This came as a comment:
Why do Obama and Duncan insist on naming South Korea as a model? Other than testing results, there is little that is admirable about the South Korean education system and South Koreans would be the first to admit it (I am South Korean, although I was educated in the US because my parents immigrated to — you guessed it — spare my siblings and me from the South Korean education system). Public schooling is basically meaningless, kids start going to cram schools that run until 10pm or later while in middle school. Regular school is just for sleeping and socializing. Parents have only one kid (Korea has the lowest birthrate of any OECD country) because educating them is such an insane cash drain. Even so Korea spends much more of its GDP % on education than the US has or ever would. Korean schools can be better funded, standardized and operated because the central government provides most of the funding and sets the curriculum. Socially, Korea is a very horizontally integrated country (at least superficially) outside of certain well-known wealthy neighborhoods like Gangnam, so there are very few equivalents of inner city schools. Most kids, rich or poor, attend similar schools with similar resources.
However, it doesn’t really even matter that Korean public schools are supercifially decent across the board because the reality is that most of them don’t matter to an extent that makes a poorly performing inner city school in the US look like a fountain of opportunity in comparison. There are specific schools in Gangnam that everybody tries to send their kids to because they are known as magnet schools for the best universities. Average academic achievement is very high in Korea but the results are horrifically unjust – in a recent year it was found that 60% of the new hires by Samsung (the most prestigious employer in Korea) were graduates of a single high school in Seoul (plus of course one of the top three universities). Think about that. You don’t go to that high school and you’re basically screwed if you want to work for the biggest, most prestigious company in your country. No wonder the kids are committing suicide.
Korea has the highest immigration rate among OECD countries because even now, if you aren’t one of the lucky elite, you’re better off trying your luck in a foreign country. Imagine if the US had higher test scores but millions of our best and brightest left every year because the US had nothing for them to do. There is your South Korean “model.” That the President and the Secretary of Education know so little about what they are talking about when it comes to public schools makes me seriously worry about whether they know anything about the other things I don’t have any expertise on, and therefore have to take their word that they have a competent level of mastery on the subject.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why? Because they are looking at schools as a collective product that is a test score. Like a sports team’s winning season.
“Race to the Top” indicates that mindset.
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I surely hope your reader forwards his/her comment to President Obama and Secretary Duncan. Clearly they need to be educated.
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They ain’t listening and don’t give a sh!t what we think.
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That explains it. This reader makes the point right in the spot.
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I continue to hope that the President knows more about foreign policy and economics than he demonstrates when it comes to education. I become very nervous just thinking that his early morning briefings are being conducted by an Arnie Ducan type. I feel the presidency has now surpassed any one individual’s ability to understand and act upon the multitude of complex problems that arise in this country. At some point, the president compartmentalizes his knowledge, with some problems demanding understanding, while others languish in the background with surface representations of the talking point of the day—this is where a knowledgeable cabinet member could be helpful. Unfortunately, education is one of those issues that, for most presidents, has been pushed to the back burner and typically the Secretary of Education is equivalent to how we choose ambassadors—political or buddy appointments.
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That’s why the president needs to appoint actual experts to his cabinet–so that they can advise him (or, eventually, her!) about good policy. The fact that Obama would appoint Duncan, someone with no education experience, to head the Department of Education casts serious doubts. And that’s not to focus on one party: Rod Paige (for Bush II) was just as awful.
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Obomber’s a neoliberal through and through doing the bidding of the banksters, nothing more nothing less.
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More and more, I intend to agree with the neoliberal label—so far from how Dr.King would have responded to the degradation of public schooling…so much promise awash in an almost religious belief in the power of competition to solve all societal problems—
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Quite correct Alan, unfortunately so!
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This is NOT, emphatically not, about competition. It’s about wealthy corporations establishing monopoly positions. And no, Obama is not just distracted and is not just failing to pay attention to his education policy. Arne Duncan is carrying out precisely the policy that Barry O’s corporate backers want, following a precise script to the letter. Duncan’s technology blueprint at the beginning of his tenure was basically the strategic plan for Gates’s inBloom. RttT, again, was right out of the inBloom strategic plan, because adoption of the CC$$ that Gates and Pearson paid for was necessary for inBloom to work. The revision of FERPA was also required for inBloom to work. In every case, Duncan has done whatever Gates needed to have done, and Obama has jumped into the game to do his bully pulpit bit in support of his Secretary’s initiatives, which were, in turn, Gates’s.
