Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(32)
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3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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."

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!!

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.

Some books deserve 5 stars not because they are right on every score or because they will convince all readers, but because they explore a hidden other side to a seemingly one sided issue. Charles Murray's "Real Education" is one such book. It will not change everyone's mind. What it will do is make everyone (agreers and disagreers) take a long, hard think.

Murray's main point is a simple one: we need to be real about what we expect from students, especially those in the bottom percentiles. While the present age's mantra is that one size - the "college track" - fits (or SHOULD fit) all, the data has never bourne this out. While very modest gains in ability are possible with much effort, all the attempts to "leave no child behind" do exactly that, often by asking square pegs (underperforming students) to fit into round holes (the college-prep track). Murray shows us the numbers - including those from Head Start and NCLB - to back up the idea that, like it or not, some students are less ACADEMICALLY gifted than others by nature.

One hard truth that Charles Murray focuses on is that while trying to send all kids down the college path sounds good on the surface, it may not be the most reality-based approach. High schools need to recognize that it is alright to steer students towards vocations, two year colleges, and trades. Murray also criticizes colleges for mandating that all students - no matter whether they aspire to be a lawyer or an HR manager - go through four years of liberal arts classes that may be irrelevant to their career-track. (Does the latter really need to take philosophy?)

All of this might seem a bit pessimistic and will surely rub people the wrong way. As a special educator that deals mostly with the underperformers, I can attest that every teacher I work with knows that, try as we may, some students will never be college material. (As one put it to me, it is not a God-given right to be able to understand algebra.) Murray's point is that the sooner we recognize that one size and ability level does not fit all, the sooner we can figure out how to design an educaiton program that fits everyone's needs, rather than fitting all students to our needs. (Despite our best intentions, half of kids will be below average and 10% will be in the bottom tenth.)

The only real criticisms that I have are that so much of the book focuses on proving that the problem exists that only a small portion - 1 chapter - is focused on soluitons. And, while some of the proposals are sensible, some are chimerical. (Do you really think that there will be a push to replace the BA degree with career-tailored certification programs any time soon?)

Overall, though, there is so much (should be) common sense running through this book that I found myself grinning while reading it. As a teacher, I am always afraid that admitting that variation in scholastic potential exists would consign some of my stduents to failure (and arouse the ire of administrators). Murray's goal is to prove me wrong. He succeeded!

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

Charles Murray makes you think by supporting controversial arguments with excellent data analysis. He did it in Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book) and Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. He is doing it again here. Murray makes four simple statements: 1) children's ability vary; 2) half of children are below average; 3) too many people go to college; and 4) America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. Three of those statements seem evident. Yet, when he states their implication they become controversial.

Children's ability vary means a large segment of students is unable to learn abstract concepts (i.e. calculus). Murray notices that only three of Howard Gardner multiple intelligences as studied in Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice drive academic ability: spatial, math, and linguistic skills. And, those are highly correlated. This means children's abilities are fairly uniform across the board (instead of being good in math but poor in linguistic). Schools that convey otherwise are fooling themselves. High-performing students live in a different world than low-performing ones. And, little can be done to bridge this gap. To study this issue further, read The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence)

Regarding the "half of children are below average" truism, Murray states you may never have encountered "below average" students. Below average is an 8th grader who does not know that 4% = 0.04! In the notes on page 172, he invites the reader to figure out in which Statewide percentile the average student in one's school would fall. I did it for my daughter's public high school. The average student in this school was in the 98th percentile in the California. The government has spent $billions in shoring up the performance of below average academic performers but to no avail as documented in the Coleman Report and studies on Title I and No Child Left Behind. School quality, teachers credentials, class size, money spent per student did not have much impact on academic performance. The main factor was family background (which captures family education, income, IQ, etc...). Even the best schools could not overcome the constraints of limited academic potential of "below average" performers.

