Schools Should Stop Telling Kids to be "Nice"

At least in his writing, Charles Murray is not what I would consider nice. He has denounced equal opportunity, the welfare system, and the belief in the endless potential of each child. His most contentious work, The Bell Curve (1994), co-written with Harvard professor Richard J. Hernstein, argues that a child’s intelligence is innate, related to race, and predictive of future economic status. That is to say, a poor black man might be that way not because of discrimination or societal obstacles but because he’s just not smart. Refutations from journalists, authors, professors, teachers, economists, and psychologists came tumbling down on the book. As a teacher, I can attest that if anyone believes that children can change and grow, it’s educators. We see evidence of it, and we live by the hope that there will be more. I disagree vehemently with Murray on certain points. Yet when he is right, he is awfully right.

Murray’s main gripe in Real Education is with universal college education, which he sees as a waste and an injustice. We push young people to study subjects in which they do not excel, he argues, when they could be pursuing a satisfying and profitable occupation. College should be for the academically inclined, and education through high school should give students a strong background across the subject areas. After high school, students should begin work, pursue vocational training, or go to college; college should not be the default, but a place for the academically gifted. One can argue with his individual points, but the problems he addresses are real. According to the New York Times, only half of students who enroll in college wind up with a bachelor’s degrees. Work could be satisfying for many young people, and some might choose to enroll in college later. Some of my middle-school students have expressed a wish to start work immediately after high school, in order to help their families. Such a wish is honorable and should not be dismissed.

But Murray’s most compelling point is one he makes in passing:

The same [moral void that we find in sports] extends throughout the curriculum and the school day. Today’s public schools (and many of today’s secular private schools) tell children to be nice but not how to be good. It tells children to be happy but does nothing to help children think about what happiness means.