REVIEW: Exposing 'the Hidden Side of Everything,' Freakonomics Spreads Itself Too Thin

Least successful is Eugene Jarecki's entry, "It's Not Always a Wonderful Life," a largely animated and yet dully summative segment narrated by Melvin Van Peebles. Animation, charty graphics, and archival news footage illustrate Levitt's most controversial theory. When the crime wave predicted to overwhelm the country in the 1990's didn't happen, mayors and news outlets offered a number of explanations -- including "innovative policing" (shudder) and the decrease in crack habits. Unconvinced, Levitt looked to history and the numbers, deciding that a more plausible explanation might be that the passing of Roe V. Wade in 1973 meant that there was a cohort of unwanted (and therefore potentially criminal) children who failed to materialize. Mention is made of Romania, where abortion was outlawed in 1966, ostensibly to raise the failing birth rate, and the crime that overran that country, as if destitution and a murderous dictator had nothing to do with it. Levitt, who appears in each segment, persists in reminding us that he is an economist (as if the pleated Dockers weren't a dead giveaway), and in this case adds to that the apolitical messenger defense. But squeezing his theory into a 20-minute capsule does its logistical gaps and inflammatory leaps of logic no favors.

Best in show is the final chapter, by Jesus Camp directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing. "Can A Ninth Grader Be Bribed To Succeed?" is as straightforward a title as the others are oblique, and rather than retreading Levitt's theories, the duo decided to test one of them out on their own. They follow two Chicago ninth graders with crappy grades and little educational motivation. The kids have been told that they can make cold hard cash if they get their grades up; both are intrigued but only one follows through. The class issues are a little head-spinning, as is the untroubled rationale of incentives as a social good: Romanian women, for instance, were also given incentives to have at least five kids; not all unwanted children are the product of anti-abortion laws.

The idea, alluded to by one of the charismatic young subjects, is to hook kids on phonics by first speaking to them in a language they can understand: stretch limos. The experiment -- along with the way privileged folks (like those conducting the study here, or directing any of the recent spate of education reform docs) seem to weep with relief whenever an inner-city kid pulls a B -- captures the larger desperation surrounding the issue of education in this country: Just get it done whatever way you can.

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