This is why liberals hate IQ scores. They also seem to hate SAT scores. I wonder why?
Hat tip Brian
The intelligence scores came from work carried out earlier this decade by Richard Lynn, a British psychologist, and Tatu Vanhanen, a Finnish political scientist, who analysed IQ studies from 113 countries, and from subsequent work by Jelte Wicherts, a Dutch psychologist. Countries are ranked highest to lowest national IQ score.
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Years before the Internet became available as a research tool, I was informed – by way of an apocryphal source – that the U.S. Army had tabulated data on the college graduates entering their officers’ candidate training programs.
The Army began performing Stanford-Binet (IQ) testing on candidates applying for officers’ commissions long before World War II, and when the data were broken down according to the major in which the college graduates had taken their degrees, the three lowest-scoring cadres tended to fall into the following disciplines (though I can’t remember the order in this peculiar walk of shame0:
• Education
• Home Economics
• Physical Education
In other words – and it came to me as no surprise, apocryphal or not – to the extent that the Army’s samples are representative of the nation as a whole, the people who are “certified” as teachers are actually the DUMBEST guys getting diplomas from the nation’s colleges.
I’d welcome anyone’s confirmation of this factoid, with supporting reference.
A lot of other people might hate this table, too, because there are many surprises here that some folks might find upsetting.
For example, Israel has a lower average than Italy, or the U.S. Who’d have thought that a Jewish population had an average I.Q. lower than either than Italy, a country of people that many ignoramuses consider to be congenitally dumb, or the racially and ethnically diverse U.S.? Aren’t Jews supposed to be far smarter than average? I am not surprised that Italians are slightly above the mean, because Italy is, after all, a region that has made an massive and disproportionate contribution to the canon of Western Civilization over the past 3000 year, in fact gave us almost (though not quite) all of the core body of knowledge and thought that has made possible our achievements in the sciences and arts, and our technological and scientific advancement since,; while Israel is the redoubt of a small, self-selected population of religious zealots, a type of person never known for intelligence.
I could continue this comment for quite a few pages, speculating on why, for another example, Greece is so far behind the curve, when this is the country in which rationalist philosophy was born and that also made its own outsized and fundamental contributions to the Western canon, and why, in main, the Eastern European countries rank so far behind the Western European nations.
The low rank of the equatorial places surprises me not. More than one person has remarked on the effect of extreme heat on the human brain, and the near-impossibility of maintaining civilization in equatorial climates. The extreme heat and rot, with the monster insect infestations and the constantly-evolving deadly pathogens, defeat all attempts to maintain a human settlement in reasonable comfort, let alone a highly advanced and complex civilization.
Other surprises: Italy outranks China, Austria outranks Germany (though by such a small margin that it is probably not significant, and Ireland ranks well behind almost every other Western location.
Why Liberals Hate IQ Scores= Why Vampires Hate Sunlight
Expose these two groups ( liberals and vampires) and they blow up.
Please forgive the little lapses in grammar and punctuation in my post, above. I tend to make a lot of typos in the A.M.
Deninger explains why Baltimore became impoverished, like small towns will, except they can grow food – until the govt seizes it.
—————————————————————–
The Classic: Lie, Obfuscate and Deflect
You knew it would come, right?
The attempt to blame all on…. liberalism.
Of those governments, perhaps the most salient fact to the objective political scientist, tasked with anatomizing the failed system, would be that both governments have long effectively functioned as one-party systems. Baltimore last had a Republican mayor, Theodore M. McKeldin, in 1967. (A wire photograph from April 1966 captured McKeldin, a bear of a man, chatting amiably with Dr. King in Baltimore, two years before the civil rights leader’s assassination in Memphis.) Maryland elected its incumbent Republican governor, Larry Hogan, in November – but that made Hogan only the second GOP governor in the Old Line State since 1969.
Incumbent mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat, deals with a city council comprised 100 percent of fellow Democrats. Other important power blocs in the political and civic life of Baltimore are likewise controlled by Democrats, such as educational institutions and public-sector unions.
See, that’s easy. Just blame “one party” rule, as if the Republicans have “better ideas” without demonstrating how their ideas are better or even providing examples of alleged ideas to be implemented.
Nobody, of course, wants to ask the salient question: Exactly how did these cities become one-party political machines?
That, of course, is because if you were to go there you’d expose the soft underbelly of corruption in the political process — the making of political promises that the maker knows cannot be fulfilled but doesn’t care as he or she is buying votes, not results.
In the meantime behind the scenes even more-perverse and outrageous corruption is taking place; the selling of America, literally, to the highest bidder. And rather than perform its job as a guardian at the gate the press fawns over such people and their espousing of various programs without a single critical examination of the issues at hand or a question being raised.
Let us put reality out there for everyone: No, not everyone is exceptional. In fact most of us are downright ordinary and even there, if we’re in the middle of the bell curve somewhere instead of out on the ends, fully half of us are on the wrong side of it!
The question to ask becomes simply this: What are you going to do about that fact given that we all must somehow manage to find our way in the world?
This is a cancer that we invited into our nation with so-called “free trade” and the exporting of our manufacturing base. It is the one we refuse to discuss and debate, yet we must. We instead try to placate and paper over it while at the same time destroying the programs and structures that led individuals in that situation to have productive, happy lives.
We then wring our hands when despair turns to crime and rioting.
Baltimore was a thriving industrial community that produced, among other things, a huge amount of steel.
