How to increase your IQ level ?

[Helen]

Mi brane hertz.

That's good, at least you know you have one!

 

[Vixen]

Fun fact: the average Mensa member IQ is 137/15 (+sd 2.47) pass mark 131 or 132; the triple nine club average IQ is 153.333/15, according to their archives, citing the psychometric psychologist. (+sd 3.55) pass mark would be about 147.

 

[arthwollipot]

Musical ability is associated with mathematical ability so maybe - looking at the world's greatest composers - the idea of a link to IQ comes from there.

Only theoretically. AFAIK it has not been demonstrated that mathematicians have a higher ability with music, or that musicians are better at mathematics. The relationships in music are undeniably mathematical, but we process it on a different level.

 

[Vixen]

Only theoretically. AFAIK it has not been demonstrated that mathematicians have a higher ability with music, or that musicians are better at mathematics. The relationships in music are undeniably mathematical, but we process it on a different level.

This intangible aspect is what makes me doubt it's measurable on a Normal Distribution scale. Take height for example: you can see it, measure it incrementally, as with the IQ scales, and it fits the Normal Distribution. But wait. On the Normal Distribution at the, say, 99.9 percentile level, for example, US adult males, that translates to 6'8". Tall, but not particularly rare! We all meet these tall guys all the time. (sd= 3.5" or so.). This is where I fear IQ testing is of little use outside of employment and academic skill testing, and perhaps quasi-social club membership (but then the Rotary Club or Freemasons serve something similar). Is intelligence even Gaussian or linear? My model would be a logarithmic model, as mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

[dann]

Can it be improved? <Shrug> Who knows? What special advantage would there be when it is 'enough already'? Burnout, more probably.

Of course, it can be improved!
If you go to school, your IQ will increase. If you study at home, your IQ will increase. If you go on to higher education, your IQ will increase. If you use IQ tests to train before an IQ test, your IQ will increase. It's a tenacious lie among fans of the "g" theory that your IQ is something you're born with. The purpose of the lie is to justify classism and racism.
Helmuth Nyobrg, Danish IQ theoretician, racist and misogynist, claims that there are "no known ways of improving intelligence.”
Also: "You have the intelligence you have, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Quotations from m article: How intelligent is the average IQ test designer? (Skeptic Report)
Danish Nazis love the guy. And he deserves their love!

My criticism of ...

The science of IQ

But wait at minute!!! This is not just for fun! This is serious science! Psychology and behavioural science, if you please! This is not simply a question of people who do crossword puzzles and sums to entertain themselves. We are dealing with an alleged measurable power that is expressed in members of the human race.

This is a very childish notion: It is clear to everybody that if you solve a crossword puzzle, then you must also have the ability to do so. But the reverse conclusion is rather inane. If you do not solve it, it does not follow that you cannot solve it at all, in the sense that you completely and utterly lack the natural prerequisites for doing so. It just means that you did not solve it yet. So if you learn the principles of crossword puzzles – and maybe some foreign words and the names of a couple of ancient Norse and Greek gods – you will probably be able to solve them the next time.

It is similar to the number-based exercises that we already looked at: As soon as you understand the principle/s behind them, it gets extremely easy to do this kind of ‘mental gymnastics’.4 However, if you don't understand the principles and if you also aren't able to figure them out when you see them, the exercises can't be solved until you acquire the necessary knowledge. For instance, you won't be able to do exercise b) if you're not familiar with addition, and a) and d) require the understanding of multiplication and subtraction.

This also explains both the phenomenon that “all over the world intelligence grows by three points every decade”5 and the alleged racial differences which some IQ fans point to with a certain glee: If you say that the average IQ score of white Americans is 100, “the IQ of black Americans is 85”, and “you (!) almost (!) dare (!) not mention it, but black people in Africa have an IQ of 70”.6

In other words: When the exercises in an IQ test are hardly distinguishable from exercises in schools and are also the kind of exercises that you almost automatically must get better at solving when you learn (!) to master the disciplines taught at school, it's no wonder that extended school attendance leads to a higher “IQ score” and that the lack of schooling leads to a score at the level of the mentally retarded. This is a fact that the IQ theorists don't like: They are not only very well aware of the fact that you can easily improve your faculties for solving IQ tests and thus gain a higher score, it is also common knowledge to them that, as already mentioned, the average population in industrial countries with regular schooling has become no less than 30 percent better at filling out IQ tests in the course of the 20th century. And still Helmuth Nyborg and his colleagues claim that there are “no known ways of improving intelligence.” 7
(...)
The IQ theory’s contradiction in terms

But on the other hand you should not even be allowed to change your “IQ”, and therefore the 30-percent increase is seen as an “empty effect”, “without any practical value”8 or as just “a kind of blur in the methods of measurement because, in time, people learn (!) the principles (!) of the various tests.” 9

And that is a contradiction in terms – one which Nyborg et al. are not keen to announce. When you learn the principles behind IQ tests, you get better at doing them (no surprise, really), and therefore your score, i.e. your IQ, rises, but it should not rise since it is supposed to be a natural constant – in the opinion of the IQ proponents. Nyborg will not allow people to have higher IQs, and therefore he ends up disproving himself when he tries to explain away the ‘measured’ rise: The tendency of the IQ to rise is not caused by people’s increasing intelligence, but by the fact that they have learned how to do the exercises which, in the opinion of Nyborg et al., is a form of cheating – Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s IQ, nor improve upon thine own! – and therefore the measured increase is declared nil and void!

Let us repeat the argument so far:

1. IQ tests allegedly measure people’s intelligence,
2. but people who know – not the specific exercises, but – the principles that they are based on get better at doing them and therefore achieve higher IQ scores.
3. According to Helmuth Nyborg, however, there are “no known ways of improving intelligence”,
4. but the IQ scores refuse to obey this law of nature and continue to rise,
5. and therefore IQ tests do not measure people’s intelligence after all, but are blurred, empty, of no value etc.,
6. which, of course, they cannot be since the advocates of IQ would then have to give up their stupid tests and their entire discipline, which, however, they cling to, and therefore … (go back to 1) and start again)

 

[Vixen]

Of course, it can be improved!
If you go to school, your IQ will increase. If you study at home, your IQ will increase. If you go on to higher education, your IQ will increase. If you use IQ tests to train before an IQ test, your IQ will increase. It's a tenacious lie among fans of the "g" theory that your IQ is something you're born with. The purpose of the lie is to justify classism and racism.
Helmuth Nyobrg, Danish IQ theoretician, racist and misogynist, claims that there are "no known ways of improving intelligence.”
Also: "You have the intelligence you have, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Quotations from m article: How intelligent is the average IQ test designer? (Skeptic Report)
Danish Nazis love the guy. And he deserves their love!

My criticism of ...

The issue of eugenists using IQ for political ends is an annoying one, and many of the early biologists and psychologists (such as Galton) did have eugenistic ideas. However, those studies seem to have been more to do with the Victorian Age - a great era of human progress - scientific obsession with classifying everything rather than anything malevolent. Stuff such as phrenology and the study of race was based on scholarly curiosity more than anything improper. Now we know that many of these early hypotheses were wrong, although it hasn't stopped some on the far right from trying to base divisiveness, social stigma and segregation on 'scientific principles' (for example, Murray's The Bell Curve, which extended the principle to unmarried mothers on benefits, being inherited). But 'g' does remain one of the most robust and useful psychometric measures, because, (a) it is highly reliable and (b) has predictive quality. For example, diagnosing learning difficulty in schoolchildren. What this thread seems to be about is 'increasing one's IQ' on a personal level. That seems okay to me as I have always had an interest in expanding consciousness (not to be confused with 'mindfulness') - Journey to the East and all that - but I am not sure you could measure this other than by comparing how 'woke' one is in contrast to those who rarely think about anything much.

