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IQ by ethnic groups and education policy

Yeah. What I find slightly depressing is that, while the right would love to use these statistics to justify racism, the left would rather ignore them because they seem to also think that they justify racism.

Who is ignoring what? "The left" is disagreeing, based on evidence, about the etiology, the cause, the true source of the test differences.
 
More generally it is fascinating that the history of evaluating "races" by intellectual capacity typically has generated conclusions that place the evaluator's race as within the high IQ range and "others" in lower IQ range. Just coincidence no doubt.

What I tend to find more fascinating, is that in my experience the racists who really really seem to care about this, tend not to be the ones pulling the White average up. :rolleyes:
 
Yeah. What I find slightly depressing is that, while the right would love to use these statistics to justify racism, the left would rather ignore them because they seem to also think that they justify racism.


Do you see anybody ignoring them?! Pointing out that they are racist pseudo-science cannot be described as ignoring anything.
 
Do you see anybody ignoring them?! Pointing out that they are racist pseudo-science cannot be described as ignoring anything.

It can when it's not pseudo-science.

Hell, I've had hard-left people pretend that sexual dimorphism in humans was a socially-constructed myth, presumably because that brought down the very idea of equality. Which it doesn't of course.
 
It can when it's not pseudo-science.


Any examples of that?!

Hell, I've had hard-left people pretend that sexual dimorphism in humans was a socially-constructed myth, presumably because that brought down the very idea of equality. Which it doesn't of course.


What is your point? Do you propose that IQs are sexually dimorphic?!
 
What is your point? Do you propose that IQs are sexually dimorphic?!

No, he's right that there's a truly problematic resurgence of this weird, toxic, extremist sort of postmodernism in "left" activists circles in some countries. I think it might be limited to the plutonomy countries, though.
 
I have a few relatives who like to point to some of the positive stereotypes associated with our "ethnic group" as a way of patting themselves on their own backs. Of course they reject the negative stereotypes as blatantly wrong, but they like to savor the positive ones as if they were personal compliments.

Almost all people like to borrow undeserved personal credit through this type of membership in a larger ethnic group (and/or from the ancestors they can document). However having Napoleon as your great great third cousin doesn't mean you are a military genius and stereotypes are just that: typically highly inaccurate, often blatantly racist, and always meaningless, idiotic shortcuts that are absolutely useless when judging individuals. Does it matter that I am jewish if you are seeking investment advice? As far as I can tell the stereotype that jews are good with money is simply wrong. But more so, it is particularly incredibly wrong in terms of me as an individual. I am terrible with investments. My jewish genes are not going to help you if you ask my advice about a stock. Nor, in regard to the OP, would I suggest depending on the intellectual skills of several of my relatives.

Who we each are as an individual is far more important than what type of "ethnic" groups we were assigned into by prejudiced prior rules. And I am not even suggesting that genetics does not play an important role in determining "who" we are, including intellect. But modern genetics does not parallel the concepts of "race" so frequently put forward in the past and held onto by modern racists.
 
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Why don't we deny individuals an education based on the inherent inferiority of their race?
Oh golly gee, must because those dastardly bleeding heart PC people in power are so naive.

That's not actually what the OP was suggesting though. He suggested education split by intelligence, not race. He also suggested that doing so would lead to some sort of racial segregation, and he thinks that's due to natural differences in intelligence, though I'm doubtful about the accuracy of that idea.

But isn't education already segregated by ability? I remember when I was in high school we had different tiers of courses that students could sign up for based on scores in previous classes, with a minimum grade required to get into more advanced classes.

I guess he wants something similar for grade school, and perhaps to tie it directly to IQ scores instead of, say, grades.

I'm not sure what I think, and I really don't think that his implication that the reason this isn't done is because people are afraid of racism is correct.
 
But isn't education already segregated by ability? I remember when I was in high school we had different tiers of courses that students could sign up for based on scores in previous classes, with a minimum grade required to get into more advanced classes.


That would be pretty rational: Moving on to the next level of knowledge requires the you master the basic stuff. It doesn't say why you don't master it: if you didn't do your homework, were absent because you had mono, or because your conditions for studying weren't as good as those of the other students.

