Philobiblon

At last, a sensible piece on the race/IQ debate in the New York Times – yes there is a difference, but it is overwhelming down to environment – and that’s been shown by very solid studies.

Or to put it another way, a view that I’ve held for a long time: all IQ tests really test is how well you do IQ tests – and if you’ve grown up in an environment that thinks broadly the same way as the people who drew up the test, you’ll do rather better than people who didn’t. If the tests were set by Kalahari bushmen, we’d all do rather badly, and be put in the bottom class.