Every piece of this is carefully orchestrated, and Obama misses no opportunity to further the various parts of the Gates agenda. Again and again, Bill Gates announces a new agenda item, and the Obama administration snaps to attention. Most recent example: Gates announced his vision for higher ed, which involved grading colleges, making entrance requirements more stringent, using technology and flipped classes to reduce faculty and save money, and making colleges more vocationally oriented, and Obama followed up almost immediately with a major policy speech that might have been Gates’s own writing about this, verbatim. Gates has a vision for extending the deforms to higher ed, and the Obama administration is busily carry out its marching orders. The administration just hosted Coleman for a big confab about extending the data-driven decision making model and the Common Core to colleges.
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“That the President and the Secretary of Education know so little about what they are talking about when it comes to public schools makes me seriously worry about whether they know anything about the other things I don’t have any expertise on, and therefore have to take their word that they have a competent level of mastery on the subject.”
I’m really liking this kid.
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Ditto
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http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2094427,00.html
My favorite part of the article above about South Korean is the arm pillows for kids to sleep in class so they can stay up late studying in the hagwon til 10 pm+. Is this what we want for our kids? By the way, plenty of hagwons here in Bergen County, NJ.
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Oops, I meant South Korea, not Korean…
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It’s ridiculous to compare the public education system in the US to any other country that doesn’t have the same culture, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic profile. Comparing South Korea’s public schools to the US is no different than trying to convince people that the taste of a bitter melon is the same as a sweet naval orange picked ripe from the tree.
But the Wolves of Sesame Street know that the average American voter doesn’t think about the cultural and socioeconomic differences and complexity between countries. To at least half of adult Americans, a comparison like this is the same as the medal count at the Olympics.
And one of those Wolves in that pack is President Obama and his pet Secretary of Education when it comes to the public schools but it is obvious that Obama isn’t the alpha male in this pack. That’s Bill Gates or one of the other billionaires and Obama is rolling over on his back and exposes his belly to the leader of the pack.
What the Robber Barons of public education are doing is keeping the message simple to take advantage of the ignorance and bias of most Americans and as Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all of the time and most of the people some of the time.
That is the concept behind these comparisons—to fool enough people long enough to get the support the wolves want to achieve their nefarious goals.
For instance, I knew a public school teacher from Canada who went to Japan to teach.
The stories he shared with me of teaching in Canada were similar to what I was experiencing in a public school classroom in California, and he admitted that the pressure and difficulty dealing with North American kids and the lack of support from most parents was burning him out.
Then he had a chance to go Japan for a few years and teach as part of a teacher swap. The e-mails I received from Japan describing his experience and it was the difference between an arctic winter and Death Valley in summer.
In Canada, his class load was about half the load he had in Japan but the behavior problems and lack of cooperation from students and parents were off the chart.
In Japan his class load was 50+. but there were no behavior problems, no disruptions. In fact, the Japanese kids he taught didn’t talk in class without permission. When Japanese children had a question, up went a hand and no one said a word until the teacher indicated it was okay to talk. Then the student stood up at attention and asked their question and waited to be told it was okay to sit down again.
He also said that every student turned in every assignment and the amount of time he spent correcting filled every waking moment. Keeping up with the flow of student work was the challenge instead of struggling to get kids and parents to cooperate.
Teachers in Japan were expected to take an extra duty and monitor a student club. The club he volunteered to monitor was the archery club and these 14 year old teenagers practiced with real arrows that could kill. He said after school, the student president of the archery club, a girl, respectfully came to pick up the bows and arrows and went out to the field to practice for an hour or more with the other student members of the club and he wasn’t required to supervise them. He stayed in the room and corrected papers. At the end of an hour, the president returned and the bows and arrows went back into the locked Cabinet.
