There is no switch, it's not the easy.
How do you see the human brain, MSB? I see it as a memory-making, decision-making system. Decisions are made based on past experience. Intelligent people make intelligent decisions because they have suitable past experience. Sure there are genetic differences which make some people smarter than others but I think by and large it's all about past experience.
The switch I talk of, is the switch of independent logical thought. This switch is engrained from a very young age in children. I have been reading quite a bit about it recently, and apparently by the time you're capable of making yourself a sandwich you're set. Let me give you a few examples in the differences which result in marked intellectual differences between classes and people in general:
- In a typical hour, parents from a professional background spend twice as much time interacting with their young children than those on welfare (this is American based by the way)
- Children hear 2100 words per hour in a professional household, 1200 in a working class household, and just 600 in a welfare household
- By age 4 a child born in a welfare dependent family will have heard upto 13 million words less than a child from a working class background
- Professional parents give children feedback such as praise more than 30 times per hour, twice more than working class parents, and five times more than welfare parents
- Children from welfare dependent families are twice as likely to have a scolding for their behaviour than they are to get praise for good behaviour
Working class parents tend to train their children in obedience as a life skill to get on in the world, whereas middle class parents tend to teach their children independent thought as a method of solving problems and surviving in life. Unquestioning obedient people, who can't help but be that because they are above the age of 4, can't help but pass that onto their children. There is nothing we can do to fix this. You can't force independent thought onto people who don't possess it, any more than you can make people who aren't particularly intelligent into geniuses.
Now, let's consider our population structure. I would estimate that even though wealth has increased rather dramatically in recent years in this country and many people now consider themselves middle class, this country is in fact still working class or benefit dependent by a fairly large majority. What can we really do to get the majority of children in this country out of the trap that has been laid for them before they were even born? High quality language skills are the fundamental foundation to better linguistics, higher thought, and a greater degree of independent thought. I don't have the answer... Even if we schooled these children for 12 hours a day, they'd still go home to different families who would instil different values wouldn't they? I mean, in one sociological study my wife showed me, there were quite a few families who had been dependent on welfare for generations who actively mocked their children for using 'big' words that they'd accidently picked up from their baby sitter TVs.
I am at a loss... perhaps you have the answer?
