Having attracted a staggering number of hits, unpublishable comments, and abusive emails by daring to criticise Monty Python in general and The Life of Brian in particular, I have decided to see if I might be on a roll. Not only for that reason, let me put on record my total lack of surprise that IQ has turned out to be a load of rubbish. Who in the world ever imagined that it was anything else?
I have never taken an IQ test in my life, and I question whether anyone who sets any store by them is sufficiently intelligent to be allowed out alone, if at all. The whole thing depends on “mental age”, whatever that may be. The IQ of children in numerous countries has “improved” dramatically over the years when IQ tests have been set, and therefore taught to, in schools; indeed, this never fails to happen.
The publications of Mensa are a particularly rich seam of amusement. “More people than you might think are above average”? I’m guessing about half of them. “One person in twenty is in the top five per cent”? You don’t say! And so on.
But never try and tell the “I have a high IQ” lot any of this. They are even worse than the Oxbridgers. At least you have to do something first to get into Oxbridge and then to get a degree there, even if you do only have to do it at a very early age (there is no excuse for still dining out on it even a very few years, never mind decades, later), and even if it does only make you the equal of the ninety-fifth best Etonian in his year.
You wouldn’t have to, and indeed you never could, do anything to get a high IQ, even if such a thing really existed. Having it would be no cause for congratulation, never mind for self-congratulation or for the creation of an international society for mutual congratulation.
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"They are even worse than the Oxbridgers. At least you have to do something first to get into Oxbridge and then to get a degree there, even if you do only have to do it at a very early age (there is no excuse for still dining out on it even a very few years, never mind decades, later), and even if it does only make you the equal of the ninety-fifth best Etonian in his year."
ReplyDeleteSounds like you failed to get in!
Only applied to Durham. Not straight from school, so not taking a risk, since I already had my A-levels. But even so.
ReplyDeleteContrary to what Oxbridge people seem to believe, there are extremely few Oxbridge rejects at Durham, and far more at certain other places that one could name.
What does an Oxbridge degree really prove? That your parents could afford either the fees or the house prices to send you to one of the hundred feeder schools. So what?
Between them, Oxford and Cambridge admit between 90 and 100 Etonians every year. How good can the ninety-fifth best Etonian in his year possibly be?
None of this was the case while the grammar schools existed. But until they so again, all of this is and will remain the case.