THE PROB LEMS OF EDUCATION ARE NOT GE NE TIC 333in the world of work. In his review, mentioned above, J. Scott Armstrong
has put the correlations, six or more years aft er graduation, as low as
0.05.^23 Higher- performing pupils do not tend to become “high-
performing” adults. Conversely, the vast majority of high achievers in
the real world, as adults, did not stand out in school.
A legitimate objection may be that correlations will be underestimates,
because many of those who took the school exam are not pres ent among
those assessed for job performance— they have been selected out. In
statistical terminology, this is called “restriction of range.” However, as
mentioned in chapter 3, even when corrections are made, correlations are
small or confusing.
For example, excellent high school grades are required for entry to
medical school. Given that medical studies involve a real accretion of re-
lated knowledge over time, we would expect there to be some correlation
from exam to exam. Th at appears to be the case. When we turn to actual
medical practice, however, the situation is diff er ent. A study in the United
Kingdom (also mentioned in chapter 3) reports small and statistically
nonsignifi cant correlations between A- level results and the Practical
Assessment of Clinical Examination Skills several years later. Also, cor-
relations between A- level scores and having been promoted to the Spe-
cialist Registrar (or se nior doctor) grade were low (below 0.2) or not
statistically signifi cant.^24
Th e most surprising result is the tenuous association between school-
acquired knowledge with useful real- life knowledge. It has frequently
been shown how high school and university students, steeped in objecti-
fi ed curriculum knowledge, have diffi culty translating it to, and thus un-
derstanding, real- life practical situations in corresponding domains. In
his book, Th e Unschooled Mind, Howard Gardner described the results
of a large number of studies, on both sides of the Atlantic, as follows:
“Perhaps most stunning is the case of physics.... Students who receive
honours grades in college level physics are frequently unable to solve ba-
sic prob lems and questions encountered in a form slightly diff er ent from
that on which they have been formally instructed and tested.... Indeed,
in dozens of studies of this sort, young adults trained in science continue
to exhibit the very same misconceptions and misunderstandings that one
encounters in primary school children.... Essentially the same situation
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