Sunday, June 7, 2009

Desperation

It's closing in on Kristof, and he's panicking. His latest column, #1 on nytimes.com, is total drivel and bs.


A common thread among these three groups may be an emphasis on diligence or education, perhaps linked in part to an immigrant drive. Jews and Chinese have a particularly strong tradition of respect for scholarship, with Jews said to have achieved complete adult male literacy — the better to read the Talmud — some 1,700 years before any other group.

The parallel force in China was Confucianism and its reverence for education. You can still sometimes see in rural China the remains of a monument to a villager who triumphed in the imperial exams. In contrast, if an American town has someone who earns a Ph.D., the impulse is not to build a monument but to pass a hat.


But what happens when a culture values intelligence? The intelligent procreate more.



Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.”



Damaging to public policy. Another generation of college dropouts that would have made decent mechanics, police officers, or army platoon leaders.