MN Twin Study is accepted as the definitive work in this field by virtually every expert and no significant controversy exists about the heritability of intelligence. It is a proven fact. While it is true that there is no guarantee that two smart parents will produce children of above average intelligence it is an absolute statical fact that parents with IQ’s of 125 will produce a much higher percent of offspring with high IQs than parents with IQs of 100. These discussions are about groups of people and no single individual. This is really a discussion of statistical probability and therefore not a topic necessarily familiar to the average parent on this thread. Quite a few of the comments made in the above posts in isolation are not untrue but do not any way contradict the statements in my posts. Pretending that hard work alone in the absence of intelligence will allow high academic achievement doesn’t do anyone any favors any more than pretending that by extensive practice that a good HS tennis player can become a top pro. It just isn’t true. Unfortunately there is no way to sugar coat the genetics of intelligence or any other dersirable trait.
@ucbalumnus , what you also see is that marriage and family are more highly valued in Asian cultures more than in many other ones. In India, out of wedlock births are around 1%. In the US, out of wedlock births among hispanics are 55%, and 78% for blacks. Having a bachelors degree as a new immigrant is only a small component of raising children, in only reflects where you start out on the income scale, not where your descendants will be. It’s also that the culture prizes education.
The EPI study from @ucbalumnus is interesting, but the SAT or ACT, possibly in combination with subject tests or AP scores, would provide a better measure of college preparedness than 8th grade scores.
@Cobrat -
You left out the support of eugenics by early 20th century progressives like Margaret Sanger.
In India, females commonly marry young through parental arrangement. Marriage while still children (under 18) is still common despite laws against it (see http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/india/ ). So out-of-wedlock births are less common there, but the reason behind that is not exactly a nice one.
I remember looking at a school ratings web site that included other aspects of the school like family income levels, ethnic breakdown, parental education levels. These tended to correlate in the usual stereotypical ways. But when they were not matched in the usual stereotypical ways (e.g. heavily Asian school with low parental education levels, or heavily Latino school with high parental education levels), the school’s performance correlated with the parental education level rather than the other aspects. I.e. the “culture that prizes education” is generally that of people with high educational attainment, rather than one associated with race or ethnicity.
Also consider this: why isn’t the University of Hawaii seen as an academically elite university, or one with highly competitive admissions, as it is the state flagship of a state with a very high Asian population?
This isn’t just about Asians (or Jews) in the US. It’s worldwide. Back before the Japan and the Asian Tigers took off, Asians as a race were viewed as lacking in intelligence. When their economies started growing like crazy, all talk of them lacking intelligence disappeared.
Up until around the middle of the 20th century, Jews, especially those from Eastern Europe, were often viewed as inherently inferior when it came to intelligence. Now Israel is rated as one of the top five educated countries in the world, and has a booming tech sector.
Genetics doesn’t change things that fast, especially over only 2 or 3 generations, so this has very little to do with inherited IQ. It’s more about who values education, and being allowed to prosper if given the chance.
samba wishing something doesn’t make it true. You are right that the genetics has not changed. The Asians have always been first world which means they are smart. Every country that was first world in 1500 is first world today. There are no exceptions except for countries that didn’t exist and then you look at the founding country. Conversely despite billions in foreign aid no third world country has ever entered the first world. Why do you think this is true?
What are you talking about? If you want to claim IQ as measured by WAIS isn’t genetic, you can’t use data before 1955 because that’s when the test was invented. Even if you use Wechsler-Bellevue, as its predecessor, 1939 is the earliest something approaching a modern IQ test existed.
@ucbalumnus , It’s the same reason that you have no elite universities in Alaska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana etc. They are all rural, isolated states. The only small states with elite universities are Rhode Island and New Hampshire, and they are in high density areas and have been states for 225 years, a mere 160 years before Hawaii. Besides, not all Asian cultures are the same, and Filipino and Japanese are the largest Asian groups in Hawaii. It’s not the Chinese / Indian mix that you see elsewhere.
Why do you assume arranged marriages are bad? I don’t think you know the culture very well. It’s actually a pretty good system with a lot of family involvement and a lot better than tinder or bar hookups. It doesn’t work for everyone, but judging by the divorce rates it works better than our system.
So the 2 options are arranged marriages and bar hookups? OK.
