Showing posts with label Now and Next. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Now and Next. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 07, 2023
Sunday, August 07, 2022
Archie vs the NHS
I republish below a post from my Substack account (June 15.) Tragically the boy, Archie Battersbee, died yesterday after his life support was switched off, against his mother's will. Her request to move him to a hospice was also denied and permission to take the legal case further refused by the Court:
Three judges, sitting at the court of appeal in central London, ruled on Monday that the decision of a high court judge to reject the plea by the parents of Archie Battersbee for him to be allowed to die a “natural” death had been based on the child’s best interests.
What we suspect it's really about: resources, especially money.
Tiger mothers
... or should they just be sensible and listen to experts?
A British boy currently lies comatose in hospital; doctors say there is ‘no brain activity’ and a High Court judge has ruled that he can be taken off life support. Yet his mother says he has gripped her hand; she believes he is ‘still there’ and she will fight on.
Intensive care is very expensive and so there can be a financial element in medical professionals’ judgment that there is no point in continuing. They may or may not be right in this case; yet ‘miracles’ happen.
Lady Anne Glenconner’s autobiography ‘Lady In Waiting’ (chapters 14 & 15) gives reason to hope against hope. In 1987 she learned that her 19-year-old son Christopher had had a motorcycle accident (helmetless) in Belize; after emergency surgery he was flown to Miami in a deep coma. Fortunately she had bought travel insurance for him and he was taken on to London in a private plane, still unconscious and on life support.
After Christopher had been unresponsive for weeks in the Wellington Hospital a doctor with long experience in this field told Lady Anne:
‘Christopher will be a vegetable all his life. There is no hope of recovery for him. If I were you I would forget about him improving and get on with your life.’
There are two kinds of explanation. One is to enable you to understand a phenomenon; the other is to explain it away, preferring it not to be real. I’m no preacher - I doubt everything; but this is what Lady Anne says and I believe she is being truthful:
Already religious, she had begun engaging with God and praying hard. At the point of giving up she heard of a Christian healer in Scotland, a Mrs Black, and got help from her by telephone. Then Mrs Black came down several times to work on Christopher in person. Lady Anne thought she could see tiny improvements, but she told Mrs Black she herself was exhausted. Back in Scotland, Mrs Black told her to prepare for a session next morning:
‘Suddenly, to my amazement, I felt as if champagne was flowing through my veins. I felt invigorated. It’s the only time in my life when anything like that has happened to me.’
With renewed energy and commitment she sought out a doctor whose own son had been in a coma; he stressed the importance of doing things with the patient and engaging all five senses. Christopher would need to be stimulated ‘fifteen minutes in every hour every day for weeks.’
Lady Anne set up a rota with the help of friends, to use the doctor’s ‘coma kit’ - smells, music, singing, talking, reading aloud, brushing Christopher’s skin with different textures and temperatures.
‘We even persuaded the nurses to let us take Christopher out of bed [still wired up to many machines] and nurse him on the floor so I could cradle him: I was sure that if he could feel my heartbeat it would have a positive effect on him.’
The breakthrough came when after Christopher had come off the ventilator a friend arrived with a baby’s bottle. A skeptical nurse let them try and eyes still closed, Christopher started to suck. Eventually, after four months in a coma, he woke up, and began rehabilitation.
If Lady Anne hadn’t accepted Mrs Black’s help, she would very likely have followed the hospital doctor’s advice and given up, sensibly.
There’s the choice.
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Abortion, law and liberty
From Sackerson's 'Now and Next' on Substack:
Friday’s US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling on abortion has split the people, as though America did not have enough causes of internal strife already.
In the USA the law is complicated by the interaction of the Federal Constitution and the law-making bodies of its fifty member states, each of which has its own Constitution and body of laws. Several States prepared for SCOTUS’s judgment in advance and treated it as a starter’s gun, so that they could immediately set about modifying their own abortion laws.
