Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count by Richard E. Nisbett (PDF)

Description

“[Nisbett] weighs in forcefully and articulately . . . [using] a thoroughly appealing style to engage . . . throughout.”―Publishers Weekly Who are smarter, Asians or Westerners? Are there genetic explanations for group differences in test scores? From the damning research of The Bell Curve to the more recent controversy surrounding geneticist James Watson’s statements, one factor has been consistently left out of the equation: culture. In the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, world-class social psychologist Richard E. Nisbett takes on the idea of intelligence as biologically determined and impervious to culture with vast implications for the role of education as it relates to social and economic development. Intelligence and How to Get It asserts that intellect is not primarily genetic but is principally determined by societal influences.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Nisbett argues that a variety of social, cultural, and economic factors can significantly affect a child’s IQ, and suggests ways to improve intelligence scores, as well as grades, by manipulating those factors.” ― Chronicle Review”A hugely important analysis of the determinants of IQ. . . . A ‘must-read.’” ― Daniel Osherson, professor of psychology, Princeton University About the Author Richard E. Nisbett is Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and Research Professor at Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. He has taught courses in social psychology, cultural psychology, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary psychology. His research focuses on how people from different cultures think, perceive, feel, and act in different ways. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association and the William James Fellow Award of the American Psychological Society and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The answer is YES, according to Richard E. Nesbitt, who presents a stack of compelling research and logic to arrive at this conclusion, which, of course, flies in the face of traditional hereditary beliefs. His theory is that all humans start life with about identical IQs. Then the family, the neighborhood, the culture, and the school, can each either provide encouragement to increase IQ or apathy to lower IQ.I especially appreciated his clear research findings, bracketed below:[“A lower-class child who grows up in an upper-middle-class family has an IQ 12 to 18 points higher on average than the lower-class child who grows up in a lower-class family.”] The components of class differences that affect IQ: “genes, prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal biological factors; and all social factors associated with class, including quality of neighborhoods and schools and parenting practices.” Nesbitt states that genetics must be a minor contribution to the IQ gap since 12-18 points is the purely environmental contribution.[The achievement gap between the lowest 25 percent and highest 25 percent of Americans is similar to that in developing countries, not developed countries.] What is the solution? He feels that it is much more than the federal government regulation of schools. And that stimulation and support for individual achievement must come from families and neighborhoods.[Although Asian Americans account for only 2 percent of our population, they constitute 20 percent of students at Harvard and 45 percent at Berkeley.] Success in East Asia is a family affair, not mainly a matter of individual pride and status. A child achieves to strengthen the family–both economically and socially.[Ashkenazi Jews, who represent 2 percent of the American population, received between 27 (all Jewish) and 40 (all Jewish plus one-half Jewish) percent of all Nobel Prizes in science awarded to Americans. Jews comprise 33 percent of Ivy League students.] There are certain cultural factors often invoked to explain this. Also, exceptionally strong family ties place unrelenting demands on children. “Jews value intelligence, the intellectual life, and achievement.”My experiences while living in foreign countries confirm this connection between family cohesion and successful students. I found that in English schools with enrollments mixed between English speaking students and English, as a second language, students, the latter nearly always surpassed the former in academic performance. These students from the Middle East, East Asia, and India all had something in common. Each evening after dinner, gathering at the dining room table, the mother, father, and children reviewed homework and prepared for upcoming tests with each student.Nesbitt’s investigation reveals that we Americans must somehow raise our lower socioeconomic families to higher levels in order to provide a supportive environment for students. Unfortunately, the obvious first steps are the federal takeover of our schools and required national testing. This would eliminate the yawning gap of school and teacher qualities between rich and poor. Today, there is another gap–industry requires certain skilled types that our schools are not providing. This leads to youth hopelessness and their turning to crime. If we raise education levels of lower socioeconomic schools, their higher competitive standards will better prepare graduates for employment and cut our prison population.

⭐I bought this book based one some gushing reviews and hoping it might do some good for my parenting skills. The main thrust of the book is to dissect the question of whether IQ is a useful test, and if so, whether it comes from your genes or your environment. The author piles on a mountain of evidence that while genes matter, the environment matters at least as much. If you are willing to buy that proposition at the start, then you can skip five of the first 6 chapters without serious loss. In fact the Epilogue nicely summarizes all of this information in just a few pages, so you should just read that first. The most interesting section of these chapters analyzes how certain types of analytical intelligence have actually been improving for the general population over the past few decades due to increased levels of schooling and earlier teaching of symbolic reasoning.Chapter 4 talks about school as an environment and the main actionable comment is don’t let your kid have a rookie teacher.Chapter 7 talks about how poverty conditions greatly hurt IQ and this information will be quite important for people with a policy interest.One of the main points of Chapters 4 and 7 is that certain computer-based programs are highly effective at improving IQ for a fairly low price.Chapters 8 and 9 discuss the disproportionate success of Asian-American and Jewish people. Chapter 8 declares that Asians have normal IQ scores, but they work so hard that they effectively add (e.g. 15 points of) IQ and that makes a huge difference. There is a discussion of differences in Asian and American thinking styles that concludes Asians make good engineers and Americans make good scientists.Chapter 9 says that Ashkenazi Jewish people *might* actually have a small genetic advantage due to brain anatomy but there is not enough evidence to prove that for sure; Nisbett asserts that, like Asian households, Jewish households emphasize hard work on studying, and this is probably an important reason for their relative success.Far from endorsing any particular culture or race, Nesbitt points out that there were moments in history when many different cultures – Ancient Arabs, Spanish people, English people, Chinese scholars, etc. – became the most prolific in the world at intellectual achievement. This adds fuel to his point that culture matters.Overall, Nisbett makes a powerful argument that HARD WORK significantly affects intelligence and that culture, family, schooling and other environmental factors greatly affect hard work and thus can determine intelligence. Therefore, he feels we should not give up any group, because enough of intelligence (or at least +/- 15 points of IQ plus a bunch of inangibles like self-discipline and practical intelligence) is determined by our environment that how we treat people will make a substantial difference in their ultimate success.Chapter 10 finally gets to parenting and what you can do to improve the intelligence of your child, which comes down to: praising their hard work! Plus a bunch of minor suggestions, which you can read for yourself.If you have read Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers recently as I did (also on my Kindle!), the framework here is completely consistent with his idea: working longer and harder than average is essential to being more successful than average.If you have not read Outiers yet, then go read it as it is a lot more fun than this book. If you have read Outliers but worried that it lacked academic rigor, then this book should interest you greatly. And if you think that people are either born smart or not, then this book will convince you that how you treat kids will still make a big difference to their future success.

⭐interesting and complicated view on what intelligence is.after you read this book and someone calls you dumb, you can recite the 5 main principles of what defines intelligence and nerd the crap out of them.

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