Raising IQ

Nicholas Kristof reports on a new book, Intelligence and How to Get it: Why Schools and Cultures Count, by Richard Nesbitt, in today's op-ed.

Kristof seems to echo three points that the book makes:

1.) Intelligence is not really hereditary

2.) Conditions present in the households and neighborhoods of different classes influence IQ

3.) Good Schooling can eliminate the IQ gap between classes: "By my calculation, if we were to push early childhood education and bolster schools in poor neighborhoods, we just might be able to raise the United States collective I.Q. by as much as one billion points."

Notice anything missing?

I'll leave you with one last interesting note/quote -- IQ has risen so precipitously over the past century that "the average I.Q. of a person in 1917 would amount to only 73 on today’s I.Q. test. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements"