Charles Murray. Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality. New York: Crown Forum, 2008.
Summarized by John Teevan, August 2016
The four truths: 1) Ability varies. 2) Half 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. His main argument is that the facts (1+2) are denied by the academic dreamers who believe that everyone should go to college. They have bent the efforts and attitudes of public education toward that assumption and have failed to prepare the 60% who do not earn a BA and need a variety of vocational training.
“The lie is that every child can be anything he or she wants to be. No one really believes it, but we approach education’s problems as if we did. Call it educational romanticism” (11).
1. Ability Varies:
He debunks the value of multiple intelligences in education. The only three that matter are spatial, linguistic, and logical math. Several others are beneficial, especially relational intelligence, but your brain surgeon may be miserable at that and still perform amazing surgeries.
2. Half are Below Average:
People who read books do not really know anyone in the lower half. So, everyone in your school may have been in the upper half. The lower half cannot do simple problems; he lists in detail (36ff). These “are not smart enough to become literate or numerate in more than a rudimentary sense.” (44).
Insisting that a student can ‘do better if you try’ does not mean that they can do better. Don’t believe that? Try hitting a homer by trying harder if you’re in the bottom half of the 6th graders. We also try to raise IQs by changing the schools or the economic environment—no way (51). Getting people into school 100 years ago did make a difference, but nothing has changed since 1980 (57). Coleman’s report, widely resisted, defined the problem. Title I; not helping. The gap widened. No Chile Left Behind? Not working. He uses good stats. He is sympathetic to the hope of raising the worst schools but lists four reasons why raising all of them to grade level will not happen. Quit dreaming. His goal is not to stop trying, but to stop harming those who simply can’t.
3. Too Many Attend College:
He observes that 10-20% may be capable of the abstract thinking and academic ability required for college education. Check the SAT scores. Reading ability limits many people. He gives 100-word samples from page 400 of textbooks in six college topics. Long sentences, unusual words, and concepts make these difficult. Long section on Core Knowledge by E.D. Hirsch on the basics in grades K-12.
College receives his scorn because it offers easy, distracting, or job-oriented classes, so students do not have to take the liberal arts variety of college-level courses. (85ff). He confesses to taking the easier options himself, but that was before he took classes in film and comics. He then states that four years is too long and that traditional college campuses are increasingly obsolete.
Students are starting to agree. The wage bump from a BS degree is evaporating as many work as possible in jobs that do not require their degree, leaving them saddled with debt. (e.g., electricians at 90%ile earn $70,500, which is twice what a manager at the 10%ile makes.
‘College as a place to mature,’ which was once a legitimate aspiration, is now comic. Rather than preparing for maturity by learning to focus and act responsibly (self-discipline and self-restraint) toward superiors in challenging academic situations, college is a place to extend adolescence (99-101). Seeing themselves as consumers of education, how hard should they have to work?
Politicians exploit the situation by seeing injustice in the failure of all to graduate and seek villains and obstacles to remove. “…every failure to go to college (is seen) as an injustice that can be remedied by increasing government help” (103). Besides, “the acceptable excuses for not going to college have dried up.”
So those without a BS degree are stigmatized as failures. The ticket to the upper half of America is the BS degree, which is expected, but out of reach of two-thirds (or 80%) of Americans.
4. How to Educate the Gifted?
Now for the meat: How should we educate the 10-20% who will one day lead the nation? He states that in addition to pre-brain/academics, they need integrity, prudence, self-discipline, moral courage, and common sense even more (107). Elites in a variety of areas, from finance, business, and government to entertainment and medicine, have tremendous influence. “They are already smart, now they need to be wise” (109). If they have IQs of 120 and up and are aged 25-64, there are 16 million in this elite, roughly 10%. But 10% of the nation’s graduating seniors (410,000) who go to college cannot all attend the top 40 colleges, which can accept only 48,000 freshmen (111). Ninety percent do not go to top colleges.
That’s the numbers, but not for the task: training the elite to be citizens. First, they need a sense of duty. Second, they need verbal abilities, which, as measured by SAT scores, are declining. Their communications need to be both clear and persuasive. Third, they need the ability to make difficult choices among many options (116).