I guess he wants something similar for grade school, and perhaps to tie it directly to IQ scores instead of, say, grades.


My guess is the same as yours.

I'm not sure what I think, and I really don't think that his implication that the reason this isn't done is because people are afraid of racism is correct.


The reason this isn't done is that people don't believe 100% in the racist ideology of g and IQ where people are excluded from further education because nature prevents them from learning any more.
This is one of the many contradictions of IQ theory:
Society excludes people from higher learning by turning education into competition and claiming that the losers lose, not because the educational system is based on competition but, because of their inferior genes, nature, when all it would take to remedy the fact that not everybody had learned the same would be to give the disadvantaged extra time to complete the courses that they had missed for whatever reason.
The idea is racist even when this competition takes place within one ethnic group!

the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community. Therefore the school and the teacher must guard against employing the easy method of creating individual ambition in order to induce to pupils to diligent work.
Darwin’s theory of the struggle for existence and the selectivty connected with it has by many people been cited as authorization of the encouragement of the spirit of competition. Some people also in such a way have tried to prove pseudo-scientifically the necessity of the destructive economic struggle of competition between individuals. But this is wrong, because man owes his strength in the struggle for existence to the fact that he is a socially living animal. As little as a battle between single ants of an anthill is essential for survival, just so little is this the case with the individual members of a human community.
Therefore, one should guard against preaching to the young man success in the customary sense as the aim of life.
On Education (http://www.cse.iitm.ac.in/~kalyantv/pdf/on_edu.pdf)


Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our
whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
Why Socialism (Monthly Review)

What moron could possibly get with ideas like that?! :)
 
But even IF women were smarter or stupider than men, ...


What you don't seem to understand is why women aren't smarter or stupider than men ... IQwise:
They aren't because that's the way IQ tests are calibrated. It would not be difficult at all to calibrate IQ tests in a way that made descendants of Europeans and Africans in the USA have the same IQ - on average.
We already know how easy it is to make IQ tests that make it appear as if whites have much more of the non-existent entity g than blacks, don't we?!
 
No, he's right that there's a truly problematic resurgence of this weird, toxic, extremist sort of postmodernism in "left" activists circles in some countries.


And what does that have to do with the racism of The Bell Curve and similar ideologies?
 
When you test various ethnicities on the least culturally biased IQ test, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and you do it in a low-pressure setting, the IQ "differences" completely go away.

IQ tests and the g-factor extrapolated to racial generalizations are considered racist pseudoscience for good scientific reason.

Can you post some places where I can read about this? Especially if it has easy to paste links to discussions I've been having elsewhere. This would pretty much be nails in the coffin for a lot of arguments I've seen. So far I couldn't find anything rigorous that shows what you say, but my google fu is weak
 
I assume that there are ethnically/socially correlated levels of IQ for the same reason that there is a strong correlation between having perfect pitch and being a native Chinese speaker: certain environments will promote learning of certain skills more than others.
 
What you don't seem to understand is why women aren't smarter or stupider than men ... IQwise:

The only reason why you think so is because you didn't read the sentence you quoted properly. It starts with an "if", and is a hypothetical. It's simply a reminder that it doesn't matter if groups have a higher IQ than others, because the idea of civil rights and equality has nothing to do with whether people are just as smart, strong, fast or funny as anyone else.

As for the usefulness of IQ tests, it's been a debate for a while, and I honestly don't have an opinion about it. I just find it amusing that one side is always more than willing to use it to justify racism, while the other is quick to dismiss it in order to avoid veering into racism.
 
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That's not actually what the OP was suggesting though. He suggested education split by intelligence, not race.
Oh please...
Almost all of the OP was about race. If he had wanted to make a suggestion about education policy there would not have been any reason to mention "ethnic groups", at all.

The sane suggestion would have been: People have different abilities which can be determined via IQ tests. Education should use IQ tests.
The OP suggests: On average, races have different abilities, which can be determined by averaging individual IQ tests. Education should...

