
Just Leave Them Behind  - bootload
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/education/edlife/books.html?ref=edlife&pagewanted=print
======
markessien
It's easy for those who live in ivory towers to write books justifying how
they deserve to live in ivory tower. I would be much more intruiged in
somebody writing a book explaining how he should actually be a plumber.

One of my college professors always starts a new session by telling the story
of how he bacame a professor. He started off by learning how to be an
electrician, because that's all everyone around him was doing. This is in a
3-tier schooling system. After doing that for a while, an instructor
encouraged him to go for a somewhat higher learning to become a technician. He
did, and there again, he decided on a whim to try out for the university. He
got in, and was encouraged to get a PHD. He got it, and some years later, was
made a professor.

It would have been real easy for him to have stayed an electrician. Maybe he
could have met a girl and needed to pay bills. Maybe he would have felt he was
too old. He had the intellectual ability, but the tiered system could have
forced him into a path where he would never have been able to contribute what
he has to everyone who passed through him.

~~~
cperciva
_I would be much more intruiged in somebody writing a book explaining how he
should actually be a plumber._

You'll never find a well-written book which honestly claims that its author
should be a plumber. Why? For the same reason as you'll never find a well-
written book which honestly claims that its author is illiterate: If you're
able to write well, you're overqualified to be a plumber.

~~~
markessien
What about a labourer arguing for the case that there should be an influx of
labourers from Mexico? It's the same pattern everywhere. When people argue for
high IQ being superior, they have high IQs. When they argue for immigration,
it's because they are not affected, when they argue for more police on the
streets, it's because they are not criminals.

I would be a lot more impressed by people who make arguments that are
rationally correct, but that do not favour them.

It's like people who argue for Eugenics - their version of Eugenics never
involves them or their friends/family being cut out from the genetic pool.

~~~
cperciva
_I would be a lot more impressed by people who make arguments that are
rationally correct, but that do not favour them._

I've been arguing for a long time that universities should take fewer students
and technical training schools should be expanded. Given that I hope to end up
with a faculty position at a university, I'd say that this isn't a position
which particularly favours me.

 _It's like people who argue for Eugenics - their version of Eugenics never
involves them or their friends/family being cut out from the genetic pool._

I wouldn't argue for cutting myself out of the gene pool, since I think the
genes I have which are responsible for my intellect are worth keeping (both of
my parents have doctorates, so I think it's safe to say that there's a strong
genetic component in my case); but there is strong evidence that I have genes
which predispose for autoimmune conditions, and if I'm ever in a position to
have children I'd strongly support using genetic testing to eliminate zygotes
with those genes.

~~~
ced
_both of my parents have doctorates, so I think it's safe to say that there's
a strong genetic component in my case_

Both of your parents have doctorates, so I think it's safe to say that there's
a strong _nurture_ component in your case.

~~~
nostrademons
You can't draw that conclusion unless he has an adopted sibling or a
biological sibling that was put up for adoption. Normal unadopted children
share both their genes and their environment with their parents.

When studies _have_ been done on identical twins raised apart, they've shown
that genetics matters far more than parental environment, with genes being
responsible for close to 40% of the variance in a wide array of personality
traits, parental nurturing responsible for about 10%, and the child's peer
group responsible for the remaining 50%.

------
lux
My personal experience from myself and everyone I've seen, is that there are
very few true geniuses (much less than 20% of the population), and that the
major differentiators are luck and effort. You're lucky to be born into a
family that turns you on to reading and learning, or even to be born in a
country where you have the freedom and equality of opportunity to try for your
dreams. But you also make your own luck, in that those who put in the effort
make things happen.

I don't know any really smart or accomplished people who would say that it was
just their intellectual superiority that got them to where they are. Rather,
they are usually eager to cite luck first, and in reality it was their effort
that got them places.

Myself, I know I'm lucky as hell, but I do put in a lot of effort too, not
just in my chosen field but also reading everything I can. My hope is the
effort in combination with a little luck will pay off big :)

This guy has some interesting points, and there is a degree of truth in it,
but he's way too absolute in citing a single determinant factor of success,
and his idea of additional systemized testing is ridiculous. There are
differences in intelligence levels, but through effort they even out in
practice in most cases. And as if his tests could ever be completely without
bias, or even perfected enough to accurately determine true intelligence vs
acquired knowledge.

------
MaysonL
Peter Drucker had a telling piece of (anecdotal, but telling nonetheless)
evidence on the subject. After World War II, a large proportion of students at
Columbia were returned veterans, thanks to the GI Bill. Most of them would not
have been considered, or considered themselves, candidates for college before
the war. _None of them were on academic probation._

Motivation and application are much more important than any hypothesized
"native ability". "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" Practice.

------
jacobscott
Thesis of the book (article is a book review):

"it’s almost impossible to raise academic ability, to turn the below-average
into even the slightly less below-average. It’s only “educational romanticism”
that makes us think we can."

I disagree in principle, although I don't have a lot of exposure to the
science/data concerned here. What is pretty clear to me is that currently, the
United States as a whole is not culturally geared to hold education, science,
etc as important and/or "sexy". Consider the ratio of how many people watch
Reality TV compared to Mythbusters and the like.

