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Thought provoking ideas about a fundamental topic | Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality | Charles Murray

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	• Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality Charles Murray Crown Forum, 2008 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Four simple points that show how we need to reform and free our educational system

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a system of education that actually prepared everyone for happy and productive lives? Instead, we try to stuff everyone into procrustean k-12 model and wonder why we have so many "failures". Worse, we tell every high school graduate to go to college and too many college graduates end up at jobs at benefit not a bit from their expensive post high school education and the student often has a big chunk of debt to pay back. Why are we doing this to ourselves and our children? Who benefits from this present mess? As parents and taxpayers, we have to get the gumption to take back our educational system from the politicians and those who control our present system (and, no, it isn't the local school boards or the citizens).

This terrific book by Charles Murray makes four basic points.

1) Ability varies. You know this is true. Some people are good at sports. Some people are better at math. Others have strong verbal acuity and so forth. Murray examines the multiple-intelligence (seven intelligence) model and discusses the "g" measured in IQ tests, as well. The point is, if talents vary widely, our current system tries to adjust this necessary outcome by holding back the most talented rather than letting them zoom ahead, and it places burdens on the least talented that discourage them and keep them from becoming prepared for life with skills that can help them in jobs that can contribute to a happy and constructive life.

2) Half of the children are below average. No, we don't live in Lake Woebegon and no one really does. If you line up people by height, half of the children will be below average. If you have them run around the track, half of their times will be below average. If you have them perform math problems, write essays, make drawings, or play musical instruments, the range will run from the truly gifted in each to those who don't seem to understand the subject at all. And, yes, half will be below average. This is simply true. But it has strong implications of how your should set up an educational system. You cannot put the best basketball players and those who can barely stand on the same varsity basketball team and expect it to function let alone win. The same is true for every subject. The word segregation is radioactive so lets use differentiate. You may need to differentiate students to different schools based on talents, interests, and accomplishment in order to truly educate the students. An education is supposed to lift students from where they are to a better place in life. Not everyone is going to learn advanced calculus, but those that can should be given the best education to learn it and more. Each subject should be treated the same way.

3) Too many people are going to college. The issue is not that people aren't learning things in college; but that many of the kinds of remedial skills and core subjects now being taught in many undergraduate programs should be pushed back into effective high school programs. The same is true for vocational education that can help those who really need to be prepared for a trade or a job that requires skills rather than a four year degree. No one should be denied college who wants it, but the evidence is in that merely having a four year degree in many subjects does not provide a marketable skill that justifies the investment to obtain it. Yes, we want to give them enriching life experiences that a liberal arts education provides, but much of that can be done in high school by creating a more focused system that prepares people for happy and productive lives. We need to stop handing out meaningless diplomas that certify nothing about the skills, qualities, or accomplishments of the person holding it.

4) America's Future Depends on How We Educate the Academically Gifted. You don't win track meets by sending in just anyone from your high school. You send in those best at each event. Our technological society depends on knowledge, innovation, and creativity. Other countries from around the world do have competitive education systems and they are preparing many times the number of engineers and other knowledge based jobs. We will not be able to compete in the future unless we similarly identify our most gifted students and provide them with everything they need to magnify their gifts. Heaven knows we spend millions upon millions providing facilities for our athletes to train and compete at the highest levels. Why don't we do the same for our academic students where the stakes are real and the payoff is much higher?

Murray concludes the book by advocating the creation of an educational system that is more free and can truly adapt to the needs of the students rather than the teachers. He points out that merely paying teachers more won't change the quality of the teacher. What we need are better and more focused opportunities for the students. If that means letting new kinds of teachers teach, then so be it. If that means we need to created schools that focus on certain subjects, all the better. The point is that our current system is broken and for all the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend on education, the benefits of that spending are accruing to the wrong people. Our focus must be on the students, their lives, and the country we are passing on to future generations.

We can do better and Charles Murray has made a nice contribution to the discussion.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

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Charles Murray Light

This is another fantastic book by Murray though it is nothing like "The Bell Curve" or "Human Accomplishment" in the nature of statistical support. Rather, it reads like Murray light and focuses on some intriguing points. Should we do away with the false dichotomy of categorizing people as BA / non-BA when the BA does not mean what it used to? Kronman's book "Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life" is referred to as dealing best with the question of what education should be all about for the elite. Perhaps with my special interest in mind a better book that Murray does not mention is Neil Postman's "The End of Education" within which Postman outlines different sorts of narratives that are the sorts of paradigms that offer answers to questions of purpose. Still, Murray's book is a great read and touches on many of his favorite points. This book will serve as a good introduction to Murray's thinking for those that would otherwise be turned off by the size of most of his other books.