But in America, the teacher is held responsible for everything that happens to a child. One PE teacher—who had 100 kids in his PE class—at the high school where I taught was sued in court by the parents of a boy who slipped out of the locker room unseen and lost an eye in a fight with another student. The PE teacher was standing in the doorway struggling to keep an eye on the locker room and the kids outside who were lining up before the final PE bell rang. With a hundred kids milling back and forth, it was easy for two of the boys to slip away and get into a fight out of sight. The court case dragged on for three years and the stress on that dedicated teacher was terrible. We could see him age as the months crawled by.
The classrooms in Japan also didn’t have heat in the winter when snow was on the ground or air conditioning in the summer when it was hot. My Canadian friend wrote and said the kids never complained. Even with frosty breaths fogging the air, they politely sat at their desk paying attention.
Then, of course, as you said, these same kids were often going to cram schools at night and on the weekends as most Asian countries do.
My wife is Chinese who grew up in China and I know how seriously most Asian parents take education. There is little to no comparison between Asian parents and most Western parents unless they are also Asian.
The only way to counter the simple misleading propaganda from the Wolves is to come up with simple slogans easy to Tweet and Blog about that are not difficult for the average American to understand. This is the challenge, and it is easier to simplify and mislead than it is to educate and teach the truth through facts.
Often, the simplest, shortest misleading fact widely broadcast through the corporate owned traditional media requires a long response to counter. And the Wolves of Sesame Street and the PR people they pay millions are experts at this.
And these fascist totalitarians also know that if you keep repeating the same simple message over and over, it becomes the truth to many people until the very people they are hurting the most are supporting them.
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So, do tell! What happened to your PE teacher colleague? Was he vindicated?
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As I recall (it’s been about twenty years now) the district settled out of court. Most school district are allergic to any sort of court case and will usually do all they can to get the case tossed out or settle. The settlement removed the charges against the teacher and he continued teaching.
The PE teacher was a nice guy who worked long hours before and after school and on the weekends with track, and he didn’t deserve what happened to him. I think his average work day usually started about 6:30 am, and didn’t end until about 8:00 pm.
While academic teachers are working long hours correcting student work, most PE teachers put in long hours working with the different sports teams. They don’t just practice during one period of PE.
This PE teacher would go on long runs off campus with his track team.
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“That’s Bill Gates or one of the other billionaires and Obama is rolling over on his back and exposes his belly to the leader of the pack.”
TAGrO!!!
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Excellent story, Lloyd, relating Japanese schooling and expectations. For those of us who have experienced another country’s schooling whether as a student or teaching (and I have a little of both) I can vouch for how those cultural differences manifest themselves (and make for great stories). And to attempt to make comparisons is the height of ignorance-not that the Obomber and his pal the Dunkster would realize.
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CBS did a story on this Wednesday, 2/19. The conclusion that the celebrated teacher reached was that South Korea had it wrong in spite of or because of the stress and effort. They have what the reformers here want and yet he stresses the inefficiencies and memory of the Korean education system!
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-korean-teacher-earns-4m-a-year-but-isnt-proud-of-success/
“SEOUL — He commutes in a chauffeured Mercedes, makes more than $4 million a year — and he’s an English teacher.
Forty-four-year-old Kim Ki-Hoon is a private tutor who is thriving in South Korea’s test-score-obsessed, academic-crazed culture. Kim teaches in a “hagwon,” or “cram school,” part of the $17 billion after-school learning industry.
CBS News was with Kim at the school on a Saturday afternoon; he says studying on weekends is typical.
Kim appears on TV shows featuring “star teachers.” His students say his teaching is more engaging — and practical — than most. And to show his human — almost geeky — side, he’ll bust out the guitar.
“I was inspired about his lectures,” says 22-year-old Seung Jun-Yang. Seung says a typical school day starts at 7 a.m. and kept him studying past 1 a.m.
While an international educational poll ranks Korean students at the top for academics, they’re at the bottom for happiness. CBS NEWS
Students cheer on classmates before big exams, in this country where more than 70 percent of kids go to college. Competition is so fierce that parents can be seen praying for their kids’ success.
But when asked what the long hours of schooling mean for students, Seung says, “Personally, I think, depression time.”
Kim agreed.
“I’m not actually proud of my success,” he says. “The other side of the coin is the inefficiency of Korean education.”
