No one has found a gene for IQ. "Heritability" means that identicial twins are more similar than fraternal twins, right? Fraternal twins more similar than non-siblings. The heritability is 50 percent if your parents went to college. But if your parents never graduated high school the heritability is zero. Zero.

After hunger, a human's most important need is to know what is virtuous.

The fundamental problem is that the gap in educational achievement, which is a key in our technological economy, is due in my opinion - and the opinion of many, including Arne Duncan, our secretary of education - to the fact that the families of the poor who are not very educated are not talking to their children, interacting with their children, insisting they do their homework and so on.

Genes and family may determine the foundation of the house, but time and place determine its form.

No one has found a gene for IQ. "Heritability" means that identicial twins are more similar than fraternal twins, right? Fraternal twins more similar than non-siblings. The heritability is 50 percent if your parents went to college. But if your parents never graduated high school the heritability is zero. Zero.

Genes do make a contribution to the IQ score - but a flower needs soil. The environment for poor people is so overwhelmingly powerful, it washes out the genetic effect. There is a genetic contribution to IQ, but you can't detect it when you're living in a deprived environment.

During the latency years, American children need experiences that promote academic talents, a sense of responsibility, and most important, a belief that they can attain the goals valued by self and community. They need reassurance that these goals are attainable.