Reality Check: Murray's simple truths not so simple.(Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality)(Book review)

Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality

By Charles Murray

Crown Forum, 2008, $24.95; 224 pages.

As reviewed by Peter Wehner

Charles Murray is one of the most influential public intellectuals of the last quarter century. His 1984 book Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 helped bring about a sea change in how we view welfare programs and paved the way for the 1996 welfare reform legislation, perhaps the most successful social policy reform in modern times. Murray's newest book, Real Education, in his words, "calls for a transformation of American education--a transformation not just of means, but of ends." We need, Murray argues, "to redefine educational success."

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Real Education consists of five crisply written chapters. The first, "Ability Varies," borrows from Howard Gardner's classification of multiple intelligences. Murray identifies three-- spatial, linguistic, and logical-mathematical--that he says constitute "academic ability." Having stated a simple and uncontroversial truth--ability varies and it varies a lot--Murray argues that this has transmuted into an untruth: "that everyone is good at something, and that educators can use that something to make up for other deficits." Murray goes on: "The core abilities that dominate academic success vary together," he argues. "Schools that ignore those realities are doing a disservice to all their students."