State legislators run the risk of framing simplistic rules for ethically complex cases. For example, in Ohio, by sometime next year the only exception to a total ban on abortion may be if the mother’s life is at risk; rape cases may not be exempted. The Senate President has said:
A baby is a baby even if it came through some terrible awful thing like rape. The answer can’t be let’s just kill the baby.
In the UK there was a legal test case on just that, long before the 1967 Abortion Act. As journalist Peter Hitchens relates, in 1938 a Dr Aleck Bourne performed an abortion on a 14-year-old girl who had been gang-raped. He reported himself to the authorities for a trial that could have earned him a life sentence but was acquitted because, the judge said, the pregnancy would likely have made the girl ‘a physical and mental wreck’ and the doctor was ‘operating for the purpose of preserving the life of the mother.’
Yet Dr Bourne opposed the call for abortion on demand, saying it would be a ‘calamity’ and would lead to ‘the greatest holocaust in history'. Asked by other women for an abortion, thinking he would sympathise, he refused and later recalled,
I have never known a woman who, when the baby was born, was not overjoyed that I had not killed it.
In the US the Supreme Court tried to mediate the conflicting laws of the States on abortion with its 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, based on the implicit Constitutional entitlement to ‘privacy’ (the right to make personal decisions principally affecting oneself.)
SCOTUS went into further detail, laying out what States could rule on during each of the three trimesters of the pregnancy; this judgment was extensively modified by another, 1992, Supreme Court case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992.)
The latest SCOTUS has now overruled both those cases in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, saying that there was no reference to abortion in the Constitution, because the Founding Fathers drew it up nearly 250 years ago.
That is what is known as an ‘originalist’ interpretation and raises questions about whether the Constitution needs updating. Thomas Jefferson himself suggested (July 12, 1816) that each generation should be able to revise it for their own needs:
By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new generation. Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself, that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years, should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure.
Jefferson saw the Constitution as founded on the will of living people, and assumed the possibility of communal assent. But what if the law is highly controversial and the authorities are felt to be promoting a one-sided political agenda? How can citizens influence their State?
Many people feel the system is rigged: some States gerrymander constituencies and also make it harder for typical Democrat supporters to get to polling stations. In any case, the periodic choice between two party policy menus is a crude form of control.
Worse still, the parties may agree on some issues, so there is no real choice anyway. For example, the Republicans have long had trimming social security benefits in their sights, but Biden the Democrat has just appointed Andrew Biggs to the government’s Social Security Advisory Board; Biggs may help steer a changeover from the State-guaranteed pension to an investment-related product that stands to make a fortune for Wall Street while exposing the citizen to market risks.
In relation to abortions, Biden can’t countermand SCOTUS but made reassuring noises about individual rights implicit in the Constitution he is sworn to uphold, relating them to the chance to vote for his party in November’s elections:
The right to privacy, liberty, equality -- they're all on the ballot. Until then, I will do all in my power to protect a woman's right in states where they will face the consequences of today's decision.
In this case, a key right is freedom of movement. Some legislatures are already seeking to criminalise those trying to go out-of-State for an abortion, and anyone who helps them. Ironically, US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom a man allegedly planned to assassinate because of the leaked draft judgment, has already indicated that he would rule against the attempt to impose travel restrictions.
The people are impatient, so much so that one wonders if the slow and complex machinery of institutional democracy can work. Initial reactions include calling SCOTUS ‘illegitimate’, mass screaming and twerking, shouting ‘f—- you, Supreme Court!’ at an LA awards ceremony and personal threats against the Justices.
One can understand the frustration and sense of powerlessness. The State has become over-mighty; the Constitutions of the USA and of Britain (who led the way) were designed to limit the power and influence of the Executive. Yet the modern technocratic State (and its Silicon Valley friends) now intrudes far into our privacy, supplying information to the policymakers, the behavioural ‘nudgers’, law enforcement agencies.
Maybe there is too much law. In 2019 the US Code listed over 5,000 different criminal offences; and that’s just federal law. The more laws that are created and the more we call on the police, FBI etc., the closer we get to a police state.
