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IQ by ethnic groups and education policy

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.

That makes some sense to me, but by letting "the best skip a class until they are no long er over-performing" you are basically differentiating by ability. "Ability" may be defined more by knowledge than anything else, as you say.
 
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.


Unfortunately, what underachievers 'learn' from this experience is that they are stupid, not that they - for whatever reason - got behind and therefore don't understand what's going on: 'The others do, but I don't, and the teacher tells me that I'm supposed to, so what's wrong with me?' (Hardly ever: '... so what's wrong with the way that school is organized?')
A rational system of education would expect children to learn certain things to a certain level, and those who didn't would have to do it again, maybe in a different manner.
Only a class society would let ignorant illiterates out at the other end and blame this condition on their inferior g. And smug educated graduates, convinced that their superior gs are the cause of the difference (and consequently the cause of class society).
Einstein also got this right.
 
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/
At 50 I decided to take a bunch of college math classes to upgrade my recently acquired teaching certificate. I started with Intermediate Algebra. I'm pretty sure the anti-anxiety medication I took was making it harder to retain information - I got a "D." I then needed to test into College Algebra, as the prerequisite was a "C" or better in Intermediate Algebra. I took the test and tested out of College Algebra, which I signed up for anyway.

The difference was in the test format. At the assessment center you could take all day. Knowing I wasn't having to race against a clock made me much more relaxed. It made it easy to identify with HS students who were having similar difficulties.
 
Long-term, the education solution is to let each student progress at his or her natural rate with more of a Coursera approach. There really is no need for millions of teachers around the country; what makes more sense is lectures by top educators around the world followed by problems based on the material. The former teachers will be performing more of a secondary role, helping any students that need assistance, but mostly letting the top students proceed at their own pace.
 
Do you actually think that teachers don't already let "the top students proceed at their own pace"?
Like I tell my students when they come up with the bad excuse for not knowing any German that it was because they had very bad teachers at their former schools: No teachers of German are so bad that they can prevent you from learning German if you are actually interested in learning the language. (And no teacher can teach the students stuff that they don't want to learn.)
Some teachers are probably incompetent, but they still can't prevent their students from learning whatever they want to learn.
The exception may be teachers who are teaching nonsense, creationism, for instance, but even so, students who aren't interested in learning the nonsense also won't learn it.
And top students can also be helped by teachers. When you learn new languages, for instance, it's pretty easy to misunderstand certain aspects of grammar, which a teacher will (hopefully) point out to you and help you correct.
 
This is a great time for autodidacts.

Back in my college days I spent more time in the library than classrooms pursuing things I was interested in. Often at the expense of my coursework. After graduation during my working career I did the same moving near UCSD so I was close to their library. And I would also buy thousands of dollars of texts each year many of which weren't related to my work but just interested me.

But for the last decade or so I just use the internet. It boggles my mind how much one can learn and the price is right. Free! The notion that learning is something one does in an educational institution just seems increasingly quaint.
 
This is a great time for autodidacts.

Back in my college days I spent more time in the library than classrooms pursuing things I was interested in. ...

But for the last decade or so I just use the internet. It boggles my mind how much one can learn and the price is right. Free! The notion that learning is something one does in an educational institution just seems increasingly quaint.

I perfectly dig that, but would advise that the autodidact can often profit from the guidance of an educator with a general grasp of the topic covered right now. I remember picking up at the university library, while studying business management, two books on the rise of Juan Peron. Both described a rally in front of the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, organized mainly, iirc, by unions, that had become a part of national lore. One book said people demonstrated against Peron, the other said they cheered and praised him. Obviously, at least one of these scholarly books had an agenda. Had I, by chance, only ever seen one, I might have missed the fact that this event is actually disputed.

People can self-educate themselves into the goofiest niches of fringe scholarship without realizing it. That was certainly true before the age of Google, but has probably been aggravated by the advent of the internet. Just look at things like "9/11 studies". If you start off the wrong google result, you can easily get sucked down the wrong rabbit hole for life.
 
