"Half of all (U.S.) children are below average. . ."

[donsu]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009531

Intelligence in the Classroom
Half of all children are below average, and teachers can do only so much for them.

Part I

Education is becoming the preferred method for diagnosing and attacking a wide range problems in American life. The No Child Left Behind Act is one prominent example. Another is the recent volley of articles that blame rising income inequality on the increasing economic premium for advanced education. Crime, drugs, extramarital births, unemployment--you name the problem, and I will show you a stack of claims that education is to blame, or at least implicated.

One word is missing from these discussions: intelligence. Hardly anyone will admit it, but education's role in causing or solving any problem cannot be evaluated without considering the underlying intellectual ability of the people being educated. Today and over the next two days, I will put the case for three simple truths about the mediating role of intelligence that should bear on the way we think about education and the nation's future.

Today's simple truth: Half of all children are below average in intelligence. We do not live in Lake Wobegon.

-snip-

To say that even a perfect education system is not going to make much difference in the performance of children in the lower half of the distribution understandably grates. But the easy retorts do not work. It's no use coming up with the example of a child who was getting Ds in school, met an inspiring teacher, and went on to become an astrophysicist. That is an underachievement story, not the story of someone at the 49th percentile of intelligence. It's no use to cite the differences in test scores between public schools and private ones--for students in the bottom half of the distribution, the differences are real but modest. It's no use to say that IQ scores can be wrong. I am not talking about scores on specific tests, but about a student's underlying intellectual ability, g, whether or not it has been measured with a test. And it's no use to say that there's no such thing as g.

While concepts such as "emotional intelligence" and "multiple intelligences" have their uses, a century of psychometric evidence has been augmented over the last decade by a growing body of neuroscientific evidence. Like it or not, g exists, is grounded in the architecture and neural functioning of the brain, and is the raw material for academic performance. If you do not have a lot of g when you enter kindergarten, you are never going to have a lot of it. No change in the educational system will change that hard fact.

-snip-
---------------------------

I found this at http://www.artsandlettersdaily.com/

where you can link to parts II and III

I've posted this part I because it is a subject that needs thought and talked about.

if 1/2 of all school kids are below average that means 1/2 will become below average adults.

below average = can be fed kool aide, political and religious - and all that implys.

will pollution raise the 1/2 to 2/3rds?

will global warming and pollution make everything moot but survival?

have a cheery day

[lonestarnot]

1. opinionjournal.com?

[Sanity Claws]

2. Not in Wobegone, Minnesota

There all the children are above average.

[JVS]

4. That's just a dig at the Twin Cities

where the kids are dumb as fuck

[bperci108]

17. It's from Garrison Keillor's radio program....

"A Prarie Home Companion" where he closes every Lake Wobegone tale with:

"...and that's the news from Lake Wobegone, where all the women are strong, the men good looking and the children are above average."


One of my favorite writers and thinkers.

[JVS]

21. I know. Big fan of him

I'm just joshing that he's taking a shot at the Twin Cities

[Cleita]

3. Does the OP of that opinion have an opinion on which half

is the smart half?

[donsu]

9. does it matter?

nt

[Cleita]

20. Yes, it does if the division is down, class, economic or racial

lines.

[donsu]

25. it's not

nt

[Little Wing]

5. That's the very definition of average

:eyes:

[donsu]

13. no it is not - read the article

nt

[Dude_CalmDown]

6. Well no shit. And the other half are above average.

:evilgrin:

[GreenPartyVoter]

60. My first thought as well

[Crabby Appleton]

7. Average, the arithmetic mean - is a calculation that insures that

1/2 (of anything) will be below average, and 1/2 are above average.

[donsu]

11. no - 1/2 are below average, the other half are average and

a smaller part of that is above average

[Spinzonner]

12. Not exactly

You're describing the median, not the mean. Skewed distributions (though not likely in this case) can make them significantly different.

[salin]

27. point taken - mea culpa (sorta) on my post down thread.

[lonestarnot]

14. Very clever observation.

:applause: However that said, education in America is in serious trouble.

