The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles A. Murray Page A
Authors: Richard J. Herrnstein, Charles A. Murray
Tags: United States, General, science, Social Science, History, Psychology, Sociology, Political Science, Education, Life Sciences, Genetics & Genomics, Educational Psychology, Intelligence Levels - United States, Nature and Nurture, Intelligence Levels - Social Aspects - United States, Intellect, Intelligence Levels
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rise toward the top, whereupon the brains of the newcomer were swapped in marriage for family connections and titles. England was notably sagacious in this regard, steadily infusing new talent into the aristocracy by creating peerages for its most successful commoners. The traditional occupations for the younger sons of British peers—army, navy, church, and the administration of the empire—gave the ablest younger sons in the aristocracy a good chance to rise to the top and help sustain the system. Indeed, the success of some English families in sustaining their distinction over several generations was one of the factors that prompted Francis Galton to hypothesize that intelligence was inherited. But only a minority of aristocratic families managed this trick. It remained true even in England that, after a few generations, the holder of any given aristocratic title was unlikely to be smarter than anyone else. When one observer wrote of the aristocracy in Queen Victoria’s day that “all the social talk is stupid and insipid,” he was being more accurate than perhaps he realized. 2
Even in less rigidly stratified societies, stratification by cognitive ability has been weak and inconsistent until this century because the number of very bright people was so much greater than the specialized jobs for which high intelligence is indispensable. A true cognitive elite requires a technological society. This raises a distinction that is so important, and forgetting it can so easily lead to needless misunderstanding, that it is worth emphasizing:
To say that most of the people in the cognitively demanding positions of a society have a high IQ is not the same as saying that most of the people with high IQs are in such positions.
It is possible to have cognitive screening without having cognitive classes. Mathematical necessity tells us that a large majority of the smart people in Cheop’s Egypt, dynastic China, Elizabethan England, and Teddy Roosevelt’s America were engaged in ordinary pursuits, mingling, working, and living with everyone else. Many were housewives. Most of the rest were farmers, smiths, millers, bakers, carpenters, and shopkeepers. Social and economic stratification was extreme, but cognitive stratification was minor.
So it has been from the beginning of history into this century. Then, comparatively rapidly, a new class structure emerged in which it became much more consistently and universally advantageous to be smart. In the next four chapters, we examine that process and its meaning.
Chapter 1
Cognitive Class and Education, 1900-1990
In the course of the twentieth century, America opened the doors of its colleges wider than any previous generation of Americans, or other society in history, could have imagined possible. This democratization of higher education has raised new barriers between people that may prove to be more divisive and intractable than the old ones.
The growth in the proportion of people getting college degrees is the most obvious result, with a fifteen-fold increase from 1900 to 1990. Even more important, the students going to college were being selected ever more efficiently for their high IQ. The crucial decade was the 1950s, when the percentage of top students who went to college rose by more than it had in the preceding three decades. By the beginning of the 1990s, about 80 percent of all students in the top quartile of ability continued to college after high school. Among the high school graduates in the top few percentiles of cognitive ability, the chances of going to college already exceeded 90 percent.
Perhaps the most important of all the changes was the transformation of America’s elite colleges. As more bright youngsters went off to college, the colleges themselves began to sort themselves out. Starting in the 1950s, a handful of institutions became magnets for the very brightest of each year’s new class. In these schools, the cognitive level of the students rose
Even in less rigidly stratified societies, stratification by cognitive ability has been weak and inconsistent until this century because the number of very bright people was so much greater than the specialized jobs for which high intelligence is indispensable. A true cognitive elite requires a technological society. This raises a distinction that is so important, and forgetting it can so easily lead to needless misunderstanding, that it is worth emphasizing:
To say that most of the people in the cognitively demanding positions of a society have a high IQ is not the same as saying that most of the people with high IQs are in such positions.
It is possible to have cognitive screening without having cognitive classes. Mathematical necessity tells us that a large majority of the smart people in Cheop’s Egypt, dynastic China, Elizabethan England, and Teddy Roosevelt’s America were engaged in ordinary pursuits, mingling, working, and living with everyone else. Many were housewives. Most of the rest were farmers, smiths, millers, bakers, carpenters, and shopkeepers. Social and economic stratification was extreme, but cognitive stratification was minor.
So it has been from the beginning of history into this century. Then, comparatively rapidly, a new class structure emerged in which it became much more consistently and universally advantageous to be smart. In the next four chapters, we examine that process and its meaning.
Chapter 1
Cognitive Class and Education, 1900-1990
In the course of the twentieth century, America opened the doors of its colleges wider than any previous generation of Americans, or other society in history, could have imagined possible. This democratization of higher education has raised new barriers between people that may prove to be more divisive and intractable than the old ones.
The growth in the proportion of people getting college degrees is the most obvious result, with a fifteen-fold increase from 1900 to 1990. Even more important, the students going to college were being selected ever more efficiently for their high IQ. The crucial decade was the 1950s, when the percentage of top students who went to college rose by more than it had in the preceding three decades. By the beginning of the 1990s, about 80 percent of all students in the top quartile of ability continued to college after high school. Among the high school graduates in the top few percentiles of cognitive ability, the chances of going to college already exceeded 90 percent.
Perhaps the most important of all the changes was the transformation of America’s elite colleges. As more bright youngsters went off to college, the colleges themselves began to sort themselves out. Starting in the 1950s, a handful of institutions became magnets for the very brightest of each year’s new class. In these schools, the cognitive level of the students rose
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