This is an interesting debate.
The top universities are being criticised for classism for not taking enough people from working class backgrounds.
However;
Newcastle University's Bruce Charlton said fewer working class students at elite universities was the "natural outcome" of class IQ differences.
...
Dr Charlton said: "The UK Government has spent a great deal of time and effort in asserting that universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge, are unfairly excluding people from low social-class backgrounds and privileging those from higher social classes.
"Yet in all this debate a simple and vital fact has been missed: higher social classes have a significantly higher average IQ than lower social classes."
The fact that so few students from poor families get into Oxbridge is not down to "prejudice" but "meritocracy", he said.
Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell said: "These arguments have a definite tone of 'people should know their place'.
Why do people from working class families have lower IQs on average? I would guess that factors such as poor nutrition, poor housing, stress, poverty, poor maternal nutrition in pregnancy, and a higher incidence of alcohol and drug exposure in pregnancy will have just as much effect on brain development as it does on other aspects of health.
So, the real question is why a Labour (ho ho) government that has presided over an exponential increase in the gap between rich and poor thinks the top universities and a professor who points out the obvious are to blame?
Perhaps NuLabour should take a look a litter closer to home and stop talking shit.
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14 comments:
1)Fact: IQ is bollocks, doesn't measure anything. What units is it in? Might behave like a proper statistic but it is self defining and is no such thing.
2)Total speculation, may well be bollocks: What if education has got most of the intelligent people out of poverty and left a core of thickos behind? No on the other hand the government have fucked up education even more than health. Correct answer it's their fault.
there's a bit of truth in this,but only a bit,
IQ tests are very dependent on education, they do not measure innate ability, nothing can!
however it is clearly true that on average those who do well in life will be brighter than those who do not do well
and a professor who points out the obvious
except that it is not only non-obvious, it is wrong. It is almost certainly the case that there's a difference in the mean IQ test score of the upper/upper-middle classes and the lower classes. But even if we take that as prima facie evidence of a mean difference in academic ability and potential then, even if it were shown to be hereditary and not culturally based, still it would not explain upper/middle class predominance at Oxbridge. And Charlton, who must know some stats (!) must know this. The man is a bigot. IMO.
This test measures how intelligent a person is.
How do you know it measures people's intelligence?
Because intelligent people do well at it.
That about sums up the status of the intelligence test. A perfect circle.
This is a medical blog - most of you know more about the blog topic than I do. However, this particular item is about intelligence - you're in my world now, where I know more than most of you.
Yes, there is such a thing as intelligence, but nobody knows exactly what it is. In objective terms, the psychology of intelligence testing is still at the stage of "We know it when we see it". You know an intelligent dog when you see it. Some are more intelligent than others - but there are no tests for telling which they are ... you know them when you see them.
Same for humans.
In China we only have Dragon or Worm Classes. Dragon can be poor and Worms can be rich but in the end, Dragon will be Dragons and Worms will be Worms. After Mao took over, most of us had to start with nothing, yes nothing but our parents worked hard and so did we. I at least became a Cockroach Catcher, still do except now the cockroaches are bigger and wear nice suits.
The Cockroach Catcher
"This is a medical blog - most of you know more about the blog topic than I do. However, this particular item is about intelligence - you're in my world now, where I know more than most of you."
And that is the wonderful thing about blogs.
IQ is indeed a circuitous logic.
However, it seems logical that if the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, and poor schools get worse (more targets, less teachers), and alcohol abuse increases, and the difference in nutrition increases, then the poor will not only have a lower life expectancy and higher rates of illness, but they will likely also have compromised educational development.
Of course, some overcome such handicaps to succeed, but far too few. The loss it theirs and ours. How many writers, poets, philosophers, leaders, and scientists have we lost because of unequal social policies that damage most of the population from birth?
Doc, what seems logical to you, does to me too. Intelligence needs nurturing, physically and mentally. It also needs constant exercise for the same reason muscles do: use it or lose it.
Obviously, as a GP you speak to plenty of young people who were raised in shit circumstances and had a shit education. And that is the basis of your logic. I need say no more eh?