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Thought provoking ideas about a fundamental topic

Murray provides practical insights to the challenges of education, and does it in a very straightforward, easy to read manner. There is a bit of math that some may struggle with, but overall this is a quick and very interesting read.

For me the most fascinating section was the one that seems the most obvious: half of children are below average in academic ability. Sounds really basic, right? But the author explores in some depth just what "average" means, and reminds each of us of how we define the term in our own lives.

The Wall Street Journal reviewed this book several months ago, and a week later printed 4-5 leters from readers responding to the review. Every letter was negative, taking issue with one or more points. And almost all were written by folks working in education. So I thought to myself, "There must be some interesting stuff here". :-)

In Murray's analysis traditional education is taken to task. I agree with his analysis, and believe that change is coming.

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An inconvenient fact

This will be a difficult read for many. Murray assails a fundamental American belief that anyone can succeed. He presents a fact that relatively few in America chose to acknowledge. Half of any population is below average. While the concept is well covered in our science, business and even graduate education courses it has been uniformly ignored by our elected officials, the education establishment and the electorate. Few, if any, want to acknowledge that goodwill and more money are insufficient to alter reality. The emperor is indeed without cloths. The prevailing educational policies are a disservice to all.

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Fascinating book!

This is a fascinating book that I recommend to anyone! I am neither an educator nor a social scientist (nor, I might add, a social conservative) - just someone deeply concerned with the state of education in this country.

The book is written clearly and in an engaging style, and the information it puts forth is common-sense and logical.

Half of all people are below average in their academic ability. That's just statistics. Murray doesn't say that we should neglect the less academically-able; he doesn't say or imply that we should worship the smart and cast aside the dumb. He says we should embrace the immutable (and obvious) fact that people are different and work with it instead of struggle against it, to maximise the happiness of all. We ARE leaving children (and the future of our country) behind - because our goals are wrong.

The caveat here of course (as always) is: how to determine ability? Our tests are good (I am willing to concede that) but are they good enough? Taken to an extreme, testing to sort children could create a Socialist or even GATTACA-like system, where choices are severely limited. And what of learning-disabled children, who have issues with testing? How do they fit into this model? The book does not address learning disability at all. It does, however, stress that everyone should be free to try everything - meaning all children would be allowed to attempt harder material, which means that the "sorting" imposed by the tests would not be rigid, just general guidelines which individuals could challenge. I found this reassuring.

I applaud the changes Murray suggests in the final part of the book (although I envision a super-chaotic transition period if these measures are undertaken). Removing the "stigma" of not having a college degree is a basic and brilliant concept. Not tolerating disruption in precollege education instead of catering to the disruptors - basic again, and what a change it would make for the children who want to learn and the teachers who want to teach. How wonderful it would be if teaching became an alluring, respected profession in this country. This could happen - it SHOULD happen.

I wish that everyone in America would read this book. I know "everyone" won't, but perhaps enough "people with power" will read it (instead of just pretend they have, and BS about it in inaccurate, soundbites-with-an-agenda as they tend to do about important books). Perhaps this will be the first blow to put a crack in the bell jar of denial we have been living in.

Plus, it's a great read - really, really fun.

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With four simple truths as his framework, Charles Murray, the bestselling coauthor of The Bell Curve, sweeps away the hypocrisy, wishful thinking, and upside-down priorities that grip America?s educational establishment.

Ability varies. Children differ in their ability to learn academic material. Doing our best for every child requires, above all else, that we embrace that simplest of truths. America?s educational system does its best to ignore it.

Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Real Education reviews what we know about the limits of what schools can do and the results of four decades of policies that require schools to divert huge resources to unattainable goals.

Too many people are going to college. Almost everyone should get training beyond high school, but the number of students who want, need, or can profit from four years of residential education at the college level is a fraction of the number of young people who are struggling to get a degree. We have set up a standard known as the BA, stripped it of its traditional content, and made it an artificial job qualification. Then we stigmatize everyone who doesn?t get one. For most of America?s young people, today?s college system is a punishing anachronism.

America?s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. An elite already runs the country, whether we like it or not. Since everything we watch, hear, and read is produced by that elite, and since every business and government department is run by that elite, it is time to start thinking about the kind of education needed by the young people who will run the country. The task is not to give them more advanced technical training, but to give them an education that will make them into wiser adults; not to pamper them, but to hold their feet to the fire.

The good news is that change is not only possible but already happening. Real Education describes the technological and economic trends that are creating options for parents who want the right education for their children, teachers who want to be free to teach again, and young people who want to find something they love doing and learn how to do it well. These are the people for whom Real Education was written. It is they, not the politicians or the educational establishment, who will bring American schools back to reality.

Twenty-four years ago, Charles Murray?s Losing Ground changed the way the nation thought about welfare. Real Education is about to do the same thing for America?s schools.

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