I’m discussing inherited intelligence. What makes anyone think that everyone starts off with an equal amount?
I’ve had my own kids study hard and not learn things that were easy for me. They worked harder and had more resources than I did, but the results were not equal. In languages, I studied hard for 6 years - 7th grade thru HS - and the only reason I didn’t flunk was that the teacher needed students to keep her job. Later, I met guys in the military who learned to speak acceptable Japanese in a week.
We aren’t all equal. We are born with limited ability to learn some types of things. It is painfully obvious that we are not all born equally intelligent.
Why is the heritability of intelligence is such a threatening concept to some?
Genetics plays an important role in areas such as beef and milk production, timber and crop production and show dog breeding. Athletic ability and physical traits in humans clearly have a genetic component.
Yet somehow we are to believe that genes affect all these characteristics *except* intelligence?
Mr. Rogers, what are you saying here? Do you believe they inherited a trait that renders them less intelligent than you are? Or, would it be more logical to conclude that something else was the reason?
Listen, my own children don't go to school. They never did. And I can trace almost everything about them to something in their environment or to an actual physical reason. I found out those first few years are crucial; everything to which a child is exposed at that age influences him for a long time. So, what might seem innate is not necessarily so. It probably traces back to the child's experiences in the early years.
But, the brain continues to develop. The type of thinking I see here on this thread is like shrugging, "Oh, well, I can't do it," and then giving up.