Unless Tom Murray has significantly changed his opinion in the last few months, I think this is a major oversimplification, if not obfuscation, of his argument. I mean, half the article is devoted to a "Mr. Fish," who as far as I can tell, is just another commentator that has nothing to do with the book. The reviewer clearly dislikes this book (as well as "The Bell Curve"), and I can't help but be put off by the disjointed organization of the article.

For instance, I think this review misses a point of Murray's that I consider important. In an article I read by Murray in the American last month [http://www.american.com/archive/2008/september-october-magaz...], his idea seems to be that core knowledge, the kind of things that we as a culture need to know, like basic American history, geography, cultural literacy, science, etc, should be taught at a much earlier age, in the K-8 curriculum, and not wait until college. He said that the average student needs to know much more about the above fields than they know now, and so it should be taught earlier, so that most people don't need a four-year college education in order to have the core knowledge necessary in a modern society.