Arguments for Malleability
Kristof offers several arguments for malleability. First, when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.'s rise by 12 to 18 points. Second, good schooling correlates highly with higher I.Q's. Third, during gaps in schooling (Iike summer vacation) children's I.Q.'s drop or stagnate.
The Social Reasoning
If I.Q. is malleable, and its most sensitive period is early childhood, then one of the best ways to tackle endemic poverty is to engage children during this critical period. Kristof concludes:
"The implication of this new research on intelligence is that the economic-stimulus package should also be an intellectual-stimulus program. By my calculation, if we were to push early childhood education and bolster schools in poor neighborhoods, we just might be able to raise the United States collective I.Q. by as much as one billion points.That should be a no-brainer."The Missing Link
The tacit assumption of Kristof's article is that the environmental factors suppressing intelligence in communities of poverty can be addressed by programs. The logic is simple; the practice is anything but simple. Parents remain the most influential force in child development and education. Early childhood programs can help. Great schools can help. But what defines a great early childhood program or school? Parents. Period. Want to meet a world-class administrator who understands that? Look at Geoffrey Canada. His organization, the Harlem Children's Zone, engages parents before their children are born. They target the highest risk populations before birth in order to engage, empower and involve those parents - and their results are outstanding precisely because it is so much more than a preschool or charter school program. It is the parents.
That is both good news and bad news. It means that programs by themselves can't address the I.Q. gap, the performance gap, or the growing class gaps. However, it also means that the programs that treat parents as the most important stakeholders in education and community life have the potential to profoundly influence I.Q., performance, and opportunity.
The real question is whether we have the courage to say that parents are responsible - and take responsibility for treating them as responsible human beings, and not as people who need to be "fixed." Geoffrey Canada has made that courageous decision. Does anyone else have that courage?