Gedanken experiment: new born baby; as chance - and it is chance - would have it, this particular CNS has the potential to have the highest level of intelligence any human has ever had. Stick said baby in a box with a feeding tube and let it stew for 18 years. Remove new adult from box.
What do you have?
A dazzling intellect that is going to invent a scientific theory that's going to give us a thousand year lifespan, and another theory from which will be developed a drive system that'll take us to the stars?
Or a mewling vegetable?
I wonder how many star drives we've missed because of how, as a species, we treat our children?
If you want to demonstrate a principle, do a gedanken experiment to the outer extremes.
Some of the brightest people I've ever met can make no progress in this society (or, probably, any society in the world) and end up permanently unemployed or doing low-grade work.
I'm one. According to the rules of intelligence testing (all bollux, of course, but never mind), then according to how you do the statistics there are, in a country of 60 million people, either 600, or 2000, people as or more intelligent than me. I haven't had a job for years, and have no prospect of getting one. I just can't bring myself to say the right buzz-words you see, when I know them to be bollux. There are hundreds of thousands of people like me. In your job you probably meet many of them.
Perhaps "The History of Political Correctness" will provide some further insight into the modern social "agenda"
A very interesting Google movie.
For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear :)
Kids don't get into university on the basis of their IQ but on the basis of school exam results.
It is well known that there is a positive correlation between parental income and school results.
Therefore it is no surprise that children of richer parents are more likely to get into university.
IQ is irrelevent in this context
Has anybody read the New Scientist recently? Interesting article suggested that intelligence was culturally driven. Interaction with our environement massively important for our ability to learn. So effectively my pirate friend Sir Henry Morgan is entirely correct. Biologically at the point of conception our genetics has probably very little to do with our potential but rather subsequent environmental and cultural factors are the driving force.
In otherwords if you are conceived in poverty and exposed to all manner of shite then you will be less able to learn than your genetic potential would suggest. This has nothing to do with class and everything to do with poverty and cultural influence. If you are fed shit from an early age, ingonred and discouraged by your parents and society in general and treated like a turd by everyone then you will be likely to become a vegetable...
yeah but no but yeah
i think these doctors have for too long had a monopoly on treating the infirmed
my IQ / poor a levels shouldnt restrict my entry to medical school
mckinsey and new labour told me its my right and im worth it. they mentioned something about debasing a profession to drive down standards, i mean wages
why should those posh doctors write presriptions
im starting my gp nvq tomorrow - 8/52 and im sorted
chips TDS, envy and arrogance with no awareness of my ignorance stat
one of the few ways of driving the fortunes of this country up would be to transform the worst schools in the worst council house housing association areas out from their current shit levels of service
but of course that would mean radical measures, like paying much more to attract great teachers out of their cushy lifes in more middle class schools
intelligence has fuck all to do with class
most of our biggest wealth creators started off as working class
why dont you start by scrawling a big W on any working class doors? and make working class folk walk around with badges "Im working class", start a new race of pure bred middle class?
fucking idiots dont be so fucking stupid
i bet i spend more time on a scum estate than any of you tossers, and i have more affection and respect for the genuine folk doing their best there than any nob from public school dossing their way through life as a GP
and there it is
public school posho doctor bastards
i know your game. trying to keep us down. putting special thicky mc thick juice in our pints, in our chips, in our pies
i like living off the state. doing fuck all and blaming everyone for my lazy, retarded, hateful envious outlook
i work with common folk so it gives me carte blanche to be a supercilious cunt to n'th degree
I'm a teacher and I think separation of intellects exists and is obvious to the point of tautology. I define intelligence as curiosity-those that want to simply ask why my car isn't working , or why am I not happy, or why do we have too few hospital beds or any why questions small or big as asked in this excellent blog-shows intelligence.
Too many people in the UK want to be entertained , to be told baby stories and laugh. The press is the great evil cause. (I mean that) how many journalists are really curious enough to explain the real world they find themselves in? Lord Beaverbroke had a sign on his wall saying `Remember they are only ten'(the average reading age of the UK public)The press are too busy dumbing down and entertaining to sell with false morality. It is our media that helps in the process of social separation and wasted adilities.
We should never stop being curious and get interdosciplinary too-the more we know about other people's constraints-the more we are going to help ourselves.
Mark
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