For LATEST NEWS, go to
CHRIS BRAND'S HOMEPAGE.

 

The William McDougall NewsLetter

UNMATCHED FOR SEX, VIOLENCE, INTELLIGENCE, REALISM, LIBERALISM AND OPTIMISM!

Edinburgh, Spring 2000
Differential Psychology -- and its Politics

This newsletter advances the ideas of the British social psychologist and Harvard professor William McDougall FRS (1870-1938). The Lancashire-born Anglo-Scot has been recognized by a leading Harvard historian as the major figure to have resisted the arrival of behaviourism, egalitarianism and environmentalism in psychology and anthropology (R. Pipes, 1999, Property and Freedom -- see McDNL 24 viii '99). McDougall believed in innate and inherited factors of instinct, purpose and ability; in race and sex differences; in three realms of reality (matter, mentality and knowledge -- cf. the later ideas of philosopher Sir Karl Popper); and in the liberty that he took the USA most especially to enshrine. McDougall was at once a classical liberal, an empiricist (even backing parapsychology research), an optimist (advocating voluntary eugenics) and a realist about human intelligence and personality. His boyhood dream was that he might have been one of the Pilgrim Fathers; and he had a lifelong proclivity for 'out-speaking' even though his own arguments with materialists and 'race slumpers' won him few friends in academia. The William McDougall NewsLetter reports advances and setbacks as the West struggles to maintain realism, individualism, choice and contract in days of tyrannical 'multiculturalism' and 'political correctness.'

WARNINGS FROM LIBERAL REALISTS OF TODAY

"….if multiculturalism prevails and if the consensus on liberal democracy disintegrates, the United States could join the Soviet Union on the ash heap of history." Samuel HUNTINGTON, 1997, 'The erosion of American national interest.' Foreign Affairs 76.
"[Political Correctness] is the most intolerant system of thought to dominate the British Isles since the Reformation." Peter HITCHENS, 1999, The Abolition of Britain: from Lady Chatterley to Tony Blair. London : Quartet.
"Today, to suggest that genetically based group differences are even probable provokes a reaction that resembles hysteria." Charles MURRAY (co-author of The Bell Curve), 2000, National Review [USA], 24 i.

Reality? Is that where the pizza delivery guy comes from?

EDITOR: CHRIS BRAND (brand@crispian.demon.co.uk)  -- THE BRITISH ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGIST WHO DECRIED IGNORACISM, ENVIRONMENTOSTALINISM, FEMINAZISM AND PAEDOHYSTERIA (THE ACTIVE INGREDIENTS OF INNOCUOUS-SOUNDING 'POLITICAL CORRECTNESS').
      GUESS WHAT HAPPENED? BRAND'S BOOK, The g Factor, WAS DE-PUBLISHED by Wiley Inc. [New York] (1996) AND BRAND WAS FIRED by Edinburgh University (1997). He was refused help by HRH Prince Philip (or the Duke's minions) and stayed fired after an internal Appeal, 1998. However, faced with legal action in 1999, the University paid Brand ŁUK12,000 -- the maximum Brand could have been awarded by a British court for unfair dismissal. Today, Brand is working on a biography of William McDougall and offers an Essay Prize of Ł1,000 to encourage students to read his censored book, The g Factor (see Brand's Home Page for library locations of the book).

"The man who walks alone is soon trailed by the FBI."
Wright MORRIS, 1967, A Bill of Rites.

 

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Go to Editor's Home Page (includes NewsLetter Archives 1997-1999)?
Go to 2000 McDNL issues Jan/Feb, March/April?

 

JUNE 6

 

A message from the editor:

The past few weeks have seen enormous changes at McDNL HQ. Not to beat about the bush, I have fallen totally in love with an Oriental miss who combines practicality and charm in an astonishing fashion and, of course, fully testifies to an East Asian IQ of >110 as hypothesized in The g Factor. Fortunately, this wonderful development has coincided with the provision of a new computer (and all the trimmings) by a star McDNL supporter in the U.S.A.

