school raises IQ

This bears repeating.

School raises IQ.

It does.

There's no question about this. (Or rather, a scientific consensus exists on this question.)

"Substantial evidence of the effects of school attendance on the development of IQ has existed for some time. A detailed review of over 50 studies using naturalistic observation, post-hoc statistical comparisons, and cohort-sequential analysis concludes that there is an association between enhancement of cognitive skills related to IQ and schooling (Ceci, 1991). These studies, conducted throughout the 20th century, comparing schooled and non-schooled populations, have estimated that the enhancement of IQ by schooling ranges from 0.3 to 0.6 of an IQ point for every year of school competed. Importantly, the association between IQ and exposure to formal education is not only due to children with higher measured IQ staying in school longer." (Blair et al)

source:
Rising mean IQ: Cognitive demand of mathematics education
for young children, population exposure to formal schooling,
and the neurobiology of the prefrontal cortex (pdf file)

And here's Engelmann:

We had shown, however, that all the disadvantaged black kids we worked with could learn to read and perform basic arithmetic operations in the preschool and that the average IQ gain of these kids was 24 points.

source:
War Against the Child's Academic Abuse of Children
Siegfried Engelman

Note: Engelmann raised these children's IQs 24 points in the preschool years alone.


By the same token, bad schools lower IQ.

Poor schooling lowers intelligence and handicaps children intellectually for life.... their intelligence is steadily eroded because the synapses in their brain are inadequately tuned and shaped by the planned structured experience that good teachers provide.

This is precisely what happened in some rural school systems in the southern states of America during the 1970s. Education was so poor in some of these systems that intelligence was more badly eroded the longer children stayed in the system. As a result, the IQs of the older children in a family who had been in the school system longer were routinely lower than those of their younger brothers and sisters whose brains had not yet suffered the great synaptic hunger which comes from poor education.

[snip]

In one study, black children who had moved from the south to Philadelphia had their IQ scores raised more than half a point for every year they spent in this better school system.

Mind Sculpture
by Ian Robertson

nature, nurture and gene expression

None of this means that IQ is "environmental" as opposed to "genetic."

Back when I was on the board of NAAR, geneticists were constantly telling us that there was no such thing as a nature/nurture split. To ask whether a phenomenon was "genetic" or "environmental" was wrong.

I found that a difficult concept to absorb, but I think I've got a handle on it these days.

The concept that finally helped me "get it" -- assuming that I do get it -- was the concept of gene expression.

Genes have to be expressed; they have to "speak."

A gene can be silent, as it is when one identical twin has schizophrenia while the other twin does not.

Both twins have vulnerability genes for schizophrenia.

But the genes are expressed in one twin, silent in the other.

Moreover, when a gene is expressed it can be expressed weakly or strongly.

Obviously IQ is "genetic."

But the genes that affect IQ have to be expressed to do what they do, and it is the environment -- which includes other genes! -- that determines whether and how they'll be expressed.

Good schools raise IQ.

Bad schools lower IQ.

I assume college raises IQ, too.

Don't know it -- assume it!

gene expression

good schools raise IQ, bad schools lower IQ, part 1
good schools raise IQ, bad schools lower IQ, part 2
good schools raise IQ, bad schools lower IQ, part 3
Seth Roberts on IQ
fuzzy math makes you smarter
IQ quiz
school raises IQ
intelligence is verbal, perceptual, and image rotation
math isn't English