Kim says students spend too much time studying the wrong way — learning lessons by rote that don’t apply to real life.
While an international educational poll ranks Korean students at the top for academics, they’re at the bottom for happiness. Kim is trying to change that.
“This is my favorite place to be, and I am happiest when I’m teaching,” he says.”
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If this is the direction the U.S. is going in, where are the young people going to emigrate to?
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The US will never achieve a South Korean model for its public schools because that model depends on parental support. Most American parents who are not Asian are not going to spend thousands of dollars annually sending their kids to private sector night and weekend classes.
It isn’t going to happen. You can’t cram a square block into a round hole and make it fit.
“Some figures suggest that South Korean parents spend as much as 15% of GNP, and up to 22% of household income to send their children to these private sector cram schools.”
http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/south-korea-overview/south-korea-system-and-school-organization/
I wonder how much the average non-Asian parent in the US spends on private tutoring in American cram schools.
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Are these parents spending to make sure that their children are well-educated or to get ahead in a rat race where test scores determine your future to a frightening degree?
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Americans are too free spirited and anti-authority to give in to a system like that. Americans still emphasize sports and activities over excessive education. But, Americans love to blame everyone but themselves-like the parents who sued your teacher friend. Typical American lawyer cash grab.
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America is also known as the Litigation Nation—another Lottery where lawyers charge by the hour and win even when they lose.
Here’s a piece on it that The Wall Street Journal published in 2006.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB116441936507032448?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB116441936507032448.html
However, at least we have the courts. In many countries that option doesn’t exist. It’s just too bad most of us can’t afford justice in the US.
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Every time I see a post like this I am reminded of the time I met a Japanese man at a party. He had moved to the United States for the purpose of affording his sons an excellent education.
“What!” I gasped. “You came to the U.S. for a good education? Why?”
The man went on to tell his story:
“In Japan my academically gifted older son was highly valued and rewarded at school. My other son, not much of a student, was marginalized. So I asked my company to transfer me to California, where my sons enrolled at Fullerton High School. There my older son took AP courses and prepared for university. Today he is a doctor.
My younger son also found his niche at the American school. He excelled in art and went on to an art institute in San Francisco. Today that son is a graphic designer in Beverly Hills and makes much more money than his brother. But, more important, that son was able to follow his dream and be successful. In my country, it is a terrible shame for a child to be weak scholastically. Many such students are prevented from getting higher education.”
Until recently, the strength of our educational system was that it allowed EVERY student, regardless of test scores, to advance at his own pace. Now we are joining testing meritocracies that fall far short of our country in terms of achievement. Is this what we want? If not, we’d better retreat soon from this test mania. Our children are being hurt.
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Heartwarming!! Love it!
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I have a friend here in the US who has a similar story, but is not from another country. Academically superior older son is in gifted/honors classes and excels. Marginally academic younger son requires tutoring during school. After college, the younger son is hired by an alternate fuel company in sales, and between his work ethic and personality, is making money hand over fist. The older, more academically superior son, decided to go to law school so he could catch up to younger brother.
Why do our country’s leaders feel there is only “one right way” for everyone??
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As an educator, who found the news story most distressing, I wonder if any of us are taking the time to draw parallels between what our elected politicians on both sides of the aisles and in the backs are doing to dismantle the free, public education system that our country has espoused for the past two centuries. What are we doing to ourselves as a society?
If classroom teachers are spending one-two days each week testing, then you may be assured that at least one or two other days per week are spent preparing for the tests. If you go into any classroom for two weeks or so prior to testing, you will probably find classroom teachers reviewing how to take tests, how to understand test questions, and how to succeed on standardized tests. I was jerked into reality as I saw the South Korean cheerleaders for the day of testing — do we not do the same, if only a little less obvious? We wonder why our children feel so stressed about testing.
Educators also feel that same stress. Here in North Carolina, our very livelihoods may be threatened by the test scores. It is now an important component of teacher evaluation. Has anyone thought to look at the salaries of the CEO’s of some of the after-school and weekend test prep (oops, remediation) companies that exist to help our students succeed?
Have we as a society gone so far to the right as Conservatives that we are going to meet ourselves on the other side as Libertarians?