A VISUAL AID from McDNL HQ:

Furthermore, a master plan has been formulated to ensure that Edinburgh University and the profession of psychology will never live down their disgraceful treatment of me. E.U.'s payment of  UKŁ12,000 to me in 1999 cannot be the end of its shame. The LUniversity will need to end its pursuit of Political Correctness, to apologize to me and my family, and to set its other academics free from the fear under which they now live. All staff at the LUniversity have been given instructions not to discuss my case – or indeed the topics of race, IQ, feminazism and paedophilia. This will have to stop. To this end, the McDougall NewsLetter will be suspended for the meanwhile. Fortunately, this is easy to do since there continues to be little good news. Quite the opposite: four years after the UK Labour leader, Tony Blair, promised 'fast track learning' in Britain's state schools, nothing has happened and the very term has been forgotten by the obliging media. Worse, Mr Blair's neosocialist government has impetuously launched a major assault on 'elitism' in Britain's universities. Although Oxbridge and many other insitutions of 'higher education' have leaned over backwards in the past 30 years to admit students from 'disadvantaged' backgrounds – shamelessly discriminating against non-state-school applicants in the process – they now find themselves castigated and told to emulate the supposedly successful affirmative racism policies of Harvard. Amidst all the mutual recriminations of the past two weeks, neither the Government nor Oxbridge dares to mention the possibility of admitting state-miseducated children according to IQ.  Plainly, the message of The g Factor has fallen on deaf ears, so some other way forward must be found. Below are some of the more cheering news items of recent weeks. The NewsLetter will resume publication when a turning of the PC tide is imminent. Readers wishing to understand more of the plan might like to consult the history of top psychologist John B. Watson after academia and the press let him down and ostracized him in 1923 (see David Cohen, 1979, J. B. Watson: the founder of Behaviourism, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul). Thanks to all who have helped. Goodbye for now – hopefully not for long. Chris Brand.

Oxbridge Entrance

Times Higher 2 vi '00; Guardian, 5 vi '00

 

As the UK row about 'elitism' developed, many predictable attitudes went on display.
      UK Chancellor Gordon Brown had begun it all by saying it was an "absolute disgrace" that state-school pupil Laura Spence had not won a place at Magdalen College, Oxford, when she had subsequently been chosen by Harvard: the Chancellor himself was a state-school product who had had to be content with a place at Edinburgh LUniversity and now finds the job slot he covets occupied by privately educated Oxford graduate Tony Blair.
      Oxford University replied by leaking details of Laura Spence's selection interview, showing plainly that staff had made generous allowances for Miss Spence's lack of confidence; and the Vice-Chancellor, Colin Lucas, said the main problem of class discrimination was that working class/ disadvanteged students simply failed to apply to go to Oxford (because they have a largely outdated stereotype of the university as snobbish).

      The left-wing Guardian gleefully editorialized, using figures from new research by the Sutton Trust (director Peter Lampl) to show that, on the basis of A Level results, 14% of children from the bottom half of the social hierarchy should go to university, instead of the current 10%. The Guardian did not mention that A Levels – never an exacting test even in the 1960's, when good students took S Levels – have been turned largely into tests of rote memory so as to achieve more passes by girls (who swot harder and loathe exams that have 'surprise' questions). Any university that used only A Levels to decide entry would end with many zombies – as does Edinburgh LUniversity in contrast to Oxbridge.
      The begging-bowling Times Higher naturally concluded that everything would be all right if only the government gave the unversities and university students more money. (Currently, having effectively nationalized the universities over the past 30 years, the inclination of government educationists is to starve the system of funds – as a punishment for elitism – and spend the money on the old age pensioners who have lately been voting with their feet against Labour.
      But amidst the predictability, two interesting facts emerged. (a) The three universities having the worst records for admitting A-Level-qualified lower class students are Durham, St Andrews and, of course, the LUniversity of Edinburgh. (b) The Sutton Trust is working on the question of what differentiator should be used to supplement A Levels and apparently backs a US-style Scholastic Aptitude Test – well known to be largely a measure of the g factor. 
      Will IQ soon make a come-back? Or – like Mr Blair over the issue of 'fast track learning', will Mr Brown manage to stuff back in the the bottle the genie he has let loose?    

