The latest issue of Standpoint magazine features a
provocative article by Charles Murray on the question of whether all children have the potential to be academically successful. Murray was co-author of the controversial book "The Bell Curve", published in 1994, which explored issues of race and IQ in America.
Murray's new article is a response to what he describes as "educational romanticism", encapsulated by the beliefs of the UK's former schools minister Andrew Adonis. In August, Lord Adonis wrote "There is no genetic or moral reason why the whole of society should not succeed to the degree that the children of the professional classes do today, virtually all getting five or more good GCSEs and staying on in education beyond 16."
Murray argues that study after study has shown that improving schools actually makes very little difference to children's academic success. For example, he cites the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies, an American project which compared 11 of the best pre-school interventions. "The consortium's bottom line" he writes "was that 'the effect of early education on intelligence test scores was not permanent'".
He also discusses The Coleman Report, published in 1966, which observed the relation between school quality and academic success among 645,000 students. "To everyone's shock," Murray writes, "the Coleman Report found that the quality of schools explained almost nothing about differences in academic achievement." Instead, family background was by far the most important factor explaining academic success.
Murray argues that IQ is the strongest influence on academic success and that some children simply aren't equipped to excel at the highest levels, no matter how excellent the schooling they receive. The children of parents from the professional classes tend to do better academically, he proposes, because they inherit higher IQ from their parents, and because the households of professional couples are more conducive to learning - for example, more intelligent parents are more likely to read to their children.
"This is not a counsel of despair," Murray concludes. "The implication is not to stop trying to help but to remove the ideological blinkers and stop pretending that all children can or should pursue the academic track. There is a healthier and attainable goal of education: to bring children to adulthood having discovered things they enjoy doing and having learned how to do them well. The goal applies equally to every child, across the entire range of every ability."
What do Digest readers think? Does the psychological literature support Murray's controversial claims? A
previous Digest item that seems to undermine his claims described a study showing that self-discipline matters more than IQ when it comes to academic success.
译文:
所有孩子都能取得学术成就么？
最新一期的《支点》杂志（Standpoint）（官方网站； 维基百科介绍；中文译名来源）杂志刊登了一篇由查尔斯·默里（Charles Murray ）撰写的抢眼而具有争议的文章，其主题针对是否所有孩子都具有取得学术成就的潜能的问题。默里曾与他人合著引起争议的《钟形曲线》（The Bell Curve）（维基百科；百度知道）一书，该书探讨了美国的种族与智商的问题，并于1994年出版。
默里的新作针对“教育浪漫主义”作出回应，而这正是前英国教育部之学校部长（中文译法来源见《教育部电子报》）安德鲁·阿多尼斯的观点。阿多尼斯大人曾于八月写到：“从基因和道德上看，全社会应该都可以像今日的职员阶层的孩子们一样获得学业上的成功，而他们实质上获得了五张以上优良的英国中等教育证书(GCSE)，并且在16岁后继续深造。”
默里则认为根据一个又一个的研究显示，改善学校教学质量其实对孩子学术成就的影响微乎其微。例如， 纵向研究协会(the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies)曾在美国做了一个实验，比较了11个最出色的学前干预，其数据则为默里所引用。默里写到：“经实验，该协会的立场是‘针对智力测验的早期教育对人的影响并非是永久性的。’
默里还论述了于1966年公布的科尔曼报告(The Coleman Report) 。该报告观察分析了645000名学生的学术成就与其学校质量的关系。 默里写到：“让每个人都吃惊的是，科尔曼报告显示教学质量几乎和学术成就没有任何关系。”而事实上到目前为止，家庭背景是解释学术成就问题最重要的因素。
默里主张智商是对学术成就最有影响力的因素。无论其受到的学校教育有多么精良，有些孩子就是因为智商的原因而无法出类拔萃。他还认为，之所以职员阶层的子女在学术上更成功，就是因为遗传了其父母的高智商，并且职员阶层家庭对学习有着更有益的影响。譬如说，越聪明的父母，往往越会读故事给他们的孩子听。
“这不是一个绝望的忠告，”默里总结道。“该推论并不是要停止帮助，而是旨在移去意识形态的有色眼镜，并且停止那种声称‘所有孩子都能够，或者应该追求学术建树’的矫饰。对于教育来说，有一个更健康、更现实的目标，那就是将孩子培养为成人，让他们找寻自己喜欢做的事，并且学习将事情做得更好。这个目标超越了不同能力的界限，对每个孩子而言，都是同等的。”
《研究文摘》（Research Digest）的读者是怎么认为的呢？这份心理学著作是否声援了默里引起争议的主张呢？这里有一篇似乎与默里观点相冲突的《研究文摘》过刊文章描述称一个研究显示自律因素在学术成就方面起着比智商更重要的作用。
