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| Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success (895669) | |||
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jan 5 13:34:43 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by JayMan on Thu Jan 5 09:50:59 2012. Handicapping them with watered-down curricula and a flurry of tests won't solve this problem - hell, we've discussed this before at length.Here's the secret and the piece of the puzzle that I think you're missing: education doesn't make you smarter, it only makes you more knowledgeable. Intelligence, particularly the g-factor (the meat of IQ tests) appears to be largely innate, and poorly affected by learning. Smarter students can learn more at a faster pace, hence, they have more hefty curricula. By contrast, less intelligent children learn more slowly and generally can only handle the "watered-down" curricula. This is why if you compare a middle school in the South Bronx to one in Helsinki, you'll notice a world of difference of what is taught and how quickly. Good point, but it's exactly this secret that bolsters my argument - namely, that the current state of education lends itself to mediocrity. The current policies that encourage watered-down curricula implicitly hold back the gifted (high IQ) students by not giving them the opportunity to attain higher-level knowledge when they're clearly ready for it. In the Atlanta cheating thread we discussed IQ and motivation; would a gifted student be motivated to learn in an environment where they're unable to demonstrate their gift? Would they not become bored and indifferent due to the fact that they're not being challenged? That said, while their intelligence may enable them to overcome and succeed later on, we do ourselves no favors by denying them the opportunities to do so in exchanged for easier tests. Allowing for more gifted/talented programs and bringing back music, the arts, etc. (along with related extracurriculars) will give them the opportunity to explore their talents and gifts; I believe re-opening these channels will enable more students (especially those of low SES and/or IQ) to succeed. (And yes, I know some simply won't make the cut even then, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go for it.) Yes, sorry about that, I as yet haven't found a free link to that particular paper. The main point that Lynn makes about the PISA test is that scores on the PISA correlate about as well with scores on IQ tests (~0.85), about as well as IQ tests correlate with each other, and about as well as scores of one individual taking the same test multiple times correlate. In other words, the PISA is really an IQ test, and doesn't measure the effectiveness of education per se, but rather students' ability to learn. Thanks for the synopsis; however in my (brief) research of IQ tests I found that there are some that are more culturally sensitive (i.e. the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales (WAIS)) than others (i.e. Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices). If one took different IQ tests and obtained (slightly) different results, which would be more accurate (or do we simply take a weighted average of results)? One thing we can do is enact immigration reform, we should make sure that people moving here will only be those capable of contributing to our society (i.e., high IQ) and shut off the flow of illegal Mexican and other Latino immigrants (who have a lower average IQ than the White population here). So long as "shutting off the flow" entails fighting (and ideally ending) illegal immigration and not suppressing legal immigration, I agree completely. As a man whose mom LEGALLY immigrated here from D.R. several decades ago, it pisses me off to no end when illegals get this and that while legal immigrants have to endure bureaucratic gymnastics and other nonsense. Unfortunately, this is one of the things where the wisdom of the "Serenity Prayer" comes in handy. Eliminating social inequality is impossible in a free, meritocratic society, as long as innate differences between people exist. They have not even eliminated it in Finland and the other European countries; it's just that they don't have the wild extremes that we do because of their homogenous (and high IQ) population. I love the Serenity Prayer; as a believer in God it's quite encouraging! Pertaining to social inequality, even if we can't eliminate it per se, we can certainly do something about these "extremes," which brings me to... I am however one of the apparently rare liberal believers in HBD. I'm all for social welfare programs that help the underprivileged. However, they should have realistic expectations—just as none of the nations in sub-Saharan Africa will rise to First World standards in the foreseeable future, no matter what the developed world does for them, requiring us to accept that we in the developed world must resign ourselves to look after them, so we must we do for the underclasses in our own country. ...this point of yours. As I'm sure you've seen in the media, there is a concerted effort to slash these programs in the name of cost-savings. While there are abuses (i.e. people who "game" the system) that must be curtailed, full-on elimination of these programs and initiatives is something we cannot afford to let happen. This is particularly true of healthcare reform, since evidence suggests that SES (and I guess IQ, according to Jensen) is a significant determinant in assessing child health and predicting their well-being into adulthood. As Jianghong Li et al. state: Given the pervasive impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on health and the fact that many aspects of this influence are amenable to policy intervention, especially at the macro-level (such as universal education), unless justified, all studies of population health should include robust measures of the current socioeconomic status of its participants. The increasing evidence for intergenerational and early life impacts on adult health underscores a growing need to include measures of socioeconomic status from the previous generation and of the participants’ childhood. Information on individual level socioeconomic status should also be included in the routine population level data collections, such as existing linked administrative data bases for health, education, child protection and crime in Western Australia as an example (Glauert et al., 2008). Even with the evidence you've presented suggesting that one's SES is related (predicted?) by his/her IQ, policies which risk the exacerbation of poverty should be avoided IMHO. Or put another way, if the financial barriers were removed here, as they were in Finland, would we see higher achievement amongst underperforming groups? So the short answer is no, as the failure of programs like Head Start demonstrate. In fact, as we see on the PISA charts, all racial groups in America do better than they do in their ancestral homelands (indeed, American Blacks average IQ is about 85, significantly better than the average African average IQ of 70). While the PISA results indeed demonstrate that all races in America perform better on the average than elsewhere, wouldn't this be more of a testament to IQ than to the strength of American education, based on your evidence? It doesn't necessarily mean that the American education system itself is better or that it doesn't need improvement. NOTE: This isn't to say that America's education system is the worst; clearly, our ed. system is better than that of many countries, but still in need of improvement IMHO. Think of this: IQ is highly heritable (70%-80% so, especially in late life) and not really subject to environmental manipulation. As well, IQ has an impact on life achievement both academically and economically. As such, it necessarily follows that children coming from higher SES parents have higher average IQs than those from lower SES backgrounds, and those from wealthier backgrounds will perform better as a group. This is especially true in today's world that is awash in opportunities and people of all sort of backgrounds have a reasonably fair shot at succeeding. The earlier era of people ascending into the middle and upper classes was due to new opportunities being provided to people who previously lacked them, such as poor rural dwellers like Charles Murray who praised the SAT for identifying his talent and opening the door to better schools. However in the current generation, this process is now largely complete; the children of the higher classes remain in the higher classes because of their talents, and the children of the lower classes remain there because of their lack of talent. The main reason that we have far less social mobility in today's world isn't because we don't have a level playing field, but precisely because we do. Yet economic disparities are widening. The playing field may have become more "level" in terms of opportunities, but in terms of earning potential it's not. Mayhap it's time to encourage creation of opportunities - exploration of gifts - SOMETHING to make a positive impact on communities, especially those riddled with poverty (like the very borough I live in, which STILL has one of the highest poverty rates in the NATION). It is because of these facts and more that I'm so passionate about education and why I believe a comprehensive, enriched one is fundamental to success. my blog |
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