Education Experts Assail Book on I.Q. and Class

By Debra Viadero

A new book suggesting that America is becoming divided into a nation of cognitive "haves" and "have nots" came in for sharp criticism last week from a number of education experts.

The central premise behind The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure is that the nation is increasingly stratified by intellectual ability. It argues that a "cognitive elite" of highly educated politicians, professionals, and business leaders runs the country, increasingly isolated from a large and growing underclass that is far less intelligent.

"To try to come to grips with the nation's problems without understanding the role of intelligence is to see through a glass darkly indeed, to grope with the symptoms instead of causes, to stumble into supposed remedies that have no chance of working," the authors, Richard J. Herrnstein...