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Ability to Reason. To develop this noninflammatory point, and to weigh the genetic contribution to intelligence, Psychologist Jensen relies heavily on the so-called intelligence test. He defines intelligence, somewhat circularly, as "what intelligence tests measure." In education, he says, what they measure is the subject's adaptability to a system that stresses cognition—the ability to reason—and that is designed for normal, middle-class white children. On this contrived scale, the American black typically registers below the American white—on the average, about 15 IQ points. This information is not very new. Moreover, its insight into the relative intelligence of black and white is inconclusive and limited, as Jensen himself admits. Jensen also allows for the elevating effect of a rich cultural environment. But except in cases of severe deprivation, he denies any substantial depressing effect in a culturally poor one. The implication, to him, is that most Negroes—and, for that matter, many low-income whites—are not sufficiently deprived to claim environment as a major factor in low IQ performance. "Various lines of evidence," he argues, "no one of which is definitive alone, make it a not unreasonable hypothesis that genetic factors are strongly implicated in the average Negro-white intelligence difference." The difference, according to him, is found in the highest form of intelligence: the ability to reason abstractly and to solve problems. In what he calls associative learning, or mastering by rote, ghetto children seem to do as well as anyone else.
The author uses his theories to attack compensatory education programs, such as Operation Head Start, which assume that the withered young intellect will bloom if it is properly watered. Jensen contends that if substantial IQ improvement is the goal, all such programs will fail. He proposes instead that the schools broaden their approach to accommodate all levels of intelligence. Jensen writes: "Too often, if a child does not learn the school subject matter when taught in a way that depends largely on being average or above average, he does not learn at all."
Jensen's more thoughtful critics concede some validity to this point. "Our educational systems," writes Geneticist Lederberg, "often neglect a child's strongest capabilities, and hold him back while focusing on his weaknesses." J. McVicker Hunt, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, agrees with Jensen that the child's first exposure to formal education is confining when it should be expanding. Says Hunt: "I am among those few who are inclined to believe that mankind has not yet developed and deployed a form of early childhood education (from birth to age five) which permits him to achieve his full potential."