The IQ elite and minimal responsibility

There is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal by Charles Murray titled "Aztecs vs. Greeks : Those with superior intelligence need to learn to be wise."

You will have to read the whole article to see what the title means, but it argues that putting those with IQs of 120 and over in regular classes is a very bad idea. It is ironic though. When I was going through school the more rigorous standards and demands the author calls for in special classes for the 'gifted' (god I hate that term) were simply part of our regular classes (thank you Mr McClung, among others).

The basic thesis is: "The top 10% of the intelligence distribution has a huge influence on whether our economy is vital or stagnant, our culture healthy or sick, our institutions secure or endangered. Of the simple truths about intelligence and its relationship to education, this is the most important and least acknowledged: Our future depends crucially on how we educate the next generation of people gifted with unusually high intelligence."

Murray defines the problem:

The encouragement of wisdom requires a special kind of education. It requires first of all recognition of one's own intellectual limits and fallibilities--in a word, humility. This is perhaps the most conspicuously missing part of today's education of the gifted. Many high-IQ students, especially those who avoid serious science and math, go from kindergarten through an advanced degree without ever having a teacher who is dissatisfied with their best work and without ever taking a course that forces them to say to themselves, "I can't do this." Humility requires that the gifted learn what it feels like to hit an intellectual wall, just as all of their less talented peers do, and that can come only from a curriculum and pedagogy designed especially for them. That level of demand cannot fairly be imposed on a classroom that includes children who do not have the ability to respond. The gifted need to have some classes with each other not to be coddled, but because that is the only setting in which their feet can be held to the fire.

Again, when I was in school this seemed to be where our regular classes were pitched. My work, as well as that of the kids who were clearly smarter than I was, was rigorously critiqued and we were allowed no airs due to our performance. I sure felt like our feet where held to the fire and then some!

His solution:

I am calling for a revival of the classical definition of a liberal education, serving its classic purpose: to prepare an elite to do its duty. If that sounds too much like Plato's Guardians, consider this distinction. As William F. Buckley rightly instructs us, it is better to be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. But we have that option only in the choice of our elected officials. In all other respects, the government, economy and culture are run by a cognitive elite that we do not choose. That is the reality, and we are powerless to change it. All we can do is try to educate the elite to be conscious of, and prepared to meet, its obligations. For years, we have not even thought about the nature of that task. It is time we did.

The whole article is worth a read. Though he uses the word 'elite' frequently Murray is no elitist. Elsewhere in the WSJ he argues that many of the intellectually superior should NOT go to college - they have better things to do with their lives. He is trying to spark a debate about education, unelected elites, and solutions.

It is all the more important as many of our colleges and universities, mine among them, are retreating from this very concept in favor of a more technically careerist orientation with lower standards. We are, after all, market driven.