If we value the liberty of the individual, we must learn not involve the authorities in every matter. Instead of framing and enforcing criminal laws on one another, in some cases we should revive the practice of moral suasion; argue and listen, prepare to modify our opinions, sometimes agree to disagree; but refrain from blowing the whistle.
Monday, June 20, 2022
'Now and Next': did you miss these?
Keep up with a FREE email subscription on Substack !
June 8 - 14:
Quiz Night
A fun evening at the pub
Our money is rotting
... and has been doing so for over 100 years
Ukraine: a doomed neocon cattle-raid
The robbery of a poor country with rich resources
Baron Munchausen 2
A translation of the earliest (tall) stories
'You will own nothing...'
... being happy, that's another story
Ukraine is finished - Lira
But what happens next?
Monday, June 13, 2022
New Substack articles !
See what you missed on 'Now and Next' - subscribe and share if you like!
June 1 - 7:
Boris Johnson's mock-Imperialism
He waves the flag but he's a chancer
Private Eye: from satire to propaganda
The magazine has lost its balance over Ukraine
Ukraine is a distraction from service to the people
The US needs a bogeyman to disguise domestic failure
Monarchy and national integration
Never mind the miserygutses, the Jubilee helps unite us
Baron Munchausen 1
The first of the original tales, in a new translation
Pounds and ounces: power to the people
Why the old measures actually work better
Zelenskyy's kill list
He didn't start it, but he's not stopping it
Monday, June 06, 2022
'Now and Next' - what you may have missed in May
Here are links to the inaugural pieces on Substack
There is a FREE email subscription service...
IQ - a right-wing issue? (May 15)
Academic ability is not always the biggest factor in employability; sometimes, a drawback!
IQ and racism (May 16)
Some right-wingers seize on IQ as a mark of racial superiority; the research and reasoning may well be flawed
Education and the crab bucket (May 17)
Stupidity is not the greatest barrier to achievement in schools
Did Russia engineer the 2014 Maidan protests
to secure her gas exports? (May 19)
to secure her gas exports? (May 19)
Something I mooted at the time...
Chinese real estate and superstition (May 20)
Why millions of Chinese apartments remain uncompleted
The Beach Master (May 23)
A fat rogue seal's search for love
Azov - it's only the start (May 24)
Russia's territorial objectives, and global warming
Double crisis: Ukraine and US leadership (May 25)
60 years on from the Cuban missile crisis, a repeat - but without a strong US President or stand-ins
The Tobacco Tin (May 31)
A visit to a tiny Cornish fishing village, and its artist
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Double crisis: Ukraine and US leadership
_________________
60 years on from the Cuban missile crisis, a repeat - but without a strong President
Oval Office, October 19, 1962 10 a.m.: the Joint Chiefs of Staff
‘… unanimously agreed on a minimum of three steps: a surprise [bombing] attack against the known missile sites, continued surveillance, and a blockade to prevent reinforcements from entering Cuba. […] The chiefs’ objective was to be in the best position to fight a war, while the president’s aim was to select the strategy that was least likely to start a war. The chiefs assumed that a prompt military response (bombing and invasion) would coerce the Soviets, but the president believed it would provoke them to respond in kind.’
World War Three might well have erupted anyway, had it not been for another restraining hand on the Russian side. Eight days after the above Oval Office meeting, a Soviet submarine submerged near Cuba was being depth-charged by US forces with the intention of forcing it to surface; what the Americans did not know was that the sub had a nuclear torpedo and, thinking that the depth charges were lethally intended, the captain was all for going out in a blaze of glory: ‘We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all – we will not become the shame of the fleet.’ That decision required the agreement of three senior officers; two were for it, but the world is indebted to the third, Vasily Arkhipov, who refused.
Is President Biden up to handling military hotheads, as the confrontation in Europe intensifies? It is widely thought that his mental condition is deteriorating, to the point where he cannot even command attentive respect in a White House gathering (5 April 2022):
Like Nature, political power abhors a vacuum and we have to worry about who is taking control behind the scenes, and whether as sixty years ago their groupthink is leading us to potential disaster.
