I am persuaded that if any attempt is made to improve the education of the poor and such an unmanly spirit should guide the resolution of a society or committee for that purpose it would render the design abortive.

The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters the decision is made by committee and that's crap. You want people and groups who are able to think thoughts before they share.

Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota then Oxford College in Minnesota and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry.

If we are to survive we must have ideas vision and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.