The Sage Forge

Too many people, according to Murray, are going to colleges.  Too few are going to vocational schools.  This is an argument with some merit on economic grounds.  As a culture we probably too highly prize the cachet of "college" education and make too little of that sort of education that will grant to hard working people the skill which will both provide an income and support the needs of society.  In my opinion, for one, it should be a national priority to educate auto mechanics.  We could sure use more than one or two good ones in this neck of the woods.

While it is necessary to have good carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and mechanics to make an economy run, however, Murray once again draws too close a parallel between the proper constitution of these vocations and the intelligence of those who should practice them.  Murray thinks it problematic, for example, that 40% of high school grads are entering college (assuming, it would seem, that this implies 40% of the high school aged population is thus represented).  Murray equates this with a population of people with an I.Q. of 104 and above and goes on to say that for real college educations an I.Q. of 110 may be problematic.  On the assumption that the capacity to follow an argument is an innate skill endowed by intelligence Murray states people below this level simply do not have the stuff to do what college requires.

At the risk of getting off-track let's examine this notion.  If the capacity to follow and critically examine an argument is innate and the proper purview of people of high intelligence (let's say the top quintile of the population), and intelligent people are distributed throughout human populations (as, by Murray's own definition, they must be-  In every population there is a top quintile.) how are we to explain that logical argument as we know it is so uniquely a product of cultures that developed an educated elite?  Why, too, do even the dull-witted among the children of the educated elite (They are, after all, a population, too.) seem capable of making their way through undergrad studies?  Follow Murray's logic to it's conclusion and one must assume that some populations are just more intelligent genetically.  Hence they are the populations on which we should lavish the blessings of education.

If, on the other hand, logic is a skill that is learned, a product of culture rather than wiring, is it ethical to deny training in it to anyone who truly desires it?  As with my comments yesterday I recognize that there are contrasts in innate abilities.  Intelligence tests more often than not reflect these capacities.  Sometimes, though, they do not, and the disparities that can then be perpetuated by public policy can be both individually cruel and societally costly. 

As the father of a child who, in second grade, had a tested I.Q. of just over 110 and was unable to pass the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test but now has a repeatedly tested I.Q. of over 130 and straight 'A's in college coursework, I can attest to the power of an educated household.  I give particular credit to the benefits of a college educated full-time mother.  Having had the same situation in my own home, growing up, to similar effect I feel comfortable in speaking to the power of education.  Murray's assertions strike me as more than just troublesome for a nation such as ours.  They are, at least on the logical foundations he sets forth, dangerous.

Do we send too many people to colleges?  Perhaps we do send too many men.  Much of what Murray says about the importance of craftsmen in society has merit.  The real benefit of education, though, perhaps the greatest benefit, is in how it can raise the level of the whole culture from the bottom up.  The people in society who are really the most intelligent, who can benefit the most from that raising of the cultural tide, are our youngest children.  They already learn a complex, highly structured, symbolic communication system by age five, and when presented with the foundations of logical systems are capable of grasping much that they can build on in later life.  These may be capacities that are foreclosed after a certain age, which means we all, as a society, benefit from exposing these children to educated women. 

Murray may be right, but not on his terms.

It sure would be nice to have an auto mechanic who could follow the logic of the functioning of a modern car.