The Atlantic - The War on Stupid People
it seems safe to say that no more than one in three American high-school students is capable of hitting the College Board’s benchmark. Quibble with the details all you want, but there’s no escaping the conclusion that most Americans aren’t smart enough to do something we are told is an essential step toward succeeding in our new, brain-centric economy—namely, get through four years of college with moderately good grades.
That leaves us with early education, which, when done right—and for poor children, it rarely is—seems to largely overcome whatever cognitive and emotional deficits poverty and other environmental circumstances impart in the first years of life (3 or earlier). … while the results haven’t proved that students get a lasting IQ boost in the absence of enriched education in the years after preschool, measures of virtually every desirable outcome typically correlated with high IQ remain elevated for years and even decades—including better school grades, higher achievement-test scores, higher income, crime avoidance, and better health.