 

McDNL supporter Robin Clarke, of Birmingham, England, wrote to the Guardian: 

As a graduate of the same university as Bill Gates, Richard Branson, the Beatles, Beethoven, Polly Toynbee, Michael Faraday, Isaac Newton, etc., etc., etc, may I offer some alternative observations on the subject [of Oxbridge admissions] (Letters, May 30)?
      Firstly, there is a massive degree of disjunction between real-world outstanding achievements and the very crude rankings produced by the formal pseudo-education system of today. Secondly, and following from the above, GCSE / A-level grades are severely flawed as criteria of intellectual excellence.  Newton and Einstein were rated as mediocrities by their universities.  But if they or Darwin were to apply to Oxbridge today they would not even be accepted and would be quickly chucked out if they were in.  The reason is that in contemporary "universities", intellectual "excellence" is rigidly and exclusively defined in terms of hyperactive reading, writing and memorising to order, to the exclusion of the ponderous reflective thinking characteristic of the true genius. 
      Professor DK Simonton rightly wonders whether there are "a few homeless people who are today's versions of the great geniuses of old" (http://www.the-scientist.com/yr1989/feb/opin2_890206.html). The head of psychology at one of the "best" UK universities (Birmingham) wrote to me that  "Notwithstanding your published theories", failing exams due to illness ruled me out forever from consideration alongside school-leavers.  And as the most world-famous expert on autism (Bernard Rimland) said to me: "Why do you want to associate with those rigid, narrow people in universities?" In my documented experience, levels of corruption and contempt for truth among academics are such that most are not fit to educate themselves, let alone vulnerable school-leavers.
      Sincerely, Robin P Clarke (r.clarke@zazz.org.uk).

Multiculturalism

While Northern Ireland is forced out of democracy and into 'power sharing' by Messrs Blair and Clinton, Fijian natives have become disenchanted with their idyllic PC constitution.

Reuters May 30, 2000. Web posted at: 3:19 p.m. HKT (0719 GMT)

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Fiji military scraps multi-racial constitution

SUVA, Fiji -- Fiji's military rulers bowed on Tuesday to coup leader George Speight and scrapped a constitution that had allowed an ethnic Indian to become prime minister for the first time in the country's history.
      Military leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama signed an official decree that revoked a multi-racial constitution and reverted to a 1990 constitution favouring indigenous Fijians. "There was a definite bias (in the 1990 constitution) for Fijians, especially in allocating specific ministerial portfolios for Fijians, including the prime minister,"army spokesman Captain Eroni Volavola told Reuters.
      The military took power on Monday night amid growing lawlessness after Speight and a team of gunmen seized Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister, and about 30 others on May 19.
      The decree meets one of the main demands of Speight, who says he is acting to defend the rights of ethnic Fijians. Ethnic Indians make up 44 percent of Fiji's 800,000 population and dominate the sugar- and tourism-driven economy. The racially biased 1990 constitution was imposed after two coups in 1987 overthrew a previous Indian-dominated government….

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Academia & PC Tyranny

 

Race realist Professor Glayde Whitney {see previous McDNLs} continues to hang on by the skin of his teeth at Florida State University. Recently his university principal make a statement about the case.

http://www.collegevalues.org/diaries.cfm?id=121&a=1

Presidents' Public Diaries

Florida State University President Sandy D'Alemberte

Should a University Create a Speech Code?

In my opinion, some universities' efforts to create speech codes have been misguided and have led to more mischief than benefit.
      I have learned first hand how tempting it is to contemplate a speech code. A psychology professor with a good reputation for fairness and civility has written the introduction for a book by the Louisiana politician David Duke. The introduction does not endorse the wilder claims of Duke's book, but it does endorse a view of race and genetics that underpins the philosophy of the book.
     In my opinion, the Duke book is extremely racist, and the act of a Florida State University professor contributing to it is understandably very troubling to a number of students and public officials, particularly members of the Black Legislative Caucus.
      I'm not sure what we can do to assure those people who are offended that the professor does not speak for this university. We must assure them that students are not required to take his classes and that those who do are not being abused in class in any way. We need to demonstrate that all of our professors grade fairly.
      Without evidence that the professor has acted improperly, I am reluctant to intervene. Any concept of academic freedom should allow this professor to voice his opinion, and we must ultimately rely on the free exchange of ideas, even if some of them are extremely abhorrent.

