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

.ces that persist, even if there is no other objective evidence for
the unequal treatment of ‘privileged’ and ‘disadvantaged’ children.
The full flavor of this school of thought is found in the following
statement by two educators:
The disastrous effects of the schools on lower-class children are
now finally becoming known. The ‘compensatory’ concept has
gained some headway, but most educators are so overloaded
with work and so traditional in outlook that the schools have
become partners with the economic system in reinforcing a
system of privilege that usually panders to the children of those
in power and finds metaphysical excuses to make only minor
gestures toward the less fortunate. The ‘special programs for the
gifted’ would be more accurately labeled ‘special programs for
the privileged’, for the gifted are primarily the children from
socio-economic classes which provide the most opportunities.
The less fortunate (usually lower-class children) are ordinarily
neglected or convinced that they are innately inferior. Once
they become convinced, the prophesy is soon realized. (Boyer
& Walsh, 1968, p. 68)
Later on these authors say,
Subpopulation Differences in Educability 31
It is not merely racism which bogs down American progress,
but also the more pervasive belief in intellectual inequality.
The failure to develop the abilities of people was useful to the
early American aristocracy and to the power elite of an industrialscarcity
economy. . .. All institutions, including the schools, will
either need to re-examine their self-consoling elitist beliefs and
create real and equal opportunity, or else risk that violence and
revolution will increasingly become the dominant instruments of
social change, (p. 69)
When equality of educational performance is regarded as the
only proof of equality of opportunity, and the failure to demonstrate
such equality can have the social consequences predicted in the
above quotation by Boyer and Walsh, then it would indeed seem
important to question the basic assumption underlying this logic,
viz., that the gene pools of all subpopulations, social-class and
racial, are equal or equivalent for the characteristics involved in
educability. It is merely assumed by some persons on the basis of
very weak evidence that this is the case; yet although it is far from