A concise and well-argued summation of the case against reparations, delivered in an accessible and easily-understandable fashion – in short, a masterclass. And a necessary one, at that.
A concise and well-argued summation of the case against reparations, delivered in an accessible and easily-understandable fashion – in short, a masterclass. And a necessary one, at that.
My work has returned to the digital pages of Providence Magazine once again, this time with a review of Nigel Biggar’s 2025 book Reparations: Slavery and the Tyranny of Imaginary Guilt. The reparations debate may seem like ancient history here in the US, peaking in the George Floyd moment of 2020-21, but it is alive and well overseas, especially targeting the former British Empire. The United Kingdom has been inundated with claims that it is responsible for all the evils of the transatlantic slave trade - now considered by the UN to be history’s greatest crime, absurd as that sounds to anyone who knows history - as well as the poor economic development of former slave-centric colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. And Biggar’s book does yeoman’s work explaining why, all backed by concrete evidence. It’s a masterclass that is well worth the read, particularly so given its brevity.
Below is an excerpt of my review, but you can read the whole thing here.
The early chapters of Reparations describe the actual history and context behind the transatlantic slave trade, Britain’s involvement in enslavement and, more importantly, abolition, and the complex post-abolition economic histories of the reparations-seeking nations. All of the facts, figures, and analyses that Biggar musters in this section form the real meat of the book and serve as ready-made counters to many of the most commonplace pro-reparations arguments. He explores the broader historical phenomenon of slavery, bringing to bear plenty of evidence that shows it to be a sadly-universal institution across cultures and epochs, certainly not one particular to the empires of Western Europe, even when it comes to trafficking in Africans. The most enlightening examples presented to bolster this point are ones that reparations activists intentionally ignore.
One such counterpoint is the existence of the Arab slave trade, which lasted for centuries longer and probably trafficked far more Africans than did Europeans (though precise counting is impossible for long-term historical phenomena like this), only ceasing when threatened with the British Empire’s military and economic might. Another is the complicity of Africans themselves in the capture, trade, and exploitation of slaves – a controversial claim, but one that is heavily supported by the primary sources. Biggar assembles a great deal of this proof, showing how the arrival of European slavers merely provided a new and profitable market for a pre-existing trade, as well as how many African rulers and societies fought against abolition. This context serves as exculpatory evidence against the claim that Britain’s involvement in the slave trade was uniquely pernicious.
Britain did have a unique role in the history of the global slave trade, however: ending it. This is the context most commonly and cynically shorn from the pro-reparations narrative, and understandably so: Britain’s abolitionism was far more important and historically unique than was its role in enslavement. Biggar does yeoman’s work bringing to bear significant support for this position, detailing how Britain was at the very forefront of the abolition movement, driving the cessation of the global slave trade even at significant economic and geopolitical cost to the empire.
When Parliament ended the slave trade in 1807, London’s strategic fortunes were at a low ebb; Napoleonic France was in control of the majority of the Continent and was about to attempt to cut off all British trade to Europe, making the slave-centric colonies all the more crucial. And yet London voted to fight its greatest foe with the equivalent of one hand tied behind its back, handicapping itself economically and even dispatching its wartime navy to suppress the trade. That the full emancipation of slaves across the empire took another three decades and was done in an incremental and conservative fashion, including by compensating slaveowners and creating a brief post-slavery apprenticeship program, does not undercut the fact that emancipation came early and was successful. It also does not change the reality that it was British thinkers, politicians, and theologians who led the charge in fighting for abolition worldwide, against the societal and civilizational currents that had been present for thousands of years.
But Britain did not stop in the 1830s when it freed the slaves living under the empire; it spent the next several decades going around the world to halt both the slave trade and slavery as an institution, by force of arms if necessary. This moral crusade, fondly remembered by the contemporary British statesman Lord Palmerston as “the achievement which I look back on with the greatest and purest pleasure,” was historically exceptional and extraordinarily costly. Britain’s immense naval might was marshaled in service of this noble aim – during the mid-1800s, up to 13% of its global fleet was stationed off West Africa for this purpose alone – and was regularly used to interdict ships, blockade ports, and even attack coastal fortresses. The empire also utilized its skilled soldiers and experienced bureaucratic corps to end this evil practice worldwide. Abolition was centered in all of the empire’s diplomatic overtures to slaving polities, even when it created problems for other core British interests, while several new colonies, mostly unprofitable, were established so as to enforce local emancipation.
The economic cost of these impressive and dedicated efforts was not small. Expert estimates put the present-day cost of suppressing the transatlantic trade alone at between £1.4-1.7 billion per year for half a century, in an era when government spending was a minuscule fraction of what it is today. Other economic historians taking a broader view estimate that the full cost of British anti-slavery efforts, including price impacts, direct costs, and loss of business, amounted to 1.8% of national income from 1808 to 1867, a figure which nearly matches total modern-day UK defense spending. That this amount was spent on a purely moral and ideological project across 50-plus years is a major argument against the reparations narrative. It is no wonder they studiously avoid it.
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I’ve worked with David VanStory for some time now, and he’s thought more about Direct Instruction than almost anyone I know. I asked him to write up what he learned building error correction into CrushAP. Here’s David. – Zach
Introduction
Most learning apps think they correct students’ mistakes. Very few actually do. The industry standard is to show the student the right answer and move them on to the next question. Everyone accepts this as the way things are, but it doesn’t have to be.
