Not all the kids are above average

Arts and Letters Daily has a link to a series of articles discussing the idea that "too many Americans go to college". Quoting part one of the series:

To say that even a perfect education system is not going to make much difference in the performance of children in the lower half of the distribution understandably grates. But the easy retorts do not work. It's no use coming up with the example of a child who was getting Ds in school, met an inspiring teacher, and went on to become an astrophysicist. That is an underachievement story, not the story of someone at the 49th percentile of intelligence. It's no use to cite the differences in test scores between public schools and private ones--for students in the bottom half of the distribution, the differences are real but modest. It's no use to say that IQ scores can be wrong. I am not talking about scores on specific tests, but about a student's underlying intellectual ability

The articles are in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal site, which to me makes them suspect. However, I think they ask some good question, such as What's Wrong With Vocational School? and what do we do with 'gifted' students?

David, thank you for linking to these. I enjoyed the read, and all three articles address ideas I've been batting around for years. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I can find very little to directly disagree with in Murray's analyisis, despite the fact that it's the WSJ, and maybe because of it. Slate has had articles on the issue of education (primary, secondary, and higher) before, but they've skirted the issue of intelligence, perhaps because an IQ-based argument seems (as it does here) to significantly oversimplify human capacity and human flexibility. Anyway, thanks.