Educability-and-Group-Differences-1973-by-Arthur-Robert-Jensen

16 Educability and Group Differences
differences may involve genetic as well as experientially derived
variation. A sharp dichotomy in our causal account of individual
and group differences seems to me to be scientifically unwarranted,
and to act as if such a dichotomy exists, when it is unlikely that it
accords with the true state of nature, would seem to me to be
undesirable. Groups are the result of classification, whether in
terms of geographic origin of one’s ancestors, visible physical
characteristics, socioeconomic status, occupation, sex, or whatever
- it can be quite arbitrary. Although average group differences in
any characteristic are really just an average of individual differences
classified by some particular rule, when viewed in this collective
form they can appear quite troublesome if the behavioral characteristic
in question is socially valued and differentially rewarded
by the economic system, and especially if the mean differences
between groups are large relative to individual differences within
groups. The problems are magnified when group membership is
rigidly imposed and the group identity of individuals is highly
visible, as in the case of physical characteristics associated with
racial classification.
Race differences and social class differences, therefore, are
essentially more a social problem than a scientific one. But they
are there, nevertheless, and society demands that they be dealt
with in many spheres of public concern, and perhaps more in
education than in anything else. If this is the case, then attempting
to bring scientific knowledge and methods to bear upon understanding
the nature of group differences would seem most appropriate.
At the same time, we should not let the fact of group
differences make us lose sight of the more fundamental fact of
individual differences. The problem of the importance of intelligence
in schools as they are presently constituted is not primarily
a problem of any particular minority group within our population.
Although the average IQ of the Negro population of the United
States, for example, is about one standard deviation (i.e. 15 IQ
points) below that of the white population, because of the disproportionate
sizes of the Negro and white populations there are more
whites with IQs below the Negro average than there are Negroes.
It is only when society is ideologically, politically and economically
sensitive to its classifications of persons into socially identifiable
groups that unequal percentages of different groups in, say, special
classes for the academically gifted and the educationally retarded