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Jews pushed the Bell Curve with all their might, but...
Researchers search for genes behind intelligence, find almost nothing Three possible genes, all with minuscule effects on brain power.
To what degree do genes determine how intelligent we are? It's a question with a lot of social implications, given the potential for people to get lumped into categories based on their inheritance—or for them to make a self-fulfilling prophecy out of it.
But so far, at least, it's a question that science has been unable to answer. When scientists have focused on specific genes involved in the nervous system's growth and function, they've found a few hints of associations, but those haven't held up in large population studies. Large population studies that scanned the entire genome have also come up empty.
Now, we may have a good idea why. A massive and thorough genetic study has looked into the question and, despite all the effort involved, has only come up with three genes, none of which have a very large effect on cognitive abilities.
The work was done by a collaboration of nearly 60 scientists. Rather than either looking at a specific set of candidate genes or scanning the entire genome, they took a hybrid approach. Reasoning that intelligence is likely correlated with academic achievement, they first did a scan of the genome, looking for base differences that were associated with educational attainment. This approach, called a "genome wide association study," relies on tens of thousands of individual bases that normally vary within human populations. To make sure that whatever came out was likely to be significant, the work relied on a panel of more than 100,000 participants.
All of which suggests that intelligence isn't a matter of a handful of genes. Sure, there are some genes that, when damaged, have a catastrophic effect on cognitive abilities. But, assuming you avoid these, it seems that your intelligence is likely to be the product of a huge collection of minor genetic effects, combined with a very large helping of your environment.
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As has been known for some time, genes account in substantial proportions for variances in the most popular intelligence constructs typically measured in modern society. Whether such constructs adequately capture the human quality oft called "intelligence" is a matter of continuing controversy. Some argue for "multiple intelligences" as a fuller human picture. In any event, genes play a part in varying proportions, in varying models. Environment, whether directly or as affecting genes also accounts for a proportion of variances. The two work together and interact, in varying proportions. The oft heard claim that people are "denying" the "reality of genes" is a tired & bogus strawman. Of course genes play a part- how could they not? Who credible is going around "denying" this?
And environment itself has an effect on genes, or on assorted intelligence constructs. For example, the negative effects of very low birth weight on intellectual development are well documented. There is an association between IQ and normal variance in birth weight.
As the article below on that study indicates, on the average, "genes" account for about half the variances in assorted studies, and there is no single "smoking gun" gene, but a large number in the mix, each contributing its 2-cents to the general pool to the particular intelligence construct at hand.
8 September 2014, 9.29pm BST Intelligence inheritance – three genes that add to your IQ score
There’s no one universal ‘intelligence gene’ but many thousands each contributing a small increment – and here are three.
Intelligence, cognitive ability or cognitive performance is usually measured by a battery of tests that aim to quantify skills such as memory and analytical ability. There is loads of variation between… Authors
Beben Benyamin- Research Fellow in Statistical Genetics at The University of Queensland. Peter Visscher- Professor of Quantitative Genetics at The University of Queensland
There’s no one universal ‘intelligence gene’ but many thousands each contributing a small increment – and here are three.
Intelligence, cognitive ability or cognitive performance is usually measured by a battery of tests that aim to quantify skills such as memory and analytical ability. There is loads of variation between people in how they perform on such tests, and these differences can be due to genetic and environment factors, and their interplay.
In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) today, we show three genetic variants in humans that can account for a couple of IQ points – but before you get excited, these are only three variants out of likely thousands. The genetics of cognitive performance
While a measure of “intelligence” can be controversial, cognitive performance scores are widely used because of their predictive ability. Educational attainment, income, job performance and health are all correlated with cognitive performance.
By comparing the cognitive performance between family members, including comparisons between identical and non-identical twins, scientists are able to quantify the contribution of genetic and environmental causes of individual differences.
Decades of research have shown that genetic factors account for about half of the causes of individual difference in cognitive performance, and recent studies using unrelated people have confirmed that a substantial proportion of individual difference is due to genetic factors.
