I seem to recall an article about how as many as 1/3(?) of parents trying to enter their kids into “gifted” programs.
And a book citing a survey of high school students in which 90% of students ranked themselves in the top 50%, and 40% ranked themselves in the top 10% (if my memory isn’t off.)
‘then’… 
I must be whooshed on this one.
You seem to be turning my statement into " If this, then that".
It was intended to be “More of this, than that”.
ETA: but you’re probably a lot smarter than me.
It’s my own reading comprehension fail.
I read it as:
“There are a lot [of] people that believe they are smart; then there are [the] truly smart people.”
I suppose it’s now self evident which population category I fall under. :smack:
Intelligence has no real moral value. Like any other characteristic like Strength Wisdom Dexterity Constitution or Charisma says nothing about whether the person is lawful good or chaotic evil. But Intelligence is very valuable in a modern economy, and all things being equal (and there is really no reason to believe that intelligent people have less grit or character or any of the other soft factors than stupid people), the intelligent person is better equipped to succeed in the modern world.
Throwing clogs in the machinery is only going to slow down technological progress here in this country. Other countries will adopt the more efficient technology and eat our lunch. Over time technology has been a huge boon to all mankind. Every living human being on earth is better off today because of the invention the wheel (and other simple machines), farming (and sciences like biology and chemistry), the industrial revolution, the electronic revolution, etc. In fact This is the first time since the birth of our nation when improvements in technology haven’t resulted in higher employment and that is largely a matter of leakage to foreign labor markets.
It doesn’t require that everyone have above average intelligence and critical thinking ability, what it requires is that more of us with above average intelligence apply that intelligence to the new technology rather than something less productive. This is going to fix itself, either our children will learn this stuff or we will import people that will and our children will be second class citizens in the nation of their birth like so many whites are today.
When some significant percentage of high school seniors are reading at a 7th grade reading level then the problem isn’t that we have glorified intelligence or that we don’t have the ability to be smarter, the problem is that we have glorified ignorance and stupidity and degraded intelligence to the point where our kids don’t try anymore. I see this in my local school when parents try to dumb down the curriculum so that their kids can get A’s too. Teachers go along with this because it makes their jobs easier and they’re not going to piss off parents by insisting that teachers really ought to be teaching harder. Other parents don’t complain because we now have GPAs that exceed 4.0 so we just look at 4.0 as the new 3.0. But we are coddling a generation of kids who are being told that they are A students when they are barely B students.
Our children are now competing with the a generation of kids in China and India who all have parent that love their children just as much as we do ours but are putting their kids through sometimes brutally high levels of competition so that their kids can have a better life. They are vaccinating their kids from poverty, we on the other hand don’t want to see our kids cry when the shot is administered and let our kids out into the world unprepared for what awaits them. Competing with the Chinese and Indian kids will be inevitable and a large part of that competition will be won or lost based on factors that will require that we fully develop the best amongst our children.
The writer of this article is doing us all a disservice. You really think that only 15% of high school graduates were capable of taking calculus? You really think that the median high school graduate’s potential reading level is a 7th grade reading level (that’s about the level of the toughest Harry Potter books).
In America the most popular kids are often the sports stars. Do you know who the most popular kids are in School in Shanghai, Singapore and Seoul? Its the kids that are competing for valedictorian. How is that a worse system than what we have here?
Now there are definitely kids that are not really built to learn in the typical academic environment. Psychologists tell us that people have different sensory methods of learning and for some kids. The football star might be great at learning stuff but he really learns best through physical activity and something as simple as chewing gum in class or while studying will satisfy the part of the brain that needs a movement trigger to learn things. So we ought to really spend a lot more time figuring some of that shit out but don’t throw sabots into the machines because you only make things easier for the guys in other countries who are teaching their kids how the machines work.
I’d argue that a school where this happened is in better shape than a school where no parents try to get kids in the gifted program - or care very much.
At the elementary school my kids went to in NJ the meeting on the gifted program was jam packed, but I don’t know the percentage. However a lot of parents in our town worked for nearby research center and there was one or two PhDs on every block. Not all schools are created equal.
I’d argue that a school like that probably doesn’t need a gifted program comprised of 1/3 the student body. If that many students are geniuses, the general curriculum should be tailored to suit their needs.
I’m confused. Are we saying 1/3 of parents try to get their kids into the program? Or are we saying 1/3 of kids do get into the program?
I agree, but typically the curricula are set at a district or statewide level, so the principal of a school like that can’t really unilaterally do much, other than have a massive G&T program at that school that encompasses half the student body.