Worse still, should the President be officially deemed unfit for his office, is the seemingly weak or unstable people who are next in line to take over the role.
Kamala Harris, the Vice-President, has been called lazy, incompetent and ‘unable to think on her feet’ by Democrat-supporting US author Lionel Shriver. Could Harris rein in the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
Third on the succession list is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. Aged 82, Pelosi is three years older than the President and although her position requires her to be ‘impartial’ she seems incapable of controlling her overt bias towards her political party, ostentatiously ripping up a copy of President Trump’s State of the Union address live on TV behind him (February 2020); and as President Biden gave his own two years later, making a very odd display of grinning and knuckle-rubbing that makes us wonder whether she too, like Biden, may be developing some mental affliction:
At this perilous time the world needs America’s leadership to have strength in depth; it seems we have the exact opposite.
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Azov - it's just the start
The Sea of Azov is north of the Black Sea, into which it flows. It is vitally important to Russia for trade and her ambition to build a Eurasian Union.
The river Don, running into the Azov, is linked by canal to the river Volga, which empties into the Caspian Sea. The Caspian is bordered by Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iran - the last also leading to the Red and Arabian Seas. Fifteen years ago the President of Kazakhstan proposed another, bigger canal directly linking the Caspian and Azov Seas and was excited about the growth prospects for central Asia.
The Azov is also important for Russia’s defence, increasingly so since the collapse of the Soviet Union. As one former Soviet bloc country after another joined the European Union and NATO, Ukraine became a ‘red line’ as the last bastion against encroachment by the Western powers. Its eastern region borders the Azov Sea; whoever has mastery of Ukraine has the power to disrupt Russia’s waterborne trade and threaten her sovereign territory.
Quite possibly, from a Russian perspective the hot war that erupted in Ukraine in February is merely the culmination of a progressive thirty-year cold war plan by Western powers to restrict Russia’s regrowth. For all the talk in the mass media about war crimes and wars of aggression, it should be noted that neither Russia nor the US have signed up to jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court. This filthy business has deep roots and assigning blame would open a can of worms, as the American expression goes; not to mention other adventures in North Africa and the Middle East.
Strategically, Russia has always wanted an all-year-round ice-free port to communicate with the rest of the world. It got one in 1945 with the acquisition of Königsberg (now known as Kaliningrad) in what was then East Prussia. It houses Russia’s Baltic Fleet at the port of Baltiysk; but this Russian Federation territory is separated from the motherland by Lithuania and either Latvia or Belarus, depending on the route chosen.
If the Ukraine shooting war manages to avoid turning nuclear, then perhaps time will reconfigure the cat’s-cradle of this modern Great Game. The gradual shrinking of the Arctic ice will open new maritime opportunities for Russia. Further ahead, if global warming continues, it is possible that both Canada and Siberia will become greener as countries to the south begin to parch and populations suffer and migrate en masse. A century from now, the current military confrontation will seem a mere spat by comparison with the northern hemispheric disruption to come.
Monday, May 23, 2022
The Beach Master
Lizard Point in Cornwall is mainland UK’s most southerly edge. Here, a few years ago, a fat rogue of a seal called Woody used the back of a boat as his sunbathing platform and capsized it. There are postcards in the gift shop showing him at it again, with what looks like a cheeky laugh.
We asked about him on this visit; he still comes but isn’t here at the moment. He goes up north each year to fight the local seals there in pursuit of a harem and comes back with more scars.
The shop owner says the dominant seal will chase off the other males to enjoy his brides in peace. The ‘beach master’ here is Tom, though the owner’s favourite is Yogi.
Maybe Woody’s time will come in another season.
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Chinese real estate and superstition
From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':
YouTube vlogger and old China hand ‘Serpentza’ tells us something new about China’s ‘ghost cities.’ But first a brief overview:
Ordinary Chinese people are now able to save money - something undreamed of a couple of generations ago. 70% of it is in real estate, because other investment vehicles are illegal (e.g Bitcoin) or risky (e.g. the frequently crashing stock market.) Investors look to buy and sell apartments, not live in them. There are some 65 million units standing empty.
