These four charts show how the College SAT favors rich, educated families

Washington Post ^ | 03/06/2014 | BY ZACHARY GOLDFARB

[Liberty Wins]

A child who grows up in an environment where they see parents reading, studying, working tend to mimic those behaviors.

Exactly.

[Altura Ct.]

How low can you go?

Heaven forbid we have high expectations. Excellence used to be desired...

[SWAMPSNIPER]

2 people with IQs of 70 don't produce many offspring with IQs of 140.

The Bell Curve is, of course, a curve, but I suspect that if you pinned the 100 point where it was just a few years ago distribution would be no where near symmetrical, the body count on the left side seems to be increasing.

[Mr. Jeeves]

The Professional Minorities can’t stand it that white racism has dwindled to near zero in recent years. They have to publish silly articles like this to try to bait Whitey into resuming racist attitudes - and in turn keep the government cash flowing their way.

[Joe 6-pack]

In South Korea, there is compulsory military service for all males. A select few are chosen for the KATUSA program (Korean Augmentee to the U.S. Army). It’s a very desirable selection as KATUSA soldiers are assigned to US units, live in US barracks, eat in US mess halls, etc. In other words, lead a much easier life than their counterparts who go to the regular ROK Army.

Needless to say, there is a lot of animus and envy directed to those selected for the program by those who weren’t, and much of that is predicated on class envy. While some time back there was a scandal involving the greasing of palms to get certain people’s sons selected as KATUSAs, as a general rule, one of the biggest criterion is English fluency and proficiency. By and large, those conscripts with parents who emphasized, and could afford quality English classes tended to be selected for the program.

Nothing arcane or mysterious about it….

[crazycatlady]

I haven’t read the article yet but did hear on the radio and what bothered me was that they are deciding to get rid of certain vocabulary words, claiming that they “aren’t used in the business world” or some such. One of the words was”phlegmatic”. Now I admit that I seldom use this word but Ive known it all my adult life. As the cowboy at the end of The Big Leibowski said, I’m kind of glad that these words, many of which are Latinate, or rooted in other dead languages, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, etc., are “out there.” He was talking about the Dude and his progeny, , but that’s the way I feel about words.
I see this as another chipping away at the concept of a well-rounded liberal education that is supposed to create a well-rounded person, and I might add, a happier person. Taluhlah Bankhead once declared that if you can shoot craps and know your Bible and Shakespeare, that’s a liberal education. At the rate were going, they won’t even be able to shoot craps.

[Liberty Wins]

Few people nowadays even know who Tallulah Bankhead was.

[hecht]

Some ethnicities faced evolutionary pressures causing them to become more intelligent or perish

[hecht]

If that was pre 1992 you qualify for Mensa

[Dead Corpse]

Successful people passing on success driven habits to their offspring?

You don’t say...

[hecht]

How about an Obamabook program ?

[Liberty Wins]

Learning to read comes first. You’d be shocked at how badly this is taught in inner city schools.

[PapaBear3625]

I like the comments at the WaPo article. The vast majority are from people who see through the stupidity of the WaPo writer.

[grasshopper2]

I believe that in one of the Freakonomics books, the authors explored the idea that children raised in homes with more books were more intelligent.

The authors explored the data and concluded that the most important key to intelligence was to have intelligent parents.

There is no doubt that IQ is mostly genetic.

Here's a theory why the IQ disparity seems to be getting wider:

In the old days the son of the richest guy in town would enter the family business directly after high school, marry the prettiest girl in town and go on to have low to average IQ kids. In this example, the middling IQ of the rich son averaged with the lower IQ of the pretty girl resulted in a low to average IQ of the offspring.

Similarly, the son of the high IQ doctor in town would attend male-only college and then marry one of the low to average IQ rich daughters in town. The high IQ of the doctor and the average IQ of the rich girl resulted in average IQ of the offspring.

Now with coeducational opportunities for women. The rich son with average IQ is likely to meet a wife with a similar or higher IQ. Likewise the doctor son will likely marry another medical student also with a similar or higher IQ. As a result of this opening up of educational and professional opportunities for women, there is less IQ balancing because there is less intermarriage between high IQ and low IQ resulting in the smart getting smarter (and the dumb getting dumber) All due to the women's movement! ha, ha, ha!

[crazycatlady]

Well, dang, you’re probably right. Next they won’t know who The Dude is.

[rlmorel]

I think thackney hit the nail on the head in the post right before yours. Some are implying (not necessarily you, Blood of Tyrants) that genetics plays a part, and in some cases I think it does, but I think the upbringing has a far more concrete impact.

[imardmd1]

Anyone can succeed. You have to want to. Some families ( too many, in fact) don’t encourage the value of education.

Right. The Scholastic APTITUDE Test does not measure the character of a boy or girl. Generally, they choose. These statistics do not predict the outcome for any individual anecdotal situation.

However, there is a quite different mindset to the very rich accustomed to a guided pathway to rulership.

Life is not fair.

So?

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

Wow, never has the institutional racism inherent in our education system been clearer....not.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

This is a perfect example if they wanted to make an updated version of one of my favorite books - “How To Lie with Statistics” by Darrell Huff (copyright 1954).