<p>My grandmother was: born to a poor french family, made to work after 8th grade, and married off at 15. She had 5 children, but was extremely intelligent. Her daughter (145 IQ) couldn’t afford college, but finished high school. I was the first of my family to graduate from college, and did so with a 4.0 gpa. I do not believe you can equate intelligence with economics.</p>
<p>Further, educational attainment is not the same as intelligence.</p>
<p>It’s funny this topic is being discussed today. I’ve been cleaning out my parents house and my father saved EVERYTHING. He graduated in a class of 50 from a small working class village. </p>
<p>The work he did in High School I don’t think many students would have had an easy time with today. He was a B student yet produced excellent work. But everybody didn’t get an “A”, the top students did as things were graded on the curve. Grading was much harder. I took some drafting work and essays on electricity he did to a top Engineer who said it looked like college level work, and my father had gotten B’s on most and a C as a HS sophomore. He was required to take basic Latin and Greek. A researched Thesis paper was required for graduation, and my father’s was 44 pages long and real quality work-- still only a B and better then some of the “A” papers I did in college 20 years ago.</p>
<p>His history and geography classes only had essay tests and quizzes, no multiple guess. His teachers expected quality, thought out answers and analysis as you could tell by the grading.</p>
<p>He never had the opportunity to go to college, but in speaking with him you would not have known that. He rose through the ranks of a company that trained him for his position, and he ended up in management. Probably not possible today, but he came out of HS prepared for the challenges.</p>
<p>He graduated from HS in 1949.</p>
<p>Not sure there will ever be a universal way everyone can agree on to measure intelligence. What was important to know 100 yrs ago, may not be the same as today and then there are always the debates about the validity of ‘standardized tests’. Comparing individuals from prior generations seems like more of an academic exercise then something that can yield objective results.</p>
<p>My Grandmother left school after 8th grade but had a wonderful life. She was very intelligent. She ran her own business. And when my father was in HS, she used his text books during her free time to learn what she had missed out on. After 8th grade she was able to do that. Most kids couldn’t or just wouldn’t today.</p>
<p>Her sister was Valedictorian and took a banking job out of HS. She took college courses as she worked and became the first female bank President at a particular nationwide bank. </p>
<p>Both were intelligent and I think learned more in the primary grades then kids do today. An 8th grade education was worth more then it is today. </p>
<p>Grandma - no HS diploma Great Aunt HS class of 1918, Syracuse U class of 1935.</p>
<p>JamesOliver – and will all die if the power goes out!!</p>
<p>^ in 1918, only 72 % of children attended school. States only required students to remain in school until they were 14. And in 1920 only 32% of 14-17 year olds attended school.</p>
<p>I think our top 32% could keep up with kids from 1920’s, especially if they only study limited subjects that had limited information ( think science).</p>
<p>^This. It’s all context.</p>
<p>This is super late, but I was skimming the thread and saw:</p>
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<p>‘Barren’ sounds so Handmaid’s Tale - esque (novel by author Margaret Atwood). </p>
<p>Wasn’t there just a thread showing that having children typically has detrimental effects on the careers of women? Why would I, or my friends that want lots of degrees and high powered careers drop jump to have many kids for a society that constantly criticizes mothers for everything from breastfeeding to helicoptering to having a job? Plus, pregnancy results in lots of changes and can be risky for health reasons. </p>
<p>I find it weird when people who seem very openminded when it comes to using data and facts to consider issues also adhere to highly conservative social constructs. </p>
<p>I think a lot of people don’t have opportunities, and if we gave more people opportunities and adequate environments, we would ‘discover’ a lot of super smart and talented people. It’s kind of the idea in Outliers by Gladwell- there’s an arbitrary birthdate cutoff for young athletes to join sports. Those who are lucky enough to be born close to the date (and obviously on the right side of it) can join the same team as kids who were born later and didn’t have as much time to physically develop, which makes them stand out. This advantage is compounded over time. I would argue discrimination, imperialism etc. basically put people of certain groups (and this extends beyond the US) on the wrong side of the cutoff. The world would be a better place if there was a true meritocracy, but that’s not really the case.</p>
<p>But lol maybe I’m just a naive teenager. Whatever.</p>
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<p>Oh get off of your high horse.</p>
<p>Considering this was intended to be given to 8th graders who in some cases could not have had electricity in their homes, I think this was fairly difficult. </p>
<p>Thinking about the method that they had to learn this content is first, I think, a challenge in itself. They learned all from books and a teacher repeating things. They didn’t have fancy strategies that teachers are learning nowadays. They didn’t have flashcards online, and the ability to whip out their iPod to google the answer that they forgot like most kids now.
