A second French study compared four small groups of adopted children, reared in either high- or low-SES homes, and the biological offspring of high- or low-SES parents. Thus one could ask, albeit with only a handful of children,83 what happens when children born to low-SES parents are adopted into a high-SES home or when children born to high-SES parents are adopted into low-SES homes; and so on. In this study as well, the switch from low to high status in the home environment produced a twelve-point benefit in IQ.84 Such findings, of course, implicate the home environment as a factor in the development of cognitive ability. We cannot be sure how much, because we do not know exactly how far down the SES ladder the children came from, or how far up the ladder they were moved into their adoptive homes. If the twelve-point shift is produced by a small shift in environment (e.g., a child of a truck driver adopted by the family of a bank clerk), it gives a great deal of hope for the effects of adoption; if it was produced only by a huge shift in the environment (e.g., the child of a chronically unemployed illiterate adopted by the Rothschilds), not so much hope. In general, the more important the environment is in shaping cognitive ability, the larger the impact a given change in environment has on IQ.
To see what the policy implications might be, let us suppose that low-and high-SES homes in the French studies represented the 10th and 90th centiles in the quality of the home environment, respectively. If that were the case, what might be accomplished by moving children from very deprived homes (at the 2d centile, to make the example concrete) to very advantaged ones (98th centile)? The results of the French study imply that such a shift in home environment would produce a benefit of almost twenty IQ points.85
A swing of twenty points is considerable and seems to open up the possibility of large gains in intelligence to be had by equalizing homes “upward,” by appropriating for more families whatever nurturing things go on in the homes of the top 1 or 2 percent in socioeconomic status.86 The problem, obviously, is that no one knows how to equalize environments upward on so grand a scale, particularly since so much of what goes on in the nurturing of children is associated with the personality and behavior of the parent, not material wealth. This brings us to a variety of policy issues that it is now time to discuss more explicitly.
A POLICY AGENDA
Research
Nothing is more predictable than that researchers will conclude that what is most needed is more research. In this case, however, the usually predictable is a little less so.
Certain kinds of research are not needed. Next to nothing is to be learned about how to raise IQ by more evaluations of Head Start, or even by replicating much better programs such as Perry Preschool or Abecedarian. The main lesson to be learned from these better programs has already been learned: It is tough to alter the environment for the development of general intellectual ability by anything short of adoption at birth. By now, researchers know enough to be confident that, the next demonstration program is not going to be the magic bullet, because they have already demonstrated beyond dispute that the “environment” is an unimaginably complex melange of influences and inputs for all the child’s waking hours (and perhaps some sleeping hours too). No meaningful proportion of that melange can reasonably be expected to be shaped by any outside intervention into the child’s social environment, even one that lasts eight hours a day, using the repertoire of techniques now available. To have a large effect, we need new knowledge about cognitive development.
New knowledge is likely to come from sharply focused investigations into the development of cognitive ability, conducted in an atmosphere that imposes no constraints on the researchers other than to seek and find useful knowledge within commonly accepted ethical constraints. The most promising leads may come from insights into the physiological basis of intelligence rather than from the cultural or educational variables that have been customary in educational research. Long-term funding, buffers against bureaucratic meddling, readiness to fund research on the hardest questions, if they are brought forward by the inner logic of the science, and not just the politically correct questions: This is what is needed, and what today’s research programs seldom provide. With that set of caveats on the table, more research is indeed at the top of our policy agenda. Because intelligence is less than completely heritable, we can assume that, some day, it will be possible to raise the intelligence of children through environmental interventions. But new knowledge is required. Scientific research is the only way to get it.
Nutrition
Advocating that all children receive good nutrition does not come under the heading of daring new ideas. We advocate it nonetheless. Especially if the inconsistent but suggestive results about the effects of vitamin and mineral supplements on cognitive functioning are borne out, it would be worth considering such supplements as part of school and preschool lunch programs.
Investment in Schooling
When quantum changes are made in education—moving from no education to an elementary education, or from 6 years of schooling to 12—then broad gains can occur, but the United States has in most respects passed this stage. Additional attempts to raise IQ through special accelerated courses have modest effects: short-term gains of two to four IQ points after extensive training. Long-term gains are less clear and likely to be smaller. In short, the school is not a promising place to try to raise intelligence or to reduce intellectual differences, given the constraints on school budgets and the state of educational science.
