mechanism-in-education accounts (Friedman 1962 on vouchers at strongest reading) predict that fully marketized education produces efficient outcomes; the empirical record on US for-profit-college outcomes refuses the prediction at scale. Strong-form genetic-determinism-in-educational-outcomes accounts (Murray; Herrnstein at strongest reading) predict that educational investment produces minimal returns. The empirical record on Heckman-curve outcomes and on school-finance-reform effects refuses that prediction. Where the framework's predictions and these accounts diverge, the empirical record is on the framework's side. The confirmations stated in this subsection are made under engagement with the contested educational-policy traditions [§9.9.1](<9.9.1 What is Disputed.md>) names at premise: the Friedman voucher tradition (*Capitalism and Freedom* 1962; *Free to Choose* 1980), the libertarian parental-authority tradition (Rothbard; the homeschool legal-defense literature), and Illich's deschooling critique (*Deschooling Society* 1971). Those traditions are engaged at section length in [§9.9.1](<9.9.1 What is Disputed.md>), and the confirmation record stated here applies under that engagement.


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← [9.9.3 What is Predicted](<9.9.3 What is Predicted.md>) | [9.9.5 What is Concluded](<9.9.5 What is Concluded.md>) →