Talbot D'Alemberte, President, Florida State University

 

And here is a message from Glayde himself, sent as a letter to Germany:

Dear Professor Xxxx
                                  It is with regret that I must withdraw from presenting a Keynote Address entitled “Our Inquisition Today” to the main Plenary Session of the 12th International Conference on Xxxxxxxxxx, [31July-5 August 2000] meeting in Germany that is to deal with the topic of Threats to Freedom of Expression. This is because of the Threats to Freedom of Expression that are encased in law in today’s Germany.
      At another conference held just a few days ago, there was an up-to-date presentation concerning the draconian thought-crime laws to which both the citizens of Germany and visitors to Germany are subjected. Special branches of the state police exist which specialize in the enforcement of laws against thought-crimes and speech-crimes.  This totalitarian-state, indeed Orwellian, situation is as good an example of “Our Inquisition Today” as could have been exemplified in my planned address.
      Literally many hundreds of German citizens have been arrested, charged, jailed, fined, exiled, and/or lost their positions for straightforward scholarly statements concerning various areas of investigation.  Some historians and social philosophers have been affected, as also have scientists close to my own area of specialization. For example, I have an Associated Press clipping that reports the suspension of a demographer in Germany. Her sin was to say that the investigation of possible race differences in intelligence was a legitimate field of study. The clipping reports that Jewish organizations in Germany called for her dismissal.  This is relevant to my attendance at the conference in Germany because, not only do I advocate that studies of racial differences in intelligence and other traits are important, but I have myself published such studies in refereed scientific journals and in other media.
      It is not only German citizens that have fallen to the current inquisition. It is also the case that Foreign Nationals have been arrested and incarcerated upon visiting Germany. One example is an Australian citizen arrested and held for months under “administrative custody” during 1999. He was eventually tried for the crime of having published material on a website he operated in Australia.  The German judge for the case refused to sentence a foreign national for operating a website in a foreign country. However, the Australian was found guilty for sending letters into Germany.  Similar cases [writings in foreign countries combined with shipment of written material into Germany] have already lead to the incarceration of American nationals by German courts.
      In my own case, I have already been criticized and threatened by groups such as the Jewish Defense League for writings in various journals and books. It is also the case that I have mailed copies of such writings to colleagues residing inside Germany. Thus with the already existing precedents, it seems prudent to not visit Germany since I have no interest in experiencing the inside of a German prison.
      There have been quite a few times across recent decades when scholarly and scientific individuals and groups have pressured or boycotted various regions because of human rights violations. The refusal to hold meetings in certain states and the hullabaloo against the USSR for suppression of scientists come readily to mind. I suggest that rather than holding meetings in Germany, all persons of conscience should boycott Germany until the citizens of that country are relieved of the oppressive thought crime laws to which they are being subjected by their ruling elites.
      Sincerely, Glayde Whitney, Professor

Africa Realism

BLACK-ON-BLACK VIOLENCE ESCALATES

Daily Telegraph 25 v '00

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'300 die' in Nigerian religious violence

By Barnaby  Phillips In Lagos'

NIGERIAN army and police reinforcements have been sent to  the northern city  of Kaduna after renewed religious violence which is  believed  to have left at least 300 people dead. "Thousands of people are cowering in police and army barracks, although the  streets are a little bit calmer now,"  said a  local   journalist. More than 180 people were arrested.
      "There are silent killings still going on, making the actual death toll difficult,"   said   James   Wuye,  national   co-ordinator   for   the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum. "But  information from Christian and Muslim brothers give a death  toll of  300,"  he  said.  There were also reports  that  more  than   1,000 buildings  had been  burned down in the riots,  the second outbreak  in three  months in Kaduna.  In February,  hundreds died  after   fighting between  Christians  and Muslims erupted over proposals to  expand  the jurisdiction of sharia Islamic law. Tension has remained high in the city since then,  although the  causes of the latest outbreak of violence are not clear:  Unlike in  February, the  fighting  has  been restricted to the  poorer,  densely  inhabited neighbourhoods, and Kaduna city centre has not been  affected.
      Churches and mosques have been set on fire, and eye-witnesses say rival gangs  of  Christian and Muslim youths have been burning  and   hacking each  other  to  death.  The authorities have  imposed  a  curfew  and promised to deal firmly with any troublemakers.
      Religious  and  ethnic   tensions threaten the stability  of  the  most populous nation in Africa, and the regular outbreaks of violence  which have dogged President Olusegun Obasanjo during his first year in office have undermined confidence in the new democracy. Of  immediate concern to the authorities now will be that the  violence does not spread from Kaduna, as it did in February. Thousands of Ibo people, who originally came from southeastern Nigeria, fled  from the north in February and March in fear of their lives,  Ibo youths then carried out reprisal killings of Muslim Northerners in  the southeastern cities  of Aba, Owerri and Umuahia.
      Aba is again particularly tense.  A march on Monday by  Ibo  extremists who wish to resurrect the breakaway state of Biafra attracted thousands of youths. Police  were later reported to have shot two of them,  provoking  angry demonstrations, and forcing Muslims to seek shelter in police  and army barracks. Mr Obasanjo is trying to heal the ethnic and religious rifts to prevent any  further violence.  He has always said he is not  surprised by  the unrest  that  has accompanied Nigeria's return to  democracy  after  15 years of dictatorial military rule.

