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| Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success (896166) | |||
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Fri Jan 6 13:19:13 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jan 5 16:29:08 2012. however I still leave room for the possibility that some gifted cats from said impoverished districts may come back and help (or at least try) to turn things around. Might be the idealist in me though.I think Geoffrey Canada and his KIPP schools demonstrate that some folks are trying, as meager as their results are. In addition to these, gifted programs within existing middle schools is something I'd favor - especially if these specialized middle schools do not meet the entire demand of gifted middle schoolers. That won't do quite what you want it to, since part of the problem is exposure to low-IQ (and often violent) students itself. The gifted students need to be completed isolated from the low IQ rift-raft. With all of the aspects of life (SES, education, health, etc) that are correlated with IQ, does this mean that such individuals are up the creek? I'd like to think not (I know, it's the idealist in me again, but I don't favor policies which leave such people up the creek). Which brings me to this point, if your goal is having them live just like middle class Americans, then yes, they are up the creek. Look at sub-Saharan Africa. Look at Haiti. Look at Jamaica. American Blacks live considerably better than their brethren in these other countries. One of the reasons lower IQ people tend to be more more careless in terms of sexual behavior is that they need to be more fecund to make up for their (in pre-modern times, anyway) much poorer survivability. There is little hope of significantly improving the lot of the lowest IQ segments of the population (including among Whites as the   <>...destitution of Appalachia attests to). However, I wonder if one's attitude toward tests contributes significantly to the results thereof... Yes, several studies have shown you can get marginal improvement from lower-IQ individuals by motivating them to work harder. As much as I'd like to think this isn't true based on my being born, raised, and still living in The Bronx (and knowing some smart individuals here), the way some cats behave and comport themselves unfortunately supports a low-IQ assumption (I sure hope it ain't that low)... Tell me about it. I would say at least as late as the late 90s, that the average IQ in the "darkest" parts of the Bronx was about 75-80, or maybe a bit higher thanks to the Puerto Rican and Dominican presence there. Gentrification is also playing a part in the turnaround, though I suppose you could argue that this crackdown "planted the seed." Both police crackdowns (which removes the most violent and lowest-IQ elements) and gentrification (where higher-IQ individuals move in) serve to raise the average IQ of a neighborhood, but this is entirely due to replacing the neighborhood's residents. Typically the condition of the neighborhood improves accordingly. >>>>In any case, small differences in average IQ doesn't rule out larger differences in typical behavioral traits. Native Americans, and by extension Latinos, who have higher IQ's than American Blacks (~90 vs 85, respectively) still perform much more poorly than their IQ's alone would suggest (even considering mostly Mestizo Latinos like Mexicans, as opposed to more Mulatto ones of the Caribbean). Aside from what we've discussed in this thread, why do you think this is? Is it solely other biological/genetic factors or are other environmental/societal forces at play? Different ethnic groups (even in the same major race) can have fairly significant differences in personality traits. The Native Americans for example—despite having higher IQs than Black Americans—have a much lower economic standing because of these traits. Particularly, Natives have had less time to develop traits of those accustomed to civilization and have much less resistance to addiction, especially to alcohol. These personality traits can have a rather large impact on society and how it develops, as we are currently exploring. |
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