So, we know now that cognitive performance is heritable, but where are the genes? Despite considerable attempts to find genes for cognitive performance, no specific genes had been found and replicated.
One reason for this puzzle is that there are a lot of genes involved – thousands, even – and their individual gene effect sizes are tiny. Past studies couldn’t find them because sample sizes were not large enough to detect genes with statistical significance.
So how did we overcome this problem?
Last year, a huge international collaborative study of more than 126,000 people correlated millions of genetic variants with educational attainment and discovered three genetic variants associated with it.
Education attainment is correlated with cognitive performance, so given these two observations, we tested the genetic variants for education attainment with their associations with cognitive performance, which we report in PNAS today.
We tested 69 genetic variants from the educational attainment study (of almost 107,000 people) in independent samples of 24,000 people who had a cognitive performance score. This two-stage strategy is called a “proxy-phenotype method” since educational attainment is a proxy phenotype (an observable characteristic or trait) for cognitive performance.
The essence of this design was to piggy-back on a much larger study from a correlated trait (educational attainment) to pre-select a small number of genetic variants. These were then tested for association with cognitive performance – a bit like leveraging a large study on the genetics of weight to find genes for diabetes. Three genetic variants (out of thousands)
Previously, using a genome-wide study in a sample of 18,000 individuals, we could not identify a single genetic variant associated with cognitive performance. Using the new proxy strategy, though, we identified three genetic variants associated with cognitive performance. As expected from the calculation, the effects of these variants on cognitive performance are tiny.
A copy of each variant accounts for only 0.3 points on a standard IQ test (with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15). A person who inherits all six copies (note: one genetic variant has two copies) of increasing variants differs by 1.8 points compared to individual who inherits none. That’s a small difference.
sheeshoo/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA Click to enlarge
Another interesting finding from our study is related to the potential relevance to our health. A combination of genetic effect calculated from 60 education attainment-associated variants is correlated with memory and absence of dementia in an independent sample of almost 9,000 individuals.
While it is premature to suggest the biological function of the genes identified, our additional analysis suggests that the genes are related to synaptic plasticity – the main mechanism in the brain for learning and memory. The take-away message
This study of normal variation in cognitive performance confirms that there is no gene with a large effect on this trait. There is no “gene for intelligence” – instead, cognitive performance is likely to be influenced by thousands of genes, each having a small effect.
While the individual effect of the genetic variants are extremely small, their identification may lead to knowledge of the biological pathways involved in cognitive performance and cognitive ageing. This insight may eventually lead us into a better understanding of the mechanism involves in memory loss and dementia.
Finally, because individual gene effects are small, an implication of the study is that even larger studies, for example on millions of people, will lead to the discovery of many more gene variants.
---- "We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549 692 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits. We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants." -- -- Davies et al. 2011. Geonome-wide association studies
"This general cognitive factor is sometimes referred to as just g, or 'general intelligence'. It was discovered by Charles Spearman in 1904 and is one of the most replicated findings in psychology, as demonstrated in a re-analysis of over 400 data sets collected during the 20th century.4 It tends to account for about half the total variance when a heterogeneous set of mental tests is given to a normal adult sample." --Deary et al 2006. Genetics of Intelligence.
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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^^But that half and half above may be overstated based on groups. More affluent groups have less environmental negatives to worry about, and their "gene" influences loom larger in popular intelligence constructs than poor people, who are hammered more negatively by enviro influences. Furthermore what might appear to be "similar" socio-economic circumstances may not be that at all. A "middle class" black postal worker in DC for example typically has kids that may attend worse schools, may have less wealth and assets, more poor relatives to support, live in an area with more crime etc etc.. compared to a "middle class" white postal worker in a nearby, mostly white suburb, who on Average, will have less of such problems. What looks like "similar" circumstances based on 1 or 2 variables often are not. There are a host of differences that will hit some groups harder, not all readily apparent.
""WHen the data from numerous studies of children and adults are analyzed together, the heritability of intelligence is roughly .5, which is to say that about 50% of the difference between people's intelligence test scores is due to genetic differences between them (Plomin & Spinath, 2004).."
