IQ and SAT tests: Who's Smarter: Common People or The Ruling Elite?
The cognitive disadvantage of abstract thinking is compared to concrete thinking; how America's new Ruling Class is flawed by abstract concepts; and how America's school system and IQ and SAT tests are hurting our children and our country. by bill greene
(libertarian)
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Topic- America's Future
WHO'S SMARTER: COUNTRY FOLK OR THE RULING ELITE??
Kurt Vonnegut's futuristic novel Galapagos paints a dismal scene of a future world inhabited by furry seal-like creatures--the irradiated descendants of the last humans to survive a cataclysmic nuclear holocaust. He explains that the extinction was caused because humans' brains got too big, unable to think logically, and totally muddled by grandiose theories and abstractions.
I was reminded of that possible future scenario recently when our leaders in Washington decided some corporations "were too big to fail," that we should spend a trillion dollars to "bail out" the people that actually caused the economic melt-down, and that we "could spend our way out" of the recession by printing trillions of dollars of phantom money. Is it not possible that those "solutions," which defy all common sense, are based on exactly the sort of muddled thinking Vonnegut feared? The kind of thinking that could bring on the total demise of America?
Professional educators and psychologists regularly make a distinction between "concrete" thinkers and "abstract conceptual" thinkers. The former are practical and seek simplistic answers, while the latter think in complex ways and develop hypothetical answers that seek to find the perfect solution to problems. Clearly, it is more likely that the abstract solutions will become more "muddled" than simple straight-forward answers. But, academics, intellectuals, and wanna-be elites adore hypothetical concepts, and abhor the knuckle-dragging stereotype of the concrete thinker. So, the question arises, "Can there ever be too much lofty and hypothetical speculation? When does such abstraction become unrealistic, dreamy, and prone to errors of judgment?
Recent neurological studies have documented how the human mind works by examining the micro-operation of brain cells and the neurons, hormones, and synapses that carry the messages and commands that allow us to function as we do. Although I believe in free will, and the opportunity for conscious choice by each individual, nevertheless, there are basic biological inputs that influence our moods, attitudes, and cognitive capabilities, and these factors are different for every individual. It can only be hoped that future research will shed light on why the thinking of our ruling elites is so muddled.
What we need in the meantime is balanced thinking, and our schools and colleges have deliberately undermined this goal by advancing to the front those students with a penchant for abstract thinking and who have an affinity for ideological goals and top-down centralized management. Such prima donnas are led to believe that their high IQs make them superior and with that encouragement they frequently develop an arrogance that they know more than common people and therefore have the right, even the perceived obligation, to tell us all how to live.
In short, Americans have been sold a false bill of goods--that experts and "A" students should lead us because they know more than we do. In fact, the "A" students play vital roles only to the extent they enter scientific and technological occupations--in other fields their big brains are to a large extent counterproductive. So, I suggest, the emphasis on high IQ's, as evidenced by good school grades and SAT scores, has advanced a new ruling class through our schools and colleges to positions of leadership even though they lack the pragmatic good sense found in many of the average students left behind.
The inherent weakness of excessively abstract thinking chronicled by Vonnegut was described 250 years earlier by Jonathan Swift in his satire Gulliver's Travels which described an extremely flawed race of people. The Lilliputians, like today's academic and media elites, loved fine distinctions and abstract concepts. Unfortunately, they had a vision problem--they could see with great exactness but at no great distance, because they suffered from a lack of perspective. With tongue in cheek, Swift explained, "It is not their fault; that is just the way they are built." Like our leaders in Washington and Wall Street they could not often see the forest for the trees. And there is a biological-cognitive explanation for this:
In 2002 the Nobel Prize was awarded to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky for their work in economics. Their studies centered on how people make choices and evaluate alternatives and they found that it is the way human cognition works that makes some of us more or less prone to errors of judgment. Keith Stanovich has made similar investigations seeking to find out why people vary so much in problem solving ability. What has become clear from such work is that human capability is made up of a great number of attributes such as IQ, EQ, emotional self-restraint, patience, persistence, logic, a long-term view, and all the many obvious elements of maturity and seasoned experience that makes one person wiser and more successful than another. In my book Wasted Genius I have proposed a new standard: "TCQ" for "Total Competency Quotient," which would provide a measurement of all those vital abilities not currently tested for or graded in our schools and colleges.
Kahneman and Tversky found that there is only a small to medium correlation between IQ test performance and one's capability for rational decision-making. And yet it appears arguable that today's academic and institutional leaders got to their positions of influence primarily because they got good grades, could memorize and do numbers faster than everyone else, and got admitted to the top colleges and then into the best jobs. It is very likely that the great number of less academically gifted individuals, many of whom possess more of the other essential forms of competency, are the more valuable members of society. After all, they establish and or manage the businesses that create every non-government job in America.
America's great wealth and strength was built from 1620 to 1920 by the practical hard working people that came to this land and sought opportunity and self-advancement. In 1920, near the end of World War I, we were the supreme power on earth. There had been very few intellectuals or college graduates involved in that dynamic and creative process. We have continued to build on that base thanks to those workers still occupied in the hard sciences, engineering, and business activity. But their efforts are being undermined by the huge new class of elites that have come to rule our colleges, government bureaucracies, foundations, special interest groups, and all the other non-productive organizations that consume a greater and greater part of our economy--all living off the back of the productive private sector.
If we take a fresh look at today's Ruling Class, which supports so many damaging policies, we must ask why do these well-educated individuals, many with high intellect, and graduates of some of the most revered colleges, have such a faulty view of the mechanics of government, finance, and human motivation. Professor Thomas Sowell has suggested in two books, Is Reality Optional and A Conflict of Vision, that there is indeed a failure to see or think clearly among our best educated academics and opinion makers. He argues that today's intellectual elite operate under a firm conviction that there is a vast chasm between the intellectual and moral capabilities of the common man and those of the intellectual elite. That incorrect assessment justifies the elite's faith in their own superiority; and that whether through power or influence, they have the obligation to decide what is best for everyone else. And because their big brains function best at very high abstract levels, and have little mechanical or practical grounding, they invariably propose massive corrective programs to solve every conceivable issue presented to them. Such programs almost always have harmful unintended consequences only one of which is the bankrupting of America.
IQ and SAT tests have been deliberately slanted for almost 100 years to reward abstract thinkers over concrete thinkers. It is the abstract thinkers, those who Vonnegut suggest have brains too big to think rationally, that have more and more been elevated into the new ruling class of America. That could explain why our leadership over the past 100 years has created so much debt, engaged in so many destructive foreign wars and intrigues, and lowered the work ethic and moral nature of the American people. It is also why, if this new ruling class of Lilliputians is left in charge, our great grandchildren may resemble Vonnegut's furry little survivors, done in by the big brained elites who have no grasp or vision of reality.
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In the last generation in the US at least the higher IQ (160+) have tended to Libertarianism. They're still trickling down to the next level, the university profs and many professionals (130+) . I think the problem is the reverse, and we'll continue to see changes.
