Friday, April 17, 2009
Use the economic stimulus to raise our I.Q.!
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times writes about how social determinants lower the I.Q. of children living in poverty and thus contributes to a collective drain on our intellectual resources . A researcher cited in the column notes, "“Bad environments suppress children’s I.Q.’s,”and Kristof concludes, "The implication of this new research on intelligence is that the economic-stimulus package should also be an intellectual-stimulus program. 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. That should be a no-brainer." Read the full column here.
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I read this article too and while I appreciated the stated goals (of improving education overall), I wonder how useful it is to just improve school infrastructure in poor neighborhoods without investing in working-class families having time to be supportive at home, addressing the economic incentives of the rich to move (with their taxes) and go to charter schools, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt just seems like a delay of what will eventually be disgruntled educators, disinvestment in poor schools, and reinforcement of the myth that the government can't do anything right.
I'm also a little uneasy of the sentiment that poor people would do better if they were just a little smarter...