 

[dann]

"those studies seem to have been more to do with the Victorian Age"
Nyborg's 'studies' are from the late 1900s and the early 2000s. So is The Bell Curve (1994). And it's not as if he's changed his mind since then.

"scientific obsession with classifying everything rather than anything malevolent"
There was nothing wrong with that. There still isn't. What has that got to do with anything?

"Stuff such as phrenology and the study of race was based on scholarly curiosity more than anything improper."
No, it wasn't. It was classism and racism from the get-go.

"these early hypotheses were wrong"
Yes, they were, but they weren't mere hypotheses, they weren't treated as mere hypotheses, and they still aren't.

"But 'g' does remain one of the most robust and useful psychometric measures,..."
No, it doesn't. And you still don't understand what g is.

"... because, (a) it is highly reliable ..."
No, it isn't – and you are talking about IQ, not g, which is not a real thing. IQ score is a real thing. You get the score you get. "g" is an ideological construct. For some reason, you, Vixen, are able to acknowledge that IQ scores can be changed, that they are not immutable, and yet, IQ tests are supposed to measure g, which can't change, which is the whole point of the ideology of g. See my previous post 185 about this.

"...and (b) has predictive quality."
You are still talking about IQ – and you now pretend that IQ's correlation with wealth and education is predictive.

"diagnosing learning difficulty in schoolchildren."
No ◊◊◊◊, Sherlock! That's what IQ tests were meant to do and probably still did when they were invented as a rational tool for finding kids who were lagging behind in school and needed compensatory education:

Intelligence quotient: History (Wikipedia)
It was intended to identify "mental retardation" in school children, but in specific contradistinction to claims made by psychiatrists that these children were "sick" (not "slow") and should therefore be removed from school and cared for in asylums.

(And yet, lagging behind in school is 'predictive'. The educational system sees to that, and so do IQ tests.)

"I have always had an interest in expanding consciousness"
Good for you, but IQ tests don't "expand consciousness," neither does "'increasing one's IQ' on a personal level." On the contrary, it may be a sign that you adhere to the IQ ideology and are obsessed with getting into Mensa or something like that.
However, expanding one's consciousness may increase one's ability to get high scores in IQ tests. Anecdote:
When Danish men are examined for military service, they have to do an IQ test. They aren't told the exact score, but they can ask about it in general terms. I didn't ask because I already knew about the idiocy of IQ tests at that point, my early 20s. However, the medical examiner insisted on asking me about my education, at that point English and Sociology. He told me that I shouldn't have been able to get the high score I got. The reason was pretty obvious: Studies with a lot of math increase your ability to get high IQ scores. The irony is that my high IQ score probably came from my studies of the IQ ideology and thus of IQ tests.

 

[wise47]

If you want to be taken seriously you must participate. You can show your good faith by answering simple questions honestly, otherwise you're likely to be stuck with well-deserved mockery.

My limited linguistic skills also play a role in this case. That's why I'm keeping my answer quite brief.

 

[JayUtah]

My limited linguistic skills also play a role in this case. That's why I'm keeping my answer quite brief.

You're aggressively soliciting the attention of an English-language skeptics forum whose participants are enthusiastically trying to engage you. If you aren't able to participate in a meaningful debate of your claims, you should instead seek attention from people who speak your language.

 

[Vixen]

"those studies seem to have been more to do with the Victorian Age"
Nyborg's 'studies' are from the late 1900s and the early 2000s. So is The Bell Curve (1994). And it's not as if he's changed his mind since then.

"scientific obsession with classifying everything rather than anything malevolent"
There was nothing wrong with that. There still isn't. What has that got to do with anything?

"Stuff such as phrenology and the study of race was based on scholarly curiosity more than anything improper."
No, it wasn't. It was classism and racism from the get-go.

"these early hypotheses were wrong"
Yes, they were, but they weren't mere hypotheses, they weren't treated as mere hypotheses, and they still aren't.

"But 'g' does remain one of the most robust and useful psychometric measures,..."
No, it doesn't. And you still don't understand what g is.