Harriet Baker
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Unfortunately, mshbaker, most educators are also GAGAers. And if you don’t know what that means see:
Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution upon their passing from this realm.
Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
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“Going Along to Get Along (GAGA)”
There is some truth to this, but pressure and stress breaks some people sooner than others. I can’t blame teachers who caved in to the constant pressure and fear tactics that force them to comply with untested teaching methods such as the Whole Language Approach that failed so miserably in California back in the 1980s into the early 1990s.
That’s why the CIA tortures (is it past tense yet) Islamic terrorist suspects. People in power borrow similar tactics and use fear and/or pain to pressure workers to do what they know is wrong.
In my case, one of the principals I worked with recruited students to spy on me to make sure I wasn’t teaching grammar.
Several of the English teachers in the department, me included, resorted to teaching stealth grammar and kept evidence of it out of our plan books because one of the principals we had made us turn in our plan books every Friday so he could take them home and check.
Teachers can also be fired for defying direct orders from an administrator. I know because I was put in that position and REA/CTA/NEA paid for lawyers to advise me on what I could say to avoid falling into the trap so the district couldn’t fire me. In other words, how to legally defy administration without getting fired. I won but the stress was intense and it even got to my wife at home.
Daily, I arrived home angry as only a former Marine can get. and our daughter who was about nine at the time picked up some of the language and started cussing like a Marine. Got in trouble at home for that too. She’s twenty-two and can still let go like a Marine. Shocked the girls she shared a dorm room with last year when someone pissed her off.
Depending on the site administrator, the pressure may never let up, never. Although sometimes weeks might go by before a fresh attack. But not all administrators are monsters. Some of them defy district administration’s edicts but usually when that happens they are not offered another contract and move on.
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Lloyd – The stories from your friend about teaching in Japan and about the behaivor of Japanese children are very interesting. The Japanese and South Korean populations have average IQ’s of 107-108 compared with a world average of about 90. Of course the tempermental and personality differences between East Asians and Westerners are also marked. I read an article the other day in the Guardian about the fact that the children of menial laborers in China outscore the children of professionals in the UK. I agree that the educational systems of East Asia have little relevance for our society.
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Not again! Please stop the eugenics garbage. It’s racist and insulting.
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Not again! Please stop with the eugenics accusations.
Eugenics is the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population. It’s a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics), and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics).
I’m sure that what Jim is referring to is a natural IQ average that has nothing to do with a deliberate attempt to manipulate genetic superiority.
I
Besides, studies show that a spread of 8 points in IQ scores do not make that much difference.
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Not again! Please stop with the eugenics accusations.
Eugenics is the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population. It’s a social philosophy advocating the improvement of human genetic traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of people with desired traits (positive eugenics), and reduced reproduction of people with less-desired or undesired traits (negative eugenics).
I’m sure that what Jim is referring to is a natural IQ average that has nothing to do with a deliberate attempt to manipulate genetic superiority through eugenics.
IQ averages as they stand now developed through the natural the process of evolution and environmental challenges. Studies also show that IQ averages tend to be higher farther north or south of the Equator where colder weather causes challenges to survival.
For instance, the environmental challenges of survival in China and Korea may have more do with this higher average IQ than any other factor. In addition, in China only about 10% of the land is arable for crops and there isn’t enough water for everyone—this may explain why several hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Chinese started to build the Grand Canal to move commerce and water south and north into areas hit by drought and famine.
China is known as the “land of famines” and Imperial records dating back more than two thousand years show that China was hit by droughts and famines in more than one province annually causing challenges for survival. It was the Chinese who invented the Pound Lock during the Song Dynasty to make the Grand Canal work. It took centuries to finish the Grand Canal that runs between Beijing and past Shanghai—a distance of about one thousand miles and sections of the Grand Canal are still in use today.
Besides, studies show that a spread of 8 points in average IQ scores don’t make that much difference. Eight points is insignificant. But a higher average IQ means, at the extreme, means more people have higher IQs to insure racial survival against environmental and outside challenges.
Everyone that has a high IQ isn’t going to perform and use that ability so I think the reason for more people having higher IQ’s is natures way to increase the odds of a few more people working harder to use their ability to come up with solutions to overcome challenges that might destroy a civilization.
