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The NLS Annotated Bibliography - User Submission Form
BELKE, TERRY W. A Synopsis of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life The Alberta Journal of Educational Research 41,3 (Sept 1995): 238-256 Cohort(s): NLSY79 ID Number: 2628 Publisher: University of Alberta Press Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. In an overview of a special journal issue (see related abstracts in SA 44:2), "Canadian Perspectives on The Bell Curve," each chapter of Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life(see IRPS No. 79/95c02104) is summarized, and illustrative excerpts are included. Herrnstein and Murray trace the history of intelligence and caution readers against generalizing from the aggregate to the individual and overemphasizing the importance and goodness of intelligence. They assert that cognitive partitioning emerged in US society through education and occupation, 1900-1990, and has resulted in the cognitive elite becoming richer, more segregated, and more inclined to intermarry. Data on non-Latino white populations from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth are used to interpret and predict relationships of cognitive classes with poverty, unemployment, family problems, welfare dependency, crime and citizenship as well as education and affirmative action. Ethnic and racial differences in cognitive ability and social behavior are discussed. Generally, it is found that the white cognitive elite perform well in all social, moral, educational and economic areas. For people to live together harmoniously, despite differences in intelligence that will inevitably limit or enable their achievements, it is advocated that US society return to its founders' belief in human equality and the pursuit of happiness, conceptualized as allowing individuals to have equal rights to find valued places in traditional communities, regardless of their cognitive ability. Moreover, simplified governing by the cognitive elite should enable persons of lower cognitive ability to find living a moral life more desirable and easy. 1 Reference. V. Wagener (Copyright 1996, Sociological Abstracts, Inc., all rights reserved.) Search returned 1 items. Search Start: 17:41:25 Search Finish: 17:41:25
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