When Murray states that too many people go to college, he considers that only 15% of high school graduates have the academic ability to handle a representative college education. He notes that currently 35% of 23 year olds have a college degree. But, he advances the majority of those were acquired taking the easiest curriculum in the easiest majors. Thus, such BAs are not representative of a true college education. He indicates that college level liberal education has been dumbed down. Also, a college degree should not be required for the majority of professions. And, college education is inefficient in conveying training for the professions. It should not take four years to get a degree in accounting, business, economics, or journalism. Also, the concept that college gives youth time to grow up is a fallacy. It has given it time to extend adolescence. The teacher-student relationship has devolved into a vendor-customer relationship. Demanding professors are defeated by students/customers reviews that threaten their acquiring tenure status.

When it comes to educating the academically gifted (top 10% with IQ of > 120), he indicates they receive adequate training in competence, but not in judgment and verbal skills. He bemoans the declining SAT Verbal scores of such gifted. He thinks they should receive better training in judgment. Murray is not just thinking about ethics but critical thinking. The Media (part of elite) is ignorant of statistics and misinterprets data on any issues ranging from global warming to income inequality. And, it forges public opinion with misinformation. Murray states judgment also relies on pattern recognition based on knowledge of history not to repeat the errors of the past.

His recommendations for primary education entails giving every first grader an IQ test. The information would allow teachers to react to special needs (either disability or giftedness) early on. We should enforce stringeant discipline to erradicate violence out of the worst schools. A safe environment is essential to learning. Teach a richer liberal education curriculum. Let gifted children go at an accelerated pace by giving them specific materials reflecting their aptitude. Keeping them in a slow paced learning environment is detrimental.

About 2/3 of high school students are work bound (not college bound).We should dedicate 2/3 of resources towards them by providing better vocational preparation in high school and more technical training in community college. We should make them aware of high paying jobs that do not require a college degree.

He recommends to do away with BA requirement for most jobs and replace it with professional certifications equivalent to the CPA exam for accountant. By doing so, it would provide more information to employers on what candidates actually know. It would level the playing field between elite universities and other schools, and eventually eliminate the BA requirement. Students could acquire the more valuable and relevant certification at a cheaper cost and in less time than a BA.

Overall, Murray's recommendations resemble European education systems. Those have more rigorous k-12 curriculum. Their university systems are more selective resulting in a larger % of youth heading for vocational training. My one concern is that the US education system is more flexible. Everyone has a second chance. The Murray-European way does not account for late bloomers. If you don't show above average performance very early you are toast.

Doing away with the BA requirement for the professions is an interesting concept. But, it is not realistic. The CPA exam has not done that for accountants. It has just turned into an additional hurdle to limit access to the profession just as the Bar exam has for lawyers.

This book certainly makes you think. But, don't stop thinking once you close the book. Some of the issues addressed don't have clear-cut finish lines.

Murray is the author of the brilliant WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A LIBERTARIAN. Therefore, one might expect this succinct and fluid little book on education to be a critical analysis of centralized educational schemes coupled with recommendations for more privatization and healthy competition. There is a splash of this, as Murray makes his case against the backdrop of Title I and No Child Left Behind's disappointing results; but REAL EDUCATION is broad in its scope and full of pleasant surprises.

Sadly Murray has been mistreated by his critics since the publication of THE BELL CURVE. Even here I see critics whose review of REAL EDUCATION is more a tirade against demons of their own fabrication than anything Murray has actually written. Firstly, IQ is not something which Murray supports as a way to forcefully fit children to an education program suited to their IQ. Rather, IQ is intended as a means to understand why separations inevitably occur and why not all students will achieve at the same level. It is important to note that these separations are natural and to be expected. It is inherently absurd to assume that all children can be "above average." The vision of Charles Murray is of an education system which is more flexible to the needs of all students; not one which directs a child in some institutionalized way on the basis of testing. This would be an intrusion which any libertarian would find repugnant. His realism about differing intellectual abilities is not the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that some would suggest-a characterization which implies that all should desire and meet the same academic standard-but rather the realistic offering of choices to students at all ends of the intellectual continuum.

