[snowbird122]

I can provide you with a potential counterexample. Acedemics were never important to my family growing up. School was viewed as a waste of time. I wasted a good portion of my life doing manual labor jobs.

One day, I read a book on IQ and took the IQ tests in the back of the book. The description next to my score said something like "With this IQ, you can be anything you want to be". Regardless of the accuracy of the test or the description, I was inspired and have since gone on to do some great things.

[jgg]

That doesn't make the metric any more accurate though. It just means it gave you a result that inspired you. That's good for you, but why the hell aren't schools inspiring kids like this, instead of grinding them into the mindset required to "be successful", which usually boils down to rote memorization and lots of busy work?