When you were a little child, you were told, “All you need to do to succeed is work hard at school and anything is possible.” But is that really the case? The truth is that yes, the saying is true, however, it’s significantly far more likely to remain exactly what it is, just a saying, if you are from a poorer social background. In essence, children who are born into poorer families are at a huge disadvantage in life from the second they are born. Even things such as good parenting, capability and IQ cannot outweigh the effects of a poorer social class.
Firstly, let’s define social class. How is it weighed? Social class is generally measured through income, occupation and education. There are many different arguments on social class and …show more content…
The study has also shown that a parent’s social class has a larger impact on a child’s school performance than good parenting. The research took race and family size factors into conclusion so there would be no bias. A great example of this would be the famous Lewis Terman test. Lewis Terman, a professor at Stanford university, was fascinated with IQs, he believed that IQ was one of the most important thing a person can possess and was the driving force behind success. He believed that children with incredibly high IQs would be at the forefront of the world, the politicians, professors and etc. Lewis decided to do a study on children with extremely high IQs. He selected about 1500 children, in the state of California, with IQs above 140. To take that their into perspective, the average IQ is 100. Less than 1% of the entire population has an IQ above 140. If you had met these children, you would have been blown away by how incredibly gifted they were. He called the children, “Termites” Lewis carefully tracked them until they were adults, in fact about 200 termites are still alive today and are still actively being recorded. When the termites were still in school, whenever Lewis looked at the newspapers, he was hard pressed not to find the termites being mentioned for some sort of prizes …show more content…
Why were the lower social class termites so much more likely to fail compared to their counterparts? They certainly weren’t missing smarts. They were all by far more intelligent than required, IQ wise, to be successful. What they were truly missing was the practical intelligence required to thrive in a society. Practical intelligence is “the ability that individuals use to find the best fit between themselves and the demands of the environment.” (Human Intelligence, http://www.intelltheory.com/practicalintelligence.shtml)” Basically "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect." (Practical Intelligence in Everyday Life, Robert J. Sternberg) So how come the poorer class termites were lacking this ability and the higher class termites were not? The answer is fairly simple. The environment that the poorer class termites grew up in does not allow for much opportunity to develop these skills. Studies from Indiana University have shown that there are surprisingly only two distinct parenting styles. Race, family size and even adopted children were taken into equation. The two styles turn out that they are almost perfectly correlated with social class. The higher social class parents were more involved in a child’s school life. They ask about their children’s teacher, friends and most importantly teach them to ask questions if
Firstly, let’s define social class. How is it weighed? Social class is generally measured through income, occupation and education. There are many different arguments on social class and …show more content…
The study has also shown that a parent’s social class has a larger impact on a child’s school performance than good parenting. The research took race and family size factors into conclusion so there would be no bias. A great example of this would be the famous Lewis Terman test. Lewis Terman, a professor at Stanford university, was fascinated with IQs, he believed that IQ was one of the most important thing a person can possess and was the driving force behind success. He believed that children with incredibly high IQs would be at the forefront of the world, the politicians, professors and etc. Lewis decided to do a study on children with extremely high IQs. He selected about 1500 children, in the state of California, with IQs above 140. To take that their into perspective, the average IQ is 100. Less than 1% of the entire population has an IQ above 140. If you had met these children, you would have been blown away by how incredibly gifted they were. He called the children, “Termites” Lewis carefully tracked them until they were adults, in fact about 200 termites are still alive today and are still actively being recorded. When the termites were still in school, whenever Lewis looked at the newspapers, he was hard pressed not to find the termites being mentioned for some sort of prizes …show more content…
Why were the lower social class termites so much more likely to fail compared to their counterparts? They certainly weren’t missing smarts. They were all by far more intelligent than required, IQ wise, to be successful. What they were truly missing was the practical intelligence required to thrive in a society. Practical intelligence is “the ability that individuals use to find the best fit between themselves and the demands of the environment.” (Human Intelligence, http://www.intelltheory.com/practicalintelligence.shtml)” Basically "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect." (Practical Intelligence in Everyday Life, Robert J. Sternberg) So how come the poorer class termites were lacking this ability and the higher class termites were not? The answer is fairly simple. The environment that the poorer class termites grew up in does not allow for much opportunity to develop these skills. Studies from Indiana University have shown that there are surprisingly only two distinct parenting styles. Race, family size and even adopted children were taken into equation. The two styles turn out that they are almost perfectly correlated with social class. The higher social class parents were more involved in a child’s school life. They ask about their children’s teacher, friends and most importantly teach them to ask questions if