Educational Heresy

"The Obama Administration's munificence toward state and local public schools ($100 billion in stimulus funds, including a $5 billion slush fund to try to figure out 'what works') is bringing out of the woodwork the usual array of miracle workers with cures for whatever ails us educationally. ... Fortunately, America's leading social scientist recently published a short, lucid book of his charateristic judiciousness laying out a roadmap for fundamental reform of schooling: Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality. ... [Charles Murray] demonstrates four simple truths and their profound implications: 'Ability varies, Half of the children are below average, Too many people are going to college, America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted'. Tracking, for instance. Why humiliate the worst students and bore the best students by clumping them in the same classroom? But tracking has been out of fashion ideologically since the late 1960s, in large part because it tends to lead to racial segreation within schools. ... Showing little evidence of having read the book he excoriated [The Bell Curve, 1994], Obama demanded more government spending on social programs that would benefit his political bases: blacks and social workers. ... Obama could appoint Charles Murray his Senior Advisor on Education", original italics. Steve Sailer (SS), 25 May 2009 at: http://vdare.com/sailer/090524_obama.htm.

Suppose Obama had read the Bell Curve? Could he comprehend it? I doubt it. SS's "four points" were debated during 1957-58's "Sputnik panic". Hyman Rickover said much of this then. SS sees Obama's bases as my "Teacher-Educationalist-Social Worker" complex (TESWC). Murray as education advisor, John Bolton at State, Joe Jett at Treasury. Now that's a cabinet even Andy Jackson might be happy with.