TA shames misinformed writing

I have often felt sorry for my colleagues in the political science department that they must claim Mr. Cassino as one of their majors, and after reading his column today I wonder if he is awake in his classes.

It's not that I don't agree with him mind you, I don't, but that's not the point. His columns are often poorly written and contain numerous falsehoods, inaccurate conjectures, and bizarre examples.

To the point, Mr. Cassino claims that liberal philosophy has indoctrinated us not to notice the correlates of intelligence tests such as income, educational attainment, avoiding poverty, and occupational success. He then speaks as though this correlation is evidence that intelligence causes these outcomes. But as any student majoring in the social sciences should know, correlation is not causation. The correlations that Mr. Cassino speaks of are in fact spurious.

The real predictors of income, educational attainment, avoiding poverty and occupational success are factors like parent's occupation, parent's education, parent's income, school district expenditures, private vs. public schooling, and race. These factors affect how a person does on these so-called intelligence tests. Thus, scores on the intelligence tests are merely an indicator of prior privilege and training.

One thing we do know, in America: The best predictor of positive life outcomes is who you know, not what you know.

Mark A. Konty
Department of Sociology Graduate associate