Charles Murray has a New Criterion piece called The age of educational romanticism, the thrust of which is that despite a thousand movies about inspiring teachers, you can't inspire kids to be smarter than they are. This is the same point made by Steve Sailer in Why "No Child Left Behind" Is Nuts, and more recently in Alchemists Can't Turn Lead Into Gold, Educrats Can't Eliminate IQ. (But Lead Is Useful Anyway).

Or to put it as I put it with regard to another subject

The primary message of conservatism is this: "Life is not like that."