[Warpy]

8. Half of all children are NOT below average

Average is measured as an IQ of 100, and most children are average. As you go to either side of the bell curve (which is what you get when you graph IQ by population, the percentages toward either extreme decline rapidly.

Most children are average, but the "one size fits all" people try to gear education to the small percentage of students who are below average, thus boring the great majority of students and making them hostile to the whole institutional process.

NCLB certainly contributed a lot to this, since dry preparation for a test is not nearly as interesting as actually being taught.

[Spinzonner]

10. It's not exactly a mathematical revelation that half of any population

is below average, particularly with a Normal distribution. That's sort of characteristic of the meanings of average in such cases.

Now there are other distributions where the mean (average) doesn't so closely track the median, but that's not usual for large populations of humans.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

30. Is intelligence normal? I'd expect it to be positively skewed.

I suspect that non-trivially more than half of the population have below-average intelligence.

[Spinzonner]

36. You're engaing in semi-circular reasonong

trying to argue with out considering the very definitions of things.

Please study (just a little) the meanings of mean (average) and median and the difference. Might try Wikipedia,

[Donald Ian Rankin]

55. No, you've missed my point.

I know precisely what a mean and a median are: a generalised mean for a given function is given by the inverse function of the integral of the product of the function with respect to the measure giving the distribution; the standard mean is this calculated using the function f(x) = x. The median is the number with the property that the integral from minus infinity to x of the density is 1/2, sometimes written F^-1 (1/2).

I know that in a symmetrical distribution, e.g. a normal one, (and in some weird asymmetrical ones) these two values are equal, but in general they aren't.

I suspect that the distribution of intelligence is one with positive skew, i.e. a mean higher than its median, because there are a few very intelligent people and lots of slightly stupid ones (although I may have mixed up the definitions of positive and negative skew, but that's only a terminological, not a substantive, point).

This means that there are probably more people with below-average than above-average intelligence.

Do you want to try and patronise me some more?

[Bronyraurus]

85. You're wrong anyway.

The bell curve for intelligence is basically symmetrical.

[AikidoSoul]

15. A "Silent Pandemic" of chemicals impairing brain development announced by Harvard Schl of Pub Health

This is my area of expertise, and the word "pandemic" is not too strong a word. The number of neurotoxic chemicals we are exposed to is now so huge, so ubiquitous, that we cannot avoid them. They are impregated into every conceivable product -- even clothing and bedding -- off-gassing continually into our indoor environments. Many of these chems -- like synthetic pyrethroids -- cannot be washed out of clothing even after 30 washings! (see military funded studies by Carl Schreck)

Here's the press release from Harvard School of Public Health released last Nov. Notice it didn't make national news because chem/ pharm funds it. Almost every ad you see on national news is by the chemical / pharmaceutical industry which is creating this pandemic.


http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/press/releases/press11072006.html


A Silent Pandemic: Industrial Chemicals Are Impairing the Brain Development of Children Worldwide

For immediate release: Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Boston, MA – Fetal and early childhood exposures to industrial chemicals in the environment can damage the developing brain and can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs)—autism, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), and mental retardation. Still, there has been insufficient research done to identify the individual chemicals that can cause injury to the developing brains of children.

In a new review study, published online in The Lancet on November 8, 2006, and in an upcoming print issue of The Lancet, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine systematically examined publicly available data on chemical toxicity in order to identify the industrial chemicals that are the most likely to damage the developing brain.

The researchers found that 202 industrial chemicals have the capacity to damage the human brain, and they conclude that chemical pollution may have harmed the brains of millions of children worldwide. The authors conclude further that the toxic effects of industrial chemicals on children have generally been overlooked.

To protect children against industrial chemicals that can injure the developing brain, the researchers urge a precautionary approach for chemical testing and control. Such an approach is beginning to be applied in the European Union. It puts in place strong regulations, which could later be relaxed, if the hazard were less than anticipated, instead of current regulations that require a high level of proof. At present in the U.S., requirements for toxicity testing of chemicals are minimal.