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We built corrections that way too, at first. I’m (David) an engineer building CrushAP, an AP Physics app based on Direct Instruction. After a lot of trial and error, a DI expert, Jon Owen, showed us that the problem was solved decades ago, in a procedure today’s learning apps have mostly ignored. Here’s how we adapted DI’s correction procedure for our app.
Corrections matter more than most people think
A tenet of Direct Instruction is that mistakes should be corrected immediately. They are so important that NIFDI made a protocol that details step by step how to correct students.
The clearest version of the DI correction procedure is the “7 step correction procedure for verbal tasks”. The core of the procedure is this: the mistake is corrected immediately, then students repeat the task until it’s firm, with increasing delays. Students must prove they have corrected their mistake by giving correct responses before they are allowed to move on.
NIFDI correction procedure for Verbal Tasks. Source: NIFDI.org.
The key benefit of the DI correction procedure is that it ensures:
When students make mistakes, they are corrected
They repeat the task right away until they get it right
After a short delay they repeat again so they can prove they got it.
After a longer delay they repeat it again so they prove they got it.
The repeats aren’t always the same question. Variations of the example make sure students aren’t just recalling an answer but applying what they learned.
Here’s what a student actually does after getting a question wrong, before and after we adopted the DI correction procedure.
Students get the practice they need right away, at the moment they need it, instead of carrying a mistake forward.
If they don’t have to correct it, they won’t.
When a student made a mistake, we would show the full solution for them to read, and then move them on. Unfortunately, we found that students would just click “next” immediately, not reading it. It wasn’t until after many iterations of our own correction procedures that we realized that if a student doesn’t have to correct their mistake, they won’t. This is not a dig. It’s human nature.
We tried several correction procedures:
adding hidden timers that delayed when students could click “next”
click-to-reveal corrections
forcing students to redo lessons when they made mistakes
an AI tutor that asked them questions about where they went wrong
All of these solutions were reasonable iterations, but they were trial-and-error designs that did not have the right balance of efficiency and proof of understanding. We didn’t know that the hard work had already been done: a tried and tested DI correction procedure already existed.
Over time, we learned two things:
Other curriculum builders and designers had encountered this problem too; if a shortcut existed to avoid the correction, students will take it.
Other curriculums seemed to have landed in the same design spot. Each had its own correction procedure.
I sought the advice of a DI expert, Jon Owen, and he suggested I would benefit from looking at DI’s correction procedure. He was right.
Adapting the procedure for an app
So, our mistake had been that our corrections did not follow DI principles. Students weren’t repeating the task with increasing delays between repeats. Here is how we have made our corrections align with DI principles.
It is important to note that the 7 step DI correction procedure was designed for verbal tasks, with a teacher and a group of students. Our app is not a classroom, and that changes things:
There is no teacher voice and no script. Students read text and look at images on a screen.
Every student works individually - there is no group work.
There are no fixed lessons or class periods. A student might do one 3 to 12 minute exercise, or several in a row.
The app tracks every answer for every student, far more closely than a teacher with a full classroom can.
So we didn’t try to replicate the exact procedure which was designed for verbal tasks in the classroom. We took the core of the procedure (correct the mistake immediately, repeat the task until it’s firm, test it again after a delay) and built a 4 step version that fits our app.
Table 1 - How the DI Correction Procedure maps into CrushAP app
Step 1 - (DI Step 1) correct the mistake (in this case, prompt the rule)
Step 2 - (DI Step 2) repeat the question
The student repeats the task. However, getting the answer right on the repeat isn’t enough on its own. A student can pick A because they remember it was A. So after the repeat, we ask: ‘How do you know?’. This was one of Engelmann’s key DI techniques when teaching rules. The student has to pick the reason, ‘Wider spacing means faster motion’. That tells us whether they’re applying the rule or just recalling the answer.
Step 3 - (DI Step 3) go back and then repeat the part - quick replay
The student answers an earlier question, then redoes the one they missed - we call this “quick replay”. This adds a short delay before they have to prove they get it.
Step 4 - (DI Step 7) A variant at the end
At the end of the lesson the student gets a “variant” of the question they missed: the same type of question with a different scenario. This does two things. It’s a delayed test, so they have to show they still know the rule after a longer gap. And because the scenario is new, they can’t just answer from memory - they have to apply the rule. Right now the variant comes at the end, but in longer exercises it could come sooner.
What changed
The biggest change is that a mistake now leads to more practice instead of straight to the next question. Before, a student who got a question wrong saw the answer and moved on, and we had no way of knowing whether they attended to the correction. Now every missed question is corrected and asked again right away, and about 9 in 10 of our students get it right on that retry. More than 8 in 10 still get the question right when it comes back at the end of the lesson (Student Data, August - October 2026).
It also changed what we can see. Because the student has to answer again, every correction now tells us whether they actually learned from the mistake.
Conclusion
Showing a student the right answer isn’t the same thing as correcting a mistake. If a student doesn’t have to correct their mistake, they won’t. The DI correction procedure fixes that by making the correction part of the work: the student repeats the task, proves they get it, and proves it again later. It took us a lot of iterations to adapt the classroom version to work in an app, and there’s more to do. Next, we’re adapting the correction to the type of error, whether it’s a discrimination, strategy, or production error. But the principle is the same, and our students are getting the practice they need at the moment they need it.
Thanks to Marcy Stein for reviewing drafts of this piece.
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