General Purpose Preschool Programs
Much is already known about what can be accomplished by ordinarily good preschool interventions—“ordinarily good” meaning that a few modestly trained adults who enjoy being with children watch over a few dozen children in a pleasant atmosphere. It is hard to know how many Head Start programs reach this standard. But a vast amount of research tells us that even ordinarily good Head Starts do not affect cognitive functioning much if at all. There is no reason to think that any realistically improved version of Head Start, with its thousands of centers and millions of participants, can add much to cognitive functioning. Even the claims for long-term benefits of Head Start on social behavior are unsubstantiated.
Such findings do not invalidate Head Start’s value as a few hours’ daily refuge for small children who need it. But the debate over Head Start should move away from frivolous claims about how many dollars it will save in the long run, none of which stands up to examination, and focus instead on the degree to which it is actually serving the laudable and more fundamental function of rescuing small children from unsuitable, joyless, and dangerous environments.
Highly Targeted Preschool Programs
The nation cannot conceivably implement a Milwaukee Project or Abecedarian Project for all disadvantaged children. It is not just the dollar costs that put such ambitions out of reach (though they do) but the impossibility of staffing them. With teacher-to-child ratios ranging as high as one to three and staff-to-child ratios even higher, these programs come close to calling for a trained person per eligible child.
But should such programs be mounted for the extremes—the children far out in the left-hand tail of home environments? We are not talking about children who are just poor or just living in bad neighborhoods, but children who are at high risk of mental retardation in an awful environment, with parents who function at a very low cognitive level. Should such children be enrolled, within a few weeks of birth, in a full-time day care setting until they begin kindergarten?
The decision cannot be justified purely on grounds of cognitive benefits, judging from what has come out of the Milwaukee and Abecedarian projects. On the other hand, the evidence about improvements in social adjustment from the Perry Preschool Project may be relevant, if they stand up to further critical scrutiny. If they do, then highly intensive preschool programs have an important role to play in socializing children from highly disadvantaged backgrounds. Such results are not as hopeful as they are sometimes portrayed, but they may be substantial. Earlier,
we said that the cost-benefit claims for Head Start could not withstand examination. For programs that achieve results comparable to those claimed for Perry Preschool, perhaps they could. But even this limited endorsement is applicable only to the small fraction of the population that is both at substantial risk for mental retardation and living in the worst conditions. Comparatively few children typically classified as “disadvantaged” fall in that category.
Adoption
Adoption at birth from bad environments into good environments raises cognitive functioning, especially in childhood and by amounts that are not well established. In general, the worse the home that would have been provided by the biological parents and the better the adoptive home, the greater is the cognitive benefit of adoption. Adoption at birth seems to produce positive noncognitive effects as well. In terms of government budgets, adoption is cheap; the new parents bear all the costs of twenty-four-hour-a-day care for eighteen years or so. The supply of eager and qualified adoptive parents for infants is large, even for infants with special needs.
If adoption is one of the only affordable and successful ways known to improve the life chances of disadvantaged children appreciably, why has it been so ignored in congressional debate and presidential proposals? Why do current adoption practices make it so difficult for would-be parents and needy infants to match up? Why are cross-racial adoptions so often restricted or even banned? All these questions have political and social answers that would take us far outside our territory. But let it be said plainly: Anyone seeking an inexpensive way to do some good for an expandable number of the most disadvantaged infants should look at adoption.
The tough question about adoption involves the way the adoption decision is made. Governments should not be able to force parents to give up their children for any except the most compelling of reasons. Right now, the government already has the power (varying by state), based on evidence of neglect and abuse, which we do not advocate expanding. Instead, we want to return to the state of affairs that prevailed until the 1960s, when children born to single women—where much of the problem of child neglect and abuse originates—were more likely to be given up for adoption at birth. This was, in our view, a better state of affairs than we have now. Some recommendations for turning back this particular clock are in Chapter 22.
Realism
An inexpensive, reliable method of raising IQ is not available. The wish that it were is understandable, and to pursue the development of such methods is worthwhile. But to think that the available repertoire of social interventions can do the job if only the nation spends more money on them is illusory. No one yet knows how to raise low IQs substantially on a national level. We need to look elsewhere for solutions to the problems that the earlier chapters have described.
Chapter 18
The Leveling of American Education
Most people think that American public education is in terrible shape, and any number of allegations seem to confirm it. But a search of the data does not reveal that the typical American school child in the past would have done any better on tests of academic skills. An American youth with average IQ is probably better prepared academically now than ever before. The problem with American education is confined mainly to one group of students, the cognitively gifted. Among the most gifted students, SAT scores started falling in the mid-1960s, and the verbal scores have not recovered since.