“The human brain is a precious and vulnerable organ. And because optimal brain function depends on the integrity of the organ, even limited damage may have serious consequences,” says Philippe Grandjean , adjunct professor at Harvard School of Public Health and the study’s lead author.

One out of every six children has a developmental disability, usually involving the nervous system. Treating NDDs is difficult and costly to both families and society. In recent decades, a gathering amount of evidence has linked industrial chemicals to NDDs. Lead, for example, was the first chemical identified as having toxic effects to early brain development, though its neurotoxicity to adults had been known for centuries.

A developing brain is much more susceptible to the toxic effects of chemicals than an adult brain. During development, the brain undergoes a highly complex series of processes at different stages. An interference—for example, from toxic substances—that disrupts those processes, can have permanent consequences. That vulnerability lasts from fetal development through infancy and childhood to adolescence. Research has shown that environmental toxicants, such as lead or mercury, at low levels of exposure can have subclinical effects—not clinically visible, but still important adverse effects, such as decreases in intelligence or changes in behavior.

Grandjean and co-author Philip J. Landrigan, Professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, compiled a list of 202 environmental chemicals known to be toxic to the human brain using the Hazardous Substances Data Bank of the National Library of Medicine and other data sources. (The authors note that the list should not be regarded as comprehensive; for example, the number of chemicals that can cause neurotoxicity in laboratory animal tests exceeds 1,000.)

The authors then examined the published literature on the only five substances on the list—lead, methylmercury, arsenic, PCBs and toluene—that had sufficient documentation of toxicity to the developing human brain in order to analyze how that toxicity had been first recognized and how it led to control of exposure. They found a similar pattern in how the risks of each substance were documented: first, a recognition of adult toxicity and episodes of poisoning among children, followed by a growing body of epidemiological evidence that exposure to lower levels of the substances caused neurobehavioral deficits in children.

“Even if substantial documentation on their toxicity is available, most chemicals are not regulated to protect the developing brain,” says Grandjean. “Only a few substances, such as lead and mercury, are controlled with the purpose of protecting children. The 200 other chemicals that are known to be toxic to the human brain are not regulated to prevent adverse effects on the fetus or a small child.”

Grandjean and Landrigan conclude that industrial chemicals are responsible for what they call a silent pandemic that has caused impaired brain development in millions of children worldwide. It is silent because the subclinical effects of individual toxic chemicals are not apparent in available health statistics. To point out the subclinical risk to large populations, the authors note that virtually all children born in industrialized countries between 1960 and 1980 were exposed to lead from petrol, which may have reduced IQ scores above 130 (considered superior intelligence) by more than half and increased the number of scores less than 70. Today, it’s estimated that the economic costs of lead poisoning in U.S. children are $43 billion annually; for methylmercury toxicity, $8.7 billion each year.

“Other harmful consequences from lead exposure include shortened attention spans, slowed motor coordination and heightened aggressiveness, which can lead to problems in school and diminished economic productivity as an adult. And the consequences of childhood neurotoxicant exposure later in life may include increased risk of Parkinson’s disease and other neurogenerative diseases,” says Landrigan.

The researchers believe that the total impact of the pandemic is much greater than currently recognized. In supplementary documentation (see below for a link), about half of the 202 chemicals known to be toxic to the brain are among the chemicals most commonly used.

Testing chemicals for toxicity is a highly efficient public health measure. However, less than half of the thousands of chemicals currently used in commerce have been tested to assess acute toxicity and, although new chemicals undergo more thorough testing, access to the data may be restricted because companies fear exposing proprietary information. Also, current toxicity testing rarely includes neurobehavioral functions.

“The brains of our children are our most precious economic resource, and we haven’t recognized how vulnerable they are,” says Grandjean. “We must make protection of the young brain a paramount goal of public health protection. You have only one chance to develop a brain.”

