AND CLASS

on from father to environmenta, son with ences contributing little.

Sir Cyril's views naturally provide great ammunition for right-wing Tory educationists who, in their notorious 'Black Paper Two', have demanded a drastic cut-back in educational facilities for working-class children. (See 'Crisis in Education'. Workers Press, October 17, 1969.)

The Black Paper says, 'what is the use of trying to develop children's intelligence by educational methods, intelligence is largely inherited?' In case anyone thinks Sir Cyril's views have been distorted or misquoted, it would be useful to see precisely. what he has said:

•... differences in intelligence . . . result from differences in genetic constitution (and) they are to a large and measurable extent transmitted from father to son. Moreover .. there has been natural tendency for individuals of high intelligence rise in the scale and for those of low intelligence to drift downwards; their children tend usually to inherit the high or low intelligence of their parents. The cumulative effect is a marked difference in the average intelligence of the different social classes.' ('The Evidence for the Concept of Intelligence'. By • Sir Cyril Burt in Wiseman's 'Intelligence and Ability'. Penguin Modern Psychology 1967. p. 279)

Further: . • there are well marked differences between the average intelligence of the socio-economic classes - that of the manual classes being decidely lower than that of the non-manual and professional classes.' (Ibid. p. 281.)

To indicate the errors in this concept, it is necessary to establish a working definition of intelligence and the role of, both constitutional and environmental factors in its development. The nature of the so-called intelligence tests has also to be considered.

Mental defectives While there is no standard definition of the term "intelligence', many psychologists, including the writer of this article, believe that intelligence can be used to denote STALINISM IN BRITAIN A TROTSKYIST ANALYSIS I would like information about ferences in the personalities and behaviour of the four eminent men, they all share something in common which they do not share with the mental defectives—a high level of general mental ability or of An individual's intelligence level depends on both constitutional and environmental factors and also the complex interaction which takes place among these factors.

Consider constitutional factors. It is obvious that an individual's level of intelligence depends, in part at least, on the physical condition of the brain.

Processes The number of brain cells, the connections between them and the various metabolic processes all play a role in determining an individual's level of mental ability.

This has long been recognized by leading neurologists, who have many times described the inferior brain structures often found in mental defectives.

It is convenient to place those constitutional factors that affect intelligence into two categories, namely, hereditary and non hereditary.

Heredity is a process by which physical characteristics are transmitted from parents to offspring.

The actual mechanism of heredity is the function of genes, minute particles of biological matter thousands of which exist in long strands called chromosomes.

These chromosomes exist in every one of the millions of cells in our bodies and in the normal human cell number 46.

Genes play the role of biological blueprints, determining the way in which cells multiply and differentiate from the first multiplication process of the ovum (fertilized female sex cell) to the development of the mature organism.

It is these genes that determine, in a process of interaction both with their environments and among themselves, most aspects of our biological structure and functioning, including the structure and functioning of our brains.

Non - hereditary constitutional factors that affect intelligence include damage to the JUST OUT NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS pregnancy or if is inadequately early life. Long recognized However, since Sir Cyril Burt is concerned with the hereditary aspects of intelligence rather than with the non-hereditary constitutional spects, the latter really neec not concern us further It has long been recognized that the development of intelligence is affected not only by constitutional factors but also experience, particularly during early childhood.

Professor Hebb of McGill University goes so far as to identify two separate kinds of intelligence, namely Intelligence A, which reflects the physical condition of the brain FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT PART TWO TOMORROW A criticism of Sir Cyril Burt brain in early life or during the mother's pregnancy.

This can be caused by direct mechanical damage such as blows on the head or difficult delivery at birth. It can also be caused by infection or poisoning either of the child after birth or of the mother' during pregnancy. "r':

HEH Apart from damage of this experimental subjects. ('Learnsort, a child's brain can fail ing to Think' by Harry t.and to develop fully if the mother Margaret K. Harlow, cientific lacks an adequate diet during American, August 1949) child itself during its complex situations).

A number of experitents have shown that do in fact 'learn'. Perh best known of these were conducted by *Professot Harlow of Wisconsis University and his wife, used young monkeys (as some young. huinans)

Since the brains fandt the learning processes of moskeys bear many similarities to those of humans, the findin is of the Harlows can be saidite be very relevant to the question of how intelligence.! devełops in humans.*.

These findings "conflict sharply with one of the principal lucas LIE i done anna. influential 'Gestalt' school of psychology, which claimed that the 'insight' necessary to solve problems was "innate' rather than learned.

The Harlows set young monkeys a series of tasks involving the discrimination of colour, shape and size.

Peanuts For example thiegs nad to pick up a red object rather than the blue object,. or a square object rather ..than a round one. They were rewarded by finding raisins or peanuts underneath the correct object.

The unusual feature of this experiment was that"-in contrast to previous psychological work of this kind the test was repeated many times, with several hundred paits of objects, each timm with a different pair of ob Ls.

In other words th oakeys were trained to 'sole many different problems, bot all, the problems were of general type.

When the monkeys faced their first few tests they learned to solve problems by a very slow and laborious 'fumble-and-find' process. " But as each monkey gained experience in solving the problems, a dramatic change in behaviour would take place at some definite point. *The monkey would immediately solve a problem of which it had no direct experience. In other words it had acquired, through experience, the capacity for 'insight' or, if we like to call it such "intelligent behaviour'.

The Harlows themselves sum up the results of this experiment:

'All our studies indicate that the ability to solve problems without fumbling is not inborn but is acquired gradually? (Ibid.)

Having trained their monkeys to solve relatively simple problems the Harlows developed their experiments further.

Hierarchies of skills The type of problems they set their monkeys became progressively more difficult. Eventually they were able to get them to perform different tasks when presented with abstract symbols.

For example, they trained the monkeys to move all red objects, but leave all blue objects untouched when they were shown a triangle and to move all blue objects but to leave all red objects when they were shown a circle.

The Harlows say: 'All these data indicate that animals human and subhuman, must learn to think. Thinking does not develop spontaneously as an expression of innate abilities: it is the end result of a long learning process.' (Ibid.)

Since, by any definition of Intelligence, thinking is involved in intelligent behaviour, the relevance of this work to our consideration of intelligence is obvious.

Professor Harlow's findings confirm and supplement observations made by many educationists. For example, it has often been found, that people who find themselves unable to learn differential calculus cannot do so because they have not properly learned algebra. Likewise they cannot learn algebra because they have not really understood arithmetic in that they have not properly learned the concept of numbers.

It is apparent that most, if not all, complex skills involved in orientating oneself in situations calling for 'intelligent' behaviour, involve the acquisition of 'hierarchies' of skills, the most complex skills being dependent on the previous learning of those plex nature.

In the past the question has often been asked: 'Which is more important in the development of intelligence - the individual's heredity and constitution or his environment?! • However, it is now being increasingly: recognized... that this question is virtually meaningless.

If a child is born with a defective brain, he will never develop a high level of intelligence no matter how favourof environment and constitution (or heredity) and the effects of constitution and environment are multiplicative rather than additive.

It is important to realize that the same environment that will develop intelligence of a person possessing a certain type of constitution (or heredity) may well retard the intelligence of another person possessing a different constitution (or heredity). As the old saying puts it: "The same fire deep side to appear threatening. that it has been found that when young rats are given learning tasks these, result in a definite growth in brain structure.

If this occurs in many rats it may well also occur in human beings.

However, since no conclusive evidence has been pro duced to prove this, we are not yet entitled to draw any definite conclusions.

Continued tomorrow.