Ideological blindness to the facts on social mobility
Peter Saunders, 26 July 2013
There is an ideological blindness on the left which seems to preclude them from acknowledging any biological basis to cognitive differences. I discuss this in Social Mobility Myths and I experienced it yet again this week when I was a guest on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze.
The programme was discussing meritocracy and, as usual, I suggested that the evidence shows Britain is a remarkably open and fluid society with a lot of movement between classes, up and down, which is driven principally, but not solely, by intelligence and hard work.
Left-wing panel member Matthew Taylor refused to believe it. He expressed incredulity at my position, and at one point said that what I was claiming could not possibly be true “unless you think intelligence varies between classes”.
But this is precisely what I do think. Indeed, I know it. It’s not just the evidence shows it; the logic of a meritocracy requires it to be true.
In a meritocracy, employers will try to select the brightest people for the top positions. There, they meet and pair off with other bright people, and although this does not guarantee their children will be bright (IQ regresses to the mean between generations), the probability is that they will be above average. Mean intelligence levels will as a result be higher among children from middle class parents than those from working class parents. These children then grow up and compete successfully for the top positions, just as their parents did, because they are bright.
The fact that Matthew Taylor had clearly never thought about this is telling. How can you discuss the ethics of meritocracy on national radio if you don’t understand this basic feature of the meritocratic process? Michael Young (who first coined the term in 1958) understood it well enough which is why, as a socialist, he disliked it intensely. Charles Murray is another who understands it – he has drawn attention to the ‘cognitive stratification’ now occurring in the USA and other countries as a result of the expansion of opportunities to all children.
Professor Robert Plomin’s work – showing that exam performance is largely down to a child’s genetic inheritance rather than the quality of their schooling – is hugely important. But I wish him well trying to convince the powers-that-be in this country. David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Alan Milburn, Harriet Harman – they all believe fervently that equal proportions of lower and middle class children should succeed, and that if they don’t, it must be due to unfairness, nepotism etc. Cameron has even announced that his absurd ‘social mobility strategy’ is this government’s top social priority!
So rectifying a problem that doesn’t exist is more important than improving the supply of affordable housing, remedying care failures in the NHS, improving teaching quality in the schools, reducing welfare dependency, sorting out the mess in nursing home care, etc, etc? It makes you want to weep.
Peter Saunders is Professorial Research Fellow (Visiting) at Civitas. His personal website can be found here.
As John Le Carre said recently, it is ridiculous to suggest social mobility is at acceptable levels when there are so many Etonians in government.
Of course a programme called ‘the Moral Maze’ is going to examine the moral arguments!
I don’t think anybody suggested a healthy meritocracy was wrong. The problem arises when it clashes with a healthy democracy and when it is abused to the extent that society is rendered egregiously unequal.
The opinions you espouse tend to ignore the historical, social and economic dimensions of the debate, although your point about early learning for the poor was very good. Privilege has been built on privilege, and no more so than in the UK. Let’s not forget that we need to counteract this. I don’t accept Mr Saunders’ argument about the underclass.
I have heard the program now and I was also disappointed by the discussion in both fronts (the lefty and the other that I am not quite sure what to call).
The discussion was:
a- Too much concerned with the “moral” rather than the benefits of having a healthy meritocracy.
b- Focused (Quite oddly) on the need of removing privileges from the middle classes rather than to offer opportunities for the working classes.
The beloved quotas of lefties, feminists and alike are anathema to reason. Why nobody mentioned that? You cannot blame Oxford and Cambridge for taking up mostly white Protestants (and Chinese…) because they are the most educated (I.e. best) candidates. Why nobody mentioned that?
Let’s allow the upper classes to send their children to Marlborough but let’s provide good state-run schools for the poor that deserve attending one. Why nobody mentioned this alternative?
The fact that the first years of life are the most critical period of education was completely out of the discussion as it was the fact that the vast majority of the poor will not receive a good education during that period.
Why nobody mentioned that the best way to promote social mobility is by hand-picking the best and not by levelling down?
