I am posting this in yahoo answers as well I again want to know if it is against the rules of Frihost forums
Dr. J.D. Watson
( undisputed Mol Bio King of the 20th Century has stirred a hornets nest!
Check these urls ( better still google J.D. Watson and race)
the jist is as follows
he told the Sunday Times he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really.”
and also this
"there was no reason to believe different races separated by geography should have evolved identically, and he said that while he hoped everyone was equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”
If IQ tests are the basis for this remark as I know it is
why, I will ask, would you want them? why, some will ask, would anyone want them? Is there actually any position in giving IQ tests formulated by American or European psychologists to an African farmer or Australian aboriginal? Of course, they will attain low scores, but that says not anything about their accurate level of brainpower. Can anyone gravely recognize Watsons conclusion that the preponderance of San Bushmen, whose average IQ is 54, are mentally retarded? An adult with an IQ of 54 has the mental age of an 8-year-old European, and 8-year-old European children would have no difficulty learning the skills needed to survive in the Kalahari desert.
Yes, they (generally) have lower intelligence, but that is because of lack of education. (Yes, education does increase intelligence) Thankfully studies show that lack of good education in childhood does not permanently cripple a person, and can be rectified later with tutoring. (read the book intelligence can be taught).
The exceptions to the rule (black people with a good education) prove that stupidity is not a natural trait of that race.
For blacks in Africa, they just need development, and economies more self-centered rather than centered on being taken advantage of by the rest of the world (I think, though I'm not too much of an expert on African economies)
For blacks elsewhere, they just need to give up on blaming everyone else for their problems and do something about it themselves. (namely be proper fathers to their children, educate themselves and their children, and emphasize the importance of intelligence and competence, rather than the importance of drugs and sex.)
(nice copy-paste, by the way)
I think this is one of the reasons G8 is trying to provide education. So they can not only be self sufficient in that sense, but also to increase their intelligence. Maybe if they find a particularly bright spark, they might have career prospects in european countries.
Dudes, have you read about the Flynn effect? It is the tendecy for IQ scores to increase over time. In the US it increases by about half a point a year. This means at the turn of the century, the average IQ would have been retarded. What Dr Flynn has said to explain this is type of intelligence has changed. People would relate dogs and rabbits for example as predator prey whereas now people related them as mammals. Mammals recieves a full score while pred/prey recieves 0.
What does this have to do with anything? Well the Bushmen might have smaller mental capacities but not that much smaller. They just relate things differently based on their experiences. Language fluency fort example is used in Verbal IQ testing and is profoundly affected by reading.
Yes, the results of IQ tests really vary greatly with education. You can learn how to do those types of problems in case you didn't know. In industrialized countries, many people go to some type of school from age 6 to 20+. They also throughout European people's lives are exposed to things outside of school that require you to learn stuff relating to numbers, language and such, which are what IQ tests test you on. It's very different in Africa - you learn how to hunt not do math. No wonder Africans have a lower average IQ.
And you were supposed to put that in quote marks like this:
The above came from some web site. | Code: |
| [quote]Bla bla bla[/quote] |
Last edited by nilsmo on Sat Nov 03, 2007 4:26 pm; edited 1 time in total I assume the 'black employees' were being employed where they had a different first language to the employer? If somebody does not speak English you assume they are a bit slow, but that does not mean that they are of lower intelligence. If you take a European baby and have him/her brought up in an African village and take an African baby and bring him/her up in a European country and submit them to the same IQ tests then the African child will have had the education and experiences that the IQ test makers assumed you will have had and will achieve an accurate score (probably normal).
But the European child will have had none of the required education or neccessary experiences and so the IQ test will not give an accurate result (and will be low).
If you did these tests at say, 12 and then switched the children round so the African is now living in the African village and the European child is now living in Europe and then redo the tests at age 20 then the results will have switched round.
*Please do not try this with your own children*
David.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| Yes, they (generally) have lower intelligence, but that is because of lack of education. (Yes, education does increase intelligence) |
| Bertrand Russel wrote: |
| Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education |
Anyway, when I look at an IQ-Test, it seems that some questions are checking your education, not your intelligence.
So, YES, education increases your points in a IQ-Test! 
| powers1983 wrote: |
then redo the tests at age 20 then the results will have switched round.
|
But not quite as much... The one that moves back to Africa will remember a lot (though it may get rusty after a while) The one moved to Europe might settle for a low-income cheap labor job and not learn much more than it learned in the first place.
(Since the gender of these test subjects hasn't been determined, I can use 'it' instead of the cumbersome 'he/she')
| Quote: |
| So, YES, education increases your points in a IQ-Test! |
I would point out that education really does increase one's intelligence. (Or at least, it can.)
No matter how 'objective' you manage to make an intelligence test, the scores will improve with the right kind of education, even if the test has nothing to do with what was taught. The important thing is that the students be taught how to think rationally, and how to apply that thinking to different kinds of problems. Unfortunately, that kind of teaching is being missed by many people, and is crippling them for the rest of their lives.
Your intelligence is not determined at birth. There is one case of two identical twins raised in an environment that discouraged growth in intelligence. One twin was separated and educated properly, and the other was left at home. When they were reunited, the IQ difference between them was almost 100 points.IQ tests are also a test of culture as well. A San bushman, who spends the day hunting, gathering, or whatever they do, wouldn't perceive of things the same way we do. After all, they probably can't read, write, or do math, or think logically the same way we do, which is partially what our IQ tests are based on. But if they have the ability to survive in that harsh world of theirs, why should be they be considered any less smart than we are?