"The intelligence of a single person is a product of both genes and experience and cannot be "due" to one of these things more than another. The heritability coefficient tells us why people in a particular group differ from one another; thus its value can change depending on the particular group of people we measure. For example, the heritability of intelligence among wealthy children is about .72 and among poor children about .10 (Turkheimer et al 2003)."
--Schacter, Daniel; Gilbert, Daniel; Wegner, Daniel (2010). Psychology. 390-412
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
This was a waste of money. Educational psychologists have known for years that intelligence (IQ) was depended on experience and education. This results from the fact that intelligence test, test what we know, i.e., information we learn in school. Naturally people who attend better schools (which is depended on the wealth of the child's parents) have higher IQs.
.
-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: This was a waste of money. Educational psychologists have known for years that intelligence (IQ) was depended on experience and education. This results from the fact that intelligence test, test what we know, i.e., information we learn in school. Naturally people who attend better schools (which is depended on the wealth of the child's parents) have higher IQs. .
ALBINO KIDS GETTING STUDY GRANT MONEY TO SHOW THAT ALBINOS ARE SUPERIOR.
KIDS WITH DOCTORATE DEGREES GETTING GRANT MONEY TO SHOW THAT KIDS WITH DOCTORATES ARE SUPERIOR.
What' the difference?
NONE!
Always remember what your mother told you:
CONSIDER THE SOURCE!
THE STUDY IN QUESTION:
Common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance identified using the proxy-phenotype method.
A study done by 60 kids (this is so juvenile that they can't be considered adults) with doctoral degrees.
Quote: In the study reported here, our phenotype of interest is cognitive performance, for which we use Spearman’s measure of general cognitive ability (usually abbreviated as g;) it is the general factor measured by a battery of diverse cognitive tests). Our proxy phenotype is educational attainment measured by self-reported years of schooling. Rietveld et al. had suggested the strategy of using SNPs associated with educational attainment as “empirically-based candidate genes ”for association with cognitive performance; here, we conduct that analysis and further develop the methodology for doing so.
SI Appendix contains our formal framework, which builds on that in ref. 11, as well as power calculations under a range of assumptions. According to the framework, educational attainment is a good proxy phenotype for cognitive performance, because cognitive performance is strongly genetically influenced and causally affects educational attainment.
Humans without access to higher level formal schooling, or those who choose to forgo it, are unintelligent or even stupid.Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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Vikram Shankar Pandit (born 14 January 1957 in Marathi is an Indian-born American banker. He is the former chief executive of Citigroup, a position he held from December 2007 until he resigned October 16, 2012.
He holds a B.S. and M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, and MBA and Ph.D in Finance from Columbia Business School.
Vikram Pandit was born in Dhantoli locality of Nagpur, Maharashtra, India to an affluent Brahmin marathi family. His father, Shankar B. Pandit, was an executive director at Sarabhai Chemicals in Baroda.
He completed his schooling at the Dadar Parsee Youths Assembly High School in Dadar, Mumbai and when he was 16 years old, moved to the United States to attend Columbia University.
As a student, Pandit went to Columbia University for his undergraduate program and, in 1976, earned his B.S., electrical engineering degree in only three years. He completed his M.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1977.
He then turned to business studies & finance and earned an M.B.A in 1980 followed by a PhD in finance from Columbia Business School in 1986, after publishing a thesis involving a complex financial puzzle, titled "Asset prices in a heterogeneous consumer economy.
Pandit Ouster Is No Surprise, And Good News For Citi Shareholders.
Forbes:
You will be hard pressed to find anyone that is surprised by the departure of Citi CEO Vikram Pandit from the giant bank.
Citigroup Chief Executive Office Vikram Pandit...The timing of the news may seem a little bizarre since the bank just reported third quarter earnings yesterday but the decision to bring in new leadership will not shock many who follow the bank.
Pandit, 55, had been charged since 2007 with the difficult task of righting a bank that had gone very, very wrong.