"... because, (a) it is highly reliable ..."
No, it isn't – and you are talking about IQ, not g, which is not a real thing. IQ score is a real thing. You get the score you get. "g" is an ideological construct. For some reason, you, Vixen, are able to acknowledge that IQ scores can be changed, that they are not immutable, and yet, IQ tests are supposed to measure g, which can't change, which is the whole point of the ideology of g. See my previous post 185 about this.

"...and (b) has predictive quality."
You are still talking about IQ – and you now pretend that IQ's correlation with wealth and education is predictive.

"diagnosing learning difficulty in schoolchildren."
No ◊◊◊◊, Sherlock! That's what IQ tests were meant to do and probably still did when they were invented as a rational tool for finding kids who were lagging behind in school and needed compensatory education:

(And yet, lagging behind in school is 'predictive'. The educational system sees to that, and so do IQ tests.)

"I have always had an interest in expanding consciousness"
Good for you, but IQ tests don't "expand consciousness," neither does "'increasing one's IQ' on a personal level." On the contrary, it may be a sign that you adhere to the IQ ideology and are obsessed with getting into Mensa or something like that.
However, expanding one's consciousness may increase one's ability to get high scores in IQ tests. Anecdote:
When Danish men are examined for military service, they have to do an IQ test. They aren't told the exact score, but they can ask about it in general terms. I didn't ask because I already knew about the idiocy of IQ tests at that point, my early 20s. However, the medical examiner insisted on asking me about my education, at that point English and Sociology. He told me that I shouldn't have been able to get the high score I got. The reason was pretty obvious: Studies with a lot of math increase your ability to get high IQ scores. The irony is that my high IQ score probably came from my studies of the IQ ideology and thus of IQ tests.

I agree with much of what you say but we are not talking about politics or the sociology of it. The OP is talking about the 'science' of improving it. It certainly measures whatever it is it measures. I do disagree with you re its use in education. The abolition of the tripartite system was a shame IMV for it gave everybody the chance of a good education if they had the ability. Giving 75% of all children the same high school achievement might make for equality but is useless otherwise, with the well-off always managing to acquire the best university places by sheer dint of expensive prep schools and exclusive public schools, many of which only have places for those whose parents were former pupils. At least with the old universal 11+, even the poorest kids could get an equivalent education (although the cost of the uniform was still a bar). For example, in my class, as well as the Tory councillor's kid and the famous photographer's one, there were kids from a really rough council estate, with labourer dads relying on daily cash-in-hand work.

 

[Thermal]

My limited linguistic skills also play a role in this case. That's why I'm keeping my answer quite brief.

We are not asking for extremely technical responses that require an unusually high command of the language. Please feel free to answer at a grade school language level, which you demonstrate proficiency with in your postings.

Just answer, please, and stop evading.

 

[Vixen]

My limited linguistic skills also play a role in this case. That's why I'm keeping my answer quite brief.

You can write in your native language on a word doc and then Google translate it for the forum. Presumably you already know how to do that as your blog is in English.

My thoughts are that when people discard grammar and style, and avoid elaborating, they are trying to conceal their true identity or motive.

 

[8enotto]

When I entered the US military we did an aptitude test. Not an intelligence test per se.

It showed them where each of us was strong, weak or needed remedial classes.
Motor pool or infantry were the catch all categories for the lowest skilled.

I ended up in supply duties for my time in service. Warehouse duties and processing paperwork along the supply chain.
It fit me well. Repetitive tasks, working alone a lot on a task and processing computer paper output like a mail room.

I even got to work computer cards on a sorting machine. That required a lot of observation and logic to know what cards carried special markers in what column to sort them out quickly from five full boxes of cards
That officer in my office had limited time for me to get it to him.
Planes had to fly and most of the sorting machines had broken sensor fingers.
A co-worker struggled dearly to process them in the taught manner.