I perfectly dig that, but would advise that the autodidact can often profit from the guidance of an educator with a general grasp of the topic covered right now. I remember picking up at the university library, while studying business management, two books on the rise of Juan Peron. Both described a rally in front of the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, organized mainly, iirc, by unions, that had become a part of national lore. One book said people demonstrated against Peron, the other said they cheered and praised him. Obviously, at least one of these scholarly books had an agenda. Had I, by chance, only ever seen one, I might have missed the fact that this event is actually disputed.

People can self-educate themselves into the goofiest niches of fringe scholarship without realizing it. That was certainly true before the age of Google, but has probably been aggravated by the advent of the internet. Just look at things like "9/11 studies". If you start off the wrong google result, you can easily get sucked down the wrong rabbit hole for life.

I think he was more referring to stuff like MIT's opencourseware. There's also google scholar now, which is kind of revolutionary with it's "cited by" feature.
 
Motivation

Back in the 70's the buzzword for teachers was "motivation".. Has that been replaced by IQ? For a lot of people if it's a subject which they are uninterested it's "duhhh". Maybe the challenge for teachers ought to be presenting subjects as interesting as possible.
 
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Teaching somebody who's interested in what you're teaching them is the part of the job that (most) teachers love. Trying to make something interesting to somebody who just isn't interested in it is what most teachers hate. And even more so: having to try to make students interested in what they just aren't interested in!
It sure as hell didn't work with myself when I was a student and had to study stuff that I wasn't interested in. And I hated it even more if a teacher tried to invent reasons for me to be interested in the stuff. Uninterested students aren't so dumb that they can't see through a teacher's (vain) attempt at coming up with reasons for learning, for instance, a language that they aren't interested in: 'Latin is so useful when you want to learn another language.'
Well, yes, if you were already forced to learn Latin, you may now and then discover that a word that you already learned in Latin is similar to one that you need to learn in the other language, the one that you're actually interested in learning, but it is still a detour and a waste of time. If you are interested in learning another language, you should start learning that language, not some other language.
But that's not how the educational system works - which is detrimental to students as well as teachers.
As interesting as possible isn't interesting enough. :)
 
Back in the 70's the buzzword for teachers was "motivation".. Has that been replaced by IQ? For a lot of people if it's a subject which they are uninterested it's "duhhh". Maybe the challenge for teachers ought to be presenting subjects as interesting as possible.

Indeed that is one of the biggest challenges as a teacher. Good teachers work at it intensely and use all their experience and skills to make it happen. The best can achieve it more often than the not-so-good. But even the best teachers in the best environment cannot make it happen all the time for everyone. And even the best teachers need small enough classes, enough time, the support of the school administration, and the support of the parents to have it work.

Sure, many people are hired as teachers who are uninspired and/or undertrained. Or otherwise inappropriate. But many potentially good teachers are extraordinarily underpaid, are assigned large classes filled with under-prepared students in physically dangerous environments, and have little choice but to go through the motions. They try to help the students who do care, and, if lucky, have their classes learn just enough that the school scores ok on standardized exams, which is what most principals care about.

The ideas upthread of having education fitted to the level of knowledge, the interest levels of the students, and their abilities (as shown by their actual performance) all make sense. But how's this for an additional idea: value these concepts enough so as to build an educational system that has what it takes to achieve these goals. Have smaller class sizes. Pay teachers enough that they can have a family and do not have to be married to someone with a real income to live and eat. Show good teachers sincere respect, rather than treat them as menial labor.

Other countries are doing it much better than we in the USA do. It is possible.
 
