F. George McDuffee wrote:

snip
The hard-core poor are mostly stupid. Stupid people used to die before they
were old enough to reproduce. We've changed all that. We keep them alive, we
keep their children alive and we keep their grandchildren alive. We actually
pay them to have more children.
snip
Don't confuse ignorant with stupid. Ignorant can be fixed,
stupid is forever.

Of course. And choosing to remain ignorant is stupid.

One problem is that the median level of abstract intelligence
required to function in society is continuing to increase while
jobs for those with less abstract/verbal intelligence are
disappearing.

Another problem is that while the decisions that the poor make
may seem stupid to the middle class, they may be perfectly
logical when seen from inside the poverty society/culture. For
example, the poor are some times faulted for being unable to
delay gratification. From their point of view, why delay
gratification? Nothing is going to change, except I am not
gratified.

I've heard that before, and it indeed makes sense. Our schools are supposed
to counteract that, pointing the way to a brighter future for anyone willing
to invest the time and effort. If they just maintain the status quo then
there's no reason to make school obligatory -- leave it to the ones who want
to learn and forget about the others. The ultimate end will be no different
from what it is now, but it will be a lot cheaper.

We can complain all we like but nothing is going to change until
we answer the WIIFM [what's in it for me] question from the
viewpoint of the poor person [which is all they know.]

Somehow they manage to see some point to playing basketball, although the odds
of making it big in the sport are vanishingly small.

One of the criteria for a successful species is the ability to
reproduce and possibly expand their polulation numbers. By this
criteria the poor are a much more successful species than the
European middle class. The birth rate for this group, both in
Europe and the United States, remains below the replacement
level.

It might be useful to distinguish between the permanently poor and those who
are poor now but will be middle class or even rich in 10 years.

The case can be made that the middle class has deferred so much
gratification and made such heavy investments of time and
attention in education that we are breeding ourselves out of
existance.

Its time to step back and look at the data.

We have met the data and the data are us?


--
Cheers, Bev
================================================== =============
The people who don't know what they're doing and the people who
don't realize it are generally the same people." -- DAbel