Five years later, Pandit’s efforts were simply not enough to keep him on as chief of one of the biggest banks in the world. Just take a look at the stock which is down over 90% since he took over.
“At the end of the day, Vikram was not the right guy for the job. He was a good interim CEO who was given a challenging job but it wasn’t a job where he was going to win a popularity contest,” say Raymond James bank analyst Anthony Polini.
Indeed Pandit has had his share of critics along the way. Most recently, former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair in her new book about the 2008 meltdown describes Pandit without much regard. From her book:
More than any other institution represented in that room, his bank was in trouble. Frankly, I doubted that he was up to the job. He had been brought in to clean up the mess at Citi. He had gotten the job with the support of Robert Rubin, the former secretary of the Treasury who now served as Citi’s titular head. I thought Pandit had been a poor choice. He was a hedge fund manager by occupation and one with a mixed record at that. He had no experience as a commercial banker, yet now he was heading one of the biggest banks in the country.
quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Vikram Pandit CEO of CITIBANK N.A.
Vikram Shankar Pandit (born 14 January 1957 in Marathi is an Indian-born American banker. He is the former chief executive of Citigroup, a position he held from December 2007 until he resigned October 16, 2012.
He holds a B.S. and M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, and MBA and Ph.D in Finance from Columbia Business School.
Vikram Pandit was born in Dhantoli locality of Nagpur, Maharashtra, India to an affluent Brahmin marathi family. His father, Shankar B. Pandit, was an executive director at Sarabhai Chemicals in Baroda.
As I said wealth matters!
Today it cost more than $100k to get a PhD. I was lucky I had Fellowships.
(Not to suggest that wealth is a measure of intelligence either).[/b]
Carlos Slim, Chairman of Grupo Carso, National Autonomous University of Mexico dropout.
Here is an interesting note:
Slim was born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1940 to Maronite Catholic parents, Julián Slim Haddad and Linda Helú, both of Lebanese descent. His father, born Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz, emigrated to Mexico from Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Empire) at the age of 14 in 1902 and changed his name to Julián Slim Haddad. It was not uncommon for Lebanese children to be sent abroad before they reached the age of 15 to avoid being conscripted into the Ottoman army; four of Haddad's older brothers were already living in Mexico at the time of his arrival.
Carlos Slim's mother, Linda Helú Atta, was born in Parral, Chihuahua, of Lebanese parents who had immigrated to Mexico in the late 19th century. Her parents upon immigrating to Mexico had founded one of the first Arabic language magazines for the Lebanese-Mexican community, using a printing press they had brought with them.
In 1911, Julián established a dry goods store, La Estrella del Oriente (The Star of the Orient). By 1921, he had purchased real estate in the flourishing commercial district of Mexico City. These enterprises became the source of considerable wealth.
Criticism
The Mexican magnate's growing fortune has caused controversy, because it has been amassed in a developing country where average per capita income does not surpass $14,500 a year, and nearly 17% of the population lives in poverty. Critics claim that Slim is a monopolist, pointing to Telmex's control of 90% of the Mexican landline telephone market. Slim's wealth is the equivalent of roughly 5% of Mexico's annual economic output. Telmex, of which 49.1% is owned by Slim and his family, charges among the highest usage fees in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
According to Celso Garrido, economist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Slim's domination of Mexico's conglomerates prevents the growth of smaller companies, resulting in a shortage of paying jobs, forcing many Mexicans to seek better lives in the US.
The Syriac Maronite Church of Antioch is an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See of Rome. It traces its heritage back to the community founded by Marun, a 4th-century Syriac-Aramean monk venerated as a saint. The first Maronite Patriarch, Saint John Maron, was elected in the late 7th century.
Although reduced in numbers today, Maronites remain one of the principal ethno-religious groups in Lebanon. The Maronite Church asserts that since its inception, it has always remained faithful to the Church of Rome and the Pope. In November 2012, Pope Benedict appointed Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rahi as a Cardinal.
