- ISBN13: 9780307405395
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“The most talked-about education book this semester.” —New York Times
Based on a series of controversial Wall Street Journal op-eds, this landmark manifesto gives voice to what everyone knows about talent, ability, and intelligence but no one wants to admit. With four truths as his framework, Charles Murray, the bestselling coauthor of The Bell Curve, sweeps away the hypocrisy, wishful thinking, and upside-down priorities that grip America’s educational e… More >>
Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality
This book is not worth the your time to read. The premise is factually untrue. There are many books that are available that give a differing opinion regarding the “value” of a college education to be made accessible to all people. College education is not something for just the gifted. It is to be accessible to all citizens in a democratic society. A better books to read include:
1.) Investment in Learning: The Individual and Social Value of American Higher Education by Howard R. Bowen
2.) Leveling the Playing Field: Justice, Politics, and College Admissions by Robert K. Fullinwider and Judith Lichtenberg
Rating: 1 / 5
The main idea that Charles Murray wants to convey in this book is that of the IQ.
The IQ , according to Murray, is genetically predetermined, and nothing, can be done to permanently raise a child’s IQ-.
According to Murray, The IQ is a determining factor of how well a person will perform in school- and no amount of tutoring, special teaching, enrichment classes or any other sort of private enhanced education of any form will ever make a difference in how a child will perform in school– They will only be as academically advanced as their IQ allows them to be. There is a wall the IQ puts up, that prevents them from learning any high concepts above their level. AN IQ of 95 for example, would never be able to comprehend advanced calculus, no matter the teaching method.
Murray goes on to say that because these low to mid range IQ students are basically in so many words, a lost cause- most of a schools’ efforts should go to the gifted children- those that can and will have the ability to be the leaders of our country. They have enough IQ points to make them academically capable of being the elite and brains of our country.
Not once does Murray ever explore the actual medicine and science of brain funtion, and how the brain can compensate for defects in certain areas of learning. Nor does he examine the different ways that kids learn ( kinsthetic, visual, ect) or learning disorders, or what immersion, tracking, year around schooling, or intense tutoring can do for a child that struggles.
Murray pretty much sums up IQ as the be all, end all to how a child will perfom, and there isn’t anything else you can do about it.
There are a couple other chapters in the book about his ideas of elementary school reform that were all drivel, and his almost obsessive beliefs about a liberal education that serves no one in practical, modern day working America.
Thank you Charles Murray for wasting my time.
Rating: 2 / 5
I had to read this book for a graduate course in Education. Many good points are brought up about America’s education system, but Charles Murray goes off on so many random tangents, that you lose what his point was. It was a very slow read, and put me to sleep a few nights.
Rating: 2 / 5
Charles Murray writes an awful lot in this book about how we can change the system to make it better, but what we really need is to be increasingly skeptical of one person claiming that they can “make it all better” if we just listen. I urge readers to read very critically and think of the results of not allowing more than the highest 20 percent to attend college. If we really allow Educational Testing Services to produce certification tests for everything instead of allowing people to receive a well-rounded education we are setting ourselves up. There will only be more problems instead of fewer. I again urge the reader to think extremely critically about the potential results here. There are people in German for example, who are not able to go to college even if they can handle the demands and even if they find it enjoyable because they have been sorted into vocational high schools. Really dig down deep into what the results will be before giving up “educational romanticism” entirely (as the author calls it) and really critically think about what will happen if we allow this to be put in place as policy, for example. It may not be so horrible, but we won’t know until we get there.
Rating: 2 / 5
Be careful with this book. While Murray acknowledges Gardner’s argument that there are very different abilities, he then concludes that only those who score high on traditional tests, in other words those with the most verbal ability (especially) and math ability, should be the focus of our primary educational efforts.
He’s right in arguing that college isn’t for everyone and that we make a mistake by pushing all kids to go to college. But without an alternative well financed vocational training thrust and evaluations that measure all student abilities this will only help create an elite who have never been assessed for integrity, creativity, self-knowledge, street smarts, or technical gifts, and we will have a solution that will create far many more problems than it solves.
Murray’s perspective is filled with a combination of insights worth reading and myopic elitist thinking that
fails to provide solutions to our most pressing educational problems.
Should the book be read? Sure, but with a very skeptical and critical eye.
Rating: 2 / 5