He's certainly part of the conservative right. He's no Michelle Malkin, but he's considered the NYTimes right-wing opinion columnist.
His point is actually slightly different than what you are saying, and this subtlety is important. Because while Brooks is on the right, is one of their more astute thinkers. Brooks is actually saying that formal education is easy. Not intellectually challenging, and largely a playground. Lets take some quotes:
"I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t."
"these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale. "
"Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood"
He's not simply saying that there exist other skills that aren't taught in the classroom and that these ar also important and difficult. He's saying something much stronger. He's saying the things that people like Chua value (math, science, arts, literacy, etc...) are the easy things -- the things not to be valued. They're the things you do when your child needs a break or to be coddled. These are the things of intellectual lightweights.
The hard cognitive work is the stuff you see at the corner store in Smalltown USA. These people don't have college degrees, PhDs, Fields Medals, but they can do the actual intellectual demanding activities, not the stuff "you coddle your children" with.
That linked op-ed on the "softening" of American jobs just gracefully skips over the fact that those hard-nosed, hard-chargin' back-breakin' jobs he wished we all had (as he sits in an industry that is so completely the opposite of that) have all moved to China and other places where cheap labor is the ultimate advantage. We can keep graduating Mechanical engineers until the cows come home, but if someone can make more money (or, indeed, any money at all) being a stock trader or realtor, most would consider ME a dying industry in this service-based economy.
He seems to focus on industrial entrepreneurship, a capital-intensive proposition to be sure. I peg Brooks as a "supply-side" kinda guy, so he would probably point to tax cuts as the divining rod of spurring entrepreneurship in that area. Thing is, you can cut taxes all day, but if the bank won't lend you any cash because they're not lending anything much less to your really expensive first-time venture, tax cuts aren't gonna help.
And, VC cash is hard to find in the US unless you're doing software, consumer, web, mobile, or cleantech. If you're in "old line" tech like medical devices or consumer electronics, forget it. Overseas is where to go. Open up shop in Singapore if you're building the better artificial heart.
First, read the article yourself. You appeared to have missed the 700 words that preceeded that sentence.
And even that sentence you quote is completely ambiguous. Is he arguing that they're equally demanding? Or that the important ways that matter the school cafeteria is more demanding than the library or vice-versa? You can't tell from that one sentence. But if you read the whole article you can tell what he actually believes. Read the quotes I have from above that are NOT ambiguous. He clearly states that the library is LESS intellectually demanding. No ambiguity, no qualifier.
His agenda is already clear. That article you sent certainly makes it no less clear.
Although, I do find the below deliciously ironic:
Finally, there’s the lower class. The problem here is social breakdown. Something like a quarter to a third of American children are living with one or no parents, in chaotic neighborhoods with failing schools.
Many of these children have navigated the most treacherous of social environments. Abuse at home, gangs in the neighborhood, and no teaching at school. You'd think they'd be the intellectual highlights of our country. They're not, because everyone really knows that this is not sufficient, nor effective.
This article by Brooks is really saying two things, and is largely unrelated to his later article:
1) The free market doesn't work. People should forego higher paying jobs and do jobs that better help the country. Almost like a large-scale self-imposed socialism.
2) Businesses can't be bothered to train people that don't have college degrees. There are millions of people in the inner city that have the social skills, but not the book smarts or degrees.
Brooks's should put his money where his mouth is and implore businesses to swoop into Watts and hire the available talent. He won't though, because he doesn't actually believe that this is where the intellectual horsepower is. He thinks its at Harvard and MIT, but he'd like you to believe its in Smalltown USA.
From a couple of posts up: He's certainly part of the conservative right.
You believe this because he makes claims like this: The free market doesn't work. People should forego higher paying jobs and do jobs that better help the country. Almost like a large-scale self-imposed socialism.
So basically, Brooks is part of the conservative right because he is more or less pushing one of Obama's policy proposals [1]?
Those two points I give are meant to show the inconsistency in his arguments. One showing how he side steps free markets to argue against even a whiff of intellectualism.
Yet at the same time isn't willing to ask businesses to step up to the plate.
In other words, he's all about the subtext. He doesn't really believe that traditional measures of achievement are coginitively less demanding than 14 year old sleepovers, but he'll say that so that you value it less.
He doesn't actually believe in self-selected socialism (he loves free markets), but he'll attack Harvard grads so you value them less.
His point is actually slightly different than what you are saying, and this subtlety is important. Because while Brooks is on the right, is one of their more astute thinkers. Brooks is actually saying that formal education is easy. Not intellectually challenging, and largely a playground. Lets take some quotes:
"I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t."
"these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale. "
"Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood"
He's not simply saying that there exist other skills that aren't taught in the classroom and that these ar also important and difficult. He's saying something much stronger. He's saying the things that people like Chua value (math, science, arts, literacy, etc...) are the easy things -- the things not to be valued. They're the things you do when your child needs a break or to be coddled. These are the things of intellectual lightweights.
The hard cognitive work is the stuff you see at the corner store in Smalltown USA. These people don't have college degrees, PhDs, Fields Medals, but they can do the actual intellectual demanding activities, not the stuff "you coddle your children" with.