Charles Murray has
a provocative essay at The New
Criterion on education reform--and how both left and right
go about achieving it exactly wrong. Here's a snippet:
For the good of our children, educational
romanticism needs to collapse, and quickly. Its effects play out in
the lives of young people in devastating ways. The fourth-grader
who has trouble sounding out simple words and his classmate who is
reading A Tale of Two Cities for fun sit in the same
classroom day after miserable day, the one so frustrated by tasks
he cannot do and the other so bored that both are near tears. The
eighth-grader who cannot make sense of algebra but has an almost
mystical knack with machines is told to stick with the college prep
track, because to be a success in life he must go to college and
get a B.A. The senior with terrific
SAT scores gets away with turning in
rubbish on his term papers because to make special demands on the
gifted would be elitist. They are all products of an educational
system that cannot make itself talk openly about the implications
of diverse educational limits.
topics:
Education