If this sounds suspiciously democratic for a man known for touting the importance of IQ and criticizing No Child Left Behind then you have probably read more of his critics than of Charles Murray himself. There is no intent-implied or otherwise-to reshape education in a way that will entrench some privileged status quo. The irony is that the bloated government educational reforms that Murray criticizes stand in stark, totalitarian contrast to the kind of flexible, multi-faceted educational system that Murray proposes.

One of four truths Murray uses to frame his argument is that too many people go to college. At first blush this would seem to be just what his critics expect, a sneering elitism that bemoans the degradation of college by those who are not worthy. Instead Murray saves his contempt for the way our culture has turned higher education into a kind of meaningless ritual, the completion of which all children should aspire to. The social devaluation of the skilled electrician or plumber, or the automobile mechanic who is honest and genuinely skilled at what he does, does a tremendous disservice to those whose capabilities are not academic in the traditional sense. Not only are these trades in demand but a person who is capable can make the sort of money usually associated with a professional degree. (Try finding a competent attorney and then try finding a competent auto mechanic. You're apt to discover that finding the former is much easier though the schooling is far more rigorous.) The cultural assumption that a person's life is lacking if he doesn't get a fluff degree by reading obtuse authors and taking `A Survey Of Modern Film' does that person-and the rest of us-a great disservice.

Again, it cannot be emphasized enough that there is no suggestion that the young person who is more capable of being an electrician than a physician should be "assigned" to his fate. Murray instead desires that we face reality and expect that some will not have the capability, or even the desire, to be academically successful. Hence we should accommodate such instances, as the alternative is to impose upon everyone a singular and unrealistic expectation of higher academic achievement; an expectation that when failed to achieve becomes not only a kind of personal failure but creates unnecessary dissatisfaction for that person upon whom such idealism is imposed. This is not fatalism so much as practical wisdom.

Another one of Murray's four truths is that America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. Here again one would expect the kind of sneering elitism and IQ absolutism that Murray has become wrongly known for. Here again his critics are shown to be attacking a caricature of their own creation. In fact, when Murray discusses educating the brightest among us he has in mind clearing the way to a better education not simply for those who are smart but those who are smart and have difficulty achieving to the level they should because of their geographic or economic disadvantage.

Take for example his recommendation for more certification tests like the CPA exam. Murray envisions the ivy league kid going for the same job as the community college or internet course kid; with the ivy leaguer having a relatively low score on a critical certification test while the latter has a high one. Just as an employer can assume that a person who has passed the CPA has a high competency for accounting, so to could the same kind of certification test be used to demonstrate competency in many different fields. This allows the kid with an internet education or an education from a less than stellar institution to earn a spot over his better-situated peers.

Also consider that much of what Murray has to say about educating the brightest minds is about inculcating character. Murray wishes that virtue be taken seriously again and that the "great traditions" be appreciated for their time-tested insights on the human condition. As an example he uses the ethical systems of Aristotle and Confucius. He states: "If your children grow up 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?" The problem, Murray says, is when education teaches nothing of the great traditions. It is a compelling reminder that education should be more than jumping through hoops on the way to a job. It is also about shaping the attitudes and opinions of the nation's future leaders.

However, isn't Murray missing something when he suggests that education is not addressing the great ethical traditions? What about the pervasive morality of multi-culturalism and it's shibboleths of "tolerance" and "diversity"? Though he doesn't address this directly one may well step back and marvel at our current educational monstrosity and it's empty, manifold pretensions. In light of our present situation the idea of reviving Aristotle's cardinal virtues or Confucian philosophy seems not only practical but downright refreshing... even humble.

