[steenkeenbadges]

"As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence, graduates will tend to marry graduates and produce children with similar intelligence, while others will tend to produce children without it...

Does Mr. Parket suggest that George Washington Carver was some kind of an intellectual fluke? That the children of crop dusters will produce only cropdusters? What a Darwinian crock!

Has anyone noticed that the systematic dumbing-down of our "educational" system is producing endless crops of spiritually crippled Elitist parrots without a shred of critical-thinking ability?

Those "tests" that are ostensibly devised to measure this ever increasing superiority have been modified to the point of banality for the purpose of turning out intellectually fatuous and morally vacant corporatites.

I thoroughly disagree and object to the tone and conclusions of this pathetic analysis.

[Paved Paradise]

Yes. Also, I wonder if they are mistaking what we often call "success" or a high income with true intelligence. I know many people that could've gone onto very high paying jobs if they'd been born into the right circles - let's face it, in many instances it IS who you know and not what you know. You can learn the what very easily but getting in the door might require some effort. Also, there are plenty of rich and very high level people that produce children that grow up to be selfish, greedy and unwholesome. We had a very interesting story here in Cleveland over a year ago about a man that went through the most elite of private schools and he ended up screwing a bunch of people out of their investments (look up Frank Gruttaduria on Google) and he would have been considered in this upper tier, according to this article. They can HAVE their tier!

[Ace's Dad]

That the children of crop dusters will produce only cropdusters? What a Darwinian crock!

Cropdusters? You have to be a pretty good stick (pilot) to be a successful cropduster. It's not a lower class job, IMHO. And yes, I know a pilot who's father was a "duster," and went another career path from spraying fields with needed chemicals so we can have healthier, more plentiful food.

[cyborg]

AMEN!!

[redgolum]

Very good point. As one who went to school at Iowa State, I have great respect for Carver.

What we are seeing is the increasing cost of college is driving out some who would have otherwise gone. That, and many are seeing that a degree in "women's studies" isn't very marketable, and are turning elsewhere.

[Clock King]

...graduates will tend to marry graduates and produce children with similar intelligence, while others will tend to produce children without it...

Example #1 of "Good Breeding"

You are right IMO. GWC and Frederick Douglas, and Benjimin Banneker were SLAVES. Yet they achieved more than most people.

[Physicist]

Read this part again:

As college education becomes open to all with the requisite intelligence

That wasn't even approximately true in George Washington Carver's time. It has recently become approximately true, for the first time in human history. That's the point.

Until now, stratification according to merit could not have occurred, because there was this disconnect between ability and social position. Many natural geniuses picked cotton, because they were forbidden to read. That doesn't happen any more. Almost everybody gets his chance to shine, and the reality is that the shiny kids strongly tend to come from shiny parents.

Is that what you would expect? What do you think the reason is?

[Diddle E. Squat]

Has anyone noticed that the systematic dumbing-down of our "educational" system is producing endless crops of spiritually crippled Elitist parrots without a shred of critical-thinking ability?

Well yes, the author in fact alludes to that:

"...and that Britain, more open to upward mobility in the past than popular legend would have it, is becoming less so. This he partly blames on the abolition by equality-minded Laborites years ago of the academically demanding grammar schools..."

[Lindykim]

I agree with your analysis. The Left (the diabolically narcisstic core, not its' usful idiots) wants to re-establish the "old ways"...smallish aristocracy running the show at the expense of the "unwashed masses." Hence they love to speak in terms of 'inherited' intelligence...meaning themselves, of course.

[GSlob]

Maybe you should read (or re-read) and understand Murray and Herrnstein. They explicitly speak of tendencies, trends, and statistical probabilities, NOT about any determinism at the level of an individual. Say, out of one thousand children of college graduates 800-900 will be "college material", while, say 50-100 would be college substandard. Out of one thousand lower class children the proportion of "college material" [they define it as IQ 115+] could be , say 50-100, while those who would not make it in a college could number, say, 700. But in both cases there would be those falling through the cracks (in the former case -"cracks in the floor", in the latter case - "cracks in the ceiling"). And in neither case would one be able to predict the individual's fate based merely on the background of that individual. More interesting things occur when such sorting is repeated over several generations.

[webstersII]

"Does Mr. Parket suggest that George Washington Carver was some kind of an intellectual fluke? That the children of crop dusters will produce only cropdusters?"

It's not even primarily an issue of intelligence, i.e., high IQ. It's a social issue, not so much an intelligence issue that causes successive generations of college grads to go to college.

The reason the college-graduates have more children going to college is because the college-educated parents expect more of their children.