 

[wise47]

You can write in your native language on a word doc and then Google translate it for the forum. Presumably you already know how to do that as your blog is in English.

My thoughts are that when people discard grammar and style, and avoid elaborating, they are trying to conceal their true identity or motive.

I use Google Translate to translate from Polish as well as from English, for example this website.

 

[Thermal]

I use Google Translate to translate from Polish as well as from English, for example this website.

Oh that explains everything. AI is translating our questions into the Polish phrase "now run away and hide".

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

How to increase your IQ level ?​

Turn off the boob tube.

 

[JayUtah]

I use Google Translate to translate from Polish as well as from English, for example this website.

This doesn't help your reputation.

You're telling us you have the ability to translate posts on this forum into your native language. And since you've written several essays in English, it's clear you have the ability to write at length in that language. And you've started several threads at this forum in English in which you repeatedly post links to these essays. In each of these threads you've received several pages of feedback including simple questions asking you to clarify the claims you keep directing people to read. Yet now you're telling us a language barrier prevents you from providing anything more than brief, evasive, unsatisfying answers.

I don't believe you.

In your physics essay you flatly say that existing physics is "rubbish." Yet on this forum you tell us that you lack the mathematical knowledge to prove your own version of physics. Do you understand how frankly arrogant that is? In several of your essays you make testable claims, but here in this forum you admit that you don't have the means or skill to test them. In your evolution essay, you cite to the work of some eminent researchers and claim that you predicted the same outcome with your pidgin graphs, but you can't rise to your cited authors' level of rigor.

Science is not the hypothesis; science is the test. Since you're unable to carry out the tests, you aren't doing science. No, you don't get to say that you think your ideas are still good science even though you won't test them and won't assist others in testing them.

At this point it's becoming clear that you know this. Your critics have been extraordinarily patient with you. But your excuses for not answering even their very simple questions are no longer convincing. You've received enough well-founded criticism of your work in your various threads that a reasonably smart (but perhaps not very sincere) person would realize that his ideas don't stand up to any degree of scrutiny. And such a person might scramble for innocent excuses not to participate.

Fine, many people (including myself) come to a realization that an idea they thought was good won't work for one reason or another. But the honest person abandons the idea. Instead you keep posting to your threads. Often it's just to link again and again to the same essays that you have not bothered to revise in light of the criticism you explicitly recognize as valid. At other times it's just to post throwaway lines apparently designed to bump your threads back into people's attention.

It's quite rude to keep demanding people's attention and then giving lame excuses for why you won't engage any further. And then it's quite pretentious to claim to be a scientist when nothing you do has any resemblance to anything scientific.

 

[dann]

I agree with much of what you say but we are not talking about politics or the sociology of it. The OP is talking about the 'science' of improving it. It certainly measures whatever it is it measures.

That really says it all! Like I said, 'g' is a construct. It isn't something real being measured by an IQ test, which is the reason why you can actually improve your IQ if you feel the need.

I do disagree with you re its use in education. The abolition of the tripartite system was a shame IMV for it gave everybody the chance of a good education if they had the ability.

No, it was not a shame that it was abolished. The ideology of the tripartite system was that "it gave everybody the chance of a good education if they had the ability," i.e. when a lot of people didn't get a good education, it was because they didn't have the ability, i.e. their 'g' was insufficient for a good education, and trying to educate those 'low-IQ individuals' would have been a waste of resources. It's the ideology that still rules most education systems, and it's the ideology praised by misogynistic racists like Helmuth Nyborg: 'Some people can only learn so much. They just don't have the 'g' required to learn as much as "the Tory councillor's kid and the famous photographer's one," but it's got nothing to do with racism, sexism, class or the education system. It's all to blame on their defective genes. Nature has spoken, not class society, and nature must be obeyed.'
Google sums the tripartite system up like this:

In essence, it was a "pass or fail" system that was largely replaced by comprehensive schools due to criticisms that it was elitist and restricted working-class opportunities.

I think the summary fits. (We had something similar in .)

