Power Line News

This is a very informative article from the recent issue of NEW CRITERION (the entire issue is about education) and it is well worth reading.  Murray offers criticism of views on education on both the Left and the Right.  His main points are that all students are not all equally intelligent — there are innate limits to intelligence— and that No Child Left Behind is a colossal failure.

MAY 2008: The age of educational romanticism, by Charles Murray

On requiring every child to be above average.

This is the story of educational romanticism in elementary and secondary schools —its rise, its etiology, and, we have reason to hope, its approaching demise.

Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement.

Educational romanticism characterizes reformers of both Left and Right, though in different ways. Educational romantics of the Left focus on race, class, and gender. It is children of color, children of poor parents, and girls whose performance is artificially depressed, and their academic achievement will blossom as soon as they are liberated from the racism, classism, and sexism embedded in American education. Those of the Right see public education as an ineffectual monopoly, and think that educational achievement will blossom when school choice liberates children from politically correct curricula and obdurate teachers’ unions. [end]

http://tinyurl.com/49chbr

There is this engaging article by Victor Davis Hanson from the same issue of New Criterion: http://tinyurl.com/3rhn5t

The new learning that failed by Victor Davis Hanson

On the value of classical learning.

Ten years ago John Heath and I wrote a lament for the decline of classical learning in the university—Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom. We sounded three simple themes. First, that the study of Western civilization and the appreciation of its literature, art, values, and ideas hinge on acknowledging the singular contributions of the classical Greeks and Romans.

Second, that classicists themselves had shied away from advocating the study of the classical world. Instead, a new careerism encouraged the avoidance of teaching undergraduates, while rewarding scholarly overspecialization and its counterfeit antidote—postmodern, politically correct “theory.” As a result, university students were not learning much about classics. And the public had little interest in reading from their professors about the racism, sexism, and homophobia of the founders of Western civilization.

Third, as remedy, we argued that classicists at every level must work harder and more creatively to expand the study of the ancient world within the university, challenging anti-Western biases on campus, and the creeping relativism that has impeded empirical judgment. As defenders of a unique discipline inextricably linked to the origin of American values and traditions, classicists also need to introduce the Greeks and Romans to a wider public, both to enrich contemporary American society and to bring both an ability to popularize and a much needed pragmatism to what has otherwise become a stultifying and often pedantically narrow field. [end]