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Teaching somebody who's interested in what you're teaching them is the part of the job that (most) teachers love. Trying to make something interesting to somebody who just isn't interested in it is what most teachers hate. And even more so: having to try to make students interested in what they just aren't interested in!
It sure as hell didn't work with myself when I was a student and had to study stuff that I wasn't interested in. And I hated it even more if a teacher tried to invent reasons for me to be interested in the stuff. Uninterested students aren't so dumb that they can't see through a teacher's (vain) attempt at coming up with reasons for learning, for instance, a language that they aren't interested in: 'Latin is so useful when you want to learn another language.'
Well, yes, if you were already forced to learn Latin, you may now and then discover that a word that you already learned in Latin is similar to one that you need to learn in the other language, the one that you're actually interested in learning, but it is still a detour and a waste of time. If you are interested in learning another language, you should start learning that language, not some other language.
But that's not how the educational system works - which is detrimental to students as well as teachers.
As interesting as possible isn't interesting enough. :)

Well, not really hate: I think that many teachers view "turning on" initially uninterested students to be a special personal challenge that, if successful, really makes the job incredibly exciting and fulfilling. Some teachers are better at this than others. But it is typically incredibly frustrating as well, and even a good teacher has to accept that many students will never become interested. I think the best way for a teacher to view this is that it is like hitting a hole in one: that is the goal one seeks and sometimes one can achieve it. But it will never be routine and it is ill-advised to get upset if it doesn't happen every time you play the course.
 
One concern I have with the internet age is that students will self select. Those interested in learning will supplement their classroom instruction with the huge variety of explanations and illustrations available while those who are not will find the internet the source of homework answers they will use to complete work w/o really understanding things. This, of course, has always been there but is now easier for both skaters and learners.

This seems like a recipe for wider disparities between the knowledge haves and have nots.

What is to be done?
 
I've never been a teacher but I can identify with the problems. It would be hard in the beginning to put fresh energy into a class and then when that one graduates. to start over.
 
Well, not really hate: I think that many teachers view "turning on" initially uninterested students to be a special personal challenge that, if successful, really makes the job incredibly exciting and fulfilling. Some teachers are better at this than others. But it is typically incredibly frustrating as well, and even a good teacher has to accept that many students will never become interested. I think the best way for a teacher to view this is that it is like hitting a hole in one: that is the goal one seeks and sometimes one can achieve it. But it will never be routine and it is ill-advised to get upset if it doesn't happen every time you play the course.


I don't think we disagree, but let me try to make it clearer. When I said that, "Trying to make something interesting to somebody who just isn't interested in it is what most teachers hate," I was thinking of the many ways of doing this where teachers think that they can make students interested in something by making it appear to be useful to them when really it isn't.
For instance, I remember this guy in the early days of home computers (like Commodore 64) who thought that he could persuade boys to become interested in programming by trying to convince them that you could use it to sort your record collection by having all the titles and performers on your computer.
Now, I had more records than any of the boys my age that I knew, but not so many that I completely lost track and couldn't find what I wanted to listen to. I could have alphabetized them in 15 minutes, I guess, whereas having to type all titles and names of performers would have taken hours, and on top of that he also wanted us to figure out how to programme the thing to do so.
In other words, I saw through his lie immediately - and never got interested in finding out how computers work.
So it was a little like claiming that learning Latin helps you learn English (as a second language). It may, a little, but it's a hell of a detour if English is what you are actually interested in learning.
Too many teachers come up with ideas like these, and students immediately see that they are false. It may even persuade them of the uselessness of learning the thing that the teachers are trying to motivate them to learn.
 
One concern I have with the internet age is that students will self select. Those interested in learning will supplement their classroom instruction with the huge variety of explanations and illustrations available while those who are not will find the internet the source of homework answers they will use to complete work w/o really understanding things. This, of course, has always been there but is now easier for both skaters and learners.

This seems like a recipe for wider disparities between the knowledge haves and have nots.

What is to be done?