That's what makes the OP racist. The IQ pseudoscience is just that. It's that needless roundabout where individual ability becomes racial ability and where the individual is then seen as a member of his race with his race's abilities.

I'm not sure what I think, and I really don't think that his implication that the reason this isn't done is because people are afraid of racism is correct.
As humans we assume that others reason in the same way us ourselves. If race is central to your thinking, you will assume that it must be central to other's, too. If your perception is not completely colored by race, you will not come up with a moronic explanation like that.

We can argue about IQ pseudoscience or about the possible uses of IQ tests in education. But let's not pretend that the OP is anything other than racist.
 
Oh please...
Almost all of the OP was about race. If he had wanted to make a suggestion about education policy there would not have been any reason to mention "ethnic groups", at all.

The sane suggestion would have been: People have different abilities which can be determined via IQ tests. Education should use IQ tests.
The OP suggests: On average, races have different abilities, which can be determined by averaging individual IQ tests. Education should...

That's what makes the OP racist. The IQ pseudoscience is just that. It's that needless roundabout where individual ability becomes racial ability and where the individual is then seen as a member of his race with his race's abilities.


As humans we assume that others reason in the same way us ourselves. If race is central to your thinking, you will assume that it must be central to other's, too. If your perception is not completely colored by race, you will not come up with a moronic explanation like that.

We can argue about IQ pseudoscience or about the possible uses of IQ tests in education. But let's not pretend that the OP is anything other than racist.

I'm not arguing that the OP isn't racist. It pretty clearly is.

I'm trying to be clear about how it's racist. He says that we should use IQ to segregate students between higher and lower IQ groups. He suggests that we don't do this because people know that this would lead to segregation into racial groups, and people don't want that to happen. He thinks this would be a good thing because he thinks that it's just the way things are that different racial groups have different IQs, at least on average.

The places where I disagree:
- I think there are probably better metrics for separating students along lines of ability. For instance when I was in school your grade in 9th grade math determined which stream of math classes you went into. But going into a more challenging math class didn't mean also went into a more challenging english class: that was based on your score in english. That makes more sense to me that using IQ which would lead to a student either in all "high IQ" classes, or none.
- It's not clear that the racial segregation that he suggests would actually happen, and the degree to which it would may be dependant upon which tests were used and may also be an indicator not of racial IQ differences but of bias in the test chosen.
- I don't think he's right that the reason that IQ as a metric for separating students into different streams hasn't be used is because people are afraid of racism. Rather I think it's because it hasn't been seen as a good idea (see my first point).

I don't know enough about the science of either IQ or racial differences in IQ to comment much more, except to say that based on my understanding of evolution I find it unlikely that the reported differences are real. I did listen to Charles Murray's conversation with Sam Harris, and there were a few things he said that led me to think there's room for all the differences he suggested to be environmental rather than genetic. But even if they are environmental they'd still exist, though they wouldn't be an insolvable problem like he suggests.
 
Can you post some places where I can read about this? Especially if it has easy to paste links to discussions I've been having elsewhere. This would pretty much be nails in the coffin for a lot of arguments I've seen. So far I couldn't find anything rigorous that shows what you say, but my google fu is weak

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._Gap_on_Raven's_Advanced_Progressive_Matrices

This study addresses recent criticisms aimed at the interpretation of stereotype threat research and methodological weaknesses of previous studies that have examined race differences on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM). African American and White undergraduates completed the APM under three conditions. In two threat conditions, participants received either standard APM instructions (standard threat) or were told that the APM was an IQ test (high threat). In a low threat condition, participants were told that the APM was a set of puzzles and that the researchers wanted their opinions of them. Results supported the stereotype threat interpretation of race differences in cognitive ability test scores. Although African American participants underperformed Whites under both standard and high threat instructions, they performed just as well as Whites did under low threat instructions.
 
That really looks easy to dismiss as special pleading. Are there other studies or replications of this one? Especially I'd like to see the "threat" stuff removed. I don't mind if all participants think its an important test.
 
Especially I'd like to see the "threat" stuff removed. I don't mind if all participants think its an important test.

The threat is cause of the situationally decreased ability.

