The Bell Curve, Intelligence And Class Structure In American Life

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African American students are less likely to take to take advanced mathematics classes as a result of tracking. Coincidently, according to research conducted at Boston College, family income was the best indicator of scores on standardized tests. If someone connects all the dots it becomes quite clear how our education system upholds racism. Once again, I will come back to the example of Chicago Schools. As stated earlier income level is usually the best indicator of how kids will score on standardized tests. When looking at Chicago neighborhoods and especially schools which are segregated based on income level. Students who score higher will be set on the fast track and be put in advanced classes. Ironically the kids who scored lower were …show more content…

Herrnstein and Charles Murray because although I disagree with what the authors argue there are evident truths present in this book. The authors argue that there are differences in the intelligence levels of ethnic groups, “Another taboo Gee that intelligence levels differ among ethnic groups. This is already well-known and widely discussed among psychometricians and other scholars” (Herrnstein & Murray 15). This isn’t due to some biological reason, but rather because resources and opportunities are not allocated equally to ethnic groups. However, with ideas like eugenics and other biological superiority mindsets racist policies have been put in place. People who believe that someone is biologically less intelligent will have little motivation to spend resources on them. In fact, to them it seems like a waste of time and money. No one would ever admit that these ideas persist today, but when one examines the discrepancies in the quality of education given to the rich versus to the poor it becomes evident. Especially when the demographic of people who hold most of the wealth are white. However, not all of what Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray say can be discounted. In fact, they point out that measures of intelligence are limited, “Measures of intelligence have reliable statistical relationships with important social phenomena, but they are a limited tool for deciding what to make of any given individual” (Herrnstein & Murray 27). They repeat this many times, while they attempt to clarify their research their data is very outdated and as result the statistics are skewed. Many people have used books like The Bell Curve, Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life to justify their ideas and

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