To view supplementary documentation on industrial chemicals and risks of toxic effects on brain development, click here:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/neurotoxicant/appendix.doc

Support for this research was provided by the Danish Medical Research Council, the (U.S.) National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

("Developmental Neurotoxicity of Industrial Chemicals," The Lancet, November 8, 2006- Vol. 368)

See the latest news from the Harvard School of Public Health .

For more information, contact:
Todd Datz
[e-mail]
617-432-3952

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Harvard School of Public Health is dedicated to advancing the public's health through learning, discovery, and communication. More than 300 faculty members are engaged in teaching and training the 900-plus student body in a broad spectrum of disciplines crucial to the health and well being of individuals and populations around the world. Programs and projects range from the molecular biology of AIDS vaccines to the epidemiology of cancer; from risk analysis to violence prevention; from maternal and children's health to quality of care measurement; from health care management to international health and human rights.

[donsu]

22. thank you for posting this

pollution is ruining brains

[Spinzonner]

16. One half of all DU'ers

don't understand the meaning of average (mean) and how it differs from the Median , which divides the sample into halves.

Don't know if the other half DO understand, but most of them probably don't care ....

[athena]

77. And a subset of all DU'ers

are so busy trying to look smart that they miss the (highly controversial) point of the article.

The distribution being referred to is a gaussian (or Bell curve), for which the mean is the same as the median. The writer is not talking about the shape of the IQ distribution but stating that the roughly-50% of kids who have less-than-average IQ will simply not benefit from a good education. He is arguing against educating all kids equally.

[proud2BlibKansan]

82. Bingo!!

And the source is questionable. So I am wondering why this article was even posted. Educating all kids equally is a progressive value, isn't it?

[donsu]

18. cheese and crackers - think! there is below average, average, and

above average.

three segments.

below average contains the less then below average

average is average

above average contains the super above average

so you could say it was 3 segments with 2 sub segments

[salvorhardin]

19. Note that the author of this opinion piece is Charles Murray

One half of Hernstein and Murray who wrote the widely discredited book The Bell Curve, a reconstituted for the 1990s social darwinism.

You can read criticisms here: http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/bellcurve.shtml

[Cleita]

23. I had a feeling there was something racial there.

Thanks for the information.

[fujiyama]

68. I'm glad someone actually realized that

This guy is a notorious racist. RWers love his work, because it intellectualized their racism in a pseudo-academic sense.

His work has been discredited millions of times, and it does not surprise me in the least that the Wall Street Journal's editorial section would carry him.

[salin]

24. er... and the definition of average is... the middle

half above and half below. Even if raise the middle - by definition there is still an average and half are above and half are below.

What silliness.

[Spinzonner]

28. Nope

You're describing the MEDIAN

[salin]

29. catch my mea culpa above

I posted this, before I read your earlier post, and posted the mea culpa up there.

Peace.

[nebenaube]

48. I concur n/t

[TahitiNut]

54. Yep. More than half of all adults are so statistically illiterate that ...

... they don't even know the difference between mean and median. Further, they're deluded in to thinking an 'average' individual exists in an 'averaged' population. This is a common misapprehension - one used to great effect by polemicists and sophists. The "average American" is as mythical as the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

[salin]

56. sheez I typed before thinking

how many times do I have to say that. Dang I hate when I type "half-cocked". Can i blame it on the lack of coffee?
;-)

:hi:

[TahitiNut]

58. Even with a math undergrad, I've screwed up, too. Nonetheless ...

... the public discourse is so polluted with the abuse of those terms that I think it's understandable. I was not, even implicitly, targeting you (or me) and I stand by the observation that the vast majority are not even aware of when they make such errors.

:hug:

[salin]

65. I have some stats grad courses under the belt - so I really

do know better. Just wasn't thinking. I know you weren't targetting me :D

How is the weather up there? Here it is just enough to be messy, but not enough to enjoy.

[proud2BlibKansan]

26. Oh good heavens, how in the world does anyone know this?

I am a special ed teacher so I know a bit about this subject. And I can assure you that without individually testing every kid in the USA, we have no way of knowing the collective IQ of our kids.

