The Bell curve is a bunch of nonsense. It assumes that we have one intelligence, one mind and that it is measurable.
If you read Robert Ornstein's book the evolution of consciousness, you'll see that we have many minds and many talents and education, by and large, is what determines how well a person's mind works.
I start from the proposition that we know very little about the human brain, everybody has different talents, and the biggest variable to human intelligence is how much they study and learn.
The one other variable that is very important, is when people are indoctrinated at an early age with nonsense, like myths that have no scientific backing e.g. religion, or racism, it can greatly hinder their ability to learn.
The children that are raised without primitive dogma, and get pervasive education from the minute they are born, do quite well by and large.
They did a study recently between rich kids and poor kids. By the time the rich kids are two years old, the poor kids are only operating at 18 months intellectually. By the time the rich kids are five years old, the poor kids are only operating at three years.
They went back and found out that the variable had to do with how many words were spoken in the house, how much exposure the children had to exercising complex thought. Don't use baby talk.
Now add to that, the fact that almost all rich kids and academic kids are sent to preschool, poor kids that don't get education at an early age in there household and are not sent to preschool, have a very hard time competing with rich and academics kids in kindergarten, no matter how well they are genetically predisposed. |