But Baltimore lost over 100,000 manufacturing jobs by 1995, all due to foreign imports produced under near or actual slave labor conditions with zero regard for environmental impact. One third of the residents of Baltimore fled the city. Worse, 90% of the jobs in Baltimore today are low-paying and often part-time service-sector jobs.
Did liberals promote all the so-called “free trade” that led to this manufacturing displacement? Hardly; that charge is equally leveled against conservatives; that is, Republicans.
At the same time deficit spending, which both political parties consider sacrosanct, has destroyed the ability to accumulate wealth for anyone that is in the lower economic classes. Adding to this was outright and documented predatory behavior by financial institutions toward city residents, especially black city residents, in the 2000s via subprime lending.
Where is the debate on these topics? It’s missing from the political sphere for a very good reason: To address this you must address facts — such as the fact that if the “average” IQ is 100 then half of the people will be above and half below; unless you’re willing to literally murder the lower half of the population you need a social, employment and political system that provides opportunity for all. That in turn means you cannot export your lower-wage and lower-ability-required manufacturing jobs to places like Vietnam and China as they must be retained so your citizens have gainful employment available to them.
At the same time you cannot deficit spend because for the person in the lower economic and intellectual quantum there is no defensive move available to them to mitigate the damage done to their financial security by such policies.
Finally, accountability for every dollar spent is far more important when you have few dollars to contribute to government programs in the form of taxation. In this regard both Democrat and Republicans fail; our current so-called “educational” system is an utter and complete joke when looked at in terms of return-on-investment.
Are you ready to have a debate on these topics yet, America?
Or will you wring your hands and point fingers, as is often the case, at this bogeyman or that while ignoring the elephant in the room — the intentional destruction of working-class jobs in this nation over the last 40+ years, and our utter refusal to put a stop to the abusive and outrageous “trade policies” that enable it.
“Other surprises: …… Austria outranks Germany” —————- Chicago999444
Not at all surprising to us …………. Austrians!!!
Austria would be #1 on the list …. but too many Germans live there.
Econman makes a Denninger post. Oops! Wrong thread!
I bet he’s from Equatorial Guinea,
“Austria would be #1 on the list …. but too many Germans live there.”
You have to wonder what the average would be in the U.S. if the chimp sector of the population was omitted.
Stuck, If I’m half German and half Swiss does that make me an Austrian? Meh…screw it, those are just averages anyway.
So less than 80 is considered slower than. Less than 70 pretty much is guarantee to be featured in a “WAL-MART freaks of the week”. The lesson here is: Wally World needs to expand into Africa.
Tucci78 says: In other words – and it came to me as no surprise, apocryphal or not – to the extent that the Army’s samples are representative of the nation as a whole, the people who are “certified” as teachers are actually the DUMBEST guys getting diplomas from the nation’s colleges.
You may be right but folks without a college education far outnumber college graduates. I recall so many teachers who were smarter than the average bear and a few were military re-treads on a second career.
Numbers, when they are not assigned to people, can be used for plenty of dis-informative purposes. Statistics are, as the name suggests, static – they are a snapshot in time. People are not statistics; as Airman Pacer said, when you’re dealing with humans, you’re dealing with variables.
I’d welcome anyone’s confirmation of this factoid, with supporting reference. – Tucchi78
Thomas Sowell addresses this in one of his chapters found within his exemplary “Inside American Education” that those individuals’ whom flock into education as majors typically have the lowest ACT/SAT scores amongst those attending college. This is certainly not an indictment of ALL teachers as clearly there are some exceptions, but what’s worse is the Marxist, multi-culti-obsessive indoctrination contemporary teachers are force-fed in the oligopolistically controlled “teachers colleges.” Writer John Leo’s books/essays are the absolute best reading for this racket.
Dc – Israel has a lot of, you know, rag heads there. Kinda drops the average.
Israel is a quarter rag head. There you go re the IQ level of Israel.
Us Pollacks r in the top eight. Who would of thunk it.
Denninger [http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=230090] is quoted above: “…you must address facts — such as the fact that if the ‘average’ IQ is 100 then half of the people will be above and half below; unless you’re willing to literally murder the lower half of the population you need a social, employment and political system that provides opportunity for all. That in turn means you cannot export your lower-wage and lower-ability-required manufacturing jobs to places like Vietnam and China as they must be retained so your citizens have gainful employment available to them.”
The great difficulty in employing those fitted to be the hewers of wood and the drawers of water in these United States is GOVERNMENT LABOR REGULATIONS, particularly the minimum-wage/maximum-unemployment statutes, which had been created and continue to be ratcheted up in service to organized labor.
And those labor unions aren’t what you’d call a Red Faction constituency, are they?
Public school teachers may not be the dumbest overpaid and most destructive group in America but they certainly must be sludge on the bottom of the barrel and the administrators are the worst of the lot. I was a HS Science-Math teacher three years and could not believe my eyes and ears. Politicians couldn’t do worse and they cannot reform themselves. Please vote for vouchers.
WTH?
Mongolia tied for 5th @ 101?
Mongolia?
I call Bull Sh*t!
Another perfect example of having socialist douchebags in academia on the public dole / payroll, and they know full well that the Sheople will swallow any kind of sh*t simply because it looks “official”
Cheers, S. Rex
Taiwan is not a part of China !!
Hiro – depends on who you ask.
The countries with the highest IQ’s also have superior educational institutions. I am a bit surprised that island countries in the Pacific, such as the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu scored so high given that they are very poor areas, at least in the western sense.