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Kosovo Realism

In Kosovo, Serbs are still murdered daily by ethnic Kosovars despite NATO having one soldier in the province for every three Serbs. Now the fighting is spreading to England. It is time to stop the 'multicultural' nonsense and admit that Serbs and Kosovars will have to live separately for the next 500 years.

Evening Standard [London] 9 v '00

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10 held after sword brawl by Kosovan gangs

NINE  men are in custody and one under police guard in  hospital  today after members of warring Kosovan gangs had a swordfight in Swindon town centre in front of hundreds of terrified shoppers. Ten  men  attacked  each other in the  pedestrianised  Brunel  shopping centre with a samurai sword, knives, chains and a metal bar. One  man was left with blood pouring down his face after being  slashed in the head  and another was stabbed in the stomach with a knife. Shoppers  cowered behind shop fronts and street furniture or  tried  to flee. Over  12  hours later the police still say they have no idea  what  the pitched battle was about. Swindon's police station is close by and most of the gang members  were arrested  at the scene.  Two who fled were captured shortly  afterwards with  the aid of a police helicopter.  Police found two injured men  by following trails of blood.

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Aborigine Realism

PINC JUDGE ROCKS ACADEMIC BOAT

Sydney Morning Herald 27 v '00, Margot Saville

//////

Outrage at judge's Stone Age outlook

Outspoken NSW judge Roderick Meagher, QC, has sparked a major fight within the University of Sydney by referring to claims that Aboriginal culture pre-1780 was "Stone Age" and warning about the dangers of political correctness.
      Justice Meagher, the fourth-ranking judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, railed against the "pernicious" and "totalitarian" influence of political correctness at a university graduation ceremony.
      Justice Meagher, who received an honorary doctorate of laws (LL.D.) at the ceremony, told the audience that "one cannot get a job in a university in the US today unless one subscribes to the wholly unhistorical theory that Negro culture has its genesis in Ancient Egypt. Eminent anthropologists cannot get their writings published if they dare suggest that before 1780 the Aboriginal culture was Stone Age. We are verging, are we not, upon a new condemnation of degenerate art, a new bonfire of the books? A generation of lawyers like you must not succumb to such limitations on rational thought.''
      One observer said that the gathering, which included the University Chancellor, Dame Leonie Kramer, and the Dean of the Law School, Professor Jeremy Webber, listened in "stunned silence". The law school is now embroiled in a series of heated arguments about who recommended awarding the doctorate, and why the 68-year-old judge was asked to speak at the ceremony.             The director of the Law Faculty's Institute of Criminology, Professor Chris Cunneen, said he was "appalled" that his students had been given such an anti-intellectual speech as their final message from law school.

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NEWS in BRIEF

LONDON -- The latest immigration statistics show that the number of  undocumented passengers arriving at Waterloo Station last year reached  7,873, a 46 per cent rise on the previous year. The Blair Government will soon have to upset many neosocialists by responding positively to public discontent with 'asylum seekers' (as most intending immigrants currently style themselves).

U.S.A. – Abusohysteria continues. Among those charged with sex crimes that began with merely a Web site collecting or displaying pornography are the husband of a mayoral candidate in Arizona, a Los Angeles elementary school teacher, an English professor at Lake Forest College in Illinois, a dean at Harvard Divinity School and a retired Army major who once oversaw emergency communications.

