Is Chris Woodhead (ex schools inspector) right that some poorer kids are simply thick?
Of course some poorer kids are thick. Some richer kids are thick as well. What he was probably arguing was that, since intelligence is strongly hereditary, it would follow that more intelligent people would be more likely to have more intelligent children. As more intelligent people are more likely to succeed financially, it probably does follow that middle class people would tend to be more intelligent than poorer people. This may be one reason why there has been a decline in social mobility. I don’t agree that it should follow that we should just allow poorer children to continue failing. Some children, of whatever social class, will fail academically. What is important is that those who fail academically need constructive and useful vocational alternatives to the academic route. This is what Britain has badly failed at for at least 60 years. It didn’t matter so much when we needed a lot of unskilled manual labour but that is no longer the case. We all pay the price for the NEETS (un
