SUCCESS IN LIFE IS RELATEDTO g

If you have a substantial amount of g, you have a very good chance of doing well in life.  The trouble is, if you don’t have it, you never will.  You can’t buy it, you can’t pay for it or pray for, you can’t work overtime for it.  You can’t bribe someone for it or coerce them to give it to you. You can’t make it and you can’t fake it.

This issue has been argued in the halls of academe, in labs, and in so many, many books.  Harvard professors in this field have argued vociferously on both sides; they will never agree.  I stand firmly on one of those sides, wishing I had more of it.  The benefits of g have been proven in study after study, year after year with objective, mathematical certainty.   A popular argument against g sounds like this: “Well, I know someone who dropped out of high school and was a multi-imillionaire before he was thirty. The weakest arguments made against it are: “I just don’t believe it.  I know it’s not true.  It can’t be.”  But anecdotes, subjectivity, and denial, do not an argument make. 

When I was a high school history teacher, I often spoke to parents about Johnnie’s failing grades.  Sitting there in the classroom, I would take out my grade book to show Johnnie’s parents that he only did two of seventeen homework assignments.  His grade is lowered not because only because of his low homework grade, but if he’s not reading the book, and not answering the questions he is not learning.

 How did parents respond?  Surprisingly, I could almost hear a great sigh of relief.  Why relief?  Because if his failing grades are due to laziness, or disorganization, or refusal to do homework, then these are behaviors that can be changed.  Lack of g is not a behavior; it’s an inherent characteristic.    

Back in the days of tracking and ability groupings, I often suggested that Johnnie was better suited for a commercial or general track, as opposed to the academic track.   I never said, in so many words, “your child lacks g.” 

So what is g?   In equations it stands for “general intelligence,” also known as IQ.  The debate over the veracity of IQ tests has been raging for decades. “The literature,” wrote sociologist, Charles Murray,

        tells us that a family’s …income, parental education and occupation

        are unimportant in explaining the cognitive abilities and personality

       traits that parents try hardest to promote.  It is a counterintuitive

       finding.  It is an unwelcome finding for parents.  But it is based on

       technically strong, thoroughly replicated body of evidence.”  (Emphasis

      added).

That is an extraordinary statement.  Definitive. Provable.  Immutable.  And for many, unwelcome.

Here’s another.

        “It’s not just that IQ predicts job performance for people with

         cognitively demanding jobs; IQ predicts job performance across

        the entire range of jobs.  People who are responsible for new

       hires at a workplace should know that IQ is a better predictor of job

       performance than a resume’, evaluation through an interview,

       assessment centers or work samples.” 

What this means is that all men are not created equal.  We are equal before the law, equal in our rights to life, liberty, property and opportunity, all of which are theoretically God-given.  But that very same God did not create us as clones; he created us differently: tall or short, confident or insecure, good at math, bad at math, beautiful or homely, funny or humorless, big nose or small nose, extroverted or introverted, industrious or lazy, athletic or not.

Life is unfair.  I wish I had more g; I wish I was a great athlete; I wish I had 85,000 Substack subscribers.   But wishing does not make it so.  The takeaway is that we have to deal realistically with life as it is, not as we would like it to be.  Ignoring the truth will not make it go away.   Low g people are not going to write advanced calculus texts.  A standard foundational concept of education courses is that we “must take individual differences into account.”  Treating everyone the same cheats everyone at every level.

In 1994, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray wrote:

        How should policy deal with the twin realities that people differ in   

        intelligence for reasons that are not their fault, and that intelligence

       has a powerful bearing on how well people do in life?

Thirty years later, we continue to grapple with the inequality of talents. We’ve had plenty of suggestions, vociferous denials, educational experiments (I was involved with one for three years; it was a controversial and dismal failure) and angry disagreement.

Solution?  Follow the science, accept reality.  We hurt our kids, ourselves and our society when we don’t.