They had to have this content constantly in their head for a long time in order to do well and build upon it.</p>
<p>I understand what people are saying about how a lot of this is rote memory, but I think we need to realize how some of those questions involved critical thinking methods in order to find the answer, especially the math questions.</p>
<p>Regarding the question that asks about the cost of a room to be completed, that requires a number of steps that have to be taken and this all has to be done WITHOUT a calculator. As a college student, calculators have been around basically all of my academic career and I was able to use it almost all of the time after grade 4. The kids I tutor are using their iPad’s calculators to figure out a lot of things now. </p>
<p>So my point is that these questions are very difficult and I am sure that most 8th grade students now would fail it. I think that a lot of the things that were taught to the 1912 kids probably stuck in their heads a lot longer than it would for people now a days. Unfortunately, our educational system doesn’t build on concepts as much as it should, particularly for subjects like history or language arts.</p>
<p>Want to weigh-in here: It has been said that technology has developed new skills for youth. For example, the youth are now more able to convey and understand nuanced tone within writing (a challenge very real when it comes to texting). This has lead to the decrease in other skills, which are rendered unimportant by technology; one example is memorization of facts. So, if an IQ test is testing, say, state capitals, a student will do poorly in comparison to 30 yrs ago. The opposite is true for literary analysis.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if standards were higher back then, but like others mentioned that was most likely just because so many less people were able to attend school. I seriously doubt that anyone would have gotten a better education a hundred years ago if they were in similar life circumstances as they are today. </p>
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<p>Okay, I’m really sorry to bring this issue up again, but that’s a pretty unfair statement. The thread got derailed when a bunch of posters started bashing Beliavsky over his comment on dysgenics. The original comment was at least relevant to the thread, even if you disagree with it. The response is what took this thing way off topic.</p>
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<p>As I wrote before, if smart people don’t have enough children, average intelligence will be lower than it otherwise would be. But of course there are answers to your question that are unrelated to eugenics. My three children are close in age and just have so much fun together, whether they are running around on the playground, building sand castles on the beach, playing chess or Risk or Scrabble or poker, or any number of other things. Their happiness brings me a lot of happiness. </p>
<p>Here is another reason. In several respects, people decline after their 20s. They become worse-looking, lose some physical strength, and decline mentally even long before old age (fluid intelligence declines starting in one’s 20s, although crystallized intelligence may hold stable or rise). It’s nice to be around people who are getting bigger, stronger, and smarter – your own children.</p>
<p>I can’t close without citing a study :). Having more children increases the chance that each of your children will have a sister, which will make them happier throughout life:
[Why Sisterly Chats Make People Happier
By DEBORAH TANNEN
New York Times
October 25, 2010](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/health/26essay.html”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/health/26essay.html</a>)
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<p>PKD – I know what was posted. And I know Beliavsky’s posting personality. Dysgenics might be relevant to the original topic, but Bel has a history of conservative and unfounded claims (no problem with conservative views, or liberal ones, or anything in between. If you read my entire post, you’d see that I pointed out that lots of posters (all over CC) speak on things, people, and experiences that they have only “heard of” and that info is more than often wrong and one-sided. Regardless of your views, everyone needs to be open to being wrong and accept that their stereotypes and prejudices are unfounded.)</p>
<p>Do smart people need to be having more children for the sake of society? Basically aren’t we saying that smart, affluent, people need to be having more children? Because it doesn’t seem to me we are willing as a society to provide the social programs and safety nets necessary to support working class families having more children. As many on this thread have pointed out, smart is not the same thing as educated. There are lots of extremely smart working class families. Their children may not receive the educational and enrichment opportunities necessary to maximize their intellectual potential. In families with limited resources, limiting the number of children probably ensures better opportunities for those children, since resources don’t have to be stretched so thin.</p>
<p>We no longer live in a world where it is realistic to assume very many women can stay home and raise children, even if they want to do so. That world existed for a very brief time in the 50s (Marilyn French, Women’s Room) and had problems of its own. </p>