This both blows my mind and reminds me how stupid the educational system often is. Treating someone with an IQ of 120 like they are more similar to a person with an IQ of 100 than they are with someone with an IQ of 130 doesn’t make any sense. Nor does providing extra stimulation to 30% of the student body when in truth 50% of the student body would benefit from this.
In a society that values intellect above everything else, I don’t blame a parent at all for doing whatever they can to get their above-average kid into the gifted program as early as possible. I’m guessing the dooms-daying author in the OP would argue it would be borderline neglectful to do otherwise.
Please, please tell me where that is, I’d like to live there.
I’m all over the map with this.
I’ve known people who I consider stupid, as in “not seeming to have any common sense at all”, who nevertheless have college degrees, even advanced ones.
Also, it seems to me there are many jobs out there that require a college degree, for no good reason that I can see.
I think having a degree proves something – mostly a willingness and discipline to jump through a lot of hoops for an extended period of time. But it would seem to me that really intelligent people might be more likely to walk away from the hoop-jumping than others.
One of my lecturers said that getting a degree means that you did your homework. While that may be true but there are those who cheated to get the degree.
The anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers I know personally are college-educated with white-collar “smart” jobs, and have built immense chains of logic supporting their positions and use a lot of cleverness to argue their points. These may be built on faulty premises, but these folks tend to think they’re “smarter than the Man” and consider themselves independent thinkers for not “toeing the party line”.
Or if he was…you know…smarter. 
pizzaguy is correct that high IQ doesn’t automatically translate to success. Malcom Gladwell has a whole chapter on this in Outliers. But generally speaking, I think it does.
The fact is, someone with a low IQ doesn’t have the mental horsepower to work in many jobs in investment banking, law, management consulting, medicine, high tech, engineering and other highly intellect-intensive fields. The information is too dense, too complex and will come at them too quickly for them to process. They will either constantly be trying to catch up or will make mistakes and get fired. A common expression is it’s like “drinking from a firehouse”. The trick is to drink from it, not get knocked over.
The problem with “being smart” though is to be successful, you still need to do smart things. Invent an app. Pick the right investments. Write a kick-ass novel. Someone who is merely “bright” can go into real estate or some other sales and make a lot of money by being driven, relentless and personable.
And you just described the crux of the problem. “Stupid” people make stupid decisions. And those decisions can have big negative impacts.
It also proves you completed the required coursework in a number of subjects you purport to know.
Besides. Life is “jumping through hoops”. Whether it’s your boss or company putting the hoops out in front of you, or even if you are starting your own business, you need to figure out the right way and the wrong way to do things.
It’s incredibly arrogant and presumptuous to assume that college is just “jumping through hoops” and that there isn’t value in learning what the hoops are and why you have to jump through them.
In fact, that was one of the things Gladwell highlighted in Outliers with his comparison of two geniuses. The successful one understood the hoops he needed to jump through while the unsuccessful one didn’t.
Which is kind of why I was saying this “War on Stupid People” isn’t really a war, so much as it’s a consequence of US society losing that strata of well-paid, but not mentally rigorous jobs that it once had. It probably didn’t take a lot of smarts to work in a factory, but manufacturing jobs were typically reasonably well paid. And back in the day, that was enough to aspire to for most people- there was no shame, and some pride in “working for a living” and being middle-class.
But it does take smarts to be a banker, developer, lawyer, etc… and that’s why those jobs are relatively rare, and very well paid.
So in a society where the trend seems to be toward a bifurcation between low pay/low-skill/low-intelligence jobs, and high-pay/high-skill/high-intelligence jobs, which side is society going to lionize and aspire to, if the middle is being cut out of the equation?
What about the other 3 people?
They have lousy reading comprehension.
What’s a ‘fancy schmancy “machine”’? In fact, the Ancient Egyptians had the classical machines and we know they used them because we have extant evidence (ramps, pulleys, levers etc.).
I agree that a lot should be done to promote trades, so that kids for whom academia isn’t a good fit wouldn’t feel ashamed to instead train in some trade that interests them more.
However, you’re neglecting the fact that being a good carpenter, plumber or electrician also requires brains. Maybe less than being a neurosurgeon, but probably more than being a random office paper-pusher with a college degree. Good, successful, tradespeople are typically quite intelligent, IME.
So, this can’t solve the problem people with a sub-par intellect face. Ditch digging might indeed be their only option.
I lack this thread, by the way. I think that the issue of people who are unable to improve their lot, for some reason or another, is too often completely ignored.