IQ as we know it is a natural process, not eugenics.
Almost two thousand years of persecution and programs like the Holocaust probably explains why European Jews have the second highest IQ average.
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IQ as an intellectual concept is 100% pure Bovine Excrement.
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A reply straight out of political correctness that preaches we’re all born equal on a level playing field and no one has an advantage over anyone else.
IQ is nothing more than a number used to represent a person’s reasoning ability (measured using problem-solving tests) as compared to the statistical norm or average for their age, taken as 100.
If we were all equal, then anyone could compete in the Olympics. If we were all equal, please explain why the average tested IQ of a Physics and Astronomy major is 133?
http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-intended-college-major/
But IQ is meaningless without a number of other factors such as SQ, determination, discipline and the ability to set goals and follow through.
If we’re all equal, explain why I was born with severe dyslexia and my mother had to resort to the fear of wire coat hanger torture to teach me to read? If we were all equal, there would be no dyslexia or ADD.
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“A reply straight out of political correctness that preaches we’re all born equal on a level playing field and no one has an advantage over anyone else”
Wrong there partner. I’m not into PC and never have been. But yes, we are are “born equal” if you mean having the same inherent rights that everyone should have.
“If we were all equal, please explain why the average tested IQ of a Physics and Astronomy major is 133?”
Plain and simple, because the concept of IQ is bogus. Please delineate the exact parameters of the concept of IQ and then we can begin to have an intelligent discussion.
I’ll await your response on that last request.
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You might be able to argue that a IQ tests proves nothing, but the evolving high tech science of scanning brain activity is more difficult to argue away. Our brains are different just as we all look different for a number of genetic reasons.
In fact, according to the MIT Technology Review, Brain Images Reveal the Secret to Higher IQ.
“New research suggests that the layer of insulation coating neural wiring in the brain plays a critical role in determining intelligence. In addition, the quality of this insulation appears to be largely genetically determined, providing further support for the idea that IQ is partly inherited.”
And if you won’t accept that study, here’s a more recent study that points out that there are cognitive differences; this one is from Penn Medicine. This one compares men and women with surprising similar results to the MIT study.
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2013/12/verma/
Here’s a third study from May 2013: “People with high IQ scores aren’t just more intelligent – they also process sensory information differently, according to new study.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2331580/People-high-IQs-really-DO-world-differently-Researchers-process-sensory-information-differently.html
And a fourth study:
“Intelligence cannot be traced to a single region but is distributed through the brain. All four lobes—frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital—have important relationships to intelligence. More precisely, variation within each lobe is correlated with IQ variation. Different brain regions show considerable variation from one person to another. This suggests a structural basis for different profiles of intellectual strengths and weaknesses even when overall IQ is similar.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/21/everything_you_know_about_the_brain_is_wrong/
#5:
No one component, or IQ, explained everything. Furthermore, the scientists used a brain scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to show that these differences in cognitive ability map onto distinct circuits in the brain.
https://disinfo.com/2013/01/scientists-debunk-the-iq-myth/
The old fashioned IQ tests may be flawed, but scanning brain activity is revealing differences between the sexes and individuals that help explain who some people appear to have an advantage of others. In fact, studies using brain scans are revealing that the brain activity in conservatives and progressives is different and even psychopaths can be identified with these scans due to the activity inside the brain.
What we are learning with this new technology is that measuring a brains ability is more complex than was first thought.
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Lloyd, I am not aware of any research saying that IQ is linked to one’s race, religion, or ethnic origins, are you? In my own very large family of 8 children, there was a wide range of IQ. Small sample, I know, but we had the same nature and nurture.
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You’re right. When looked at closely, the research indicates that IQ may be linked to other factors than race, religion or ethnic origin. In K.D. Koratsky’s work, “Living with Evolution or Dying Without It”, it is clear that every racial and ethnic group has people who perform at the high end of IQ tests. The average only indicates, well, an average, a center point for a specific study group with extremes on either side that match the extremes for every other group. Evidence from Latitude studies indicates that environment and climate play a factor in IQ averages too and in larger countries that have colder and warmer climates, this fact holds true.