~~~
antiform
Unless Tom Murray has significantly changed his opinion in the last few
months, I think this is a major oversimplification, if not obfuscation, of his
argument. I mean, half the article is devoted to a "Mr. Fish," who as far as I
can tell, is just another commentator that has nothing to do with the book.
The reviewer clearly dislikes this book (as well as "The Bell Curve"), and I
can't help but be put off by the disjointed organization of the article.

For instance, I think this review misses a point of Murray's that I consider
important. In an article I read by Murray in the American last month
[[http://www.american.com/archive/2008/september-october-
magaz...](http://www.american.com/archive/2008/september-october-magazine/are-
too-many-people-going-to-college)], his idea seems to be that core knowledge,
the kind of things that we as a culture need to know, like basic American
history, geography, cultural literacy, science, etc, should be taught at a
much earlier age, in the K-8 curriculum, and not wait until college. He said
that the average student needs to know much more about the above fields than
they know now, and so it should be taught earlier, so that most people don't
need a four-year college education in order to have the core knowledge
necessary in a modern society.

~~~
jimbokun
From the article:

"The more people who go to college, the more stigmatizing the failure to
complete college becomes."

I think Mr. Murray needs to lighten up a little. One way in which American
culture excels over many others, is in our embrace of failure. If you want to
try to go to college, and end up failing, so what? Do something else. You're
still in your early 20s.

Certainly, there is the issue of going into heavy debt in a failed attempt at
a college education. But that is different from people thinking less of you
for having tried something and failed.

People reading Hacker News should empathize with this sentiment more than
most, I think.

------
akkartik
Another study: teacher motivation is the key differentiator in a school's
results.

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_ki...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html)

------
lutorm
If it's "almost impossible to raise achievement", then the implication is that
the "leaking pipeline" in higher ed, where minorities drop out at a
proportionately higher rate at each step, reflects an inherent difference in
aptitude between different races.

It would also mean that Americans are inherently "dumber" (loosely speaking)
than Europeans, since they on average score lower on tests of math and
science. After all, nothing can be done to raise achievement, so it must be
inherent.

I don't believe that for a minute.

I also think the statement is empirically false; It _is_ perfectly possible to
raise achievement, and I think it's much more probable that the difficulties
doing so on a large scale are rooted in flawed educational practices and
cultural/societal factors.

------
dgordon
Your radical ideas about education have already occurred to Plato, Charles
Murray.

Considering that 230 years ago, one-fifth of a nation consisting of 20%
slaves, 50% indentured servants, and unschooled farmers for most of the rest,
bought Common Sense, which isn't exactly beach reading, I'm not too impressed
with his claim that 80% of people are inherently incapable of college-level
work.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
I've seen the claim that "The Deerslayer" sold so many copies in the 1840s
that most American households must have had a copy. The idea of the majority
of Americans even attempting to read a book like that now is just ridiculous.

~~~
dgordon
I don't know about The Deerslayer, but The Last of the Mohicans (about which
you could say the same) sold millions of copies, so it would not surprise me.

------
chaostheory
Murray is an old school ivory tower academic who is out of date. From my
understanding I feel that his theories rely too much on standardized tests,
which many other studies over the years have shown that the only thing they
really predict is how well someone does in academia; not beyond it

------
cperciva
_"The Bell Curve," [...] argued not only that I.Q. was genetically determined
but that it amounted to destiny, predicting your job performance, your
financial prospects, even how likely you were to commit a crime or become an
unwed mother._

Life sucks. Deal with it.

The fact is, Charles Murray is correct: IQ _does_ predict your job
performance, financial prospects, likelihood of criminality, and probability
of becoming an unwed mother. It predicts these in the same sense as whether of
not someone has the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes is a predictor of whether they will
die of breast cancer -- there are lots of factors, including dumb luck, but
it's one of the largest.

Can we do something about this? Absolutely: If someone carries the BRCA1 or
BRCA2 genes, we can recommend that they undergo routine breast cancer
screening from an early age. If someone has a low IQ, we can pay special
attention to them in school to make sure that they're not falling behind.

What we decide to do is a matter of public policy. Some states provide free
breast cancer screening to everybody; others provide free breast cancer
screening to anyone with a family history of the disease; others don't provide
free breast cancer screening at all. Similarly, some states "stream" children
into classes with other children with similar IQs; some states put everybody
into the same class but perform testing so that teachers know which students
are more likely to need help; and some states just throw all the children
together without making any attempt to distinguish the high IQs from the low
IQs.

Some people are born stupid. But pretending that we're all equal won't fix
that. The first step towards dealing with it is to recognize that life sucks.

------
aswanson
I would suspect that above a certain threshold, intelligence would have a
damping effect on one's earning potential, i.e., leading to the pursuit of a
doctorate in physics instead of a medical, law, business career. Or even
plumbing.

~~~
bd
Not necessarily. See for example D.E. Shaw, J.H. Simons, N. Myhrvold.

