I have not read The Bell Curve, but I have not been impressed by Murray’s politics. I think this is a valid critique, much more so than the ones that insist he has no facts on his side. As I’ve said repeatedly, if there were no important policy considerations in play, I’d be all for purposely avoiding shining any light on racial differences in intelligence, and shaming those who do shine such a light.
But even if Murray does not, I DO have a reason to not be able to sweep this stuff under the rug. I’ve pointed this out any number of times, but I will now do so again. I am married to a public school teacher, and I’m goddamned sick and tired of seeing public school educators (including administrators as well) and teachers’ unions used as punching bags. They get attacked on the right flank, but whatever: no surprise there, and this would be nothing more than a compliment, if the left had their back.
But no: instead, the powerful coalition of “school reformers” includes those anti-union forces on the right, but also a big contingent of left wingers who blame “failing schools” for the fact that black kids score significantly lower on aptitude tests than do white kids. They begin with the axiom that if they were properly educated, black kids would score just as high—therefore it’s the schools’ fault. This is bullshit, and I’m sick and fucking tired of it.
My conception of “winning” this debate is not what you all seem to imagine. I don’t want black kids to be tarred with the label “genetically inferior” and be jeered as such on the regular. I want us to go back to a mode where we teach them as best we can, put extra resources into their education and enrichment, and at the same time care for their self esteem. Which very much does not involve constantly giving them tests that are too hard for them, and wringing our hands over the results.
You may think this is not harmful to them because the handwringing is expressed as the schools failing them rather than being about their own failure, but I guarantee you, those kids and teachers take it personally. And quite often the teachers and administrators that are chided (or fired) for “failing” are black themselves. So what is the message there?
Mother Jones embedded a reporter in a “failing” school for 18 months in 2011-2012. This school was targeted by the federal regulations reformers have pushed through to either be closed completely, or to fire its principal and at least half its teachers. Here’s what the reporter saw:
Now stop and think for a second. What if you’re wrong, and these kids really can’t reasonably score any higher than they do already? Yet the law and the “reform” movement refuses to recognize this fact. Isn’t this exactly what we’ll see? Things will get shaken up over and over regardless of how good the school staff is, regardless of how happy the kids and parents are. It will be endless handwringing, endless turmoil, to try to wring blood from a turnip. Does that not give you any pause? “What if we’re the baddies?” (Bonus points to anyone who catches that reference.)
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