The Chinese government supports the property market as a form of savings. Serpentza says it’s worth an estimated $60 trillion, or c. 30% of China’s GDP. So it is a very important element for the government also. To keep the people happy the CCP tinkers with the market, dropping interest rates (even to zero) and adding other incentives, to keep it buoyant.
On the other hand, the government is concerned about the expansion of debt. The property developers buy land and materials and pay their employees and contractors on credit; when the State tightened that borrowing it made the developers insolvent, hence e.g. the crisis at Evergrande, which owes $300 billion.
Oddly to us, the apartments are unfinished. This is not because of a residential property collapse as in the Great Financial Crisis in 2010. Paradoxically, if the owner were to complete his investment apartment its value would actually decrease.
The reason, explains Serpentza, is superstition. If someone buys one of these apartments fully equipped and furnished he will inherit the previous owner’s (or tenant’s) bad karma. For the Chinese this magical taint financially marks down a completed property.
YouTube vlogger and old China hand ‘Serpentza’ tells us something new about China’s ‘ghost cities.’ But first a brief overview:
Ordinary Chinese people are now able to save money - something undreamed of a couple of generations ago. 70% of it is in real estate, because other investment vehicles are illegal (e.g Bitcoin) or risky (e.g. the frequently crashing stock market.) Investors look to buy and sell apartments, not live in them. There are some 65 million units standing empty.
The Chinese government supports the property market as a form of savings. Serpentza says it’s worth an estimated $60 trillion, or c. 30% of China’s GDP. So it is a very important element for the government also. To keep the people happy the CCP tinkers with the market, dropping interest rates (even to zero) and adding other incentives, to keep it buoyant.
On the other hand, the government is concerned about the expansion of debt. The property developers buy land and materials and pay their employees and contractors on credit; when the State tightened that borrowing it made the developers insolvent, hence e.g. the crisis at Evergrande, which owes $300 billion.
Oddly to us, the apartments are unfinished. This is not because of a residential property collapse as in the Great Financial Crisis in 2010. Paradoxically, if the owner were to complete his investment apartment its value would actually decrease.
The reason, explains Serpentza, is superstition. If someone buys one of these apartments fully equipped and furnished he will inherit the previous owner’s (or tenant’s) bad karma. For the Chinese this magical taint financially marks down a completed property.
A mild version of this instinct may exist in us, too - how many housebuyers can’t wait to modify their new purchase, however nicely presented, to put their own mark / imprint their personality on it? But in our world, nice houses are worth more than semi-wrecks.
As the trend for mass population movement from Africa and the Middle East towards the UK and Europe gathers pace, perhaps there is something to discuss between us and the Chinese…
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Education and the crab bucket
From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':
________________________________________________
Stupidity is not the greatest barrier to achievement...
Discworld author Terry Pratchett said that those who want to get on are held back by others who try to keep things as they are, like crabs hanging on to each other as one is hoisted out of the catcher’s bucket.
This is true in school. Those who know they will never be top of the class will find ways to prop up their self-respect, either by disruptive behaviour or by forming a cosy clique of failures.
Within this they may accept a leader. In a class I taught, it became clear that one individual was gathering a group about him and making underperformance a cool thing. How to prove it, and what to do?
A senior colleague told me about sociograms (see here for an example.). So I gave everyone a slip on which they were to write two names: one, the person they would like to sit next to in the classroom, and the other, which person they would nominate for form captain (boys for a boy, girls for a girl.) Obviously, this would test for empathy and respect.
Then I drew a diagram based on the results. The subgroup of underachievers became plain, with the suspected leader right at the centre. The clincher was that I wrote next to each person’s name their grades for effort (yes, you can tell, roughly) and attainment. This showed that the poorer the student, the more closely they linked themselves to the Leader, who was the poorest of all.
