Jewish Intelligence

According to an article in the Washington Post, the American Enterprise Institute had a two-hour session the other day to discuss the question of whether Jews are smarter than other people, and if so, why. One of those on the panel was John Entine, author of the new bookAbraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People. He argued that genetic mutations gave Jews very high IQs.

That assertion rests on all kinds of pseudo-scientific assumptions, some of which may have no scientific merit at all.

1. That "IQ" is real.
2. That "intelligence" is measurable.
3. That there is causality between genetic mutations and intelligence.
4. That "Jews" is a defineable and comparable cohort of people.
5. That "Jews" generally have "very high" IQs.

I would think that a more reasonable premise is that intelligence is sprinkled evenly over all people from the bushman of Africa to the executive in the the Avenue of the Americas, along with more important traits such as empathy and wisdom.

Jews were not big on celibacy and did not equate sexual abstention with virtue. Thus our greatest genes were not destroyed in monasteries and convents. They were passed on from generation to generation and added to by the genes of the spouses. Also, Jews have always treasured learning and spirited discussion in the yeshivot.

It sounds like you are describing a theory that sounds a lot like a benign eugenics. I'm sure you know as well as I how discredited that theory is as a matter of science and also practice.

http://www.shoaheducation.com/pNEW.html

It was not conscious eugenics. It was never building a smarter "race." Judaism values families highly and couples are encouraged to have as many childrenl as they can afford. We also feeel that God smiles down on lovemaking in a committed relationship so that therewas never the encouragement -- except during the period of the Nazarite vows -- to be celibate.
Judaism also values knowledge and education. Indeed, some very observant families support their new son-in-law for a period of study before he goes to work to support his family. There are people called ilui, prodigies of Torah and Talmud. In very observant families, it is considered a blessing to marry a scholar for their daughters. Making money is a second-class career in those families.

Many very observant Jewish girls are brought up with the idea that they will marry a very observant Jewish boy. Whether the parents or other people introduce them, they are not required to accept a suitor they feel is not someone they can spend their lives with. They meet for drinks in a nice bar (the Plaza's Oak Room used to be a well-known meet up venue) and discuss life.

If they were compatible after several meetings (no sex, no even kissing), they agreed to be engaged. Because education is the more important value and because most very observant Jewish women are also literate (they have prayers they say also and they often go to women's yeshivot where they get an education at least as good as the men do), piety and a religious education are the highest values with the ability to support a family important but not primary.

The fact that they share values and share knowledge is crucial because both will be essential in the live of a family. The family is the primary good in Judaism. The children are trained by example and, since the good of knowledge and education is valued, seeing both mother and father engaged in both prayer and interest in the world makes the kids more amenable to learning.

From the time of the early patristic era, Christians have felt that the second coming was imminent and that they wanted to be free of earthly desires and attachments. People with wealth would often shut themselves up in their homes and devote their lives to prayer. Some sold off all their possessions and retired to the desert of Egypt to live in colonies of hermitages, away from "the flesh." As the church matured, some families offered some of their children as oblates to monasteries. Oblatus means "offering." For instance, Hildelgarde of Bingen's parents offered her, their tenth child, to a Benedictine abbey in Germany. There she developed into one of the singular geniuses of the Golden Age of Medieval life. Married love has not been given a first rank in Christianity. Augustine considered it evil, in fact. Calvin called children "imps of the Devil" and advised they be beaten into submission, something that has echoed even in modern advice for parents by Dobson.

I am not contending that Judaism is way smarter or superior. I am just explaining that it is not conscious eugenics. I don't even think that the Medieval Jews understood genetics at all. They didn't even understand genes. They just married their kids off in ways that would make them happy and give them lots of grandchildren.

My objection to eugenics isn't because pseudo-scientists and Nazis dabbled in it but because it is bad science.

Your hypnothesis as I understand it is that Jewish families over the generations selected in intelligence by arranging for their children to marry other bright children in part by encouraging large, loving familes. This is certainly falsifiable. Start, for example, with a population of lab mice, define intelligence by how quickly those mice can run through a maze, separate out the mice that have the fastest time and have them mate exclusively with other mice that run the fastest time. Keep doing this through several generations. Now, after many generations, take the offspring from the smart mice and compare them to the control population. Will the offspring of those mice be faster than the control population? I don't know the answer to that, and I would be interested to see if there were any studies along those lines. But my hunch is that there will be no difference whatever. Why? That is because genetics within a population is the result of countless DNA combinations that produce essentially the same population over time, unless, within a closed population, there is some kind of mutation that forks the population into a different direction. For example, Mormonism as sociobiological experiement I don't think created a class of uber-superior descendents-- the superior males have access to multiple wives to produce lots of offspring. Their offspring was the same mix of good and bad, smart and dumb people that you see everywhere.

Now, within the Jewish cohort there are cultural and historical distinctives and motivations that produce exceptional achievers -- doctoral degrees and Nobel Prizes, for examples. And you touched on some of the reasons for this . However, I contend that the underlining intelligence has still not changed. Drop this same population of degree holders and prize winners into the interior of Australia, and suddenly they would be on the other end of the bell curve-- incapable, for example, for detecting the presence of underground water by the way a leaf curls. If intelligence is response to the environment, we must always ask what response and what environment to meaningfully assess what we mean by intelligence in the first place.

