Peter Saunders on social mobility and intelligence, BBC2, 15 Feb 2011

On February 2nd, BBC-2 broadcast a programme, Who Gets The Best Jobs?, which included a brief and heavily edited excerpt from a 90 minute interview they conducted with me about social mobility and intelligence. In the clip, I suggest that, on average, people in higher occupational classes are brighter than people in lower class positions. The interviewer, Richard Bilton, is then shown looking appalled and incredulous, while neither the logic nor the evidence on which I based my claim were ever mentioned.
The programme implies that no link exists between class and intelligence. For this to be true, you would need to demonstrate one of two things. Either, employers fill jobs randomly without regard for differences of ability between candidates; or everybody is as intelligent as everybody else. Both of these positions are absurd.
Employers try to fill jobs with the most able candidates. They don't take on the first person who walks through the door, irrespective of his or her individual qualities. Occupational recruitment is and must be selective.




But if people are to a large extent recruited to occupations on the basis of their ability, then people of higher ability will tend to be found in the higher skilled and better-paid positions in society. Evidence from IQ testing confirms this: in America, accountants and lawyers have average IQ scores of 128, compared with 122 for teachers, 109 for electricians, 96 for truck drivers and 91 for miners and farmhands.
The BBC thinks it is offensive even to talk about this. They are perfectly happy accepting that sporting prowess varies across the population, and that people get selected to play for the top teams on the basis of their ability (a basic premise of Match of the Day every Saturday evening). But when it comes to intellectual, rather than physical, ability, they pretend these differences either do not exist, or are unimportant.
For more on this, go to www.petersaunders.org.uk

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