We are wealthy because we are good. We know we are
good because we are wealthy. This argument used to be fairly well
accepted in American life. Indeed some form of it was something of a
tenet in some sects of American Protestantism. While relatively few
people would make so naked a claim, the underlying sentiment still
informs much of American culture and social life: the idea of keeping
up with the Joneses or even what is commonly accepted as “the American
Dream,” rely on us all understanding that happiness and goodness are
linked to our material wealth. We fetishize commodities not for what
they do for us, but what they say about us. We are forever seduced by
advertisements that promise our completeness is one purchase away.

    The idea that wealth equal goodness or signals
intelligence led to the concept of Social Darwinism: people who are
poor not because of social circumstance but because of a personal
defect and any progressive policy that seeks to address poverty is at
best, doomed to failure and at worst threatens to drag the rest of us
down.

    For the most part, Social Darwinism as social policy
has been dismissed in our society (although that is certainly
arguable), and nowhere do we pay more lip service to its progressive
opposite than in the area of public education. From phrases such as “No
Child Left Behind” to our enormous spending on special needs to the
mandate contained in many state constitutions that all children are
entitled to a quality education, modern public education rests on the
principal that all children can be improved by education and all of
society is improved when children are educated.

    It was something of a surprise then, when last week
I picked up a copy of the Portland Forecaster and read about how “some
folks in Cape Elizabeth,” think that wealth begets brains. (For those
who might need to check the dictionary like me, beget means to produce).

    As evidence of these “folks,” the author of the
piece, Steve Mistler first mentions “a Cape Elizabeth High School staff
member,” who looked for a correlation between income and test scores.
Mistler then goes on to point out what we all knew already: Cape
Elizabeth is wealthy and its children test well. Left out of the piece
was information on any attempt, either by the CEHS staff member or
Mistler himself, about how the two facts correlate. Finding that two
phenomena correlate is usually where scientists begin an investigation,
finding out why is the tricky part.

    It has been studied and debated by many scientists
and those less-scientifically minded that on average, black students
don’t test as well as white students. This correlation is an
established fact. What is debated is the why.

    We don’t know if the CEHS staff member even
attempted to find out the underlying reasons. For Mistler the reasons
are so clear, they need not be repeated: some folks in Cape Elizabeth
think wealth begets brains. If you’re keeping score, the number of
folks he demonstrates actually believes this so far into the article
are zero.

    But that soon changes.

    “The data was enough to convince Town Councilor Sara
Lennon,” Mistler informs readers, going on to quote Lennon during a
recent budget workshop meeting. The problem is, Mistler wasn’t at that
meeting. I was. A different Forecaster reporter was there who is
attributed at the bottom of the piece (perhaps a more fitting title for
the column should be “Another Reporter’s Notebook”). How Mistler got
from “the data” to Lennon’s beliefs is not clear. Perhaps that is
because there never was any connection.

    To demonstrate that Lennon is one of these Cape
Elizabeth folks who believe that wealth begets brains, he takes
something she said completely out of context.

    In the middle of an exchange with several other
councilors about the utility of using test scores to measure the
quality of education– Lennon, by the way, was arguing that test scores
are not the best way to measure education quality– she said the
quotation, “we have parents with high IQ’s and a wealthy town.” (Point
of clarification: I’m not even sure that is what she said exactly, but
I do recall her saying something along those lines).

    In the context Lennon was speaking she was not
saying that one begot the other. The two observations were independent
of each other. As mentioned, no one disputes Cape Elizabeth is a
wealthy town and with a relatively high proportion of successful
business people, doctors and lawyers, the idea that there are parents
with high IQ’s doesn’t strike me as all that controversial. It does not
preclude that there are poorer folks with high IQ’s or that there are
dumb parents in town who married well (or were begotten well). What
Lennon’s point seemed to be is not that wealth begets brains, but
wealth begets opportunity and resources that help children succeed.

    The context given by Mistler for the remark was that
Lennon was arguing for increased budget expenditures. That is only true
in a much more general sense. But even twisting the context of Lennon’s
remark to fit the argument about folks in Cape Elizabeth, causes the
logic to fall apart. Why would a person who believes that “wealth
begets brains,” argue that more money should be spent on public
education. Wouldn’t such a person argue for less spending?

    I am sure that Steve Mistler is right. My sense is
that there are people in Cape Elizabeth who view wealth as a virtue;
who look down on others as inferior, but I’m sure that the people in
town have not cornered the market for this perspective. If the point of
the article was to demonstrate this phenomenon is especially pervasive
in Cape Elizabeth, it would have been nice to find an actual person who
believes it.

    Jersey Tawk is a bi-weekly column that runs in the
Scarborough Leader newspaper. Beginning this week is will also appear
in the Sentry.