In addition, it’s obvious that IQ is meaningless without other factors such as SQ—for instance—determination, discipline and the ability to set goals and achieve them.
During the years I taught, I knew many very bright students who probably had high IQs who made little effort to take advantage of that while students who may have had lower IQs worked much harder and were motivated to succeed and did.
As a teacher, I never gave one thought to the IQ of my students. My goal was to teach them all and offer them the opportunity to improve as readers and writers. It was up to each student to take advantage of what was taught to learn form it. I’m sure that IQ had nothing to do with how each student learned or not.
In addition, from recent brain research that uses scanning technology to monitor activity in the brain, it is obvious that we are wired differently and some brains may be more efficient than others.
Brain scans are now revealing that, for instance, conservatives are wired different than progressive causing different thinking patterns and responses; men’s brains are wired differently than women more so than first thought; psychopaths are different than others, etc. In fact, studies now reveal that medications react different in women than in men and this is changing how medications are being superscribed. It’s been discovered that a prescriptions designed for men might damage or kill women and the reverse is true.
Overall, it’s obvious that IQ plays a less significant role in outcomes than some may think. But the fact is that some people, for whatever reason, have more efficient brains than others.
However, efficiency is meaningless if someone ends up spending their life on a couch watchmaking TV ten hours a day.
And we also know that it is possible to rewire the brain to be more efficient through education. Case in point, Mr. James Bryan Ellison:
“At the age of 41/2, James contracted Encephalitis Lethargica, Sleeping Sickness, along with over 50 other children and adults. They were bitten by Tsetse flies, which hatched from the larva contained in fruit brought from Africa by a missionary. About a dozen of them survived and only a few were left functional. His fever rose to 108o and he was in a coma for 6 weeks. His brain was wiped clean. The doctors gave his parents little hope, saying he would be severely retarded. But his parents refused to accept this diagnosis… When he came home from the hospital his mother began retraining him to use the toilet, eat, talk, walk, etc. He entered kindergarten 6 months late. Among his learning disabilities was Dyslexia which actually made him good at art, no short-term memory/ability to remember names & numbers compensated for by a phenomenal long term memory and Narcolepsy which the flip side is a high energy level which his mother harnessed into his learning and creating. Throughout public school he had to work twice as hard as his peers to learn the same things.”
http://www.nogaleshs.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=160496&type=u
With all that said, it is a fact that IQ is measurable even if it is meaningless and is another way to differentiate individuals from each other the same as skin color; men compared to women, etc. We are all different and unique in our own way and any one factor or number of factors is no way to judge who we really are and what we are capable of achieving in life.
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“IQ averages as they stand now developed through the natural the process of evolution and environmental challenges. Studies also show that IQ averages tend to be higher farther north or south of the Equator where colder weather causes challenges to survival.”
Lloyd, I generally really enjoy your posts, but please…not so much with the pop biology. There is so much more to it than this.
Respectfully
The biologist
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Lloyd, Jim is a racist, pure and simple, and he has very, very ignorant, simple-minded notions about race and IQ that could have come directly from the Racial Hygiene literature produced by the Nazis. What he said about people of African descent on this blog a few days ago is the most racist comment I have heard anyone make in public since I was a child in the deep South. I was really surprised that Diane didn’t boot him off because of that comment, but I was glad that she didn’t because people like Jim parody themselves better than any of us could do.
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I haven’t read every comment on this Blog. I think that would be a challenge at this stage with the number of views and comments being made. In fact, I have to be selective or I wouldn’t get much else done other than read this Blog and make comments.
If you say the evidence is there that Jim has demonstrated he is a racist (if Jim is a he), I’ll take your word for it unless Jim can prove otherwise in his own defense.
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Lloyd, you really need to do some reading about IQ. I have posted a lot of links on this topic,
ones showing, for example, how simple techniques like giving kids M&Ms to motivate their responses brings kids’ scores up 10 to 20 points, depending on the study;
ones showing how epigenetics research has discredited the heritability claims based on twins studies;
ones showing improvement of one and a half standard deviations on IQ tests as a result of simply giving kids practice on fluid intelligence activities (see Richard Nisbett’s Intelligence and How to Get It for more on that);
and ones showing that no genes with alleles highly correlated with g have been discovered.