LONDON – The populist tabloid, the Sun ran the headline "It's Stark, Chairing Madness" over a story claiming that a "government-backed booklet" called for musical chairs to be banned. The pamphlet condemns the game because "the strongest/fastest one who pushes the other children out of the way wins" and instead recommends "musical statues" because there are no losers. The Sun reassures, though, that "shocked parents, tots and nursery managers were outraged by the suggestion … and vowed to play on."

NEW YORK (New York Times 18 v '00) -- Despite the decline, black women in 1998 were still victims of domestic killings at a rate of 4.5 per 100,000, compared with 1.75 per 100,000 for white women, said James Alan Fox, the Lipman professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University.

Africa Realism

WORLD BANK SLAMS BLACK AFRICA

 

BBC 31 v 2000, 19:00
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_771000/771271.stm

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African economies 'in reverse' --

Too little infrastructure, too little development

 

A new report by the World Bank says many African countries are worse off now than they were at independence in the 1960s. The bank says the total combined income of 48 countries in Africa is little more than that of Belgium. The World Bank report, called Can Africa Claim The Twenty-first Century?, says major structural changes are needed if Africa is to catch up with the rest of the world.

Even just to maintain current levels of poverty, African economies will have to grow by 5% because of rapidly growing populations. But, the report claims Africa has "enormous untapped potential and hidden growth reserves", if it can mobilise its human resources and improve its political systems.

[Years of neglect]

In the last 40 years, average incomes per person in Africa have stagnated while they have grown in most of the rest of the world. Africa now accounts for only 1% of the total world economic output and 2% of world trade. On average, African countries have economies smaller than a town of 60,000 people in a rich country. And infrastructure is far less developed as well. With only 10m telephone lines, half of them in South Africa, there is little chance of most Africans gaining access to the internet. Africa has fewer roads than Poland, only 16% of which are paved, and only one in five households has access to electricity. Two-thirds of rural Africans lack adequate water supplies, while three quarters lack adequate sanitation.

The World Bank also points out that Africa is under-utilising its human capital, particularly its women. The average schooling for African women has increased by only 1.2 years in the last 40 years, the lowest gain anywhere in the world. Instead, women typically work longer hours than men, collecting water and firewood, and lack access to credit, land, or educational resources.

Africa's human resources are also being decimated by disease, with Aids infection rates reaching 25% in Zimbabwe and Botswana. And decades of civil war and conflict, which have affected at least 20 of sub-Saharan Africa's 48 countries, have increased poverty and violence. The political system, even where there are elections, is generally based on a winner-take-all system that is not sufficiently inclusive of Africa's diverse ethnic groups. "Political changes .. would do much to empower people and communities and help energise the development process," the report says….

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Sex Differences

BOYS SHOW SPATIAL MASTERY

New York Times 31 v '00

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Girls a Distant 2nd in Geography Gap Among U.S. Pupils

By KATE ZERNIKE

 

Ten students from across the country gathered as finalists in the National Geography Bee on a Washington stage last week, standing alongside "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek and waving at their parents beaming in the audience. Only one could name two of the three largest sections of Denmark (Jutland, Sjaelland and Fyn). But all shared one notable trait, the same shared by all but two finalists in the 12-year history of the contest. And the answer is? They were all boys.
      For a decade, educators have bemoaned that a large percentage of Americans cannot locate their own country on a map, much less point the way to Irkutsk. Geography slipped off school curriculums, derided as too dependent on rote learning, as educators blended it into broader social studies classes. Students who learned it tended to do so at home or on their own time. But the efforts to emphasize the importance of the subject over the last few years have highlighted a new problem. With students left to their own devices, a geography gender gap has become evident, so wide that with five million students participating in the bee, about 77 percent of the school winners are boys….

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A McDNL supporter writes: Selecting from extremes can accentuate group differences.  For example, imagine that we have a measure of spatial ability that yields normal distributions within gender groups for 13-year-old boys and girls, and imagine that boys and girls have the same standard deviation on the measure but gender groups differ in mean spatial ability by 1/3 SD unit. Assume we are working with a population of 1/2 boys and 1/2 girls.  If we select students exceeding the 50th percentile, we expect to have 57% boys. If, in the same hypothetical population, we select a boy and a girl at random, the boy is expected to outperform the girl 59% of the time.  If we select students exceeding the 99.9th percentile (upper 1/1000), we expect to have 76% boys in our selected sample. 

