While reading Charles Murray’s “Aztecs vs. Greeks” in Thursday, January 18, 2007 Wall Street Journal, there were moments when I wondered if he was actually discussing blond haired, blue-eyed Aryans. The title alone suggests an Eurocentric attitude that is supported by his comment that our intellectually elite should focus on the best that came before them. That means “a light dose of Aztecs and a heavy one of Greeks.” When I recall that Mr. Murray also wrote the articles “Where Are the Female Einsteins?” and “The Black-White IQ Gap: Is It Closing? Will It Ever Go Away?,” I wonder how homogeneous his pool of intellectually elite will be.
The intellectually elite comprise the top 10 percent of the intelligence distribution: those individuals destined to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, professors, writers, scientists, inventors and the top ranks of corporate America and government.
It was a relief to learn that most gifted children are born to parents who value their child’s talent and are able to provide a higher education. Fortunately those few without such parental support are given the opportunity for a higher education in the nation’s most prestigious schools. I’m guessing that scholars of the American Enterprise institute don’t read Time so Mr. Murray had not read the article “Who Needs Harvard?” nor the recent article reporting that the highest proportion of our high-school drop-outs are among the most academically capable. But then, he provided the solution already that those drop-outs can develop portfolios and get jobs in information technology (“What’s Wrong with Vocational School?”).
Mr. Murray warns, “…our future depends crucially on how we educate the next generation” of intellectually gifted people because this group makes the decisions and policy that govern the government, the economy and the culture. Worried that the curriculum and pedagogy of American schools will not prepare these gifted students with the necessary tools to be leaders (particularly wisdom, humility and intellectual discipline), Mr. Murray believes that only a separate setting, curriculum and pedagogy can establish the necessary rigor of true challenge to their intellect.
Mr. Murray, by his own admission, is only pleading for greater realism in the nation’s educational outlook. Such realism would provide a special education for the top 10 percent of our students. It would accept that 50 percent of our young cannot rise above basic literacy or functional literacy no matter what programs or instructional approaches we adopt. For the remaining 40 percent we should provide vocational training. It sounds like the intelligence “sorting hat” has accounted for everyone. I recall that Harry Potter once asked, “Does the hat ever make a mistake and place a student in the wrong house?” The answer was no. I trust that Charles Murray’s “sorting hat” is as infallible.
Comments