That was another optimistic idealism of teachers when the internet began to become actually useful for ordinary use in the mid 1990s: A lot of them thought that what prevented students from reading about Aristotle was that they had to go all the way down to the library to find a book about him, but now they could do in on their computers without having to go anywhere.
However, if porn and movie stars were the things they were interested in, that is what they would use to the internet to find. Definitely not Aristotle! :)
 
I've never been a teacher but I can identify with the problems. It would be hard in the beginning to put fresh energy into a class and then when that one graduates. to start over.


Not if you enjoy doing it. But teaching somebody who isn't interested is a drag - for both parties. And having to grade and fail students is the part of the job I'll always hate.
Besides, the repetitiveness is the same in any job: In the supermarket, the next customer is waiting in line. When you've solved the crime, you have to move on to the next one. When one patient has either died or been cured, ... :)
 
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That was another optimistic idealism of teachers when the internet began to become actually useful for ordinary use in the mid 1990s: A lot of them thought that what prevented students from reading about Aristotle was that they had to go all the way down to the library to find a book about him, but now they could do in on their computers without having to go anywhere.
However, if porn and movie stars were the things they were interested in, that is what they would use to the internet to find. Definitely not Aristotle! :)

I think a larger segment of the population has used it for both eventually. Pre-internet, my brother bragged about having never read a book (thank you, US education system), and now he's on facebook starting conversations about...Aristotle and Plato. He watches a lot of porn, too, but the necessity of becoming familiar with the written word led him down the rabbit hole to wondering what smart people were talking about at the dawn of recorded history and being able to locate it. So, the optimists were not wrong, at least according to that one data point.
 
I've seen it happen to others, too. :)
Some people do grow up, but they also did so before the internet - for whatever reason!
 
I've seen it happen to others, too. :)
Some people do grow up, but they also did so before the internet - for whatever reason!

True, but I REALLY don't think my brother would have ever read OG philosophy without the internet. It's sucking almost everyone below a certain age (and many people above a certain age) into a higher degree of literacy, it seems.

I suspect fewer people are trapped in the world of trivial nonsense now.
 
Perhaps I skimmed over it. After all the righteous indignation personal attacks, dismissal-ism, a link to a single article with incredibly weak statistical power, and lots of self-congratulatory back-slapping - exactly why are schools are failing so many students and with such a clear set of racial disparities in outcomes ?

It's been several years since I reviewed US statistics, but at the time Blacks were academically under-performing Whites and had the highest dropout rate. Hispanics performed far better better academically than Blacks, but still had a similar dropout rate. Even the White dropout rate was disturbing.

I *suspect* the racial composition of drop-outs and under-performance has a lot to do with 'culture' in a sense, and it's clear that primary/secondary schools are failing provide the sort of education that interests these students. The primary/secondary schools need bottom-up reform. They seem an anachronistic joke, both in form and content.
 
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.

Conventional IQ tests are, within some margins of error, repeatable and differing between subjects, therefore they measure something. They likely measure a lot of secondary factors that interfere with a reasonable definition of "intelligence", like culture specific knowledge, or the emotional state of the subject, but it's nonsense to claim they measure nothing.
 
You can use an IQ test to find out if somebody is good or bad at doing IQ tests, the same way that you can use a crossword puzzle to find out if people are good at doing crossword puzzles.
The thing that IQ fans think that it measures, g doesn't exist.
 
Perhaps I skimmed over it. After all the righteous indignation personal attacks, dismissal-ism, a link to a single article with incredibly weak statistical power, and lots of self-congratulatory back-slapping - exactly why are schools are failing so many students and with such a clear set of racial disparities in outcomes ?

It's been several years since I reviewed US statistics, but at the time Blacks were academically under-performing Whites and had the highest dropout rate. Hispanics performed far better better academically than Blacks, but still had a similar dropout rate. Even the White dropout rate was disturbing.