Guns Realism

Daily Telegraph 22 v '00, Liz Lightfoot, Education Correspondent

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Guns return to the nursery school toy chest

A  BAN  on  toy  guns in nurseries is being  relaxed  as  new  research suggests that they reduce aggression. Far from encouraging violence,  they  lead  to  more  imaginative and calmer  play, says Penny Holland, of the University of North London,  a lecturer in childhood studies.
      Over the past two decades guns  have  been removed from  nurseries  and playgroups for fear of turning small boys into potential killers. After the shootings at Hungerford and Dunblane,  shops such as  Hamleys and The Early Learning Centre introduced weapons bans and parents  were advised not to allow their children to use them at home. But  Miss Holland said that they had been reintroduced at a  number  of nurseries and others were thinking of following suit. She said she was surprised  by the behaviour of children in nurseries that  now  allowed them.
      When  the ban was lifted at Konstam nursery in Camden,  north   London, for example,  the level of aggression dropped.  Allowing the use of toy guns  in  a  controlled environment provided  "an  imaginative  doorway through  which boys' play was enriched", she  said. After an initial  enthusiasm, the children's interest in  weapons,  war and super-hero play declined, leading to a more  relaxed environment.
      "Having  given  these  boys   permission  to   pursue  their   initial interests,  the world of the  imagination has  become their  oyster and they are diving for pearls," Miss Holland said….

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Psychiatric Cowardice

Associated Press 18 v '00

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CHICAGO -- The American Psychiatric Association canceled a scheduled panel discussion of whether homosexuality can be altered through therapy, a move that has upset some self-described former gays.
      The debate over what is known as reorientation therapy was pulled from the APA's convention agenda on Wednesday after two psychiatrists who contend that the subject is too politically charged for scientific discussion withdrew from the panel.
      The cancellation led to a protest by Exodus International, a non-denominational Christian organization that seeks to help gays switch their sexual orientation.

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FAQ Corner

WHY THE BRIGHT DON'T BREED

A top American anthropologist (annoyed by being referred to Richard Lynn's Dysgenics) inquires:

>If IQ is genetic, how come dumb people have more children hence spreading
>their lousy genes while the sage sexless intelligentsia allow their precious
>genetic information to wanly die out?

 

CRB replies:

My own favourite hypothesis would be that lower-IQ people fail to master birth control technology, as is explained in The Bell Curve. Partly, lower-IQ girls are more religious. They believe in their own virtue and think they will not have sex, so don't take the Pill or use other realistic methods of contraception. Then comes the inevitable party, and the girl is available for the proverbial third peach brandy. No doubt there are other contributions -- from lower-IQ men who cannot manage oral, intercrural and kindred forms of sex. Fortunately, there are signs of eugenic abortion spreading further down the social scale, as US criminologists reported last summer -- see CRIME DROP TRACED BY PROFS TO LEGALIZATION OF ABORTION (Chicago Tribune 8 viii '99, Karen Brandon; or McDougall NewsLetter 10 viii 1999 at http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk/McDNLArch8b.htm).
      As to the non-breeding of the higher-IQ in the West, my best guess is that marriage has been made seriously unattractive to men because divorce arrangements are so unfair -- typically stripping the man of substantial assets and invariably breaking up his relationship with his children. Therefore, I favour a greater diversity of marital contracts, enabling men to make marriages on fairer terms and enabling successful men to be polygamous -- as already happens de facto in Hollywood, where people can afford for their lawyers to draw up pre-marital contracts. It seems to me remarkable that in 'a free society' we accept individual choice everywhere *accept* in state education, state health care and marriage.
      Also helping explain the apparently imminent racial wipe-out of Whites, no-one realized the truth of the feminist proposition that many girls have no great drive to have babies. Instead, powerful maternal drive makes it appearance only after a woman has become well and truly pregnant. This late appearance of 'maternos' [cf. eros, thanatos] has enabled the success of birth control, as previously the development of a late age of marriage. But it means that some kind of religion will once more have to step in to regulate breeding -- this time to ensure that any breeding occurs at all. Alas, at present, it looks as if the state will play daddy -- a role it has already assumed in the financial affairs of single parent mothers. I incline to regard almost any such state interference as likely to be markedly inferior to arrangements that individuals would contract for themselves in free market conditions.
      BTW, the decline in procreation by the high-IQ would have occurred even if IQ were *not* genetic.
      I will look forward to hearing your own views. Sincerely, -- Chris Brand..

