And all these years I thought my kids were going to be stupid just because there are so many of them.
That’s a relief, I guess.
Well, that would be a relief if the study didn’t go on to proclaim, “Low IQ Parents Create Large Families."
So now when rude people count the kids when we’re out in public and then ask us if we’re crazy, we can answer, “No. We just have low IQs.”
This study was first published nine years ago, but as a low IQ parent to a large family, I hadn’t come across it before. Or maybe it’s because I’m the busy working mother of a large family. Either way, the result is the same: I’m nine years late weighing in on this. But I will weigh in on it, regardless, because intelligence in America is a subject I’ve often pondered over. Actually, I’ve seriously stressed out over it because there are so many unintelligent young people in our society, and they will be the policy makers and lawyers and doctors and teachers of tomorrow. For that matter, I’ve met plenty of people in these types of positions today who are incompetent and unintelligent.
The information I need to draw strong conclusions on this matter is not available to me without heading to the nearest university and hitting the scholarly journals, something I won’t be doing anytime soon. I would like to know, however, how many large families and how many “normal-sized” families were followed for this study, and how many children, on average, the large and normal sized families had. I would like to know where they found the participants for this study. Face it, if they paid participants, they’d be more likely to find families that were low-income, which is also associated with low IQ. So, I would also want to know the average income of both sized families. Race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion were not mentioned, either, and these factors also influence IQ.
The results of the study that I have been able to find do not give any indication what percentage of the children from large families were found to have low IQs, normal IQs, and high IQs. There was no report as to the IQs of children from “normal-sized” families, nor was I able to find out what they considered “low IQ.” My guess is an IQ under 100 would be considered low, and above 100 would be considered high.
My opinion is that the majority of Americans have low IQs. IQ is not stagnant and can be raised by things like going to graduate school, doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku, and learning a foreign language. On the flip side, then, I would assume that you can also lower your IQ by watching stupid television shows, playing certain (most) video games, and spending too much time on some Internet sites, particularly on social networking sites like MySpace and You Tube.
Most of the high school and college students I’ve taught are not readers. I know this because it’s one of the first questions I ask when a new class starts. I spend a lot of my time encouraging and requiring students to read, but it’s a losing battle. They weren’t brought up to read. Their parents don’t read. They don’t read well. I’m very upset when I have students read aloud and they stumble over words that they should have mastered in 2nd grade. Remember, I teach 10th and 11th graders, some honors classes, 12th grade AP students, college prep courses, and college level English Comp and Literature classes. The vast majority of students in each of these classes cannot read at the appropriate level and are, in fact, reading far below where they should.
In 2005, I read an article by Sam Dillon in the New York Times entitled “Literacy Falls for Graduates From College, Testing Finds” that I found greatly upsetting, but not surprising. It stated,
When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation's college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. But on the 2003 test, only 31 percent of the graduates demonstrated those high-level skills. There were 26.4 million college graduates.
The college graduates who in 2003 failed to demonstrate proficiency included 53 percent who scored at the intermediate level and 14 percent who scored at the basic level, meaning they could read and understand short, commonplace prose texts.
Three percent of college graduates who took the test in 2003, representing some 800,000 Americans, demonstrated "below basic" literacy, meaning that they could not perform more than the simplest skills, like locating easily identifiable information in short prose. (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/16literacy.html?ei=5088&en=0e36586fe81ccdb3&ex=1292389200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1134784871-U7g5x6gt0q+4+Khj28BJvQ)
The article quotes Grover J. Whitehurst, the director of an institute within the Department of Education that helped oversee the testing. Whitehurst said that in part the decline could be blamed on “a rising number of young Americans [who have] spent their free time watching television and surfing the Internet.” He also surmised that “substantial declines in reading for pleasure” are “showing up in our literacy levels.”
My point is that many Americans are unintelligent. I’m working from memory here because I can’t find any Internet sources I trust. (I could go out to the garage and dig out my old psych texts from college, but they’re outdated, anyway.) The average IQ is between 85 and 115, with 100 being the most common score. IQs of 50-70 indicate mild mental retardation. 115-124 is considered above average, while 125-134 is gifted, 135-144 is highly gifted, and 145 and above is genius. Americans are not participating in activities that would raise their IQs. They’re participating in activities that dumb them down. Turn on any TV channel right now and you’ll see what I mean. (Okay, not any channel. Some channels have quality programming, but you still shouldn’t watch them nonstop.)
You may have noticed that I’m spending much more time than is normal for me blogging today. This is because my online Intro to Lit class turned in their essays in which they write a statement of theme and explore how the different literary elements work to help the reader understand the theme. I have twenty students who turned in their essays. I promised myself I’d grade five essays a day so I could be through in four days. I get irritated and worn out reading the essays. I’ve graded five so far, and the highest score was an 80%. I simply can’t get myself motivated to grade today’s five essays. My students in my online classes usually write at a higher level than the students I encounter in the face-to-face community college classes I teach. I don’t know why that is, but still, they aren’t writing as well as they should as college students. If you’d like to get an idea of the average writing skills of my high school and college students, go to any online newspaper, pick an article, and read through the comments left by readers. Admire the spelling, the grammar, and the logic that go into these. Of course, people who don’t read can’t write well. They have nothing to model their writing after.
Another complaint I have about many people I’ve met is that they’re very willing to believe anything they hear on TV. Hey, it’s easier than doing a little research and thinking for yourself. Besides, if you’re not intelligent enough to “read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences,” research is a waste of time for you, anyway.
Now to get back to my original topic: Low IQ parents create large families. Well, low IQ parents also create small families. Bottom line, most people have low IQs, or at least act like they do and raise their children like they do. Therefore, Rob and I have pledged not to stop at nine children because we have to outnumber the idiots out there.
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