Before the conquest by Arabian Muslims reached Lebanon, the Lebanese people, including those who would become Muslim and the majority who would remain Christian, spoke a dialect of Aramaic. Syriac (Christian Aramaic) still remains the liturgical language of the Maronite Church. The members of the Maronite Church are a part of the Syriac people; though they have, over time, developed a distinctive Maronite character, this has not obscured their Antiochene and Syriac origin.
The Ottoman Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate and later the Republic of Lebanon were created under the auspice of European powers with the Maronites as their main ethnic component. Mass emigration to the Americas at the outset of the 20th century and the Lebanese Civil War between 1975 and 1990 greatly decreased their numbers in the Levant. Maronites today form more than one quarter of the total population in the country of Lebanon.
Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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KING - Why is it that you only have tears for the Black and mulatto Brazilians who are abused by their countrymen?
The Black and Mulatto Mexicans fought an entire revolution against the Albinos and the Catholic Church.
The socialist constitution of the Mexican revolution addressed foreign ownership of resources (Article 27), an organized labor code (Article 123), the role of the Roman Catholic Church in education (Article 3), and land reform.
Article 3 of the constitution required that education, in both public and private schools be completely secular and free of any religious instruction and prohibited religions from participating in education - essentially outlawing Catholic schools or even religious education in private schools.
But yet as Carlos Slim proves, the Black and Mulatto Mexicans wasted their time and their Blood. The Albinos, Foreigners, and the Catholic Church has defeated them.
BTW - 65% of Brazil is catholic.Posts: 22721 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Not to suggest that education is not important, but clearly, it's absolute relevance to intelligence is non existent.
THE RICHEST MEN IN THE WORLD
(Not to suggest that wealth is a measure of intelligence either).
Carlos Slim, Chairman of Grupo Carso, National Autonomous University of Mexico dropout.
Bill Gates of Microsoft - Harvard dropout.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook - Harvard dropout.
This has nothing to do with being College Educated. Your IQ is formed by the time you exit high school. It's during these pre-College years of schooling that IQ is developed.
To be a good businessman has nothing to do with IQ--but it does depend on wealth. Yea, Zuckerberg and Gates are COLLEGE dropouts, but their parents had the money to bankroll their business projects. You can't start a company with zero money.
The major College educated people who make money are Lawyers and Accountants. They make money off the businessmen.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: This has nothing to do with being College Educated. Your IQ is formed by the time you exit high school. It's during these pre-College years of schooling that IQ is developed.
Clyde, like them, you are equating Intelligence with "SCHOOLING".
An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence.
Therefore the logical conclusion is that someone who has never been to school cannot be intelligent.
I believe that to be patently false.
Clyde, for all your education, you wouldn't last a day in their world.
So which of you is truly the most intelligent?
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posted
Yeah somehow people only correlate intelligence with academic achievement but a recent 2013 study show that professional athletes don't just have better cognitive ability for the demand of their respective sports,their brains are better in adapting at a fundamental level.The brains of professional athletes show cortical thickening in several regions and in a 3D Perpetual Motion study professional athletes outperform university students by a huge margin.Nature.com
Posts: 121 | From: Guyana | Registered: Mar 2012
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quote:Originally posted by Mike111: Not to suggest that education is not important, but clearly, it's absolute relevance to intelligence is non existent.
THE RICHEST MEN IN THE WORLD
(Not to suggest that wealth is a measure of intelligence either).
Carlos Slim, Chairman of Grupo Carso, National Autonomous University of Mexico dropout.
Bill Gates of Microsoft - Harvard dropout.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook - Harvard dropout.
This has nothing to do with being College Educated. Your IQ is formed by the time you exit high school. It's during these pre-College years of schooling that IQ is developed.
To be a good businessman has nothing to do with IQ--but it does depend on wealth. Yea, Zuckerberg and Gates are COLLEGE dropouts, but their parents had the money to bankroll their business projects. You can't start a company with zero money.
The major College educated people who make money are Lawyers and Accountants. They make money off the businessmen.