You and Jim are both talking arrant nonsense about IQ. You need to do some reading outside the pop evolutionary psychology literature. Start with Evolution in Four Dimensions by Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb.
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I’ve often wondered why we compare the U.S. to the educational “success” of other countries, too.
Has Finland fallen out of favor with the powers that be, and South Korea is now held up as the model?
Anyway, to me, it seems ridiculous to use other countries as a model for U.S. education.
The U.S. is huge geographically, and has many diverse populations among the citizens that other countries don’t have. Though English is our nominal “official” language, in one school that I taught at alone in Brooklyn, we had students that spoke over 70 other languages, and were just in the process of learning English.
In addition, we have made provisions in this country for those that have special needs to be educated, that many other countries don’t have. Did I mention that many families that send their children to public schools in the U.S. may be economically disadvantaged, while they’re trying to get their toehold on the American dream?
The point of what I’m trying to say is that other countries have more homogeneous populations, share the same cultural values, and language. Here in the U.S., we are extremely diverse, and need to develop an educational system that addresses the unique needs of ALL of the people that we have living here, instead of looking to other countries with different economic and social systems.
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Arne Duncan latched onto South Korea in his address of the Natl Assessment Governing Board speech in January, which reads more like a commercial for Amanda Ripley’s reform-promoting book. Here’s an excerpt from Duncan’s speech:
“There’s a new book out called ‘The Smartest Kids in the World, and How They Got That Way.’ The author, Amanda Ripley, found an interesting way to compare American schools with those in top-performing countries. She spent time with American students who did a year of school abroad, and with students from other countries who went to school in the United States.
“One of the countries she compares us to is South Korea.
“Amanda came away believing that these other countries are doing a lot better than the United States in education because—simply put—they’re more serious about it. And that seriousness, that sense of educational purpose, has its roots in both policy and in culture.”
One problem with comparing the US to Finland is that Finland’s poorest residents aren’t having children– and in her smugness, Ripley missed this in her attack on Diane in 2011. I wrote about it here:
Of course, Duncan might have latched onto South Korea because he already had a recycled story to use as a lead-in.
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Well, what most folks anywhere in the world realize is that M. Rhee(ject) is a North Korean Spy Agency implant sent to destroy America’s pre-eminence in the world through destroying our educational system. First S. Korea without having its sugar daddy to prevent NK from “unifying” the peninsula, then the world! It really is that simple folks!!
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don’t realize not realize.
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Our leaders will not set for us a goal of a kinder more equitable society. That will not serve the needs of imperialism, mutli-nationalism…the “free market” or the “global economy”. The brass ring the masses will be set upon will be the unrealistic, standardized results realized in nations that exploit their people and only test and promote the absolute best. They only invite the worst sort of accountability. I refuse to be sad, so unfortunately, it makes me angry and determined.
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Did you notice how much relatively lower Medicine was on the IQ list? I don’t think any one is going to accuse medical students of being less intelligent. Those IQ tests only measure one kind of intelligence, and I question how important that one intelligence is considering how many types of intelligence are needed to function successfully in our complex society.
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Exactly. The focus on IQ (see posts above) is ridiculous. I have had students with “high” IQs that were not too bright and students with “low” IQs that were brilliant. The assumption by some that IQ is the be-all, end-all of the world, and that certain races or other groups have the corner on intelligence is appalling. And this is coming from a member of one of the so-called “more intelligent” groups.
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Louisiana Purchase: “ridiculous” is exactly the right word to use.
IQ is just another number, like the scores generated by high-stakes standardized tests, that purport to measure something that is incredibly complex, varied and individual.
They both employ the same sort of mathematical intimidation, obfuscation, and torturing of numbers and stats.
And both are a lot more impressive and convincing the less you know about them. Up close, they become both very thin and very misleading as indicators of such crucial qualities as creativity, compassion and curiosity.
Somebody named Albert Einstein said:
“The true sign of intelligence is imagination.”
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
Although, to be fair, what did he know? Did he ever have his IQ measured? Did he ever take a standardized test? Rumor has it that he was famous for something or other, but in all honesty with such ridiculous ideas, it couldn’t be anything to do with numbers and stats, so let me know if you find out…
😎
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