It's a well recognized, very real phenomenon.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2570773/

Stereotype threat has become one of the most widely studied topics of the past decade in social psychology. In 2003, Steele and Aronson's (1995) seminal article on the subject was named a modern classic (Devine & Brodish, 2003; Fiske, 2003).
 
Yet it will be (and I will have to be honest and agree that in good faith) rightfully handwaved away as special pleading.

Also, aren't the ACT's regarded as culturally biased even by "race realists"?
 
Anyway, that's just about the culturally unbiased Raven's test (pure pattern recognition).

With standard IQ tests, this is the deal:

http://www.bactra.org/sloth/fagan-holland-2007.pdf

Such specific knowledge did vary with race and was shown to be subject to test bias. Differences in knowledge within a race and differences in knowledge between races were found to have different determinants. Race was unrelated to the g factor. Cultural differences in the provision of information account for racial differences in IQ

Also:
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/20...murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech
We believe there is a fairly wide consensus among behavioral scientists in favor of our views, but there is undeniably a range of opinions in the scientific community.
Asserting that the relatively poorer intellectual performance of racial groups is based on their genes is mistaken theoretically and unfounded empirically;

The authors:
Eric Turkheimer is the Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. Twitter: @ent3c. Kathryn Paige Harden (@kph3k) is associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Richard E. Nisbett is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan.
 
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Yet it will be (and I will have to be honest and agree that in good faith) rightfully handwaved away as special pleading.

Also, aren't the ACT's regarded as culturally biased even by "race realists"?

Acknowledging and removing a real impairing neurological, cognitive effect is not "special pleading" by any definition. That's just good science.

If people want to be "stereotype threat effect denialists", that's...not my problem, I guess. Believe whatever you want.

eta: I'm not seeing the relevance of ACTs.
 
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Acknowledging and removing a real impairing neurological, cognitive effect is not "special pleading" by any definition. That's just good science.

If people want to be "stereotype threat effect denialists", that's...not my problem, I guess. Believe whatever you want.

eta: I'm not seeing the relevance of ACTs.

Stereotype threat is one of those areas that has been hit by the current reproducibility crisis in the social sciences. It is quite rational to take any stereotype threat research with a grain of salt at the moment, as it certainly can't be considered a well confirmed psychological phenomenon.

That doesn't mean it isn't real, just that new more rigorous research will have to be done if it is to be demonstrated to be real. Personally, I don't see any reason some level of stereotype threat effect shouldn't be a real thing. On it's face, it isn't an outlandish proposal in the first place. For instance, I could imagine if I were part of a group stereotypically bad at math, that on a math test, when struggling with a problem, I might give up more readily by justifying it with a "Well, people like me are just bad at math."
 
Any examples of that?!




What is your point? Do you propose that IQs are sexually dimorphic?!

They are in fact. Both men and women have roughly the same mean IQ but men have a greater standard deviation.

ETA: As for the OP, if you want to segregate students by intelligence, segregate them by intelligence. It would make little sense to use race as a proxy, since there are black geniuses and Jews who are dumb as a post.
 
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I suggest using IQ as a means of sorting instead of age.

For those of you saying there are no differences by ethnic groups then you should be applauding.

Because it is not a race or ethnic-based sorting. If you don't like IQ, then testing. Whatever test you say is best.

The result will be non-uniform with respect to ethnicity. Like it already is.

The responses in the thread have proved my suspicion: anything that results in non-uniform ethnic (or gender) distribution, like men tending to be in engineering and women in human relations types of work - this is bad, bad, bad.

So thank you.
 
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They are in fact. Both men and women have roughly the same mean IQ but men have a greater standard deviation.

ETA: As for the OP, if you want to segregate students by intelligence, segregate them by intelligence. It would make little sense to use race as a proxy, since there are black geniuses and Jews who are dumb as a post.

Sure, okay by me, but with three obvious issues:

1.How do we measure "intelligence" and in what manner so as to be the most relevant and useful as an aid to their education? Certainly we must also take into account the student's dedication, willingness and ability to work hard, the manner in which they best assimilate information, and the reality that most people are better in some subjects than others.It is not going to be easy to make that all work. The types of performance criteria/testing already in place in schools, for all their practical flaws, are much better than any "IQ" test.

