Countries and intelligence

[Le Chat]

Would you say that any particular country breeds a more intelligent person than another.
For example, a girl I worked with, who was not the sharpest tool in the box herself, had been a masseur on an American Cruise liner for 12 months. She reckoned that most of the Americans that she met were really thick. This surprised me as she was not one to talk detrimentally about anyone as a rule.
What do other ABers think.
She did give me loads of examples of things that could back up her argument, although I can't remember now!

[DottyH]

An American Tourist and his wife were walking down the dock road in liverpool and saw a small cafe. They went in and asked for a cup of coffee each and the waitress brought the coffee, 'call that a cup of coffee, in America we have cups of coffee 5 times bigger.' then they ordered a burger and the waitress brought the burgers, 'call that a burger, in America we have burgers the size of dinner plates.' they eat the burger but are still hungry, 'what is the biggest dish you have on the menu maam' the yank asks the waitress, 'sheeps head' she replies, 'then i shall have one of those and make it an American sheeps head!' says the yank tourist, the waitress shouts to the cook, 'sheeps head one, and take the brains out'.

[Llamatron]

I don't think you can generalise like that. Sure they voted Bush in which wasn't a smart move by anyones standards but they also have Nasa and Google and Apple and.... I could go on.
They're the richest nation on earth so they must be doing something right.

[luna-tic]

We could also ask,"What do we mean by intelligence?"
I think everyone has certain qualities and although the capacity for learning and logic may be not in everyone's favour I'm sure there could be something they could add to a given situation. I've worked with people that have certain academic degrees and qualifications as long as your arm yet couldn't make up a cardboard box and others who claimed to know nothing but could always make people laugh which isn't a bad tool to have.

[Llamatron]

Good point.

[jake-the-peg]

I doubt the brain is psysiologically different between races so unless there are chemical factors such as large scale pollution (parts of Russia perhaps) it's unlikely to be the case.

However culturally some countries value learning and education more and others have a more effective education system.

This can change over time as well. For many centuries the greatest mathematical advances happened in India. They still produce some great mathematicians but the rest of the world's caught up more now.

The Arab world was a centre of knowledge and learning when Europe were squabbling over who's mud hut looked nicer but changes in political fortunes have reversed that dramatically.

So no it's not in the blood, it's in the culture. If your culture doesn't respect and value knowledge you'll never produce great thinkers

[Le Chat]

Thank you for all your answers - I understand what you say Jake. However, in my son's school, there are 6 children of Chinese descent and ALL of them are brilliant, gifted in fact, in maths. They were all born in this country as well!

[jake-the-peg]

Yes, all to Chinese parents no doubt?

This is what I mean by culture - if you are surrounded by people who tell you that knowledge is worth while and encourage and push you you'll turn out rather differently to somebody who's surrounded by people who have no respect for any academic achievement you may make

[lizzierose]

to comment on a previous post. They didn't actually vote Bush in. More people voted for Al Gore. Plus you can't generalise about the intelligence of any country. Meeting a few people on a cruise liner is no basis to judge a country with a population of millions. It would be interesting to compare IQ scores of randomised tests on the general public of different countries.

[shalini0112]

I don't think so that any particular country breeds more intelligent person because every person has their ability and intelligence, but sometimes it's happened that some children born with an extraordinary IQ level that can happen in any county in the world not even some selected countries.

Recently I found some kids having the highest level of IQ by born in India such as Rajgauri, Vaishalini Gitagopinath and so on also some are from other countries.

In conclusion, we can say that intelligence can be in any country rather than some specific.