No, those group IQ tests are not very reliable. And I don't think many states give them anymore.

This reminds me of the rw bloggers who went ape shit over the fact that dubya had a higher IQ than Kerry. Some uninformed fool had decided that looking at SAT scores would yield IQ information. Now how the SAT scores of presidential candidates had become public information was never even questioned by the bloggers.

[cassiepriam]

37. We do know the collective IQ for any population, and we do

not have to test every child.

With psychometrics and statistical sampling we can get
an accurate estimate of a population's intellectual functioning.

But we don't need that. We know that intelligence is normally distributed
in most populations and that is a bell shaped curve with the mean at 100.
SD equals 15.

And you can make a rough estimate of intellectual functioning by academic performance.

[proud2BlibKansan]

50. We are just guessing

One of my statistics professors made it very clear that this group IQ score is an invalid claim, based on unreliable data.

[cassiepriam]

51. Not true. Was your stats prof an expert in intelligence testing?

Where did he obtain his PhD?
And was his dissertation in the area of psychometrics?
What are his publications in the field?

[proud2BlibKansan]

53. Yes she was

And no, I am not going to go searching through my file cabinet for the information you want. She was the head of the psych testing dept at my grad school, which is ranked as first in the nation among special ed grad programs.

Yes I do know what I am talking about. I also know when to exit a ridiculous argument that is accomplishing nothing.

[cassiepriam]

59. My My :( nt

[kath]

45. Did you even read the excerpt in the OP, much less the article itself?

From the OP:
"It's no use to say that IQ scores can be wrong. I am not talking about scores on specific tests, but about a student's underlying intellectual ability, g, whether or not it has been measured with a test. And it's no use to say that there's no such thing as g.

While concepts such as "emotional intelligence" and "multiple intelligences" have their uses, a century of psychometric evidence has been augmented over the last decade by a growing body of neuroscientific evidence. Like it or not, g exists, is grounded in the architecture and neural functioning of the brain, and is the raw material for academic performance. If you do not have a lot of g when you enter kindergarten, you are never going to have a lot of it. No change in the educational system will change that hard fact."


I have a problem with the last two sentences IF they are used as an excuse to "give up" on a large segment of kids (or any kid, for that matter) - each child should be given an education that will help them to be able to succeed to the best of their abilities.
But there ARE real differences in underlying intellectual ability.

[proud2BlibKansan]

52. Nobody is giving up on kids

except maybe the people who believe NCLB is a good law.

And I will repeat - we really have no idea what the collective IQ of any group is, without specific data. And that data does not exist. There is norming data, which would be somewhat more valid, but still not exactly what you are looking for.

This argument has been offered many times before and it has absolutely no place in discussions about educating the masses. There are so many things wrong with this. For one thing, it can result in prejudging kids and that usually leads to lowered expectations.

A good teacher is trained to reach ALL, in spite of their potential, collective or individual.

[cassiepriam]

31. The mean IQ is 100 and half the population falls below that number.

And half falls above. Intelligence is distributed normally in a bell shaped curve.

And 68% of the population falls + or - one standard deviation from the mean IQ.

[Hamlette]

32. isn't it definitional that half of us are below average and half above?

I guess I'm missing something in this argument. I thought average was in the middle.

[kevsand]

33. Wow! That's absolutely right! We need to do something!

I say we make the pie higher. Or we could just accept the inevitable, and deal with it. Maybe we could eat them. I mean, what good are stupid people if you can't take advantage of them?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

34. With All Due Respect, That's The Absolute Dumbest Title To A Study I've Ever Heard.

Hands down... Ever. Completely asinine.

[senseandsensibility]

41. I believe it is intended to be ironic.

Yes, it is obvious. But it is amazing how few people want to admit that any child is below average.