2. I believe in tracking. But I also recognize the truth in the argument that having bright students in a class can help the students with not so wonderful inherent scholastic skills.

3. Okay, what do you do with the "dumb" ones - the lesser performers? It is okay with me if your proposed tracking allows these people to be given a fine education but tailored to their needs. Ensure that each of them becomes the best they can be. Especially important because some people do change and become better scholars. And errors are made in early assessments that must be corrected. But more generally it will be very difficult to avoid these lower performers being simply ignored or doomed. In truth society might need to invest more money in them than in the top performers, but I doubt that will happen based on the history of these things.
 
Stereotype threat is one of those areas that has been hit by the current reproducibility crisis in the social sciences. It is quite rational to take any stereotype threat research with a grain of salt at the moment, as it certainly can't be considered a well confirmed psychological phenomenon.

Maybe this deserves a spinoff thread, but it seems to me that it's existence is not only not controversial, but the underlying mechanisms are fairly well elucidated, as well.

The only controversy is over it's magnitude, which will be a matter of variance sub-topic by sub-topic, study by study.
 
Sure, okay by me, but with three obvious issues:

1.How do we measure "intelligence" and in what manner so as to be the most relevant and useful as an aid to their education? Certainly we must also take into account the student's dedication, willingness and ability to work hard, the manner in which they best assimilate information, and the reality that most people are better in some subjects than others.It is not going to be easy to make that all work. The types of performance criteria/testing already in place in schools, for all their practical flaws, are much better than any "IQ" test.

2. I believe in tracking. But I also recognize the truth in the argument that having bright students in a class can help the students with not so wonderful inherent scholastic skills.

3. Okay, what do you do with the "dumb" ones - the lesser performers? It is okay with me if your proposed tracking allows these people to be given a fine education but tailored to their needs. Ensure that each of them becomes the best they can be. Especially important because some people do change and become better scholars. And errors are made in early assessments that must be corrected. But more generally it will be very difficult to avoid these lower performers being simply ignored or doomed. In truth society might need to invest more money in them than in the top performers, but I doubt that will happen based on the history of these things.

Personally, in my utopia, we'd have Montessori mixed age classrooms up until grade 6 or so, where students develop at their own pace, and then switch to emulating the Finnish system.

Or just emulate the Finnish system 100% right off the bat, since what they're doing clearly works.
 
I suggest using IQ as a means of sorting instead of age.[/HILITE]

For those of you saying there are no differences by ethnic groups then you should be applauding.

Because it is not a race or ethnic-based sorting. If you don't like IQ, then testing. Whatever test you say is best.

The result will be non-uniform with respect to ethnicity. Like it already is.

The responses in the thread have proved my suspicion: anything that results in non-uniform ethnic (or gender) distribution, like men tending to be in engineering and women in human relations types of work - this is bad, bad, bad.

So thank you.

I don't think you've been reading the thread with an open mind. Perhaps you were too interested in confirming rather than testing your "suspicions."

If the proposal is to use "Whatever test you say is best" instead of IQ: okay, better, but read my response to Brainster. No one 'test" would do it and how to "sort" people for educational purposes is far more difficult than it might first appear. Choosing the right education for each and every person is difficult and must be based on multiple criteria: trying to oversimplify it makes no sense and risks damaging individual's lives and their ability to contribute fully to society as a whole.

You are welcome.
 
I don't think you've been reading the thread with an open mind. Perhaps you were too interested in confirming rather than testing your "suspicions."

If the proposal is to use "Whatever test you say is best" instead of IQ: okay, better, but read my response to Brainster. No one 'test" would do it and how to "sort" people for educational purposes is far more difficult than it might first appear. Choosing the right education for each and every person is difficult and must be based on multiple criteria: trying to oversimplify it makes no sense and risks damaging individual's lives and their ability to contribute fully to society as a whole.

You are welcome.