And who was that psicophant of the upper classes contending that it is not right to choose a beautiful and intelligent candidate over a fat and stupid one if the later has “family connections”? If there is someone capable of bringing together Nietzsche and Spinoza as enemies I’ll say it will be that pseudoliterate imbecile.
I listened to your contribution to BBC’s the Moral Maze and was disappointed and as frustrated as Matthew Taylor by your argument. The programme aims to debate ethical issues but you appeared more keen to discuss your research findings. Clearly you were selected for the panel to counter the claims of The Spirit Level, your great nemesis, but this pseudo-scientific evidence was never raised by your interlocutors, probably because it was not deemed suitable for the programme format.
To be fair little progress was made by either Matthew Taylor or Anne McElvoy in engaging you with the ethical issues, for example by considering what society should do if there were no research findings. You were content to rest on your statistics and deflect real debate. Most studies indicate that Britain is becoming a less socially mobile society, with Scandinavian countries near the top, but yours is correct and everybody else is wrong.
Just as time was running out Matthew Taylor did expose part of your underlying belief structure when you contended that there are differences in intelligence between social classes, which for me is another version of the age-old ‘natural order’ argument and I’m sure one which has been covered on countless occasions in the past. Doubtless this is the true motivation for your research, not the facts which can actually be disputed.
I too was disappointed by the discussion on Moral Maze. I was asked about the evidence right from the start (it’s how Michael Burke kicked off), yet I had been led by the producer to believe that they wanted to talk to me about whether meriticracy is fair. I had a lot to say about this (see the last chapter of ‘Social Mobility Myths’) but never got the chance to say it. Matthew Taylor focused entirely on my empirical claims, which is why my answers were empiriically-focused.
It is not true (as you claim) that “most studies indicate that Britain is becoming less socially mobile”. LSE economists employed by the Sutton Trust say this, and politicians and media have uncritically accepted it. Mainstream sociology denies it – I discuss all this in my 2012 Civitas paper ‘Social Mobility Delusions’, and I would ask you please to have a look at that and then get back to me if you still think I’m wrong.
As for class and intelligence, I discuss this in my post above. If you think I’m wrong, show me how. Just impugning my motives for saying it does not demonstrate the falsity of what I’m arguing.
I also dislike the lefty myth that we are all equal and I would like to support sny effort to debunk it but I find your simplistic view of genetics worrisome.
IQ do not “reverse” to the mean. The mean of IQ remains the same as a myriad of supporting genes get reshuffled (remember Mendelian genetics at school?) from generation 0 to generation 1.
If you really believe in meritocracy and want to bring genetics to the mix you should support either:
1- A system such as the one proposed in Plato’s Republic: All children are reared together, including the children of the Guardians and the next generation of Guardians is selected among the brightest youngsters without knowing who their parents are.
2- Push for eugenic breeding (but convincing the most successful males not to marry the hottest women -that are generally quite stupid- will be hard).
I agree that there is upward social mobility in Britain and the Western Wold in general; I am not that sure that there is downward mobility and the later would be useful to generate more openings at the top.
(1) Do you understand the statistical concept of ‘regression to the mean’? Your comment indicates that you may not. IQ scores do tend to regress (not ‘reverse’) towards the mean between 2 generations. Given, say, a 0.5 correlation between parental and children’s IQ scores, parents with v high IQ are unlikely to have children all with such a high score; ditto those with very low IQ are likely to have some children with higher scores. Hence regression towards the mean. This does not mean that the average IQ score in each generation changes (which is what you seem to think it means).
(2) There is plenty of downward mobility! Just read the sociological literature. In Social Mobility Myths (p.16) I give the data for the 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts – have a look at Table 2.
I know it is bad to be prejudiced but I am a real scientist and you are a social scientist; I don’t think you can teach me statistics, just facts about the English Language, which I appreciate.
I any case I was trying to point out that the average IQ between generations (in big populations) remains constant. Provided that there is genetic flow between classes there is no reason to assume people in the upper classes will have higher IQs (if IQ measurements were completely unbiased but I am not convinced that they totally are).