Gates & Zucks success in business has far less to do with their intelligence or financial status versus their belonging to the "albino Club" and being affiliates of the various system organizations who invest heavily in companies that help them in maintaining the status quo.
For example, the success of Facebook is due to the use it is to government surveillance over US citizens. For every 10 people posting on Facebook, 2 are LEO, 2 are FBI/CIA and 1 is a spider bot. Microsoft's success is similar because the government wanted one dominate operating system that the NSA could easily backdoor and get at anyone's information whenever they wanted.
The success of these two companies has very little to do with the individual business acumen of Gates or Zuckerman and more to do with their willingness and compliance to serving the government’s social agenda and needs.
You are 100% correct in that the majority of big business owners owe their success to the financial resources they draw on, usually inherited from their parents. For example, Donald Trump is one of the most incompetent business people you'll ever encounter. So how did he get to be one of America's most known businessmen? Because he inherited large financial resources from his father. But even still, even finances can't cover up incompetency..
-1990 - One of his casinos is forced into temporary bankruptcy as Trump faces huge debts.
-1992 - Two of Trump's casinos file for bankruptcy in order to restructure debts.
-November 21, 2004 - Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
-February 17, 2009 - Trump Entertainment Resorts files for bankruptcy. The Trump Organization owns 28% of Trump Entertainment Resorts.
Trump is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Finance
Neither of the two shoe-ins above could hold a candle in intelligence to a true financial genius, Reginald F. Lewis, the nation's 1st true black billionaire.
In 1987, with funding from Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert, Lewis purchased the international foods division of Beatrice Companies for $985 million, renaming it TLC Beatrice International. The new corporation included 64 companies in 31 countries with revenues of more than $1 billion. At the time, it was the largest offshore transaction in business history. Lewis won the deal against Wall st corporate raiders, Sherman-Lehman. TLC Beatrice International in 1987, became the largest business in America run by an African American and the first company to reach a billion dollars in sales, with a black man at its head.
Lewis was so intelligent the Wall Street Jews murdered him for snatching business deals out of their greedy hands. To get rid of Lewis, The Jews afflicted him with a ultra rare form of brain cancer that in 30 years, has hardly been observed again.
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: This has nothing to do with being College Educated. Your IQ is formed by the time you exit high school. It's during these pre-College years of schooling that IQ is developed.
Clyde, like them, you are equating Intelligence with "SCHOOLING".
An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence.
Therefore the logical conclusion is that someone who has never been to school cannot be intelligent.
I believe that to be patently false.
Clyde, for all your education, you wouldn't last a day in their world.
So which of you is truly the most intelligent?
LOL. Yes I would. I have prepared myself, my wife and my children for a return to the wild , after some future natural disaster since the 1970's . This is because I have studied enough history to know that America is a great deceiver. At anytime the weather, earthquakes or other events will come and put us back to the stone age.
You just don't get it. Human beings do not operate off instinct or innate behaviors. We are taught how to survive beginning with our parents.
Intelligence is relative. In the Namibian Bush your teachers are elders, and leaders of the secret society. They school youth in the knowledge of the natural world . Knowledge of the natural world would be a hunter-gatherer's IQ.
The book-schooled IQ, is representative of how we are judged in the West. Our schooling, rather than being formed by understanding the natural world, is founded on formal schooling in what we call the three Rs, or apprenticeship prior to obtaining a trade. As a result, both knowledge of nature and formal institutional learning of the 3 Rs require teachers and schooling.
Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Ponsford: Yeah somehow people only correlate intelligence with academic achievement but a recent 2013 study show that professional athletes don't just have better cognitive ability for the demand of their respective sports,their brains are better in adapting at a fundamental level.The brains of professional athletes show cortical thickening in several regions and in a 3D Perpetual Motion study professional athletes outperform university students by a huge margin.Nature.com
Of course professional athletes have great perceptual motor skills. This results from years of training and experience.
I know this because I played Defensive End in High School and Linebacker in College. I performed well because the things I did on the field had become automatic due to my coach schooling me on how to play my positions.
