Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality Hardcover – August 19, 2008

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!!