Half of all children are below average
Posted by BrianThis is sure to get me in hot water with my educator wife, but the title says it all about this op-ed.
Education is becoming the preferred method for diagnosing and attacking a wide range problems in American life. The No Child Left Behind Act is one prominent example. Another is the recent volley of articles that blame rising income inequality on the increasing economic premium for advanced education. Crime, drugs, extramarital births, unemployment–you name the problem, and I will show you a stack of claims that education is to blame, or at least implicated.
One word is missing from these discussions: intelligence. Hardly anyone will admit it, but education’s role in causing or solving any problem cannot be evaluated without considering the underlying intellectual ability of the people being educated. Today and over the next two days, I will put the case for three simple truths about the mediating role of intelligence that should bear on the way we think about education and the nation’s future.
Today’s simple truth: Half of all children are below average in intelligence. We do not live in Lake Wobegon.
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This is not to say that American public schools cannot be improved. Many of them, especially in large cities, are dreadful. But even the best schools under the best conditions cannot repeal the limits on achievement set by limits on intelligence.
The author, Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, succinctly conveyed a message that I’ve tried to get across for quite some time. The point is clear - not all children are created equal. That actuality is the cause of the most glaring inherent flaw with No Child Gets Ahead.
Nothing upsets teachers more than to suggest that some kids are just dumb. Part of their anger stems from an fictive belief that every kid starts out with the same potential. There is also an element of faint egoism - the belief that they are good at what they do and, by God, they can crack even the toughest nut. All of us are susceptible to that mindset; every engineer worth his salt has tried to solve a system of equations with more unknowns than equations in the admirable, but misplaced, hope of solving the unsolvable.
NCGA tries to educate all children up to some level deemed acceptable by the federal government. Great idea; but what about the kids with superior potential? As soon as teachers get them up to the threshold level they are not only encouraged, but required (implicitly, if not explicitly), to turn their attention to the laggards who may or may not be worth the attention. It is a system designed to generate students who are mediocre at best.
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January 16th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
dont you know we are all equal? come on, get with the program. surely you understand the almight federal government from brown v board to grutter, can right any wrong, particularly genetic selection. we are all equal afterall.