One reason is that disadvantaged students have been “in” and gifted students “out” for thirty years. Even in the 1990s, only one-tenth of 1 percent of all the federal funds spent on elementary and secondary education go to programs for the gifted. Because success was measured in terms of how well the average and below-average children performed, American education was dumbed down: Textbooks were made easier, and requirements for courses, homework, and graduation were relaxed. These measures may have worked as intended for the average and below-average students, but they let the gifted get away without ever developing their potential.
In thinking about policy, the first step is to realize where we are. In a universal education system, many students will fall short of basic academic competence. Most American parents say they are already satisfied with their local school. The average student has little incentive to work hard in high school. Getting into most colleges is easy, and achievement in high school does not pay off in higher wages or better jobs for those who do not go to college. On a brighter note, realism also leads one to expect that modest improvements in the education of average students will continue as they have throughout the century except for the aberrational period from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s.
In trying to build on this natural improvement, the federal government should support greater flexibility for parents to send their children to schools of their choosing, whether through vouchers, tax credits, or choice within the public schools. Federal scholarships should reward academic performance. Some federal funds now so exclusively focused on the disadvantaged should be reallocated to programs for the gifted.
We urge primarily not a set of new laws but a change of heart within the ranks of educators. Until the latter half of this century, it was taken for granted that one of the chief purposes of education was to educate the gifted—not because they deserved it through their own merit but because, for better or worse, the future of society was so dependent on them. It was further understood that this education must aim for more than technical facility. It must be an education that fosters wisdom and virtue through the ideal of the “educated man.” Little will change until educators once again embrace this aspect of their vocation.
The education of the young is something that all human societies are committed to do. They can do it well or poorly. Many billions of dollars are already available for education in America. Can we spend them more wisely and produce better results? Our corner of the topic is how cognitive ability fits into the picture.
It seems self-evident: Education is what intelligence is most obviously good for. One ideal of American education is to educate everyone to his or her potential. The students with the most capacity to absorb education should get the most of it—most in years, breadth, depth, and challenge. But what should be self-evident is not. For thirty years, IQ has been out of fashion among American educators, and the idea that people with the most capacity to be educated should become the most educated sounds dangerously elitest.
It needs to be said openly: The people who run the United States—create its jobs, expand its technologies, cure its sick, teach in its universities, administer its cultural and political and legal institutions—are drawn mainly from a thin layer of cognitive ability at the top. (Remember—just the top 1 percent of the American population consists of 2.5 million people.) It matters enormously not just that the people in the top few centiles of ability get to college (almost all of them do, as we described in Chapter 1 ) or even that many of them go to elite colleges but that they are educated well. One theme of this chapter is that since the 1960s, while a cognitive elite has become increasingly segregated from the rest of the country, the quality of the education they receive has been degraded« They continue to win positions, money, prestige, and success in competition with their less gifted fellow citizens, but they are less well educated in the ways that make smart children into wise adults.
Letting people develop to their fullest potential is not the only important goal of public education. Since the founding of the republic, thoughtful Americans have recognized that an educated citizenry is vital to its survival. This chapter therefore examines how well our country fares in educating the average student—not the one who is likely to occupy a place among the cognitive elite but the one most representative of the typical American. We find that the average American youngster is probably doing better on tests of academic skills than ever before. We will try to understand why a sense of crisis nevertheless surrounds American education despite this unexpected good news.
We begin with quantitative evidence that shows the genera
l outline of these trends and their connection to each other. Then we switch to observations of the kind that do not lend themselves to survey results or regression equations but that we believe to be justified by everyday experience in our schools and colleges.
TRENDS IN EDUCATION I: THE AVERAGE STUDENT
A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal devoted its op-ed page to a reproduction of an examination administered by Jersey City High School in 1885.1 It consisted of questions such as the following:
Find the product of 3 + 4× + 5×2 − 6×3 and 4 − 5× − 6×2.
Write a sentence containing a noun used as an attribute, a verb in the perfect tense potential mood, and a proper adjective.
Name three events of 1777. Which was the most important and why?
The test was not for high school graduation (which would be impressive enough) but for admission to Jersey City High School. Fifteen-year-olds were supposed to know the answers to these questions. Of course, not many people went to high school in 1885. But could even the cream of the 15-year-olds in Jersey City’s middle schools pass that exam today? It seems unlikely.
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life Page 47