Again, does this sound odd for the man who is vilified as being a survival-of-the-fittest, IQ-is-destiny elitist? If so you should consider putting away the caricature of Charles Murray and get to know the real man. This book is a great start.

Charles Murray presents some good, provocative ideas here which deserve somewhat more coverage than he gives them in this book. The parts dealing with homeschooling do not cover many aspects of that phenomenon, for example. And he seems to think that brick-and-mortar colleges are going to vanish within just a few years. They may indeed turn into distance learning hubs, but I think it would take longer than that. And not everyone can afford the computers, DSL, and other technology necessary for DL, which comes with its own set of disadvantages and potential problems.
That said, Murray is right when he insists on telling the obvious truth about kids with low intellectual abilities (they do exist), varying abilities (we can't all be astronauts when we grow up), the failures of NCLB (why do people say it's working when it clearly isn't?), and the fact of far too many people going to college for wrongheaded reasons. I have been teaching college for almost 20 years and I must agree with Murray on that last point in particular. The bachelor's degree is being devalued, too many people are told they must have one, many college students don't have what it takes to get through college, and others are quite bright and capable but simply do not need a degree in order to get good and lucrative work.
Time to wake up and face reality.

Finally, someone who says what many teachers have been thinking since No Child Left Behind.
Not every kid is cut out to be an academic, and it is cruel to insist that every child should be one.

Charles makes the following politically incorrect points.

It is detrimental to the individual student and to society as a whole to try to force the student into failure by requiring those without the ability to succeed in higher education to strive for it anyway.

A college degree no longer serves the purpose that it once did, and certification would be a better way to assess an individuals knowledge and skill set. This would also solve the problem afflicting universities of grade inflation, entitlement and
general lack of effort on the part of students.

There will always be part of the population that is unable to become truly literate, both in math and reading, and it would be more useful instead to teach them how to make a living with some other skill.

If we do not challenge the gifted to become the best that they can be, we are losing out as a society.

The book could have used some more statistical support, but as a former teacher and a current parent I agree with most of his conclusions.

It was a refreshing read, I am glad to know that I am not the only one with these "radical" thoughts.

Charles Murray is one of the best known researchers and writers on various public policy topics. He is oftentimes maligned due to the fact that many of his positions and arguments fly in the face of the popular wisdom and challenge some of our most cherished prejudices. In the case of education, those prejudices have been the source of countless "reforms" that have had very little, if any, impact on the actual achievements of students they were meant to help. The latest one of those attempts, the No Child Left Behind act (NCLB) was the immediate inspiration of a series of articles that Charles Murray wrote for the Wall Street Journal. Those articles have been expanded and turned into this book. Because of politically sensitive nature of the topic, Murray is banding backwards to try to make his assumption as uncontroversial as possible and avoid for the most part the minefields of race, class and gender. The four assumptions that he bases all of his arguments are the following:

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.

The veracity of some of these assumptions can hardly be questioned - the second one is just a tautology. However, most people don't look education or their intellectual ability rationally, so it is worthwhile emphasizing the obvious. On the other hand the last two assumptions are very politically unpopular, and Murray expends considerable amount of space in backing them up and presenting the best possible arguments in their favor.

Unfortunately, I am not too optimistic that this book will have much of an impact on people who really need to make hard political choices. The real hope for change lays elsewhere - in an increasing number of technological and social developments that will create new pressures on the traditional educational system. The advent of the internet and the growing amount of resources for learning outside of the established educational venues will create an incentive for more flexible and diverse educational experience. The globalization of work will create pressures on schools and colleges to become more open to changes that will bring them in line with reality. In a meanwhile, we have to be grateful that there are people out there like Charles Murray who are willing to write so clearly and persuasively about these issues.

This is also probably Charles Murray's most accessible book so far. It is written in a conversational/polemic style with no footnotes, graphs, or tables. It is a very straightforward read and could be finished in a single sitting. Overall, there is so much going for this book that I really hope it will be read by a very wide audience.