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| Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success (896392) | |||
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Sat Jan 7 11:24:55 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Fri Jan 6 18:37:16 2012. In an effort to streamline the discussion, I'm consolidating all my responses into one post. but what of those gifted students who either narrowly miss the mark (i.e. a few points below the cutoff of an admission exam) or choose not to attend the specialized middle schools (due to distance, etc.)? In a way, the KIPP schools perform this function. The reason that KIPP schools work (and they don't work anywhere near as well as you might think) is not because of the long hours or the pledges they make kids do or any of that rubbish, it is that the KIPP draws from a select group of kids. Parents who have heard about KIPP schools make an effort to get their kids in. These families will no doubt have higher IQs and greater consciousness than the average ghetto family. As well, for students that just miss the mark on entrance exams, many of them may well be better off not going to a gifted program, because their place in the academic pecking order would plummet; the kids go from being at the top of their class at normal schools to the very bottom in a gifted class. That might serve to demotivate them to achieve more. Bear in mind that for the most part, very few children in a typical ghetto would qualify as "gifted" by White standards (i.e., IQ ≥ 130; I am one of those few), by virtue of the lower mean and lower standard deviation of the Black IQ curve (μ = 85, σ = 12), much less than 1%. Which is a shame (the up the creek part), though I guess this must be accepted; even the Bible talks about the poor always being around (cf. John 12:8). Given this, the social programs become even more imperative (though something must be done about the rampant abuses...) I have a principle of taking care of everyone as much as possible. But when you consider the likes of Gingrich or Santorum, White Americans are aware of the overrespresentation of Blacks and Latinos on welfare rolls are unlikely to want to continue to support it. This is quite likely to become more acute of a problem if knowledge of race differences became well known. >>>>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. Is sexual impulsivity still driven by a need to survive even now (at least in civilized societies)? One would think civility would lend itself to higher degrees of temperance on the average... But a "freer" society mitigates that. Before the sexual revolution, when marriage was much more of a stricter requirement for children and to a lesser extent sex, the level of Black illegitimacy was much lower than today. However, society isn't going to go back to the 1950s, and a liberated society that allows all people to live as they choose leads people to pursue their genetic proclivities more. So let me see if I understand this correctly: individual and group traits contribute to the formation of various types of societies, which in turn determine the efficacy of said individuals and/or societies (especially when it comes to civilized societies) Exactly. Part of the tension in any society comes from when the environment changes from what it had been. Individuals then face difficulty with minds and bodies that have been adapted to one environment that are then required to adapt to a new one. Some individuals are more able to adapt to the new environment than others, and over time, these individuals become more numerous in the population. this, then, should explain why certain groups/societies with higher average IQs may not perform as well economically as those with slightly lower average IQs... You should read The 10,000 Year Explosion. Civilization itself place a whole new set of demands on people, and caused human evolution to rapidly accelerate in its wake. I think it's safe to say, on the average, that by the time a person settles to his/her genetic IQ, he/she will no longer be dependent on parents. Moreover, since a child's environment may indeed give him/her a leg up, shouldn't we encourage a stable home environment? I think you're missing something important. Allow me to illustrate: If a person is a born with a "genetic" IQ of 80, and is given some sort of intervention early on (like Head Start, for example), he will initially test higher than this during his childhood. But slowly but surely, as he gets older, his tested IQ will fall and approach 80; that is, he will have had retained no lasting benefit from the earlier intervention, and will perform as does a person with an IQ of 80. The reverse is true of a smarter person who is held back from enrichment opportunities early on. His tested IQ will rise to his genetic potential IQ. Also, while I see your chart shows that shared environmental factors cease to contribute to IQ variance by age 12, I specifically mentioned non-shared environmental factors (unless those too dissipate around the same time; the study I linked to in the previous post agreed that contributions by shared environmental factors were not significant). As far as behavioral genetics is concerned, the different contributions to IQ in adulthood are heredity: 80%, shared environment: 0%, unique environment and measurement error: 20%. In youth, the shared environment term is larger and the heredity term is lower, but the shared environment quickly falls to 0 as children age. See here. >>>Worse still, I see this incentive exacerbating the absentee father dilemma, as it gives some dudes an avenue through which they can duck the responsibility of providing for their children. >>>How is that any different from what we have currently, other than the fact that it is perpetuated from generation to generation? It's not much different - and that's the problem. I know you're suggesting voluntary sterilization as a solution to the IQ problem and not the deadbeat dad problem; I highlighted this to show how it could feed another problem (or mayhap other problems) and is thus not an optimal solution. As SP pointed out, waiting for the optimal solution is often not the optimal solution (statisficing). One has to think statistically. If a program of incentivized voluntary sterilization was offered those whose progeny are most likely require social spending (be it either from welfare or prisons), would there be more such children or fewer of them than the status quo? What about in the future? This would end the issue of funding "welfare queens"; welfare moms would only be paid welfare if they agree to undergo sterilization once they become pregnant with their third child or remain on the dole longer than five or six years, whichever comes first. |
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