Interview with Charles Murray, Author of "Real Education"

Tag : religious crafts

Charles Murray, author of the new book Real Education , kindly agreed to an interview with me to discuss his new book.You may know him as a coauthor of the bestselling The Bell Curve or from his hit Losing Ground , a book that changed the national conversation about welfare. Youmay also recognize his name or some of his ideas about educationreform from the Wall Street Journal . Whether you're familiar with him or not, I think you'll enjoywhat he has to say.

Please also check out his new book, published just last month by Random House .

Katie Favazza: It seems your book has a broader audience than simply parents ofschool-age children. Who should read this book?

Charles Murray: Parents are the first audience, without question. But I hope thebook also provides an opening wedge that makes it easier forteachers to state their case. I got a lot of reaction from teachersin K-12 and college when I first published some of these themes inthe Wall Street Journal , almost all of them being of the "thank God someone is finallysaying out loud what we see in our classrooms" variety. Once theconversation has been opened up, we might see a lot more teachersspeaking out publicly. Just last month, the Atlantic published a wonderful article by a Professor X who teaches at acollege of last resort. He still felt he had to remain anonymous,but at least he got his experience into print.

And don't underestimate the degree to which students will respondto the book. I've heard from a number of students telling me aboutthe pressure they were under to go to college when they alreadyknew that college wasn't right for them. I guess the audience forthe book includes everyone but politicians and schooladministrators. They're pretty much beyond hope.

Katie Favazza: Your ideas about tailoring education to suit different abilitiesseem so basic at first, but are truly revolutionary in theirnature. When you were in school, what were your strongest abilitiesand how did they--or did they not--shape your own educational path?

Charles Murray: I grew up in a small town and I was a bright kid--regarding verbalskills anyway, nothing special in mathematics--who had all sorts ofintellectual interests that none of my friends shared. Maybe youshould strike "bright," and replace it with "weird." How manyseventh-graders get interested in mountain climbing (in Iowa!) andsend away to Switzerland for a climbing guide, in German, for thenorth wall of the Eiger, then try to translate it using aGerman-English dictionary? Truly weird.

I yearned from eighth grade onward to go to Harvard, my image ofthe Great World, and I always knew that once I got there I wouldmajor in history. I knew what my strengths were from very early on(though I probably thought I was smarter in math than I really was)and my educational path was pretty straightforward.

Katie Favazza: One of your books' truths is that half of the children in schoolsare below average--and you go on to say that schools have no choicebut to leave some of these children behind. When should educatorssay, "Enough is enough?" Must an educator simply walk away?

Charles Murray: Educators never need to walk away. Let's rephrase that lastsentence to read "When must a teacher realize he's done all he cando, and guide the student in another direction?" I think you need aconcatenation of three perspectives on a child. One is a thoroughtechnical assessment that occurs early in a child's education andis periodically updated thereafter--not just a test for math orreading aptitude, but including personality measures and testbatteries that will reveal learning disabilities. The second is therecord in the classroom in the form of grades and scores onexaminations. The third is the teacher's observation of the childin class--the three-dimensional picture that integrates thetechnical information from the first two perspectives with theflesh-and-blood reality of how the child copes in the classroom.Say, for example, we have a student who can't seem to get the hangof Algebra I. When all three of the perspectives correspond, it'stime for a teacher to think in terms of a future for that childthat does not include Algebra II.

Katie Favazza: You assert that too many students are going to college today. Whatdamage do you think this does to American society? Why does Americaneed "the forgotten half," as you call them?

Charles Murray: I'm less concerned about the damage to society than I am withdamage to the kids who don't belong in college. High schoolstudents are indoctrinated with the pernicious idea that jobs aredivided into two bins, good jobs that require a college degree andbad jobs that don't. So you end up with students whose counselorsencourage them to go to college regardless of their abilities, whohave never been told about the myriad technical and crafts jobsthat are challenging, fun, and pay well. So they try to go tocollege, fail, and too often seem to think that their onlyalternative is being a checkout clerk at Wal-Mart. As for why weneed the forgotten half--I would find it a whole lot easier to livein a society with a tenth as many lawyers and professors than tolive in a society with a tenth as many plumbers. I am at war withthe whole concept of occupational prestige. It exists, and I can'tsee any way to get rid of it, but it is senseless.

Katie Favazza: What are the best ways to push the "academically gifted" toprepare them to run the country?

Charles Murray: The academically gifted--which I define a lot more loosely thanothers as the top 10 percent in academic ability--almost all go tocollege. They need to have their feet held to the fire. They needto have term papers graded by professors who automatically cut thegrade for grammatical errors, and who demand precise logic andcoherent prose. They need to acquire the tools for forming accuratejudgments--which means among other things lots of history, becauseSantayana was right about those who are ignorant of history, and athorough grounding in probability, because there is hardly anydifficult issue in public policy or, for that matter, in thegovernance of a corporation, that does not involve probabilisticalternatives. And they need to get a thorough grounding in thegreat issues of ethics and what it means to live a good life--andby that I don't mean a one-semester course in philosophy. I meanthe many courses that call upon the best that human beings haveproduced on these issues in philosophy, literature, and the arts.And finally, the brightest-of-the-brightest need to learn that theyaren't as smart as they think they are. They need to know what itfeels like to be unable to do some intellectual task. They need tolearn intellectual humility the hard way.

Katie Favazza: How do government mandates harm America's young students ingeneral? What has been the single greatest failing of No Child LeftBehind in particular?

Charles Murray: Don't get me started on No Child Left Behind--the first time inhistory, I believe, that a government passed a law saying that allthe children must be above average. I mean that literally. Thestandards of "proficient" that all children are to meet by 2014require test scores on math and reading that only those in the topthirty-odd percentiles meet. All children in 2014 are to be wherethe 70th percenticle was when the law was passed. It's an idioticgoal that refuses to accept that many children just aren't smartenough to become proficient in reading and math. NCLB hasdemoralized teachers who want to teach, not teach to a test. It hasfocused resources on those who are on the cusp of passing thedreaded test that is used to assess "Adequate Yearly Progress,"ignoring those who don't have a prayer of passing and those whowould pass it anyway. It has induced school systems to engage inall sorts of chicanery to try to meet the law's requirements. I donot make these comments just on the basis of the technicalliterature. My wife and I had children in school during NLCB'sfirst years and saw what it did to our local schools.

Katie Favazza: Why is a clear understanding of virtue and happiness necessary fora complete "education?"

Charles Murray: If there's one topic that just almost every 19-year-old thinksabout, it is the meaning of life. No longer a child, not yet anadult, with a strong sense of setting out on a long journey throughlife, 19-year-olds are trying to figure out what kind of peoplethey want to be (involving issues of virtue), what they want tomake of themselves (involving issues of the meaning of happiness).But as matters stand, students who do not have a well-articulatedreligious faith tend to assume that they have to think throughthese questions de novo, or maybe in bull sessions with theirfriends. In fact, of course, human beings have been thinkingthrough these issues for thousands of years, and some humans havecreated works that speak to those issues brilliantly. College isthe one institution in a position to provide this rich nourishmenton such central issues to young people. That colleges no longer dothat is one of the most damning indictments of today's colleges.

Cross-posted at Examiner.com and KatieFavazza.com .