C2, I can't see why people get so steamed about the idea that some families are less intelligent than others. We all know it's true. That's just the way things are. Some families are taller than others. We know that's true too. Go to Nederlands Schipol airport and I feel short. Go to Japan and I tower over them. And it's not because Japanese don't get enough food to eat [a popular racist rumour from decades ago - "If they drank NZ milk, they'd be big and strong [and stupid] like us". Japanese aren't so great on lactose digestion as adults. They go blotchy with beer.
Different races are just big families. Obviously.
Which doesn't mean they are all the same. Also rather obviously I'd have thought. For -od's sake, we all have families and we know we aren't all the same in them. But we know there are broad similarities. "Oh, the little darling looks just like his Dad". [Which women particularly say, apparently to ensure the male stays sold that it's his to look after].
Like measuring metres, kilograms, litres, lumens and rads, there are pretty good techniques these days for measuring intelligence, memory and other brain functions. If the results don't fit prejudices, too bad.
Yes, feeding a foetus lead and Coca Cola will make it dull, so to ensure babies get what intelligence their DNA allows, they'd better get sufficient iodine, lipids, iron and other commonly missing nutrients. But poor diet is a vicious feedback loop. Children/pregnant women get a poor diet because their parents are not very intelligent, then the next generation gets a bad diet because the previous one got one. And so on.
My experience of children is that there are three big things to get right to get intelligent infants. Good DNA, good foetal diet, good breast feeding. No toxins or other damage of course. Showing them shapes and words has not not much to do with it. If they aren't kept in a dark cupboard, they will see plenty of shapes. If they are properly breast fed, [solely], until 6 months they'll be getting plenty of the right physical contact, love and communication.
Not many babies get good nutrition from before conception [the eggs and sperm need to be healthy too].
Mqurice |
