Charles Murray has just written a series of three articles on education for the Wall Street Journal and links are below. The first deals with the limits on the educability of our young people in higher education. Quote: “Today’s simple truth: Half of all children are below average in intelligence. We do not live in Lake Wobegon.”
The three articles offer a very different perspective on education and make them must reading for anyone with an interest in the topic.
Intelligence in the Classroom. “One word is missing from these discussions: intelligence. Hardly anyone will admit it, but education’s role in causing or solving any problem cannot be evaluated without considering the underlying intellectual ability of the people being educated.”
What’s Wrong With Vocational School? “Today I turn to the upper half, people with IQs of 100 or higher. Today’s simple truth is that far too many of them are going to four-year colleges … To have an IQ of 100 means that a tough high-school course pushes you about as far as your academic talents will take you.”
Aztecs vs. Greeks. “People in the top 10% of intelligence produce most of the books and newspaper articles we read and the television programs and movies we watch. They are the people in the laboratories and at workstations who invent our new pharmaceuticals, computer chips, software and every other form of advanced technology … How assiduously does our federal government work to see that this precious raw material is properly developed? In 2006, the Department of Education spent about $84 billion. The only program to improve the education of the gifted got $9.6 million, one-hundredth of 1% of expenditures. In the 2007 budget, President Bush zeroed it out.”