~~~
aswanson
Of course not, there are always extreme outliers. But if you do a median net
worth survey of the professions mentioned above versus that of of scientists,
mathematicians, and engineers, the results are indisputable. Very high
intelligence careers have a poor comparative financial ROI, on average.

~~~
bd
You are right. But to play devil's advocate: what if very high intelligence
individuals are not more likely to do science, mathematics or engineering?

For a very rough approximation: if I remember well, SAT averages for
Harvard/Yale/Princeton (more likely to be doctor/lawyer/executive) are very
similar to (or even higher than?) scores for MIT/Caltech/Stanford (more likely
to be scientist/engineer).

So, could it be that it's not the high intelligence by itself that has said
dampening effect on one's earning potential, but it's more about interests of
the individual?

~~~
aswanson
Possible, but it doesn't sit right with me intuitively. And since I don't care
enough about the issue to spend time collecting data to refute your premise,
we have to leave it at that. :)

------
alecco
Disgusting as usual. Yet another reputed scholar going out of his field and
posing a controversial set of ideas with mostly anecdotal justification.

In particular, IQ is a very old and limited measure of cognitive ability with
many controversies about culture bias. For example it doesn't reflect long
term goal focus, a more important ability for success.

~~~
antiform
To play Devil's advocate here, isn't your personal thesis that "long term goal
focus" is important for success also based on anecdotal evidence? Or do you
have a study that you would like to reference? I don't know too much about
education or psychology or any related field, and I'd be very interested in
looking at any material that you might have.

~~~
kolya3
Dr. Banfield at Harvard University wrote a book in the 70's based on his study
of this question ("The Unheavenly City"). His main finding is that long term
success is tied to "long term goal focus".

------
sdurkin
We ought to equip all students with the basic level of education necessary to
know about The Choice (work hard or clean toilets), and let them buy, beg,
borrow, or steal the rest.

------
IsaacSchlueter
Anything that can be expressed in terms of inputs and outputs, can,
conceivably, be codified into a computer program. Given enough time, the
hardware time required to run any program shrinks to nil.

I foresee a future where a computer scans you, and prints out your ideal
career. Then a beautiful one-eyed woman puts a chip in your hand that
permanently locks you into that career. The motto: "You gotta do what you
gotta do."

I'm off. Gotta deliver a pizza to I. C. Wiener.

~~~
dgordon
The funny thing is, that played absolutely no role in the rest of Futurama, at
least as far as I can remember.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
In season 3, episode 32, "The Cryonic Woman," Fry and Leela trade career
chips. He thaws his ex from the 20th century, and she delivers pizzas.

------
anthonyrubin
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XxmWTI4zWM>

------
bd
What you can't say

<http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>

<http://www.paulgraham.com/resay.html>

------
Tichy
Doesn't this call out for a modern version of "My Fair Lady"?

------
bootload
_"... This is the same Charles Murray who was co-author of the even more
controversial 1994 book “The Bell Curve,” which argued not only that I.Q. was
genetically determined but that it amounted to destiny ..."_

The sad thing is, this statement is sometimes true (but not as much as Murry
would suggest). When I was young, down the street lived a big kid, Kenny was
his name. He was never really allowed out like the other kids. But I do
remember when I visited his house once he had the largest box of cars I'd ever
seen. I remember asking my mum if he could come out to my house some time and
possibly bring some toys. Only to be promptly told no. Why? Well he's
different and has trouble learning and goes to a special school.

But why?

Surely he could take a book and learn as much as he wanted? No was the
reply... Never. I remember balling my eyes out hearing this as I couldn't
understand why he couldn't just pick a book up and learn as I was at school.
Of course this didn't stop Kenny playing Basketball for Australia or numerous
other achievements. The reason why Murray is wrong is this is an extreme. Not
everyone has the intellectual disability that crippled Kenny's ability to
learn and therefore if they want to learn new things all the stops should be
pulled out if they show the inclination. The ability to learn is a form of
emancipation.

 _"... the others are incapable of doing college-level work — and those who do
should study a curriculum heavy on the great books, so they can become moral
and ethical mandarins and wisely run the country for the rest of us. ..."_

China has this sort of approach and I'll give you an example of the kind of
screwed up problems it can cause. Australia has a large quantity of super fine
Merino wool. It's the material that all the best suits are woven from and has
some unique properties that make it ideal for high-end garments. But it's
expensive. So the Chinese decided that investment was one way to go ~
<http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1664831.htm> So they invested
some money in an existing Merino Sheep-Station with the intention of growing
the wool then shipping the clipped wool to China thus saving money. From clip
to yarn would be all Chinese. But running a farm tested their approach to
tackling things - their bias for groups of "elites" who are primarily tertiary
educated instructing a greater mass of ill-educated.

Running a farm is difficult anywhere. Not having any local expertise or
understanding of the local conditions as well as a group of people that could
be trained or seek training on the latest techniques but could also put this
training into practice turned out to be fatal. The farm failed. The highly
educated couldn't translate their theory into practice. The lesser educated
couldn't be show how.

What was missing was the broad spectrum of skills and intelligence, something
what we class as tradesman or technicians. We severely underestimate the
quality and expertise of our tradespeople and technicians.

