Education: Nature v. Nurture

Few years ago a psychologist named Harold Manville Skeels, a professor at University of Iowa, was assigned by the State to advise the State orphanage. He found that the orphanage was sending babies (mostly bastards) born of feeble-minded parents to highly intelligent families for adoption. Horrified, Dr. Skeels hurried forth to see how much damage had been done. He gave the adopted children intelligence tests. To his surprise, their average I.Q. was 115, well above normal (100). Not one was dull.

Dr. Skeels's discovery was one of a series made more or less by chance during the last 15 years by the...

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