Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Too Many Geniuses or Not Enough?

The life prospects of people are unrelated to their athletic ability, unless their ability is in the far right tail, so having a very athletically talented child can be viewed as winning the lottery. People are not saddened by not winning the lottery. The same is not true of academic ability -- it makes a difference whether you are the 25th or 75th percentile. I chose a wife using an indirect IQ filter (doctors passed) to increase the chances of having smart kids. Few people would state things so baldly, but I think this reasoning partly explains the high degree of assortative mating by education seen today. We moved to our town, as other parents did, for the Good Schools. So having kids with merely average IQ would mean things are not going according to Plan (which is part of life, of course).