P.S. Another VISUAL AID to the atmosphere that obtains at McDNL HQ:

 

 

What is the point of
The William McDougall NewsLetters?

"What shall it profit us to penetrate the mysteries of the atom and electron, to measure in thousands of light-years the paths of the great nebulae, to invent the most marvellous machines, to set free and control unlimited reserves of energy, if all such physical discoveries cannot save us and our civilisation from the abyss, can but hasten the repetition of the old story, can but precipitate the downfall and decay which hitherto have followed swiftly upon every partial success of human effort to lift some part of the human race above the 'darkling plain, filled with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night'?"
      William McDOUGALL, 1934, The Frontiers of Psychology. Cambridge University Press.

For a summary of William McDougall's heterodoxy, e.g. as a champion of instinctive and other biological factors in psychology, see the Internet magazine PINC [Politically Incorrect], July 1997, at http://cycad.com/cgi-bin/pinc.

For a summary of Chris Brand's heterodoxy, e.g. as 'IQ realist', 'race realist', 'sex realist' and 'the Nobelist paedophile's friend', see http://www.webcom.com/zurcher/thegfactor/index.html, http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/Brand/ and http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk.
Though Edinburgh University refuses even to mention the views for which it fired 'insensitive' Chris Brand, its incoherent splutterings about Brand can be found at http://www.iprs.ed.ac.uk/news/latest/cb.html. Readers should ask: 'Of what precisely was Brand found so guilty as to deserve to be fired after 26 years unblemished, and indeed much-cited academic work?'

The William McDougall NewsLetters provide a news & comment service for all who take an interest in the differential psychology of people and groups. Their broad advocacy might be said to be of indigenics. Whereas Galton's eugenics came to be associated with state-organized improvements of heritable traits, indigenics (cf. indigenous -- 'belonging naturally [to soil, region etc.]') would involve:

The NewsLetters also advocate neolibeREALISM in politics. In recent years, socialists in the West have abandoned (or postponed) their argument with capitalism. Instead of redistributing ownership or income, they now concentrate on using state power to provide comfortable state positions for minorities and imprisonment for 'racists', 'rapists', 'stalkers', 'paedophiles' and men in general who make life 'uncomfortable' for selected beneficiaries of modern piety. Such neo-statism needs to be countered by a concern for individuals and the self-chosen contracts which they make. The human rights movement has spun out of control: once extending to the many the limited privileges of the few, even when no corresponding duties were assigned, advocates of human rights today make war (as against Serbia) and plan world-wide interference to advance feminism (as against Islam). Always of uncertain derivation and authority, rights are now becoming a recipe for international and, even worse, civil strife. Instead of basing morality in mythical rights that will license aggression whenever governments or others have enough power to manipulate the media, it is time to respect people's own individual natures, choices and contracts. Such realistic concern defines neolibeREALISM.

The William McDougall NewsLetter Archives (1997-1999)
and
The g Factor Newsletter Archives (1996-1997)
can be read via Chris Brand's Demon Home Page

Relatively recent issues can be accessed by clicking on the following hyperlinks:

McDNL Archive, Spring 1999 (issues from March, 1999)

McDNL Archive, Summer 1999 (issues from June, 1999)

McDNL Archive, Autumn 1999 (issues from September, 1999)

McDNL Archive, Winter 1999-2000 (issues from December, 1999)

McDNL Archive, Spring 2000 (issues from March, 1999)

BOOTED OUT, BOUGHT OFF,
PROVED RIGHT, PLAYING ON!

The McDougall NewsLetters for Spring, 1998 contain full details of Edinburgh University's charges against Chris Brand, his defence, the report of the Edinburgh LUniversity Tribunal, and Brand's Appeal. Subsequently, faced with legal action at a UK Employment Tribunal, the University paid Brand ŁUK12,000 -- the maximum he could have been awarded by the court for unfair dismissal. Today, Brand offers an Essay Prize of Ł1,000 to encourage students to read his de-published (censored) book, The g Factor.

BOOKMARK
THE WILLIAM McDOUGALL NEWSLETTER (http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk/McDNLmain.htm)
NOW
FOR ALL YOUR NEOLIBEREAL NEWS NEEDS!

FINIS

Last modified: 5 vi 2000

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