<p>In my family it is possible to see how number of children fluctutated based on economic conditions. My grandparents, born in the late 1800s, had many siblings. On all sides of the family, my great-grandmothers worked on the farm along with their husbands. They were able to send all their children to college. My grandparents and their siblings started their own families in the late 20s, early 30s and no family of that generation had more than two children. This was because of the Depression. Limiting family size stretched resources. They were able to send those few children to college. One grandmother continued to teach school after she had her children. The other ran her husband’s office, including all bookkeeping, and did some bookkeeping for others for more income. My parents generation, starting families in the 50s, had an average of four children per family. Half the mothers worked outside the home after their children were born. All the children of that generation went to college. My generation, with many women working outside the home and college costs rising, limits family size once more. </p>
<p>Neither my children or nieces or nephews have children yet. Where these young people might see it as an economic possibility, the logistical reality is a nightmare because these couples are having a difficult time finding appropriate jobs in the same locale. The current reality is that most families need two incomes and that when both parents are working outside the home, it is really difficult to have a large family.</p>
<p>If the goal is the smartest population possible, maximizing their potential - it seems to me excellent, affordable, universal daycare available from birth and a very different early education system than what we have now are both necessary. Ecouter and my daughter-in-law can’t save the world all on their own. Let’s give them some help.</p>
<p>It’s my observation that 3-or-more-children families with a stay-at-home wife is almost the “new status symbol” for men of a certain social class. It also frees them to focus on career-building. There are, of course, other men who have no interest in having their wives SAH (unless the wife so chooses) and who pride themselves in having very equal partnerships where home care and child care and financial responsibilities are all equal. Chacun a son gout, as they say.</p>
<p>I think you are right, PG, that in some environments a stay at home parent is seen as a status symbol. However, in my own particular social group, the power couple has much greater status. I say this as a former sahm. In thinking about collegalum’s writings upthread on the common good, I keep coming back to Anne-Marie Slaughter. It seems to me possible she sacrifices the common good to the personal good when she resigns from an important political post to concentrate on a troubled child. </p>
<p><a href=“Why Women Still Can’t Have It All - The Atlantic”>Why Women Still Can’t Have It All - The Atlantic;
<p>Both my son and daughter-in-law are scientists. Both seem to me to have the potential to do quite a lot for the common good. Maybe their research helps create an environment where people get smarter 
If one of them leaves the lab to concentrate on childcare, society probably loses a couple of decades of good research. Having children, even with full-time live-in childcare, will be a distraction from their work. They are both really smart. Is it a greater good if they procreate or if they stay in the lab? Is it reasonable to expect them to do both?</p>
<p>How are you going to advise your own kids in this scenario, Beliavsky?</p>
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<p>How many children your son and daughter-in-law should have is their decision to make, but they should understand since IQ is highly heritable, the offspring of two scientists are more likely to make scientific discoveries or to make big contributions in other fields than children in general. Therefore they should weigh their own potential contributions against those that would be made by their children.</p>
<p>Well, right now my son and daughter-in-law are working on pretty important research. I assume all my potential grandchildren will be genius or near genius IQ. However, there may be birth accidents or other environmental factors that negatively impact their potential to make important contributions in any area. Maybe they will get in with a bad crowd and never finish any kind of formal education. </p>
<p>If we want to talk about what is best for society, isn’t this sort of a bird in the hand sort of situation?</p>
<p>adding: How about this? We just take some of their DNA and save it in case we need to clone them in the future? When we don’t have enough smart people. This saves their precious genes and allows them to continue with their research uninterrupted and undistracted.</p>
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<p>Ok, let’s account for mean reversion. If having children reduces the parents’ total output by one unit, but their children have total output of only 1/2 unit, their grandchildren 1/4 unit etc., then the sum of descendants’ output is</p>
<p>1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + …</p>
<p>and scientists know that this geometric series sums to one. So in this model, total output does not go down, and you get to watch your children grow up. Seriously, the long-term benefits to society over many generations should be considered.</p>