Here’s a tart item by Charles Murray about the prevalence of certain groups in educational “gifted” programs, and the willfully blinkered obstinacy of media commentators thereupon.
One quibble. In response to a journalist’s claim that “most gifted programs explicitly target students with natural talents and aptitude, which are spread evenly across racial groups and social classes”, Murray writes:
Ignore the assertion about racial groups. I am told that disputing that assertion can get one into trouble. Just think about the assertion that natural talents and aptitudes are evenly spread across social classes.
In what kind of society is it possible that natural talents and aptitudes are evenly spread across social classes? One option is a society inhabited by humans who do not pass their talents and aptitudes along to their children. But there is no such thing. Children’s abilities are correlated with their parents’ abilities throughout the world and have been known to be correlated for as long as humans have been observing and writing about other humans. A large part of that transmission of abilities is genetic. Regarding IQ, geneticists have now established beyond serious dispute that fluid intelligence””similar to the famous g, general mental ability””is at least 51 percent heritable.
Given that parent-child relationship, the only society in which talent in children would be evenly spread across social classes is a totalitarian state in which ability has no relationship to success in life.
He’s right that the only society in which talent in children would be evenly spread across social classes is a state in which ability has no relationship to success and social status. But that doesn’t require totalitarianism, just a non-meritocratic society permanently stratified by clan or family criteria (of which examples abound).