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Murray's Truths

No. 1: Half of American students are below average.

Sep 22, 2008, Vol. 14, No. 02 • By LIAM JULIAN
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Real Education

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

by Charles Murray

Crown Forum, 224 pp., $24.95

Charles Murray has written a bracing book about education, one determined not only to upset apple carts, but explode them. In varied ways he has succeeded, and for that we should be thankful; the conversations of self-described education reformers tend toward the stultifying and could generally benefit from some well-placed pyrotechnics.

His big point is this: American education suffers from a surfeit of romanticism. It is too idealistic and pursues goals it will not and cannot attain. By blindly believing that all students will be able to achieve at high academic levels, and by ignoring reams of facts that belie such a notion, the educational system does significant harm to the students it purports to help. The individual talents and aspirations of millions of young people have been sacrificed on educational romanticism's altar.

One of the truths Murray believes the romantics don't accept--but must--is that too many people are going to college.

That higher education is overly inclusive is certainly counterintuitive, especially when there exists such widespread agreement that the more Americans in college (which Murray defines as a four-year residential institution) the better. Politicians spanning the hues from navy to vermilion strive to make university education widely accessible, and the country's high school curricula typically have, as their goal, the production of graduates who matriculate at college.

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