The egalitarian ideal is a society in which every child has an equal chance for success. Not until Professor R.J. Herrnstein's famous article "I.Q.", in the September 1971 _Atlantic Monthly_ [ https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/1971-herrnstein.pdf ], were we warned that progress toward the equalization of opportunity is, in fact, progress toward a *hereditary* "meritocracy".
The argument goes like this: as environmental influences (education, for instance) become more similar for everyone, they come to matter less than inherited characteristics. And intelligence (with which many other qualities are closely correlated) is largely inherited. The I.Q. test is in fact a powerful predictor of success, in that a high I.Q. is a prerequisite for high-status occupations. Thus, social mobility tends toward social rigidity, with certain able families perpetually at the top, and certain dull ones at the bottom. Drawing on an enormous body of evidence, this book offers a careful - and fascinating - proof of the argument and points out its many implications for our future. Dispute over Dr. Herrnstein's data has dwindled since 1971, but orthodoxy dies hard. His introductory chapter (abridged in _Commentary_, April 1973) is an account of the extraordinary reaction of liberal and radical intellectuals to his conclusions, which challenge the basic assumptions of modern social thinking. Lucid, elegant and compassionate, _I.Q. in the Meritocracy_ closes with a plea for an assessment of human potential uncompromised by ideology. "The false belief in human equality", Dr. Herrnstein writes, "leads to rigid, inflexible expectations, often doomed to frustration, thence to anger. Ever more shrilly, we call on our educational institutions to make everyone the same, when we should be trying to mold our institutions around the inescapable limitations and varieties of human ability."
R.J. Herrnstein, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, is at work on a textbook with Professor Roger Brown. Articles by him have appeared in several national periodicals.
[See also _The Bell Curve_, Herrnstein & Murray 1994; _The Bell Curve Debate, Jacoby 1995; and _Coming Apart_, Murray 2012.]