The lucky boy’s mother explained to us that he was the only intelligent child in the family. The willingness to use words like “stupid” and “intelligent” to refer to one’s own children, often in their presence, is entirely consistent with a worldview that puts a large premium on picking a winner (and in getting everyone else in the family to back the winner). This belief creates a strange form of sibling rivalry. In Burkina Faso, a study found that adolescents were more likely to be enrolled in school when they scored high on a test of intelligence, but they were less likely to be enrolled in
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