To value the facts right, we might have to make a step back and look on IQ measurements in general.

For sure, but it behooves us to consider whether it is a fact that there is such a thing as an "IQ". I doubt very much that there is. The speedometer on my car now registers zero, the thermometer in my room now says 69 degrees, and the time is now 9:15 am-- all objective measurements. We assume their accuracy given the integrity of the devices themselves that measure the phenomena-- speed, heat, and time. Does the Stanford-Binet measure an objective quality that exists within a person or does it mirror what the inventors of the Stanford-Binet deems is intelligent-- that is, their own preconceptions, interests, and biases?

It wasn't uncommon for our ancestors to be given IQ tests when they came through Ellis Island and also when they were drafted into the army. But, lo, a generation or two later, their descendents have suddently gotten more intelligent according to the same tests! The velocity of the evolution of the human species never ceases to amaze me!

My skepticism with so-called IQ tests comes partly form my years when I was in Mensa, the so-called high IQ club, where I met not a few folks who were as thick as boards and belonged to such special interest groups as astrology. The paradox is that these tests-- as wretched and as dishonest as they are-- do nevertheless open doors to future opportunities, and both my boys are in the gifted program. Nevethless, I see them as a perversion of our class-based, socially-conformist "meritocracy".

My other more fundamental objection is that these tests label, and that a negative label is hard to take away once it is bestowed. How many kids were in past years labeled as mentally challenged or worse when what they really had was dyslexia, for example?

I saw this theme in a movie my wife and I saw last night "Martian Child", the new John Cusack movie. In it, David Gordon, a lonely but affluent widower, tries to adopt Dennis, an emotionally damaged nine-year-old child who imagines himself to be a Martian. In one scene, a teacher informs them that their school cannot address Dennis' special needs. Behind the teacher is a picture of George "No Child Left Behind" Bush. Much of the movie has to do with the struggle to break the boy from his elaborate fantasy and integrate into the real world through David's unconditional love for the child. It is a touching story but it is also an indictement on how so many children are treated within our factories of education-- getting these silly brands that predestine their existence.

Life would be better if we dropped the word "IQ" from our vocabulary.

It's nature plus nurture.

Of course, with, I might add, a drollop of blind luck on both counts.

It's not enough to produce bright children. It is also necessary to surround them with people who value them and who encourage them. The idea of shalom beit, peace in the home, has a very protective effect on the growing child.

Nicely stated.

As the father of two children, even before they were born, I've tried to be intentional and strategic about how we raised them. For example, at the age of six months, we started reading to them, but in such a way so that they would bond within their little minds the idea of books to nuturance. As they got older, we've had few rules concerning education but those rules are iron-clad: 1. Do homework without fail. 2. Show respect to their teachers without fail. 3. Never deviate from the truth in all things. 4. Strive for excellence-- we call it "Disney quality". I have one boy in sixth grade and another in eighth grade. Their grades came out last week-- 4.0 for both boys and for the last year's grade 4.0 for both boys as well. Both boys have a core of ability, but I suspect many parents exaggerate the importance of that core ability. I read something from BF Skinner to the effect that if you gave him a normal child, he could turn that child into a professor or a vagrant. I think it is the home environment-- the expectation of excellence-- that allows kids to transcend themselves especially during the middle school years where many kids get derailed by negative peer pressure that fosters low expectations, poor self-esteem, and general silliness.

When I was in tenth grade, I was visiting family in south-east Asia. I had an ephinany when one summer day I saw the local library filled with little Chinese kids working through their algebra problems. I remember thinking to myself: "I can do that", and sure enough I finished high school with almost straight As. Years later, as a landlord, some of my Laotion tenants newly immigrated to this country also impressed me by making their kids go through a draconian regimen of self-education-- memorizing pages of English vocabulary words each night. It seems that filial piety has something to do with educational achievement.

My oldest boy, now 13, has his heart set on Northwestern and an engineering degree whereas as my youngest, and 11, fancies Stanford and a career as a doctor. I have no idea if this will be their future, but I like it when they have goals that are external to the grades themselves and the praise we give them and have goals that are animated by a love for learning for its own sake. And its a tradition that in our family stretched back over the generations. For example, my dad's mother, a widow since my dad was three with very little money, raised eleven children during the Great Depression, all of whom went to college and some of whom went on to get advanced degrees.

My challenge is for my kids is to keep on track academically without them becoming intellectually top heavy, isolated, or arrogant, possibly by encouraging them to get involved in sports and community charities.

Here is an anecdote from the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.

Asimov’s dad once looked through one of his information-crammed books.

“How did you learn all this, Isaac?” his father asked.
“From you, Papa.”
“From me? I don’t know any of this?”
“You didn’t have to, Papa,” Isaac said. “You valued learning and you taught me to value it. All the rest came without trouble.”