Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Middle-Class Genes

In Britain, a Chris Woodhead, former school chief has caused an uproar by suggesting that the children of middle class parents might, on average, be smarter than the offspring of poor parents.

Mr Woodhead called for a return to selection by ability at 11.

He suggested that grammar school pupils were more likely to be middle-class because 'the genes are likely to be better if your parents are teachers, academics, lawyers, whatever, and the nurture is likely to be better'.

In an interview with the Guardian, he argued that Labour had betrayed a generation by refusing to accept that some children were not suited to formal secondary education.

The Government had tried to make education 'accessible' rather than ' rigorous', he said.

Ministers should accept that some youngsters are simply born 'not very bright' and allow them to pursue practical training instead of forcing them into the classroom.

'I've taught, and I can still remember trying to interest children who had no interest whatsoever in English,' he said. 'They didn't want to be in the classroom.

'If I'm honest I didn't want them to be there either - because they were disruptive to children who did want to learn. What was the point?'

Naturally, this bit of common sense sent the Blank-Slaters into full panic mode.

But political scientist Alan Ryan, who is the warden of New College, Oxford, criticised Mr Woodhead's views on genes as 'garbage'.

'All the evidence is that initial genetic endowment is pretty much random across social classes, and everything depends on a nurturing environment,' he said.
'The idea that you look for some genetic underpinning to go with it seems crazy.'

The Department for Children, Schools and Families also rejected Mr Woodhead's arguments. 'We do not accept the inevitability of pupils' socio-economic backgrounds shaping their attainment and their futures,' a spokesman said.

Well, they would say that wouldn't they, given the ideological agenda they have implemented using the taxpayers' money. But does anyone actually believe that British schools are producing better educated students today than they did decades ago?

Surprisingly, the Daily Mail bothered to find someone who actually understands the findings of modern genetics.

However, there was support from Dr Bruce Charlton, an expert in evolutionary psychiatry from Newcastle University.

'Chris Woodhead is basically correct, and there's nothing new about it,' he said.

Dr Charlton insisted that intelligence was 'mostly inherited', adding that family background and education 'probably makes a small difference but nothing like as much as people think'.

Dr. Charlton's support notwithstanding, Mr. Woodhead can expect to be pilloried, denounced as a Nazi, and roundly ignored. And Britain's schools, like their American counterparts, will continue to sink into the mud.

1 Comments:

At 6:07 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

The international left's weapons against the west are:

Multiculturalism/Open Immigration

Environmentalism

Political Correctness

Global free trade (insourcing and outsourcing)

Feminism
==================================
The international left employs these weapons just like a nation employs its army, navy, air force, spies, and propaganda against another when at war. They all serve their intended purpose.


Feminism hurts the native birthrate.

Political correctness forms a "postive" social control that makes the natives afraid to criticize the obviously bad policies for fear of being labeled "sexist or racist". It also instills a guilt complex on the native population.

Insourcing and outsourcing ends up hurting the birthrates by driving down wages for men, making them less attractive to working females, and subverts their ability to start families.


Open immigration replaces the native populace with others with no patriotism for the host country, and no reason to be a good citizen therein.


Environmentalism makes land more expensive and instills a guilt complex on the population.




All this works to the same end, that is the blending in of nation states to supra-national authorities like the European Union. Why have nations when the peoples in those geographic areas have so little in common? A Somali in America is no more a "African American" than a white American in China would be a "American-Chinese". He is an alien, period, living in a nation he didn't build or cultivate.



It astonishes me that we won the Cold War to lose like this.....m

 

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