As a podcast on iTunes, listenable/downloadable onscreen at Taki’s Magazine , or as a transcript here

This week I make sport with Mark Zuckerberg, who is either a dumb credulous adherent of utopian egalitarianism, or else crazy like a fox. My guess is the former … but we’ll have to wait for the memoirs.

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook billionaire, has pledged $120 million to help schools near Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, northern California.

Hm, why would they need helping? Let’s take a look at some of those schools.

As always in these cases, I look up the breakdowns for the student body given on the GreatSchools.org website. Let’s see.

Belle Haven Elementary, Menlo Park, grades K-8: 80 percent Hispanic, ten percent black, zero percent white.

Ronald McNair Academy, East Palo Alto, 6-8: 75 percent Hispanic, 11 percent black, one percent white.

Cesar Chavez Elementary, East Palo Alto, 6-8: 83 percent Hispanic, four percent black, zero percent white.

Stanford New, Menlo Park, K-12 (charter): 77 percent Hispanic, 13 percent black, zero percent white.

The triumph-of-hope-over-experience angle here is that four years ago Zuckerberg gave $100 million to the public-school system of Newark, New Jersey, following appeals by charismatic Magic Negro Corey Booker, then-Mayor of Newark. Now, four years on, Zuck’s hundred million has all disappeared into the pockets of consultants and teacher union officials, with no detectable improvement in Newark’s schools. This was all reported on at length in New Yorker magazine back in mid-May this year, and more briefly by myself here at Taki’s Magazine a few days later. Corey Booker, in case you’re wondering, is now a U.S. Senator.

The old wives’ tale got it right, Zuck: You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. There aren’t any bad schools, only bad students.

Show me the worst school in the country, allow me to swap out the student body for an equal number of white kids from Idaho and Utah, seasoned perhaps with a few off-the-boat immigrants from Vietnam and Korea, and pretty soon the test scores will be going through the roof and recruiters from Stanford and Yale will be banging on the doors.

At this point a very dark thought occurs to me …