The Bell Curve Part 11 Chapter 5-Schooling

As late as 1940 less than 50 percent of 18-year-olds got a high school diploma. In the post war era, a high school diploma became the norm. Now not having one is a social disability of some gravity. While it is true that most dropouts are from poor families, among whites almost no one with an IQ in the top quarter of the distribution fails to get a high school education, no matter how poor their families. In fact the drop out is extremely rare throughout the upper half of the distribution. Socioeconomic background has its most powerful effect at the lowest end of the social spectrum among students who have below average intelligence. Being poor has a small effect on dropping out of school independent of IQ but it has a sizeable independent effect on whether a person finishes school with a regular diploma or receives only a high school equivalency certificate. When it comes to college these differences are accentuated. Youngsters from poor backgrounds with high IQS are likely to get through college these days, but those with low IQs are not, even if they come from well-to-do backgrounds. Of all the social behaviors that are linked to cognitive ability, school dropout prior to high school graduation is the most obvious. In this respect, low intelligence is one of the best predictors of school failure. "Dropping out" is a very recent concept. In 1900 only six percent of the population achieved a high school diploma and it wasn't until world war 11 that the graduation ratio passed the 50 percent mark. Today it is assumed that everyone will graduate from high school and a significant stigma is attached to 14 percent of dropouts who do not. Americans today take it for granted that the goal is to graduate everyone and believe that a school with a high dropout rate is a social evil. It was not always so. Voltaire's view that "the lower classes should be guided, not educated" was typical until the twentieth century. " We must turn back the clock," one prominent educator wrote in 1936, "to take back five million boys and girls from the educational dole." Yet when the psychometricians tried to document the commonly held fear that the country was trying to educate the ineducable they found little evidence to support the concept because, at that time, there was little difference in IQ between those who were educated and those who were not. Things changed drastically over the next half century as the percentage of the population who received a high school diploma increased from 30 percent to 85 percent. By the early 1950s there was a ten-point gap in IQ between dropouts and high school graduates. By 1960, when 70 percent of the students were graduating, the gap had grown to 16 IQ points and the intellectual rout was on! The following table reveals the shocking truth. Failure to Get a High School Education Among Whites Cognitive Class Percentage Who Do Not Graduate 1 Very Bright 0 11 Bright 0 111 Normal 6 1V Dull 35 V Very Dull 55 Overall Average 9 Interestingly, nearly half of those in Class V, with IQs of 75 of under, were able to get a high school education even though they were borderline (or beyond) the clinical definition of retarded. Which raises the question of what does a high school education mean? Researchers commonly lump together those who attained a high school diploma with those who passed an equivalency examination (GED) when addressing the subject of high school dropout. However, the resent work of Cameron and Heckman have clearly demonstrated that GED youths are not equivalent to normal high school graduates in their employment rates, job tenure and wages. This is not too surprising considering that the NLSY study showed that white GEDs had an average IQ half a standard deviation lower than that for white high school graduates. To put these statistics in perspective, approximately 5 percent of the young people today get a GED. Before addressing the significance of having a high school diploma or a QED further, let's compare the students who got a normal high school diploma with permanent dropouts, those who left school never to return or get a GED. The high school dropout is commonly thought of as a bright, but unlucky, youngster whose talents were wasted because of economic disadvantage or an inept school system that could not hold him. Among whites hardly anyone in the NLSY fit that description. In fact, only three-tenths of one percent met a realist definition of a gifted but disadvantaged dropout. Even if we include everyone in the top half of the IQ distribution, but in the bottom half of the socioeconomic distribution, only 5.5 percent become permanent dropouts. The conclusion is indisputable. With rare exception, young people drop of school because they are dumb not because they are disadvantaged. For temporary dropouts who eventually get a GED it is a different story. In this case the socioeconomic status of the parents is more important than the IQ of the dropout. There are three reasons for this. First, middle and upper- class parents find it unthinkable that their children drop out of high school- find a special school, call a therapist, do anything to keep the child in school. Second, working class parents are likely to urge their children to stay in school so they can do better than their parents. Finally there are the Pap Finns of American folklore who complain about their children wasting all that time on book learning. Although this chapter does not address the issue of black dropouts the belief among many blacks that "education is a white man's thing" speaks volumes to this issue. Now let's consider the role IQ and family background play in getting a college degree. As a general rule the relationship between IQ and educational attainment has been remarkably stable for the last half century. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale showed that the mean IQ of high school graduates was about 105, the mean of college graduates was 115 and the mean IQ of people getting medical degrees and Ph.D.s was around 125. These statistics, based on studies of IQ performed in the 1950s and 1960s are virtually identical to those gleamed from the NLSY study 20 years later. Both of these studies showed that the odds of getting a college degree were small if the person came from a poor background and had a low IQ. However, people who had very well placed parents had a 40 percent chance to get a bachelors degree even if they had only an average IQ. Finally, a person in the top 2 percent of IQ had more than a 75 percent chance of getting a degree even if he came from the lower middle class. To summarize, the number of young whites denied a college education because of adverse family background, exists to some degree, but it is of such small size that it does not constitute a public policy problem. Today, if you were lucky enough to have been born bright you are likely to become educated and succeed in life, irrespective of which side of the tracks you came from. If born not so bright, you will have difficulty achieving anything of significance even if you were born to wealthy parents. Comment: I believe this is the most important chapter in The Bell Curve because it explains why our flawed social policies has been such a dismal failure over the past 50 to 60 years. We have spent 22 trillion dollars in a vain attempt to lift the down-trodden by leveling the playing field. Although the authors do not make the connection, the material presented in this chapter shows why well meaning programs such as school busing and head-start largely were doomed to failure from the beginning. Not to recognize that IQ is the key to the golden kingdom and that intelligence is largely inherited and not a product of environmental factors has been a costly governmental mistake. As Einstein said, "To continue to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity." I would conclude that our repeated attempts to educate the ineducable are the result of ignorance and blind stupidity!