Real Education

Trying to understand what has happened to the education of our children is a very difficult process. So much so that we usually throw up our hands and embrace the irony of Garrison Keillor, who says that "all our children are above average" in Lake WoeBeGone and I think we are to infer that this is true of all our children. I hope it is irony. Our No Child Left Behind law was written by educators in order to get the money from the federal government. It says that all our children will be above average by 2014 or else. Whew, another reason that we need to keep the Democratic authoritarians at bay.

Charles Murray has written another book that we all probably should pay attention to, especially our educators, that is, all our teachers and school administrators, and all of us parents.

Real Education by Charles Murray

Here is a dopey review by someone that hasn't read the book. This review illustrates very well the difficulties we have with our schools.

Here is a transcript of an interview of Murray by a professor from a New Mexico university.

Even better is this audio interview of Murray by John J Miller in National Review Online

Blurbs from the back cover:

“Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” said a well-known educator, albeit in a religious schooling context. Charles Murray is concerned with the secular world of education, nonetheless his message is worthy of evangelism: Tell the truth, and the truth shall make you free of foolish, cruel, and counter-productive educational policies.”
—P. J. O'Rourke

“Charles Murray, arguably the most consequential social scientist alive, has discovered a nifty formula for fame (or infamy): One, in lucid, graceful prose describe reality using evidence and logic. Two, propose policies that actually take reality into consideration. And, three, sit back and wait for the inevitable caterwauling and lamentations of those who insist reality isn’t real and who swear the crooked timber of humanity is nothing more than the malleable clay of utopian social engineers. Real Education follows this recipe perfectly. Even now, if you put your ear to the ground, you can hear throats being cleared for the caterwauling to come.”
—Jonah Goldberg, bestselling author of Liberal Fascism

“Charles Murray is one professional contrarian who cannot be written off–not since his first book, Losing Ground, led to a complete restructuring of America’s welfare system. At first Real Education, with its plan for identifying “the elite,” may strike you as an elaboration of his hotly contested views on IQ. But suddenly–swock!–he pops a gasper: a practical plan for literally reproducing, re-creating, a new generation of Jeffersons, Adamses, Franklins, and Hamiltons, educated, drilled, steeped, marinated in those worthies’ concern for the Good and Virtuous with a capital V–nothing less than an elite of Founding Great-great-great-great-great Grandchildren.”
—Tom Wolfe

What more can I say?