Most, including the President, assume that all children are equal and all can attend college. Usually this assumption is unspoken or is assiduously hedged in further discussion to maintain a core conviction that we are all “equal.” All “equal” mind you not before God and the Constitution, but equal in our ability to master a tough, academic college curriculum.
“Equality” is one of those high-minded ideals that have been used by leftists for generations to tear down the existing structure of society. The slogan seems to be, “all are equal therefore the government must achieve this with law and public policy.” This belief is particularly noxious when it comes to possible racial differences in intellectual ability including college entrance. (see below)
Some time ago, I did a book review on Rochester’s BESIEGED SCHOOLS, BEWILDERED PARENTS, and BETRAYED KIDS AND THE ATTACK ON EXCELLENCE. It is posted on FR. Basically Mr. Rochester found that in Kansas City the school district did everything possible to dumb down the curriculum so as to permit the least able students to compete with the most able. Usually, this resulted in a racial problem since the White, upwardly mobile parents were for tough curricula and academic excellence while the school personnel seemed to want an easier and more “democratic” approach. To his credit Mr. Rochester prevailed in some respects: in any case, one of his sons was accepted at Yale. I refer to this book so as to introduce another high school that has a different approach to college preparatory work.
Recently Edward Humes (Pulitzer prize-winning journalist) published School of Dreams. This book was written after a year teaching advanced writing at Whitney High School in California. This school ranks number one in the nation for public schools placement in colleges and, most especially, for the big three—Harvard, Yale and Princeton. It is a public school but before you can get in (people come from other countries to enroll their children) you must past a test. Of course, this is not called an IQ test, but the result is the same –a highly selected, able population of highly motivated children. In passing most of the students are Asian followed by a White minority, followed by an even smaller minority of Blacks and “Hispanics.” (Does anyone ever wonder about the logic and usefulness of categorizing people by the language they speak?)
As Humes (a classic liberal in my view) says there are some people just smarter than others. Every effort has been made to deny this. From Phillip Wylie in the 1920’s to Thomas Sowell in the 90’s reasons have been postulated denying there are individual and racial differences in intelligence. Thomas Sowell (a man I admire) castigates society and Black society in particular for failing the students.
Then what is the truth? From the Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray, Race, Revolution and Behavior by Rushton as well as the internet (free) available The “G” Factor by Chris Brand you can find that for 100 years or more we know the following: (1) Intelligence is distributed on a curve distribution; (2) There are profound individual and lesser racial differences in intelligence; (3) And, intelligence is the most effective predictive variable in assessing future performance in an academic setting.
In respect to the racial differences they can be roughly subsumed as follows: Ashkenazi Jews have average IQ of 115, Asians have an average IQ of 108, European Whites have an average IQ of 100, “Hispanics” have an average IQ of 92 and African-Americans have an average IQ of 85. If it takes about an average IQ of 110 to be successful in a rigorous academic college or be a professional such as a physician, lawyer or college professor: then, 60% of the Jews, almost 40% of the Asians, 20% of the Whites and 5% of the African Americans will be able to make the cut of 110. Actually, for most successful professionals only a small minority (perhaps 2-5%) are truly able to be something better than trained in a trade.
There are all kinds of arguments against IQ. Not the least of which are posed by really fine (and very intelligent) people such as Dr. Sowell (See his marvelous book Inside American Education). But the problem is it is more than a test. Tom Wolfe in Hooking Uprelates a vignette where someone discovered (and this is scientifically valid) that with evoked potentials and an EEG one could roughly determine IQ. This would seem to be a great advance (and also substantiate the biological basis of IQ) but it failed because everyone was afraid to take a chance on marketing a fail safe IQ test.
Emotions often rule where reason should. Plato once argued that a truly educated person did nothing but see reality rather than what he wanted to see or should see. That is where we are at with education—as a people we don’t want to see what the reality is and how we should respond to it.
Butressing this last point Brand's book was withdrawn by his publisher because he asserted individual and racial differences in "G" that were inherited. It is a good book, well written and available to all.
This wouldn't be a problem if the test wasn't garbage.
In 10th grade, passing the state [reading] exam was equivalent to the fifth percentile in the national ranking.
Amazing!
Note that these figures are about Houston ISD (Independent School District). (Translation: Inner city)
There are many school districts which surround Houston that have much better graduation rates, etc.