Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality [Hardcover]

Charles Murray (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 2008

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve, believes our educational system's failures stem from the fundamental lie that every child can be anything he or she wants and that such educational romanticism prevents progress. Four simple truths, he asserts, would prove better: children have different abilities, half of the children are below average, too many children go to college, and America's future depends on the gifted. Murray takes care with his first point, discussing various types of abilities instead of the oft-maligned I.Q. measure; however, he does believe that test scores reflect ability. He argues that there are only a limited number of academically gifted people and these are America's future leaders, that only this elite can enjoy college productively and that the nongifted shouldn't be channeled by their high school counselors into training for that college chimera, which wouldn't make them happy anyway. Further, he argues, if the Educational Testing Service created certification tests covering what employers want applicants to know, these would become the gold standard for applicants, rather than college degrees. This book is likely to stir controversy even if it appears that Murray is dressing up an old elitist argument—test scores reflect ability, so high-scorers should be offered a challenging education, while the below-average should be herded into vocational training. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Murray (Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980; coauthor, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life) proposes four "simple truths"—ability varies, half of all children are below average, too many people are going to college, and America's future depends on how we educate the gifted—for parents, educators, and policymakers to confront. The current focus of the educational system, Murray contends, of educating all children to the same level and holding them to the same standards (i.e., No Child Left Behind) ignores these four truths and attempts to prepare most children to earn a B.A., though many of them are not suited for college and would be happier and more productive in different careers. He suggests that bachelor's degrees should be reserved for students with the ability and interest in careers requiring it and instead there should be a series of national certifications to show what a job candidate can actually do. Murray's argument is controversial but well researched. His book is highly recommended for public and academic libraries.—Mark Bay, Cumberland Coll. Lib., Williamsburg, KY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Crown Forum; 1 edition (August 19, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307405389
• ISBN-13: 978-0307405388
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #72,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

189 of 209 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Goodbye to Lake Wobegon", August 21, 2008

By 

Stanley H. Nemeth (Garden Grove, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality (Hardcover)

Charles Murray has written a brilliant analysis of the shortcomings of current American education, both K-12 and postsecondary. First among the problems he singles out is the pervasiveness of a mind-set he calls "educational romanticism." Educational romanticism takes as realism the Lake Wobegon fantasy, the notion that all children are above average. Consequently, its advocates tell the young, in smarmy Edgar Guest fashion, that there is nothing beyond their ability if only they try hard enough. Murray subtly points out the unintentional cruelty in this practice of encouraging overparted children to repeatedly set themselves up for failure. As an antidote, he suggests we accept the existential truth that schoolchildren are not equal in talents and abilities, that some are more gifted than others in the most important areas for academic futures, language skills and math ability. Such differences, he readily concedes, do not make one necessarily a better person, but they surely make one a better scholar and thus a more logical candidate for university attendance.

Second, he argues that half of all children are below average. While he concedes each child should have full opportunity to develop his abilities to the utmost, Murray recognizes that no documentation exists which would support the current educational establishment's wishful thinking that it can significantly alter a student's low ability, whether through more money spent, revised pedagogy, or better teacher training. He is similarly dismissive of the government's and politician's hysterical optimism which has produced such absurdities as "No Child Left Behind."
For the improvement of K-12 education, he favors the junking of current "self-esteem" practices and empty encouragements to "creativity,", replacing them with a rigorous core curriculum such as E. D. Hirsch's which imparts lessons in culture and good citizenship. Murray also favors the return of high school tracking, with a revalorization of vocational studies and a return of respect for those frequently skilled students who choose to go into such rather than prepare for college. He is of the opinion that far too many people are pushed toward college these days, and far too often for highly questionable reasons.

Murray accepts the idea of an unelected elite, one not dependent on birth or wealth, some of whose members invariably wind up running the country. They are the power brokers in the big corporations, the media, the universities. Most of them are drawn from what he designates as the academically gifted, most of whom have had university training. But even here, Murray presents a caveat. This elite may be smart, but these days neither its members, nor its professors, are usually wise. The best that has been thought and said, given the elective system, is all too often missing from such students' university education. "Rigor in forming judgments," "Rigor in thinking about virtue and the Good" have been replaced by professorial canon bashing, contempt for "Dead White Males," and parochial obsession with matters of race, ethnicity, and gender.