When I showed this to my colleague, he discussed it with school management and they decided to remove this negative influence; but instead of shifting him to a less able group, they moved him up to a class of higher achievers who were success-oriented and not minded to buy into his mission to spread failure.
Mixed-ability schooling may sound socially just and non-discriminatory, but has this tendency to form clustered resistance to maximising potential. If the teacher aims material and tasks at the middle, there will also be more able pupils who can do the work with little effort and leave themselves time to mix with Joe Cool the Charming (or excitingly Rebellious) Failure, who has developed his social skills instead.
This particular school was a ‘comprehensive’ but the classes were not. Pupils would be regularly assessed to decide which of three broad bands of ability they fell into, and within that, which sets they should go into for Maths and English. This encouraged the more able to compete with each other, and reduced the demoralisation of others by sparing them close working with the upper element. It wasn’t perfect - children would still know what band and set they were in - but better than a pedestrian educational mishmosh. There are worse things than ‘I know my place.’
An exceptional teacher might possibly handle a very wide spread of ability in one class, but by definition such people are in short supply; I think it was Brecht who said that you can’t have an army exclusively composed of heroes.
Key to a successful school is discipline - and this is where management earns its corn. Teachers will vary in their pedagogical skill, but students need to know that if they take on one they are taking on the whole establishment.
Unfortunately, for some time they have been able to do that last; I left teaching in 1989 and when I returned ten years later I was astonished at the rudeness and sense of entitlement of young people in schools; it may have had something to do with the Children Act of 1989:
“Central to this was the idea that children’s wishes and feelings must be taken into account when making decisions that affect them. Traditionally, parents were seen to have rights over their children, but the Act reversed this stating that children had free standing right.”
I have been looking online for a speech by someone at a political conference who said children were roaming the corridors ‘drunk with power’; very oddly, neither Google nor Bing has helped me find it.
But I can give an example of what happens as a result of this empowerment. A friend went from the disciplinarian school where I used to work, to another in the south-east where the management instructed the staff, as a standing order, not to confront students. During a surprise visit by Ofsted the inspectors saw the children running in from breaktime yelling and with fists raised, expecting teachers simply to let them past without comment. The management was ordered to a meeting and fired that day, and the school closed.
The adults need to be in charge.
This is where Katharine Birbalsingh comes in. In 2010 she addressed the Conservative Party conference on how a culture of excuses, of low aspirations and expectations has failed economically poor children, and how the Left’s well-meaning condescension has kept them down; her realisation led her to the ‘shame’ of voting Conservative for the first time in her life:
She was sacked for blowing this whistle.
But she fought back, setting up a ‘free school’ - the Michaela Community School - in a disadvantaged and multicultural part of London. This school is based on a culture of rigid discipline and no excuses.
‘Right-winger’ (i.e. a moderate conservative as perceived by middle-class ‘revolutionaires’) Peter Hitchens fears that ‘progressives’ will seek to bring her down, rather than let her demonstrate that decades of fashionable soft-handed nonsense in education has failed. I do so hope he’s wrong.
Would it not be ironic to see the lower classes benefit from so-called ‘right-wing’ interventions when the Left’s policies have so clearly worked against their interests? If that seems an unfair characterisation, remember Anthony Crosland’s infamous statement when (Labour) Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1965:
“If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every f*cking grammar school in England. And Wales, and Northern Ireland.”
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
IQ and racism
From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':
Research involving human behaviour is tricky.
For example, a famous postwar study of London Transport workers was thought to have shown that people in sedentary jobs, such as bus drivers, were more likely to develop coronary heart disease than those whose work involved more vigorous physical activity, such as bus conductors (in the days when a human went round collecting fares from passengers.)
Much later, my GP friend told me, a flaw was discovered: it could be the case that those who intuitively felt their health less robust would choose sedentary roles. So it was possible that despite the large sample of people in the study and the fact that they had the same field of employment in common, like was still not being compared with like.