Fourth, they need sound judgment, which comprises four components. A) making sense of complicated situations. B) A flair for linear problem solving. C) Evaluation of data is one that can be partly taught. Much of what we have seen in research and social science is bogus, and the elite need to recognize that. D) Pattern recognition is the ability to see similarities in different situations to broaden thinking about them. This is the ability that works for solvers of crossword puzzles. Experience helps with all four.
The meaning of life used to be found in theology, but that route now leads to meaning through the humanities. The yearning for transcendence (120) is so often met, in literature and in art and in history, with longing and defeat. This is the essence of the human condition: high aspirations with insufficient success, with occasional moments of glory or of horror. What does it mean to live a good human life? Is money enough? What is the difference between being nice and being good? The elite must know.
He gives Aristotle and Confucius as sufficiently secular sources so that he can write, “ If your children grow up to be courageous, temperate, able to think clearly about the consequences of their actions, to be concerned with the welfare of others, with a sense of obligation to set a good example for others in their own behavior and to accord to others their rightful due, do you really care whether they were raised to be good Aristotelians or good Confucians?” He states that any religion would do as well.
There is a problem in that there are two paths of wisdom; one is to ‘roil the established ways’ (West) and the other is to ‘value stability’(East). America did have a period of teaching virtue in character, as seen in our presidents (politics) and in sports. There was no focus on self-esteem today. Today, we see no values in either politics or sports. And that void of values (understood as the right to self-creation and self-expression) extends to society and works violently against social wisdom. Murray has two suggestions: Being virtuous is hard. Seeking one’s own good is both important and feasible.
In addition to virtue and wisdom, it is necessary to instill humility. This is especially difficult for the academic elite in an age of high self-esteem. We know that the ‘self-esteem’ movement accomplished nothing of positive substance, but that does not prevent the elite from protecting their exalted status. Even if they feel lucky, they will start to protect themselves from failure and quit trying. Murray wants every gifted student to fail at some academic tasks so that they can look themselves in the eye and say, “I can’t do this.” (131). Everyone else knows their limits; why shouldn’t the elite who need humility to lead well?
Why not change what we can? First, quit assuming that all can be at grade level. Level with kids and parents who are likely to fail in college. Second, establish limits of the possible. Don’t throw money and teachers at the impossible. How to start with a non-romantic study of 80-90IQ kids in poverty with an urban functioning school. Throw every resource at the poverty kids and accept the miserable results (139). Third, establish targets for what is actually possible (not college) for those who won’t be going! Separate them from those who can and want to learn so they have an orderly classroom experience. Fourth, teach the core (e.g., H.D.Hirsch) to every student. Fifth, let the gifted go as fast as they can; they will appreciate the challenge of the complex and will like peers who share their abilities (145). Will the lesser be hurt? Yes, either way: by missing out or by being ridiculed in regular classes. Remember the gifted can be bores and others can be steadfast, funny, honest, and brave (146).
The forgotten bottom half? Teach them how to make a living. First, they can smile and straighten up because they are now having a school experience that is not torturous. Bulk up the career tech classes and homeschooling. Promote charter schools (152) to shift the agenda and create a different environment. Get them a certificate that employers can relate to. Signaling this way is better than degrees for low- and mid-level jobs. Certificates will also help those getting a BS but not from a name school. Ironically, prestigious college students tend to coast through the details of certificate exams and therefore do poorly. He loves it! (159). Being set free from the BA degree as an essential goal is a true liberation.
Don’t expect help from today’s faculty, who are committed to race, class, and gender and who are beloved for their easy grading. “The post-modernists in literary criticism are an excellent example, using impenetrable vocabulary to make convoluted arguments in proof of points of triviality and sophistry that would excite the envy of a medieval theologian.” (165). Asking humanity’s hard and interesting questions is worthwhile for the very bright who wonder about these things anyway. Why not let the brightest enjoy the satisfaction of realizing their capacities?
Be all that you can be? You bet, but remember that there is quite a variety of abilities.