Happily, Murray does not follow his lethal analysis with an plea of impotence. He confesses to long-term, if not short-term, hope for improvement. A necessary return to reality he expects will start with parents taking responsibility and increasingly making the right educational choices, choices in the direction of charter schools, home-schooling, CTE schools - whatever may best suit the talents and abilities of their particular children. At the university level, professors will surely tire of post-modern sophistry and realize they can ignore Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Shakespeare, Homer, et.al. only so long. In Murray's inspiring words, "the greatest work must ultimately come back into scholarly fashion."

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading for Parents, Educators, and Leaders, September 7, 2008

By 

J. Scott Shipman (Annandale, VA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality (Hardcover)

Leave it to Mr. Murray to wade into the "special-interest-laden" waters of the educational bureaucracy/establishment and present facts. Mr. Murray has written a book that is maddening on the one hand ("facts are pesky things"), and reassuring on the other. Maddening to the extent of what K-12 education has become,or more correctly, devolved. And Murray takes all comers---including the self-esteem police and the grade-inflating universities. The problems he defines---all created by people with good intentions, no doubt, are fixable but sadly probably not by our current crop of elite educational leaders. Murray concludes on an optimistic note, and not a moment too soon. I have seen anecdotal (my children are through college---those that wanted to go), evidence of Murray's conclusions; many problems are being solved in innovative ways by parents and local communities. His advocacy of expanded vocational HS paths and innovative methods of learning (beyond the campus) are insightful---but so are Murray's admonishment to get back to a "core" curriculum that emphasizes what it means to be human. (By the way, his comparison of Aristotle and Confucius on page 122 is spot-on!).
Murray illuminates the one element that is absent in today's public school setting; the lack of moral instruction. He says, "...the reigning ethical doctrine of contemporary academia: nonjudgmentalism. They have been taught not just that they should be tolerant of different ways of living, but that it is wrong to make judgements about relative merit of different ways of living. It is the inverse of rigor in thinking about virtue and the Good---a task that, above all else, requires the formation of considered judgements."
Just as his monumental work Losing Ground was used to begin the dismantlement of the welfare state, this book would be a good guide for parents, educators, and leaders to begin asking important questions about how our education dollars are being spent, and what our society gets in return.
A very important book and highly recommended!!

42 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful!, September 1, 2008

By 

Loyd E. Eskildson "Pragmatist" (Phoenix, AZ.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality (Hardcover)

American education is dominated by wishful thinking. Murray calls for changing the way schools do business, and the way we define educational success.

We approach education as if every child can be anything he or she wants; we are phobic about saying that children differ in their ability to learn school material. This includes "No Child Left Behind" - a conservative fantasy. Belief that everyone who wants (now 64% of U.S. college-freshman-age, vs. 11% in China - National Geographic) should be able to attend college is its liberal counterpart.

Occupations for which "knowing enough" requires 32 courses (standard college fare) are quite rare - Murray suggests they are limited to medicine and law involving one year of preparation and 3 years of actual medicine and law. (I'd add engineering.)

Most occupations take over four years to acquire competence, but this is attained mostly via on-the-job experience and training.

The rationale for bricks and mortar colleges is falling. More and more books are available on the Internet, colleagueship for faculty and students is available through e-mail, while distance learning has been available for years and now is augmented through the Internet.

Earnings data for a B.A. degree are distorted by employers' using it as a screening device - a trend that increases as the number of pupils attend college. The data are also often misread by career-choosers because they don't realize that eg. the range of salaries for a mediocre manager overlap those of an talented electrician - thereby, making the wrong career choice.

We need to do a better job of educating the academically gifted. Evaluation of data is one area - it lends itself to teachable techniques and appraisal by explicit standards of validity. Widespread statistical illiteracy among the gifted is a major concern today, witness eg. the paucity of data offered in most articles on global warming.

Rigor in verbal expression is another area that needs improvement in the gifted. This talent has declined at the top levels of learning. Finally, pattern recognition is another area Murray recommends increased for increased emphasis among the gifted - history is an essential part of a liberal education. Validation of learning should be increased through certification exams aka a CPA.