The notion that IQ is the most important element in success may also have its weaknesses. When the self-styled ‘Masters of the Universe’ bank traders have finally destroyed the economy and are dangling from lampposts like Il Duce the scorecard may read differently. During the Great Financial Crisis one broker is reported to have bought a flock of sheep from a local farmer in order to ensure his family’s survival. Your own imagination will supply a hundred practical difficulties and dangers that could follow from this decision. If he was that clever, why hadn’t he foreseen the crisis and planned for it well ahead of time?
Some maintain that IQ is heritable and that the average level varies according to ethnicity. As to the first bit, Sir Cyril Burt’s research on twins proved it - so people thought, until it was re-examined after his death and judged fraudulent; his notes and records were no help, as it turned out that they had all been burnt. Nevertheless, other studies appear to support the hypothesis.
As for the second assertion, the link just given says ‘The scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups.’
This doesn’t stop some people from trying to show otherwise; historian Simon Webb recently released a vlog citing the indirect evidence of a spatial aptitude test applied to applicants to the Royal Air Force. In this white British scored - on average - higher than Afro-Caribbeans and black Africans, but - oh dear - not so well as Chinese. Those of mixed b/w ethnicity scored - on average - in between b&w.
Remember the London Transport study and look for flaws: were the applicants all aiming for the same roles in the RAF? With the same long-term career ambitions? Why did they apply, but not others of their peer group? Who was advising them on career options? Did they (as seems very unlikely) all come from the same kind of family upbringing and expectations, go to the same kind of school?
It may be possible to improve your IQ; though there may also be a ceiling to that, just as you may train to run faster without ever achieving Olympian standards.
But more significant may be factors that permanently lower the individual’s IQ ceiling: ‘poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease are known to have lifelong deleterious effects,’ says Wiki. Poor nurture in early years may also hobble the child, which needs both sensory and mental stimulation to foster its development.
Poverty - or relative poverty, inequality - may well be a meta-factor behind many of these factors.
Then there’s the social environment and the development of one’s self-image, but that’s for another day.
Monday, May 16, 2022
IQ - a right-wing issue?
From my new Substack email newsletter, 'Now and Next':
Cartoon: two mammoths are lumbering along together. One has just stepped on a caveman, squashing him flat, spear and all. The first mammoth says to his mate, ‘Take it from me, brains are overrated.’
There is a theme of IQ threading through right-wing comment on immigration and ethnicity, implying that society is weakened by allowing less intelligent people into the country, or letting them have much of a say in how it runs.
This opens a can of worms, as the saying goes.
Let’s take just one of these worms: the usefulness - or otherwise - of high academic ability.
I’ll give an illustration from somewhere I once taught, an outstanding British comprehensive (all-ability) secondary school. One day, a local businessman phoned the headteacher and said, ‘I want one of your school-leavers to work for me. But he must have an O-level in maths.’ The old Ordinary-level examination was aimed at the top 20 percent of ability.
‘I’m happy to recommend someone for you,’ said the Head, ‘but why is the O-level necessary?’
‘He’ll be working in the storeroom, checking stock levels.’
‘You don’t need an O-level to do that.’
‘No, I really must insist, I won’t have someone who can’t count.’
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ said the Head. ‘I’ll send you a copy of an O-level maths paper and you tell me if that’s the level of skill you need for the job.’ This he did.
Next day the businessman was back on the phone. ‘I looked at that paper you sent me and I couldn’t understand the first two questions. I’ll go by what you say.’
So the Head recommended a youngster from the C band - the bottom quarter of the school, which then streamed children by broad ability. This lad was perfectly able to do something as simple as counting, but even more importantly he had a perfect record for attendance and punctuality, and was always smartly turned out, affable and obedient.
It was a perfect match, and got secure employment for someone who might easily have been overlooked because of daft selection criteria. Someone much brighter would have been climbing the walls in frustration and boredom after only a few weeks in the job.
The rat-race wind-up slogan says "Aptitude plus attitude equals altitude"; this misses the point that not everybody can, or should aim for the top.
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