@roethlisburger, I only mentioned IQ because others are bringing it up. Using IQ is simply the updated face of an old belief that says certain groups aren’t successful because they lack inherent qualities, such as intelligence, that could never be changed. People have been using various forms of that argument for hundreds of years. Before IQ and genetics, phrenology was the “proven” scientific method that could show who was intelligent or not.
That is simply not true. Up until the 70s, Asia was considered an economic backwater. “Made in Japan” was used to disparage Japan and its economy, yet outside of the British territories, Japan was the most economically developed country in Asia. At the time, plenty of people said that Asia was so underdeveloped because Asians as a group lacked the intelligence necessary to become economically successful. The start of the economic boom in Asia in the 70s put that one to rest. Their success wasn’t because inherited IQ suddenly jumped in one generation.
Hey, I went to college at the University of Alaska Fairbanks - “The Harvard of Interior Alaska.”
(OK, so maybe nobody called it that, but that’s how I like to think of my alma mater.)
I could hardly get past this sentence at the end of the second paragraph:
How is this not a good thing?
David Brooks concedes that it’s not (“of course there’s nothing wrong in devoting yourself to your own progeny”). But weren’t these behavior codes once fairly common across the whole American SES spectrum?
Maybe one significant thing that changed is the role of the Catholic Church in working class, urban communities. Churches still seem to be important forces in some upwardly-mobile African American, Hispanic, and Korean communities. However, the Catholic Church in particular was pretty unique in providing low-cost education and health care services to urban communities throughout the country, for many generations. In the span of one or two generations it has receded. No other institution has stepped in to fill the vacuum.
It’s different in some other countries. The Catholic Church was once a pervasive force in French Canadian life. Today, churches all over Quebec City are being turned into shops and condos. The difference may be that there, as in much of Europe, the government is stepping in with low-cost, high-quality health and education services. Furthermore there doesn’t seem to be a huge, permanent underclass of people excluded from those services (not in the major cities anyway.)
Simba9 In this context Asians refers to China, Japan, and Korean. You might want to refresh your history a little bit. Do you think a third world country attacked Pearl Harbor and fought the US in WWII. Did a third world country kill 50,000 US troops in the Korean War? In 1500 China was the most advanced country in the world with the largest navy before turning inward for 500 years and has now entirely on its own about to have the world’s largest economy. The Chinese have invented virtually everything worth inventing prior to the Industrial Age. You are confusing uninformed racism with historical facts. Do you remember Marco Polo?
Again, what policies do you advocate, based on these observations? Are you reluctant to answer that?
One of Brook’s stupidest columns.
15yo Jada can’t join any sports team or club in her high school because she has to come right home after school to look after her baby brothers and make dinner. She also works at McDonalds 3 nights a week and on weekends. She is falling behind in her studies because she just doesn’t have time to do her homework, nor does she have a quiet space at home to study. She is also constantly worried about her mom, who works 3 jobs to put food on the table. Mom’s not been feeling well lately but they don’t have health insurance. As soon as Jada graduates, she’ll be able to get a full time job and contribute more to the household. She has never thought about college because who can afford that?!
But yes, my family vacation to Cancun with my kids is keeping Jada poor. Right.
It would be nice if someone wrote a book about this phenomenon.
Huh? Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world in the 1950s, they’d just experienced a full 40 years of brutal racial oppression, colonialism, and war. And by your metric, North Vietnam during the 60s should have been an economic powerhouse. But their GDP per capita in 1964 was less than half of Chad or Sudan’s.
And since you’re complaining about people not knowing their history you might want to brush up on where the terms “first world,” “second world,” and “third world” came from and what they actually mean. Who knew that terms invented in the 1950s to specifically describe the geopolitical alignment of countries during the Cold War are applicable to the late Middle Ages?
This thread is getting really off-topic.
Apresski are you going to argue that the major Asian Countries are not first world and have been literate and advanced for thousands of years. That is the point. The people from first world countries no matter the race or cultures thrive in the modern western world and there is a clear genetic component.
Apresski but Korea went through the Bronze Age like 1500 BC and had a similar experience with China as occurred in Europe with the Romans. This is not a discussion about 1950 or even the 20th century but rather about long term effect of evolution and how it shape the genes for intelligence and behavior.