2 WSJ articles suggest a frightening future for education.

[Pale Blue Dot]

The first has to do with a new book that's just been release called Real Education. The book's author is full-time Enterprise Institute racist Charles Murray, who also wrote The Bell Curve. From the article:

None of this much impresses Charles Murray. In "Real Education," he suggests that teachers, students and reformers are all suffering from a case of false consciousness. "The education system," he says, "is living a lie."

The problem with American education, according to Mr. Murray, is not what President Bush termed the "soft bigotry of low expectations" but rather the opposite: Far too many young people with inherent intellectual limitations are being pushed to advance academically when, Mr. Murray says, they are "just not smart enough" to improve much at all. It is "a triumph of hope over experience," he says, to believe that school reform can make meaningful improvements in the academic performance of below-average students. (He might have noted, but doesn't, that such students are disproportionately black and Hispanic.)

Thus students are being steered toward college when many should be directed toward jobs for which they are better suited. At the same time, Mr. Murray argues, we're giving short shrift to the academically gifted, who ought to be offered a rigorous education appropriate to their abilities rather than having their classroom experience dragged down by low-IQ underachievers.

Mr. Murray believes that Americans should forsake what he calls "unattainable egalitarian ideals of educational achievement" in favor of "attainable egalitarian ideals of personal dignity." For high-school students that would mean more realism about potentially lucrative vocational options.

Mr. Murray would also institute a series of CPA-like certification exams for which students could prepare in a variety of non-B.A.-granting postsecondary schools. Only true high-IQ achievers -- say, 10% or 20% of all students -- would go on to college, study the Great Books and learn virtue, too.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121936528440062155.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

The second article is about the realities of the economy and the priorities of taxpayers:

On June 30, the board of education and the town council in Enfield, Conn., convened to hear the results of a citizen cost-cutting committee. Among its other recommendations, the 17 residents recommended replacing some public school teachers with low-cost college interns, restricting the use of school vehicles, and increasing employee contributions to benefit plans.

These may seem modest steps toward fiscal responsibility -- but they are emblematic of a significant change in this very blue state: growing disenchantment with the price of government, especially of public education.

Over the past two and a half decades, the student population in Connecticut has increased only 10%. Yet the cost of schooling more than doubled -- to $8.8 billion in 2006, up from $3.4 billion in 1981. Seventeen years ago, the state enacted an income tax with promises to cut other taxes. Instead, real-estate assessments soared, creating a massive income transfer from the private to the public sector, fueled in part by a state cost-sharing formula that uses taxes on residents in the suburbs to subsidize urban schools. Helping to soak up all that money were binding arbitration laws, skewed to give teacher unions an advantage in collective bargaining negotiations.

The result is that the average teacher salary is now the highest in the nation -- $57,750 excluding benefits, according to the latest survey of the American Federation of Teachers. Meanwhile, the American Legislative Exchange Council reports that Connecticut is one of the 10 states with the heaviest property-tax burdens. According to a calculator on the Web site of the Nonpartisan Action for a Better Redding, a local taxpayer group, even the smallest municipalities unnecessarily spent millions on school construction, much of it to meet a predicted increase in population that never materialized.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121944926645165231.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

So if some have their way it will be cut the funding and lower the expectations. In my view, this is a terrible combination.

[Eric J in MN]

1. There has been inflation since 1981.

Also, an average teachers' salary of $57,750, which includes people with 40 years experience, isn't that much.

[greenman3610]

2. teachers often have more than one master's degree, as well

[Burma Jones]

3. What this tells me is that we should be paying lawyers and MBAs less.....

and Tradesmen more.......

[2Design]

7. congress people should be paid a lot less and the president

especially this president who hasn't work much in 8 years but will live on the Dole from the government for the rest of his life. So this is why he chuckles all the time. He spent 8 years and got to go to all the sporting events he wanted. Upgrade his house in Texas and lots of other perks

[Jim__]

4. RW "think tanks" have one goal.

How can "we" (the rich) pay less taxes? Downgrading schools is one-way, so they're always in favor of it.

[jody]

5. Apparently Murray is saying some students are better qualified for technical training than one of

the professions requiring graduate school.

I haven't read the book but I agree with that statement.

I also agree that competent teachers should receive much higher salaries.

[2Design]

6. large cost for mainstreaming - the schools have to pick up the cost

of private teachers because the student isn't appropriate in a regular classroom -

I noticed back in the 90's that the town I was in - a large percentage of the budget was going to pay for these services - at the time I realized this would break the back of schools which plays into the fact that the GOP type people want to break unions and their control over curriculum and any semblance of a public school system - they want religion schools and control over science versus their religion books

so since we don't have money for alternative schools or any other place we now require all schools to have exams for the no child left behind and allow military recruiters in the worse performing schools to get warm bodies for bullets and bomgs

so the cost of schools is support a large population of children who their parents can not help

The town I worked in was one of the richest in Connecticut so many parents with ADA (disabilities) kids moved to these towns because the schools paid for their childs care because it fit under all the ADA regulations for kids too.

This is the other reason the gop wants vouchers is it would be another way to drain money - the faster they drain money the sooner the system can fail

I wrote about some of this in a college paper in 1994

[AdHocSolver]

8. Both of these articles are BS.

Few people are born "stupid". "Stupid" people are created by the culture in America.

A lot of what goes on in the schools is mind numbing and serves to dumb-down the majority of students. The popular media, whether in the entertainment side or the journalism side, is anti-intellectual and further dumbs down the populace. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are the most sophisticated and informative "news" shows on television. Most of the rest of the programming on the Comedy Channel is unbelievably, mind-numbingly stupid, and definitely NOT funny.

The newspapers, many of which used to at least make an attempt at intelligent discourse, have become so inane that they aren't worth buying to line a bird cage. The pundits, the columnists, and the editorial writers espouse such idiocy at times that it is painful to even read it, and I don't any more.

The advertising on TV is so mind numbing that the most important button on the remote is the mute button. We hardly ever go to the movies anymore. Not only are most of the movies made today not entertaining, they literally stink. On top of that, even though you pay to see a movie, in my area, you are still forced to sit through a bunch of obnoxious TV commercials. The people would not have to put up with such crap if they complained to the theater owners. However, they have been trained to be so stupid as to think that they are obligated to be victimized in this way.

As for Mr. Murray's contention that many students are not suited for academics, from years of observing corporate executives, the higher up you go in a corporation, the more intellectually challenged the denizens of the executive suites become. Corporate executives exhibit about the same intellectual capacity as George Bush, and many don't even measure up to that standard. They got there, not because of brains or skills, but like Bush, because Daddy could buy them a degree.

As for the increased cost of schooling in Connecticut now compared to the early 1980's, considering the amount of inflation we have incurred, (gasoline cost four times more now than in 1980, a comparable car of today cost about two times more than it did in 1980, food costs seem to increase by the month) the increase is almost totally accounted for by inflation. ( 8.8 / (3.4 + (.10 x 3.4)) = 2.353. ) The increase in funding, accounting for a 10 percent increase in enrollment, is 2.353. The inflation during that time is about two times so that most of the increase is due to inflation. In inflation-adjusted dollars, there has been very little increase at all.