On reading James Flynn

Read a short book by James Flynn this evening while watching the Midnight Mass in the Vatican. Very uplifting - both of course. A main point he makes - the book by the way is Does Your Family Make You smarter? (He has lots of books of course). But the uplifting point I found and indicated in my Amazon review is that your family circumstances are not necessarily going to dictate the level of intelligence - your IQ - for life. The scope of this inquiry in the book is less than the overall success of individuals but aimed at a narrower focus limited to measurable IQ scores - which can of course affect success but except for pointing out intelligence isn't everything, does not attempt to explore everything else. The target of the book is the message of the twin literature which may be misleading and can result in a pessimistic outlook on the part of those who would like to advance beyond the limits of their given family life and circumstances. To this the good news is you can go beyond that and at least reach the level your genes "intended" provided you use your own autonomy to do the things that will increase your IQ. These include things like not only joining a library club but more especially loving to read. The significance of family influence whether positive or negative can be detrimental in your SAT scores, for example, which can limit what kind of university you enter and what profession you achieve. What families influence most is vocabulary. After 17 the influence of the family drops off and you can level off at the range permitted by your genes. So the answer is that your family can make you smarter but only up to a certain point at which time you are free for good or bad to better yourself or not. So don't use the twin effect to counter the Flynn effect. How this is exciting to me is how it dovetails with my aims in course work. In logic of course I aim to help students improve their logic skills and in all my courses I aim at helping increase vocabulary. Both of these are items he lists as keys to IQ. So it is nice to find a book that supports what I think I am doing in my work. Nice.