It's also a fact that IQ (however you define it) is malleable and can change dramatically over the course of a person's life. The ability to engage in abstract and critical thought is a skill as much as it's a "gift".
 
I suggest using IQ as a means of sorting instead of age.

For those of you saying there are no differences by ethnic groups then you should be applauding.

Because it is not a race or ethnic-based sorting. If you don't like IQ, then testing. Whatever test you say is best.

The result will be non-uniform with respect to ethnicity. Like it already is.

The responses in the thread have proved my suspicion: anything that results in non-uniform ethnic (or gender) distribution, like men tending to be in engineering and women in human relations types of work - this is bad, bad, bad.

So thank you.

Yeah, that was how I read the OP, so glad to see I didn't misunderstand.

I think you may have a good idea in sorting by something other than age, though I'm not sure. I certainly agree that there's some validity to the idea of sorting by ability, but I'd need to consider more about why we sort by age to begin with to see if those reasons don't overcome the good that would come from sorting by ability.

It's also possible to sort by ability within age groups*, though that would tend to require larger student populations within individual schools to be logistically feasible.

ETA: Also, I pointed out earlier that there could be different ability streams. Certainly there's some correlation between math skill and language skill, but there will still be people who excel in one and not the other. So if you're going to put people into different streams it seems to me those should also be split by subject, not just a one size fit's all "gifted" group based on IQ.

*That is sorting by age and ability, which as I said in an earlier post is already happening to some extent.
 
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Both men and women have roughly the same mean IQ


Yes, that's how they're made. Most people don't seem to get that IQ doesn't actually measure anything, like a thermometer, a weighing scale or a yardstick. Temperature is an actual thing. It exists in the real world, objectively, and that is how you can measure it. So does weight (and mass) or length.
g, however, doesn't. And IQ tests don't measure anything.
 
different ability streams.


Yeah, right.
It's weird, but you don't have the ability to speak a language until you've learned it. You also don't have the ability to do math until you've learned how to do it. And when you've learned a bit, you can go on and learn even more.
If you're focused, you tend to learn faster. If you aren't, you don't, and it doesn't depend on what distracts you.
By the way, learning math and/or languages is the certain way of increasing your so-called IQ. Being excluded from education is the most certain way of limiting it.
The main purpose of our educational system is to exclude a large number of people from education. Turning the educational system into a competition is the best way to produce an awful lot of immensely stupid 'high IQ' graduates.

cf. Einstein
 
Dann, can you re-post your links about how IQ tests can be taught, practiced, and learned to master?
 
Yeah, right.
It's weird, but you don't have the ability to speak a language until you've learned it. You also don't have the ability to do math until you've learned how to do it. And when you've learned a bit, you can go on and learn even more.
If you're focused, you tend to learn faster. If you aren't, you don't, and it doesn't depend on what distracts you.
By the way, learning math and/or languages is the certain way of increasing your so-called IQ. Being excluded from education is the most certain way of limiting it.
The main purpose of our educational system is to exclude a large number of people from education. Turning the educational system into a competition is the best way to produce an awful lot of immensely stupid 'high IQ' graduates.

cf. Einstein

It's entirely possible for the thing that differentiates people scoring higher on some metric isn't some intrinsic talent but just interest. That's fine. Those people will still benefit from having the opportunity to learn more, whereas those with less interest might benefit from an environment where more time is spent on learning the basics so that they don't get lost in more advanced material before understanding the fundamentals.

There's no need to determine to what extent the differences between people are intrinsic or environmental to think that it's a good idea to separate classes between more advanced and less advanced content.

I tend to think that there are differences in intrinsic ability between people, but that given the right environment and opportunity to learn almost all people can achieve a very high level of almost any skill (or knowledge). But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong in either direction and it would still make sense to separate classes based on some metric of advanced/beginner.
 
It makes no sense to separate children by IQ - but it does make sense to differentiate by levels of knowledge; hence the ability to skip a class.
Children, to a significant degree, learn from their peers rather than their teachers or parents. If you put under performers in one group, and over performers in the other, the net effect is that both groups learn more slowly than if you had mixed things up and let the best skip a class until they are no longer over-performing.
 
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