I *suspect* the racial composition of drop-outs and under-performance has a lot to do with 'culture' in a sense, and it's clear that primary/secondary schools are failing provide the sort of education that interests these students.
As soon as you start talking about using IQ differences as a basis for racially segregated education as the OP does you are in the territory of some “races” being inherently inferior.

I don’t think many people opposing that notion disagree that early environmental and educational discrepancies are likely the major cause of differences in educational attainment. This of course represents a major difference in the opportunity afforded people of different “races” in the US. The logical response to such a discrepancy in opportunity is to invent more in early education and development and in later education/employment provide enhanced opportunity coupled with intense training/mentoring to bring people up to the standard they should have been at in the first place. Certain political factions, however, oppose and deride such efforts…
 
You can use an IQ test to find out if somebody is good or bad at doing IQ tests, the same way that you can use a crossword puzzle to find out if people are good at doing crossword puzzles.

Sure. But it doesn't follow that nothing else is being measured. For example, someone with a very poor vocabulary will not do well on the Saturday NYT crossword puzzle, or will never become good at doing crossword puzzles in general. Additionally, someone who is good at doing the Saturday puzzle will have at least a decent vocabulary.
 
Yes, and someone who has an amazing vocabulary but happens to be dyslexic also won't do well at crossword puzzles, so what where you saying again?
 
DNA Phenotyping is progressing. But there's a lot of individual genes involved in most physical traits.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/inno...-reconstruct-persons-face-from-dna-180968951/

And there are correlations with "race" but the problem with using "race" or even genetic markers that point to a "race" or even perhaps a wider selection of genes, each with tiny correlates to IQ test scores is that it's complicated by the environmental impact of the social constructs around racial phenotypes. People like simple correlates and these also help cement in stereotypes which produces feedback that environmentally exacerbates differences.
 
People also like simple correlates and stereotypes based on, for instance, sociolect, hairstyle and the kind of clothes people wear.
 
And there are correlations with "race" but the problem with using "race" or even genetic markers that point to a "race" or even perhaps a wider selection of genes, each with tiny correlates to IQ test

Again It’s not clear what IQ is measuring. Most reputable studies into the subject look at genes impact on educational attainment.

It’s important to keep ion mind that while single genes can be weighted more towards people whose ancestors came from a specific area, as the number of genes involved grows the less likely it is that the aggregate impact of all of them is unevenly distributed. IOW while it wouldn’t be unusual to find 1 gene more common in people of European decent, finding 1000 different genes all weighted this way seems unlikely.
 
How about a study to find what genes correlate to one's choice of car color?
 
It simply doesn't matter if there are differences between populations, the only rational education policy is to ensure that every child has the same opportunities regardless of race/gender/whatever.

Who cares if 80 of the world's hundred best mathematicians are male and only 20 female? What matters is that none of those 20 women are discouraged or discriminated against on their way to becoming one of the world's 100 best mathematicians because "everybody knows that girls are rubbish at maths".
 
I suspect there would be a connection. In fact, how could there not be?

And style, too? Like there's a reason that people who wind up in the suburbs like silver Volvo wagons and it's because it's in their genes? And Mexicans can't help it that they're attracted to purple low-riders with flame decals?

I'd think color and style of cars would be far less nature and much more nurture.
 
And style, too? Like there's a reason that people who wind up in the suburbs like silver Volvo wagons and it's because it's in their genes?

...or because Volvos are reliable family cars.

And Mexicans can't help it that they're attracted to purple low-riders with flame decals?

I think you'll find only a minority of Mexicans drive purple low riders with flame decals despite what we see on the TV. And yes, of course their genes will have an influence on their perception of colour.

I'd think color and style of cars would be far less nature and much more nurture.

Possibly, I said there was a connection, not that it is entirely determined.
 
I'd think color and style of cars would be far less nature and much more nurture.
My adopted brother recently found out that his biological father knocked up 2 different girls in high school. If the girls turn out to be best friends (with each other) I'd have anecdotal evidence of a trait that might have a strong genetic correlation.
 
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