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Monthly Column, November 2002

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More discrimination against high IQs


There are reports of Government plans to make grants for 'further education' (as it is called) dependent on the family of the recipient having what is regarded as a 'low income'. Scholarships used to be awarded in relatively small numbers, to those who did best in the exams, even if their parents were wealthy, but the whole point of an egalitarian system is to discriminate against those with the greatest natural ability.

A spokesman was quoted as saying that in future grants would only be given to those who deserved them - on what grounds? By virtue of having a low IQ?

In spite of all the social engineering and redistribution of income that has gone on over the last half-century, it is probably still the case that a high proportion of those with IQs above about 130 (remember this is about 3% of the population, compared with 97% of the population having IQs below 130) come from families which are regarded as 'well-off' and 'deserving to be penalised'. It is also probably the case that the higher the IQ level you are talking about, from 130 up to 180 and over, the higher the proportion of people with such an IQ who are not the offspring of families sufficiently unsuccessful to 'deserve' grants.

It is already the case that young graduates are leaving university with debts of about £20,000 which will take them years of their earning life to pay off, and that the age of first-time house buyers is rising accordingly. Another 'well-deserved' handicap for the high IQ population, which now has to go to university to collect a worthless degree simply so as not to be at a disadvantage, because nearly everyone else has a worthless degree as well, and employers would be penalised, in many cases, if they were to take on a non-'graduate' in preference to a 'graduate'.

The determination to discriminate in favour of those from state schools, as opposed to independent schools, is an almost open expression of the discrimination against high IQs which has been going on since the inception of the Welfare State. Cambridge is now aiming at a quota of 65% intake from state schools. But by now very few entrants with really high IQs will reach it from such sources, for the following reasons:

(1) The hostility of state schools to innate ability ensures that any of their former pupils with a high IQ who does apply to Cambridge will have psychological problems, which are likely to be increasingly severe at increasing levels of IQ. Many will have 'dropped out' of the long-drawn-out agony of the 'educational' system at state schools before reaching the age of university entrance.


(2) The population of those with IQs above about 130 is about 3% of the total population, and that might easily be entirely accommodated among the 7% who attend independent schools. It is probable that, at IQ levels above 130, the disproportion between the percentage attending state and independent schools is increasingly great. For one thing, the higher the person's IQ the less likely it is that their parents, who are themselves likely to have a high aggregate IQ, will constitute a family unsuccessful or thoughtless enough to send their offspring to a state school. Furthermore, the number of scholarships and grants available at independent schools has been increasing, and the more obviously exceptional a person is, the greater the likelihood that someone will make the necessary effort to get them into an independent school, even if they are born in a family which could not otherwise afford it.

So discrimination against independent schools is an effective way of discriminating against the high IQ population, and discriminating most severely against the highest levels of IQ.

Celia Green
October 2002

 

 

 

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