Giving 75% of all children the same high school achievement might make for equality but is useless otherwise, with the well-off always managing to acquire the best university places by sheer dint of expensive prep schools and exclusive public schools, many of which only have places for those whose parents were former pupils.

Why make sure that everybody is able to understand graphs and basic math? Why waste resources on making everybody (basic) science literate? What's the use of making sure that every citizen acquires the skills to see through the lies of, say, antivaxxers, tobacco companies and global warming deniers? Who needs that? What's the point?

So much for "useless otherwise."

At least with the old universal 11+, even the poorest kids could get an equivalent education (although the cost of the uniform was still a bar). For example, in my class, as well as the Tory councillor's kid and the famous photographer's one, there were kids from a really rough council estate, with labourer dads relying on daily cash-in-hand work.

What a touching story about token working-class kids mingling with the upper classes in spite of all the bars that prevent most of their peers from getting anywhere near "an equivalent education." (The story would be even better if a couple of them were black!)

To this day, the IQ ideology works wonders for class society:
The Inferiority Complex, article by Richard Lewontin (The New York Review, Oct 22, 1981)

 

[Vixen]

That really says it all! Like I said, 'g' is a construct. It isn't something real being measured by an IQ test, which is the reason why you can actually improve your IQ if you feel the need.

No, it was not a shame that it was abolished. The ideology of the tripartite system was that "it gave everybody the chance of a good education if they had the ability," i.e. when a lot of people didn't get a good education, it was because they didn't have the ability, i.e. their 'g' was insufficient for a good education, and trying to educate those 'low-IQ individuals' would have been a waste of resources. It's the ideology that still rules most education systems, and it's the ideology praised by misogynistic racists like Helmuth Nyborg: 'Some people can only learn so much. They just don't have the 'g' required to learn as much as "the Tory councillor's kid and the famous photographer's one," but it's got nothing to do with racism, sexism, class or the education system. It's all to blame on their defective genes. Nature has spoken, not class society, and nature must be obeyed.'
Google sums the tripartite system up like this:

I think the summary fits. (We had something similar in .)

Why make sure that everybody is able to understand graphs and basic math? Why waste resources on making everybody (basic) science literate? What's the use of making sure that every citizen acquires the skills to see through the lies of, say, antivaxxers, tobacco companies and global warming deniers? Who needs that? What's the point?

So much for "useless otherwise."

What a touching story about token working-class kids mingling with the upper classes in spite of all the bars that prevent most of their peers from getting anywhere near "an equivalent education." (The story would be even better if a couple of them were black!)

To this day, the IQ ideology works wonders for class society:
The Inferiority Complex, article by Richard Lewontin (The New York Review, Oct 22, 1981)

Please stop bringing class and race into it. We were talking about the science of intelligence. The truth is, the average person doesn't WANT to know about Thermodynamics, Quantum Theory, Plato, Astronomy or learning a foreign language. Why make children who do want to study paleontology, ancient religions, physiology, etc., sit in a class of children who mostly only can't wait to leave at sixteen or seventeen. There used to be Open University programmes for people covering its courses in some of the most obscure - and interesting topics - and even German conversation lessons. These programmes were shown in the mornings on minority TV Channels with only a tiny audience. Why do you think that is, Dann? Why do most people prefer the evening programmes of football and sitcoms? A staggering number of people never read another book once they have left school.

As for your claim catering to IQ doesn't work, you need only look at who's in power. The UK has traditionally been Conservative, which is the party by default, with a Labour government seen as an aberration. So prior to all the Prime Ministers that came after Macmillan - Wilson, Heath, Thatcher, Major were all beneficiaries of the tripartite system and Brown (in Scotland, hot-house school). Until then, they all came from the upper middle classes (dukes and earls, etc), including even the post war Labour government of PM Clement Atlee, First Earl (it was Aneurin Bevan, his working class deputy that transformed the NHS), so yes, identifying scholastic pupils does work. (Even Liz Truss, <ahem>)

 

[dann]

Please stop bringing class and race into it. We were talking about the science of intelligence.

