Charles Murray, social scientist extraordinaire, describes the problems with America’s educational system using four easy points:
1. Ability varies
2. Half of the children are below average
3. Too many people are going to college
4. America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted
Murray argues that these problems stem from our hopelessly romantic ideals involving education. I argue that many of the problems in the country today stem from our romantic ideals and our lack of substance to back them up anymore, but that’s a blog for another day. Many of the programs in the U.S. school systems are products of educational romanticism. The most obvious is No Child Left Behind, which sets dates for 100% of all children in schools to pass a standardized test. Most teachers will tell you that the only way that will ever happen is if they only grade whether the children can write their names on the answer sheet- not absolutely correct mind you, but close enough that they know the child was trying to write his or her name. And even then they would have to give the ones who forgot to write it a second chance.
Murray’s first premise is that ability varies. Not all kids are academically bright. Some just aren’t bright at all. Everyone realizes that not every child is athletically or musically gifted and no one has a problem with that. We don’t say we can turn every child into an athlete or a concert pianist. The same principle applies to mathematical and linguistic ability. The U.S. educational system ignores this and says that we can raise every child’s mathematical and linguistic ability to a set standard. All kids can do it. Well, all kids have a ingrained linguistic and mathematical ability, and once they hit that wall, that’s it. We just don’t want to admit that not all of our children have great academic ability.
Murray talks about the Coleman Report that began in the 1960s to study the discrepancies and inequality in segregated schools and how it affected student achievement. Congress was so certain the results would show a correlation between crappy schools and student achievement that they began Title I programs and threw money at the problem before the report was complete. When the results came back, it showed that the schools and teachers had almost no affect on student achievement. It didn’t matter if the school was run down and had mediocre teachers or had all the best resources and the best teachers. Student achievement was relatively the same. What mattered was what kind family background the kids had. Now a really good teacher will make a difference in a individual student’s educational experience, but looking at the numbers as a whole, schools have little affect on achievement.
This leads to half the kids being below average. It seems like common sense, but educational romantics will refuse to accept it. I worked for a principal who refused to have a basic English class in the curriculum because “None of our students are below average.” So, students who could not do the work in a grade-level English class were forced to stay in the class. They felt hopeless, misbehaved, failed, etc. Not everyone has the same mathematical and linguistic ability. Not everyone is an athlete or musician. Accept it.
Not everybody use to go to college. Now employers use it as a basic aptitude test. Do you have a college degree? I don’t care what it’s in, just as long as you have one. It proves you were able to pool enough resources to pay for it and you managed to put forth enough effort to get the piece of paper. Murray argues that since at least two-thirds of the population are not academically gifted and are going to join the work force at positions that require on the job training rather than a formal liberal arts education, only the top 10% of students should go to college. Now I have issues with this one because I think as a representative democracy people need to get a liberal arts education to be intelligent enough to make good decisions, etc. I am a romantic in that I think people should value education for education’s sake rather than as a means to some other end (a job). But I’m one of those people who needed a liberal arts education. I like learning difficult things, abstract things. I like reading. If you don’t like those things, then you shouldn’t go to college according to Murray. This sounds elitist, but he argues that the problem with everyone going is that only about 10% of the population really get anything out of it. Sure, more than 10% can flounder through a BA as they drink like a fish, screw everything that moves, and get a piece of paper, but how much do they really learn? Then they get a job where they never use anything they took in college and forget it all anyway.
And we segue into the last point, how we educate the gifted is important to the country because it is the academically gifted that go on to be doctors, corporate leaders, lawmakers, scientists, etc. If we do not teach these people the basics of the liberal arts education of old- what is a good life, what is happiness, how to be humble, how to make decisions involving the welfare of others, how to effectively communicate- they enter positions of power lacking ethics, critical thinking skills, introspection, etc. When we force these students to sit in classes bored out of their minds because the teacher is trying to raise the academic ability of the other students who are below average, we miss giving them the opportunity to find how far their own ability goes and even how to fail and be humble. Some of these kids leave high school thinking they can do no wrong simply because they were smarter than the majority of their peers. I’ve seen it happen.
Murray finishes the book by giving recommendations for how we can fix some of these problems, but I’m afraid the system is so ingrained that it will take a disaster to change. Otherwise, the educational system is like a biological organism. When something foreign comes into it, it makes it assimilate or it destroys it. But looking at the economy, the disaster needed to change the system may be on the way.
