IQ predicted by parents white collar or blue collar job

[NorhamGardens]

I had to have one of mine assessed by an educational psychologist.

In passing we discussed DC's school, he used to work directly for the school.

He said with absolute conviction that a blue collar parent/s were likely to have a child with a much lower IQ and a white collar parent/s a child with a much higher IQ.

It made me wonder how many other professionals in similar fields have similar ideas?

I was very surprised. Surely this is classist and hasn't the 'thinking' behind IQ evolved anyway?

Csn I mention regression to the mean again? Clever parents will not breed clever children who in turn breed clever children and son on for generation after generation. Clever parents may well either have already or obtain social advantages which mean any averagely clever or not so bright children do very well in life or on IQ tests, however.

Or does someone have a reason for mathematics not applying to the IQ test?

Gooftroop I believe that's what recent studies have shown.

I have to admit that I believed many Asian children I came in contact with to be inherently much more intelligent that other children. I then spoke to a mother who was concerned her nearly 5 year old son couldn't yet write clearly (understandably). She told me he had been working through handwriting worksheets for 1-2 hours a night and was showing marked improvement.

It's an isolated example but some cultures & people clearly value education far more than others.

Drive is much more accurate a predictor of success than intelligence, certainly. I'm 'very intelligent' but have no drive at all. My attitude to taking qualifications is "Oh GOD, do I HAVE to?" - so it's not really surprising I only got GCSE's.

Colditz - I've got a degree and professional qualifications but my attitude now to any further qualifications would be 'oh God, do I have to'. Same feeling, just at different life stages. I look at my peers who are doing MBAs or PhDs or whatever and think 'thank fuck I don't need to do that

Totally agree with colditz. Drive is everything. Which is why it's a shame that we are now so pushed into a university education.

For lots of children starting work at 17/18 is far more beneficial, it can be inspiring and rewarding. I would have loathed university I was sick to death with education and going to work completely focussed my mind far more than irrelevant subjects ever managed to do. Dh is the same he walked out of A levels and into a job at 17 and found his niche.

Our children one of whom is truly not University material will struggle to get a foot in the door of any job without a degree but will do very well in the world of work.

Iq is such a narrow construct which fails to take into consideration drive and motivation.

Edam, regression to the mean is a red herring. To the extent that IQ is genetically heritable and complex then it presumably applies but it doesn't undermine the original claim at all, any more than it would undermine a claim that children of tall parents are normally taller than children of short parents.

IQ test not only doesn't take into consideration drive and motivation but also other things such as 'analytical mind' or creativity.

And in fact height taken over a whole population is not regressing to the mean because of other societal and environmental factors in play - people are actually getting taller because of better health, diet etc.

Ahhh but Edam, I've been like that since I was about 9

Let's get it straight about the hypothetical cleaners and doctors.

1: Cleaners might have low, medium, or high IQ.

2: Doctors can only have medium or high IQ, otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to be doctors.

1+2 => Therefore average IQ for doctors is higher. IQ is not everything, but it is what the thread was originlly about.

Women are more likely to be cleamers - does this mean women have lower IQs? No. The high IQ people doing cleaning jobs are most likely women, because high IQ men have better opportunities to become doctors rather than cleaners.

IQ is very complex! One can have a very high IQ in one area and simply not in another.As for blue and white collar......It really depends .I meet doctors ALL the time from poor backgrounds and likewise from wealthier backgrounds.
If you are surrounded by love,dedication and support then you can be whatever you like and IQ doesn't even come into it!!!

Really ibubbly? Actuary, taxi driver? Psychotherapist?
IQ as a measure of pure intellectual ability is hugely overrated, but I think most parents of more than one child have seen that they do have academic/intellectual strong and weak points regardless of upbringing.

IQ quota can be expanded and is limitless and depends on many factors some of which mentioned.Some parents can see their childrens strong and weak points,whilst others only see negatives this is true of any upbring.
Having nephews who are both medical std's and are both studious and really hard working (both were at state school)I would not put them in a high iq bracket,just 2 very simple hard working boys who want to be doctors from quite humble backgrounds.

TrillianAstra... touché!

IQ as tested will always regress towards the mean because it is a average-based index. That's why it's called a quotient.

There is no such thing as an absolute test of intelligence; intelligence is a concept, not a quality in fixed supply.

A gifted & experienced joiner, who left school at 14, would get a lower test result than a cellular biologist who left university at 24. They both understand how wood works, and they are both "intelligent" in common parlance. Neither has the knowledge, skills or talent to do the other's job. But the worker with more education would score better on an IQ test. Because that's how the test works. If the tests were carried out using pieces of wood instead of tick-boxes, your results would be reversed.

