Contradictions Of Priority: Unpacking Charles Murray’s “Are Too Many People Going To College?” | Joy O’Halloran

Joy O’Halloran is an English Major at UMass Boston. Joy grew up in Boston and has a particular interest in youth rights and education reform.

**Third Place Award for Research**

Abstract: Given the crises that public higher education is currently facing, we are in desperate need of creative solutions. Not all creative solutions are necessarily worthy of equal consideration, however. In this essay, I analyze and critique Charles Murray’s 2008 essay “Are Too Many People Going to College?”, an essay riddled with creative but bad ideas for how to fx public higher education. Although Murray’s proposals are refreshingly out-of-the-box, his logic is fundamentally, dangerously flawed. I take particular issue with the underlying assumptions behind his use of “percentiles” to frame matters of individual skill level; his conception of “academic ability” as a monolithic, quantifiable skill; and his Core Knowledge approach to elementary and middle school education. I conclude that Murray’s vision for education in the United States is, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, one that will lead to a society which is more stratified by class, not less.

Given the contemporary crises of higher education in the United States—increasing tuition, rising student debt, and a general trend toward neoliberalism (Clawson and Page 2011)—anyone willing to propose out-of-the-box solutions has my ear. Therefore, when I encountered an essay titled “Are Too Many People Going to College?” (Murray 2008), my interest was piqued. Murray offers a critique of postsecondary education in the United States, arguing that the goals of a liberal arts education should be fulfilled in grades K-12, and that only a small number of people would actually benefit from college. However, I quickly discovered that Murray’s logic is riddled with contradictions and false assumptions. As interesting as the ideas he presents are, I cannot agree with his vision of an ideal society. In particular, I take issue with his overreliance on mathematical distributions to frame individual strengths and weaknesses, his conception of “academic ability,” and his specific proposals for elementary and middle school education.

Throughout his essay, Murray frequently refers to individual skills by way of percentiles. At one point he offers the example of a high school student deciding between two careers. The student cannot decide whether to become an electrician or to attend college in hopes of becoming a business manager. If, Murray argues, this boy is “at the 70th percentile in linguistic ability and logical mathematical ability…exactly average in interpersonal and intrapersonal ability…[and] at the 95th percentile in…small-motor skills and spatial abilities,” then he should become an electrician. While it is certainly true that each person has their own strengths and weaknesses, I am troubled by the use of percentiles to frame this fact. The unspoken implication of such language is that people are stuck at certain skill levels for their whole lives. The high school student in Murray’s example just is mediocre at building relationships; he just is decent, but not great, at math; he will never be anything else. Those who believe that human beings are capable of learning new skills and sharpening old ones, and that this is in fact the entire purpose of education, should take offense at this notion. Furthermore, framing skill levels in terms of percentiles completely ignores the benefts of higher education for society at large. Being “in the 70th percentile” of mathematical skill, for example, would mean something different if everyone were expected to learn integral calculus than it would if most people just learned basic arithmetic. If everyone in the United States received a liberal college education, then the entire nation would hone its critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. Society as a whole would improve, even if one person’s skill level relative to everyone else’s—that person’s “percentile”—would not.

One distribution which Murray frequently refers to is that of “academic ability.” He suggests, for example, that “a young woman who is in the 98th percentile of academic ability” would benefit from a liberal college education, while those “at the 80th percentile of academic ability” would not. The very idea of “academic ability” as a measurable quality grossly oversimplifies the skills required for success in college, which include listening, reading, writing, memorization, mathematics, interpersonal communication, time management, self-advocacy, and test-taking—among others. Where does a student fall on Murray’s “percentile of academic ability” who can write fluently but has difficulty reading sophisticated texts, or one who excels at memorizing information and taking tests but lacks critical writing skills? Perhaps he would say that anyone who possesses some but not all of the skills required for college is simply unft for a college education. Personally, I believe that colleges should provide resources to assist students in those areas where they struggle. This is not just to ensure their success in college, but in life, since almost all of these skills are applicable outside academia.

 Despite these glaring flaws in his central argument, Murray still raises some interesting questions. What if a basic liberal education was provided in primary and secondary school, and college was reserved for those pursuing a career that specifically required it? He goes on to explain the idea of cultural literacy, the “body of core knowledge” required to fully participate in American culture. “All American children,” he claims, “of whatever ethnic heritage, and whether their families came here 300 years ago or three months ago, need to learn about the Pilgrims, Valley Forge, Duke Ellington, Apollo 11, Susan B. Anthony, George C. Marshall, and the Freedom Riders. All students need to learn the iconic stories.” I fundamentally disagree. Many of these so-called “iconic stories” paint an incomplete picture of our nation’s history by emphasizing its good points while glossing over the ugly ones. When a friend of mine who had immigrated from China first learned about colonialism in his new elementary school, he was so appalled that he burst into tears. Although the history by itself is upsetting, how it was taught is what really bothered him. The tragedy that befell so many Native American societies was mentioned briefly and then forgotten about, and the teacher painted an overall rosy picture of colonialism. My own experience has been similar. I bring up this example to demonstrate that many of what Murray calls “iconic stories” are best understood as part of a romanticized or even mythologized retelling of American history. Even those examples he gives, like Duke Ellington or Apollo 11, that do not by themselves serve to sugarcoat our bloody history do not strike me as so important for everyone to know that they must mandated by the state.

Finally, even if I did not take issue with the specific pieces of “core knowledge” Murray advocates, his vision for K-8 schooling does not in any way, shape, or form resemble a liberal arts education. Even while arguing that “a lot more than memorization is entailed” in the Core Knowledge approach, he stresses that “memorizing things in an indispensable part of education, too,” and “something that children do much, much better than adults.” Contrary to Murray’s vision of elementary and middle school students simply memorizing a government-approved Core Knowledge curriculum, liberal education fundamentally entails critical thinking: the ability to engage with multiple conflicting views, to treat accepted wisdom skeptically, and to form one’s own opinion. How anyone could believe that rote memorization in middle school is an acceptable substitute for critical thinking at the college level is, frankly, beyond me.

This, then, is the basis of Charles Murray’s argument: College is not for everyone. No one should seek education beyond high school unless their career path specifically requires it, which very few career paths should. High school students who do not yet know what career they want to pursue should make up their minds. Rather than being taught to engage critically with the world, elementary and middle school students should be made to memorize a watered-down, sanitized version of our nation’s cultural heritage. Thus, despite entertaining the idea that “we should not restrict… a liberal education to a rarefed intellectual elite,” this is exactly what Murray proposes. It is not a vision of education, of our country, or of the world that I can support.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clawson, Dan and Max Page. The Future of Higher Education. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2015.

Murray, Charles. “Are Too Many People Going to College?” American Enterprise Institute, September 8, 2008. http://www.aei.org/publication/are-too-many-people-going-to-college.