Words, words, words

E.D. Hirsch's article in the latest City Journal offers the evidence that vocabulary alone is a great predictor of upward mobility. Why? Because it's an indicator of the child's knowledge-resources.

"Vocabulary doesn’t just help children do well on verbal exams. Studies have solidly established the correlation between vocabulary and real-world ability."

Implication? An old principle: reading can unlock the world, enabling a child from an impoverished background to travel around the globe, and gain the knowledge to achieve great goals. Abraham Lincoln did it, and Ben Franklin, and today's children have so many more resources at their fingertips.

The statistics Hirsch cites regarding what's happened to vocabulary in the past decades are unfortunately disturbing, but in line with all the rest of the research on educational decline.

No Child Left Behind Leaves the Talented Behind

City Journal writer Sol Stern explains how No Child Left Behind has caused talented students to do worse, and contributed to the decline of high-achieving math, science, and engineering American students.

“scientific innovation has generated as much as half of all U.S. economic growth over the past half-century, on some accounts....[but] bachelor’s degrees in engineering granted to Americans peaked in 1985 and are now 23 percent below that level.” 

One of my favorite quotes, because these regulations make me furious: "Among the worst regulations is the prohibition against hiring instructors who, though they may have advanced science or math degrees, lack the useless graduate-level education courses needed to qualify for a state teaching license. "