Charles Murray is co-author of the Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. In The Age of Educational Romanticism he explains:
"Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement."
As in the "Bell Curve" Charles Murray writes about the importance of people's native abilities, and the limits their basic intelligences has on what they can learn. He sees the NCLB law as being fundamentally flawed because it wanted to make all children above average:
"Many laws are too optimistic, but the No Child Left Behind Act transcended optimism. It set a goal that was devoid of any contact with reality."
Charles believes the Age of Educational Romanticism is coming to an end:
"The good news is that educational romanticism is surely teetering on the edge of collapse."
I am afraid I am not as optimistic. I think the lumbering education bureaucracy of government schools will continue to exist for another generation.
The Age of Educational Romanticism is a long article with several interesting points, well worth reading.
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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education
2 comments:
I have such a huge problem with Charles Murray. He looks at the facts and comes up with the most restrictive, least helpful or visionary ways to interpret them. His insistence that inherent abilities are responsible for all of the differences we see, despite obvious environmental factors, just strains credulity. Additionally, his ideas have been used by too many people to justify rank racism of the very worst sort as some sort of intellectual bravery. If we are to believe his ideas in this article, then we must buy into the idea that children are affected not a whit by violence in their schools, teachers reading newspapers at their desks all day rather than teaching and chaos in the classroom. If environment really matters as little as Mr. Murray would have us believe, then all of us who are homeschooling are wasting our times since our children will perform according to their inherent abilities regardless of the environment they are in. I think that Charles Murray's overall effect on the American scene is extremely negative, and truthfully, I wish the man would retire to a remote island with a cool drink and take his noxious ideas with him.
I know there has been a lot of controversy over the “Bell Curve.” I read part of it and got distracted, so I don't have an informed opinion.
My impression is that our personal makeup does count for a large part of what we do in life. I also believe that education and hard work are major factors. I don't have a clue on how to quantify the exact proportion.
Charles Murray may be a bit extreme, but I think it is unfair to take the opposite side, that native ability has no role.
My take away from his article was that many people in government schools have unrealistic expectations for all children.
I didn't think he wrote that children will perform in a vacuum, and succeed (or fail) regardless of how much effort or how little effort adults put in.
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