I'm so glad we can talk about it on YT. This is an obvious problem that cannot be properly addressed without research. Honest research. And as an educator I can see how efforts to reduce the achievement gap have been unsuccessful and detrimental to ALL involved bc the only solution they came up with is to lower the standards for All. Horrible for the future of this country,(reply>), @William Parker I believe it's parents responsibility to make studying attractive to children so that it doesn't have to be "enforced", but even if it is, it should be for the benefit of the children bc it is the main/major way you can tap into the neuroplasticity fountain. The quality of education again will always be important.<br>The question of intelligence is the question of psychology, and only recently we have developed tools to look at genes   and other molecular bio mechanisms to study it, but in the West it is a minefield bc of all the PC. This stops us from knowing what really is driving the change in addition to social disparity. If that PC went away, I'm sure neurobiology would study that more. There are generic studies of intelligence already but I don't know if they compared any groups. Denying differences in intelligence is like denying differences in height or in any other biologically influenced characteristic. Yes, there is plasticity but for each of us it will be within a limited range defined by the biology,(reply>), @Tatiana S Okay, that is a valid point indeed. Some parents enforcing education on their children is an example. Another doubt I have is that it seems IQ is only discussed in soft science like psychology. It seems that biologists and neuroscientists don't have much interest in it. I presume it's not entirely because of social pressure? As the guy mentioned scientists in the field are not persuaded by him. Newer discoveries in neuroscience shows the brain is more malleable instead of the opposite, it doesn't really align with theories in psychology. Could this indicate that there's not much point in discussing IQ? Or it's a wrong aspect to approach the gap problem? And obviously some politicians will abuse the findings to instead minimize the potential instead of maximizing it for certain groups of people because of his beliefs.,(reply>), @William Parker no, we should not let everyone pass bc it is dangerous. Would you be ok with a person with low intelligence fly a plane? No. Intelligence is genetic but it will flourish to the extent the environment allows it to flourish but not above the inherited capacity for neuroplasticity and learning. That means if your limit is arbitrary 110 IQ points, we need to create the conditions for you to capitalize on that IQ, but you will probably never be a grand master. If your IQ is 90, we need to create ways to make your life meaningful and allow you achieve whatever maximum potential you can with this IQ. But this will never be a person who has an MD or a MS or a PhD simply because they have different processing speed, different memory capacity etc. Letting people like that to get higher Ed is not only useless, it is cruel. There will always be a distribution of IQs. Goal is to invest in your parental education and childhood education across all people so that everyone reaches their maximum potential but it will never ever be the same. Some will stop at high school, some are BA, some at MS etc...,(reply>), ​@Tatiana S Exactly so for the economic differences. But I think we should view education as a welfare for the people. Like the guy said, all things being equal, is more intelligence or less is better? If we separate the wheat from the chaff with a high standard, the chaff will be abandoned, thus keeping their intelligence at a low level. If we admit them to the higher education, their intelligence would bound to increase, even if it doesn't reach to a certain level. Moreover, ideally we <i>should</i> let everyone pass. Ideally everyone should have the same safety net like the rich. We only filter people because education is still limited resource. And I did not see academia degrading because of letting the not-so-good people in. Small circles will always form and the chance of geniuses popping up will only increase when there's more intelligence.,(reply>), @William Parker so you deserved to fail the standards! If the standards were low then everyone would pass, and there would no filter for who has knowledge and who doesn't! That's vital in life. Especially in higher Ed where standards are also falling and diplomas in many fields no longer mean anything at all. Moreover, school is long and if there is only one misstep as you claim, years in school will wash it away, but if you are constantly misstepping then it is a reflection on your intelligence, character etc. No doubt rich, especially no so smart but born rich have if so much easier. They have a permanent safety net, and I completely disagree that high SES only reflects high IQ. It can reflect many things especially when the wealth is inherited. That is why I also don't agree that compensatory programs wouldn't work. Pre school and early school environments are so different for the rick and the poor in this country, that if you are a bright kid born in the hood your chances of capitalizing on these genes are significantly lower than if you are born into a rich fam on upper east/west side whatever.