April 7^th

Pat Buchanan, in a recent column, has cited a 1972 article in “The Atlantic” by Richard Herrnstein which Pat claims “demonstrates that heredity rather than environment determines intelligence.” First, the article is now 44 years old and badly out of date; second it didn’t demonstrate any such thing even when it was written. Until everyone is raised in the same way with exactly the same environment we cannot possibly know what contribution genes make to intelligence and we are a long way from anything like that. Then we have a little problem called epigenetics. This means that the expression of certain genes is altered by the chemical environment in which they find themselves. For example, we humans have the necessary genes to develop tails, that’s right—tails. Neither we nor the other great apes have tails but the genes are there for us to produce them.

But Pat is not really concerned with genetics; his major message is to advise us about a very selective high school, the Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County. This place is elite indeed. It teaches all kinds of upper level college material, even differential equations. It admits just three percent of its applicants. That’s much more selective than any of the Ivy League colleges.

Now Pat makes his primary point: the largest ethnic group admitted there are Asians the smallest group are Blacks; the Caucasians fall in between. Pat claims that Asians are taking over and he asks why: is it their work ethic; is it that their parents monitor their homework? He seems to have no answer. But then he did start this piece by citing Herrnstein on genetics and intelligence.

This premier high school is attempting to diversify its admissions program. Pat says that, “This is bureaucratic gobbledygook for saying they are going to start looking closer at the race and ethnicity of student applicants to bring in some and reject others. Race discrimination against Asians is coming to Fairfax County.” Not necessarily!

First we need to know the criteria for admission to this school. If they accept only three percent of applicants then they are probably turning away some academically well qualified students for trivial, non-academic reasons: does the kid who spends summers in France get the nod over an equally well qualified kid who has never been out of Virginia?  What evidence is there that this student will be the higher achiever? There may be dozens of equivalent hurdles that have no validity whatever against an academic criteria.

Very selective colleges have the same problem: they could admit another, and perhaps still another, equally well qualified first year class, so in an effort to winnow the applicant pile they start using admission criteria of questionable, or no, validity. Will this effort lead to more Caucasian and Black students? Possibly not, but the problem could be solved by helping these students meet legitimate criteria for admission to an academically demanding school. Buchanan would prefer to rant about the possibility that discrimination could be used to equalize the ethnic groups rather than work to help improve the groups that are under-represented.