Intelligence is more than academic achievement. There are many different types of intelligence.
The IQ test was invented in France to ensure that the well-to-do would be assured employment since the children of the wealthy were homeschooled by tutors and/ or attended the best schools.
There is not a single type of intelligence . Intelligence is a combination of a number of behaviors including :
• The capacity to acquire knowledge • The ability to think and reason abstractly • The capability for solving novel problems • Aptitude- the capacity to acquire knowledge
Generally intelligence is not the result of genetics. Intelligence is nurtured because it is the result of environment influences. As a result, intelligence is more than an IQ. Eventhough we know what intelligence is, intelligence does not originate in a vacuum it is affected by many factors including:
• Both heredity and environment • Intelligence is dynamic and changes over time • Enriched and poor learning environments • School experience • Early stimulation
As a result, human beings have to be taught how to live. It is this schooling that forms our IQ. No matter how you may want to deny the role of schooling in learning—this is how human beings learn to survive no matter where they live.
People acquire knowledge, skills and rules through interactions between one's environment and others. Knowledge is co-constructed by children (student, novice)+ adults (teachers, sage) + the environment. It is from these teachers we learn our Culture and Language.
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Teaching With Documents: The Many Faces of Paul Robeson How many people do you know who are athletes? How about an athlete who has won 15 varsity letters in four different sports? An athlete who has also played professional football while at the same time being valedictorian and teaching Latin at his university? Does this athlete also hold a law degree? How many scholar-athlete performers can you name? Concert artists who have sold out shows around the world and who can perform in more than 25 different languages ? Does this scholar-athlete-performer also act in Shakespearean and Broadway plays and in movies? Can you identify a scholar-athlete-performer who is also an activist for civil and human rights? Someone who petitioned the president of the United States of America for an anti-lynching law, promoted African self-rule, helped victims of the Spanish civil war, fought for India's independence, and championed equality for all human beings? Did this scholar-athlete-performer-activist also have to endure terrorism, banned performances, racism, and discrimination throughout his career?
Paul Robeson was all these things and more. He was the son of a former slave, born and raised during a period of segregation, lynching, and open racism. He earned a four-year scholarship to Rutgers University, making him the third African American to attend the school. There he was a member of the prestigious Cap and Skull Honor Society, played four varsity sports (baseball, football, basketball, and track), won speech and debate tournaments, and managed to graduate valedictorian of his class. After graduation, Robeson applied his athletic abilities to a short career in professional football. Aside from his prowess on the gridiron, he earned a law degree and changed the direction of his career. His legal career was cut short, however, after a secretary refused to take dictation from him solely because of the color of his skin. He left law and turned to his childhood love of acting and singing. Robeson starred in Shakespeare's Othello, the musical Showboat, and films such as Jericho and Proud Valley. He was one of the top performers of his time, earning more money than many white entertainers. His concert career spanned the globe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Moscow, New York, and Nairobi.
Yet Robeson, who travelled the world and was purported to speak more than a dozen languages, became increasingly active in the rights of exploited workers, particularly blacks in the South, and he associated himself with communist causes from Africa to the Soviet Union.
Robeson's travels opened his awareness to the universality of human suffering and oppression. He began to use his rich bass voice to speak out for independence, freedom, and equality for all people. He believed that artists should use their talents and exposure to aid causes around the world. "The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice," he said. This philosophy drove Robeson to Spain during the civil war, to Africa to promote self-determination, to India to aid in the independence movement, to London to fight for labor rights, and to the Soviet Union to promote anti-fascism. It was in the Soviet Union where he felt that people were treated equally. He could eat in any restaurant and walk through the front doors of hotels, but in his own country he faced discrimination and racism everywhere he went.
Albert Einstein met Paul Robeson when the famous singer and actor came to perform at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in 1935. The two found they had much in common. The 20-year friendship between Einstein and Robeson is another story that has not been told. In his biography, Einstein refers to his friend, Paul Robeson as, a great man.
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