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/0d7cee9e-362b-426b-9107-8768737cf784

No, we were talking about the science of IQ tests and g, both of which have disconcertingly little to do with intelligence.

The truth is, the average person doesn't WANT to know about Thermodynamics, Quantum Theory, Plato, Astronomy or learning a foreign language. Why make children who do want to study paleontology, ancient religions, physiology, etc., sit in a class of children who mostly only can't wait to leave at sixteen or seventeen. There used to be Open University programmes for people covering its courses in some of the most obscure - and interesting topics - and even German conversation lessons. These programmes were shown in the mornings on minority TV Channels with only a tiny audience. Why do you think that is, Dann? Why do most people prefer the evening programmes of football and sitcoms? A staggering number of people never read another book once they have left school.

Why do you think that the educational systems of all Western nations meticulously exclude young people from the educations they want but can't get into? Why do you think that is, Vixen?
As for the "children who mostly only can't wait to leave at sixteen or seventeen," they can't wait to get out of school because school has already taught them that education is not for them, the educational selection has already excluded them from access to any and all kinds of higher learning, which they respond to by pretending to hate all kinds of learning – and not least, the people who are blessed by having access to it, the nerds. (A lot of mobbing in school is due to this fact.)
In the USA, in particular, it results in contempt for the 'elites', i.e. people with access to higher education and the prospects it brings, instead of contempt for the actual elite, the Epstein class.
And you don't have to tell me what you think is the reason why TV channels only show educational programmes in the morning when most people are at work and can't watch them. You have already made it clear.

As for your claim catering to IQ doesn't work, you need only look at who's in power. The UK has traditionally been Conservative, which is the party by default, with a Labour government seen as an aberration. So prior to all the Prime Ministers that came after Macmillan - Wilson, Heath, Thatcher, Major were all beneficiaries of the tripartite system and Brown (in Scotland, hot-house school). Until then, they all came from the upper middle classes (dukes and earls, etc), including even the post war Labour government of PM Clement Atlee, First Earl (it was Aneurin Bevan, his working class deputy that transformed the NHS), so yes, identifying scholastic pupils does work. (Even Liz Truss, <ahem>)

Yes, of course! The (few) students with a working-class background who get into college benefit from their college education. The ones who don't don't.
A similar thing happened in my country in the booming 1960s. The State of Denmark began to notice that an industrialized society would need more people with a higher education than the previous mainly agricultural one. In fact, even farmers now needed to know that there was such a thing as proteins. There was even a new word, very popular back then and one that I haven't heard in decades, intelligensreserven.
It meant that even working-class children could now (realistically!) dream of going to college, and a lot of them did. It lasted until the financial crisis hit the Western world in the mid-1970s when it was all of a sudden decided that far too many young people went to college, which obviously wasn't meant for them, so admission to higher learning was restricted again - with or without IQ tests. So there now was an 'intelligence surplus', although nobody ever came up with a word since it would have made it conspicuous that the reason why many young people are excluded from going to college isn't that they don't have enough 'g'. The reason is that the state and the companies don't want them to get educated beyond what is deemed to be fitting for their class.

That's why "identifying scholastic pupils" works the way it does! The state wants just enough people with university degrees to fill the jobs it needs to fill – and sometimes not even that because importing Polish doctors is cheaper than educating them yourself. Britain seems to think so, too.
As mentioned before, Western societies don't seem to appreciate having populations that are educated beyond the level required for getting the kind of jobs that are available. Much like Trump, they appreciate having working classes that aren't science literate and lack "the skills to see through the lies of, say, antivaxxers, tobacco companies and global warming deniers," as I wrote in post 198. It's the reason why Western countries remain only half civilized and are about to be left behind by China.
It's also the reason why the IQ ideology is still as popular as it is. It's the ideological (= socio-biological) justification of societies where higher education, with a few token exceptions, is for "the Tory councillor's kid and the famous photographer's one."