(Hit send too soon)

The method of testing, therefore, favours those whose education mirrors that of the people who devise the test. It follows from this that people from a traditionally nurturing, education-based background, will do better on the tests we currently used.

I'm not knocking IQ tests, btw, (mine is high) but they're a blunt tool and they do favour the well-off. Rich people are more likely to do well in IQ tests ... not to be more "intelligent".

Somebody said earlier that you can learn to do well in IQ tests specifically. I have expereince of this. When I left uni, I took an aptitude test for a fast-track programming course. It was supposed to filter for extremely high IQ. I scored an appalling 15%. My lecturer was horrified. He took me through some past papers, coaching me in how the questions worked. On re-sit I scored 96%.

Go figure.

just go online and test your IQ and watch it grow with practice,wow aren't I intelligent-go figure.........

What ItsGrace and lbubbly said. I did far better last time I tried one of those IQ tests than I did when I tried one as a teen. Not because my innate intelligence has changed, evidently, but because I happened to read a book of puzzles so recognised some of the problems, so knew what they were on about. Also, I am far less rebellious now than I was as a teen, so I don't go out of my way to see if there is an equally possible way of grouping the words/objects that isn't the one the examiner wanted...

If there was a straight parent/child correlation, you would expect siblings to be very similar in IQ, which often doesn't happen.

I have done online IQ tests out of curiousity. My score is always low because when I see any question involving numbers I freeze.

I am not stupid but I have no idea of how 'clever' I am.

I hate IQ testing and refused to allow my DS2 to be tested on ethical grounds. As already mentioned they were not developed for the good of mankind, Their purpose was to weed out the 'unfit'.

I have known cases of mothers being subjected to care proceedings regarding their babies based on IQ tests and very little else.

If you are intelligent why do you need to prove it by taking an artificial test? I agree that a high IQ without emotional intelligence is hardly worthwhile.

"So, yes, it's all about the parents, but NOT the parents' genes - the parents' commitment to their children's education".

This was illustrated in a John Humphries BBC 2 programme Unequal Opportunities

He examines the stark educational gap between poor children and more affluent children.

"This attainment gap is a problem that starts very early on, with experts saying that even before turning two, poor children have already fallen significantly behind in development. And when they reach school age, they are on average a year behind; by 14 two years behind; and by 16 half as likely to get five good GCSEs."

The implication being that it's more about environment than genetic inheritance.

John Humphry's article. If you don't have time for iplayer.

One of the most shocking aspects to me was the Stoke study:

"Stoke-on-Trent is one of the UK's most deprived areas. In 2004, they tested a cohort of three-year-old children and found that 64% of them were a year behind the national average."

Inherited intelligence could not account for such a delay. In the programme one of the Stoke evaluation team mentions how the parents in the Stoke study appeared unaware of their children's delayed development - because is was 'normal development' in their community .

Oh that is so sad

In 1966 Bernstein carried out research into educational achievment and class. He found that children from working class homes had grown up with what he called a "restricted code" which basically translates to poor speech, lack of vocab, lack of stimulation, narrow experinces and views and lack of ambition. These children grow up unable to manipulate situations and achieve.

Whilst intelligence may in part be genetic I believe that enviromental factors play a huge part in IQ. Although IQ tests are meant to test raw intelliegence, many questions rely on reading ,making connections, mathematical concepts and no IQ test has yet been developed that doesn't have any cultural bias. There is not a culture free test.

It has been found that children in africa from poor families have few visual spatial skills, this would effect the outcome. IQ testing is not an exact science.

jackstar - I think Humphries is drawing on the Marmot Review that I mentioned early. It is stark and deeply depressing. A working class child can be born incredibly bright but the way we organise society means they will fall behind a less intelligent middle class peer in early childhood ? and stay behind them.

Mrsvincent - tall people don't have even taller children who go on to have even taller children for generations. Just as clever people don't have cleverer children who have even cleverer children. If this was the case, we'd have a society divided between giants and very short people, instead of an average height around which people cluster.

Apart from anything else, sexual reproduction means our genes are mixed and our parents' genes are mixed as were their parents so our patterns of heritability are not straightforward. We aren't copies of our parents.

Second, genes are only part of the story - and possibly only a very small part. See the Marmot Review for just one illustration of this. See bags of work that shows the best predictor of educational achievement is the mother's level of education - if your theory was correct, the father would be just as important as he contributes 49.9% of the genes. (The .9 is because of mitochondrial DNA.)