[athena]

79. The article is against educating those with below-average IQ.

The writer is basically saying, "Look, half of all kids have below-average IQ and will not benefit from a good education, so we're wasting our taxes by funding an education system that treats all kids equally." That's a highly controversial argument with a highly questionable premise (that those with low IQ don't benefit from a good education). He even says,

My point is just this: It is true that many social and economic problems are disproportionately found among people with little education, but the culprit for their educational deficit is often low intelligence. Refusing to come to grips with that reality has produced policies that have been ineffectual at best and damaging at worst.

He is arguing that people with less-than-average IQ are "damaged" by a good education!

[Jacobin]

35. Gee, four divided by two equals TWO!!!!!!!!

I would love to have had the million dollar grant to study the 'phenomenon' of simple arithmetic

[LostInAnomie]

38. Wasn't there a story about Reagen being astonished to learn...

... that half of American children are below average?

That's like saying "Half the population isn't female."

[donsu]

39. would you protesters and poo pooers agree to the following:

there are:

above average

average

below average brains


and that testing has shown that 1/2 of kids in school tested below average

[proud2BlibKansan]

64. average what?

:evilgrin:

[VTMechEngr]

70. I was going to say

Isn't that a statistical fact?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

40. If they are basing this information on IQ tests,

realize those tests were designed to show a certain grouping for people--most around 100, with fewer in the group above 120 and below 80 (20 points being the margin of error). As I understand it, IQ tests they give today aren't the same as the ones they gave to me back in the '50s and '60s--they have been changed to fit the design.

I'd say that before everyone goes off the deep end about this, it would be nice to compare apples to apples and not apples to oranges. How do today's kids do on an IQ test created in the 1950s?

[kath]

46. Read the excerpt in the OP, at minimum, if not the article:

"It's no use to say that IQ scores can be wrong. I am not talking about scores on specific tests, but about a student's underlying intellectual ability, g, whether or not it has been measured with a test. And it's no use to say that there's no such thing as g.

While concepts such as "emotional intelligence" and "multiple intelligences" have their uses, a century of psychometric evidence has been augmented over the last decade by a growing body of neuroscientific evidence. Like it or not, g exists, is grounded in the architecture and neural functioning of the brain, and is the raw material for academic performance. If you do not have a lot of g when you enter kindergarten, you are never going to have a lot of it. No change in the educational system will change that hard fact."

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

63. I didn't get this argument in the OP

How is "g" measured? By performance? How is the performance measured, and how does this performance compare to what was done in earlier years?

[OKNancy]

42. No matter the stupidity of this article, one thing is true

there are way too many parents who think their children are gifted... when they are just average, "regular" kids.

Practically every phone call I get from a parent wanting to place their child in class has this sentence: My child probably needs to be with older children since she is advanced for her age.

[LostInAnomie]

43. Ok, serious questions.

Is there any reason to think that this has changed over time?

Are children progressively becoming less intelligent or have the majority of American children always been below average?

How does this compare to other industrialized countries?

How are we sure that this is the fault of education, and not genetics, upbringing, and environmental factors?

[AngryAmish]

81. 100 IQ means 50% of children have always been below average

100 IQ is a way to show the mean (average) of the population.

Younger people, on average, are much smarter than older people. There is a thing known as the Flynn Effect (see here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect> (which, btw mentions this same Murray guy). In essence, IQ tests have to be re-normed every so often because an average child today (100 IQ) would score a 115 IQ (really smart) from a test of 50 years ago.

Environmental factors are huge in IQ. Poor nutrition and ill health in youth diminish IQ beside schooling.

THere is little quarrel with the fact that IQ is heritable just like height - and both are dependant upon good childhood environments to thrive.

[Nikia]

44. Which is why we need a minimum wage

And why some Americans will be low skilled workers even if there was truly equal employment oppurtunity.
Not everyone could become doctors, accountants, and engineers even if they wanted to become them and anyone who met a certain competency could find employment.
Are there underachievers? Are there people who are undereducated who could do these jobs if they received proper education? Are there many people who are kept from good employment oppurtunties who are able? Of course these things are true. We need to work on these issues, but keep in mind that some people are less able to do jobs that usually require college degrees and pay living wages.

[johnaries]

47. What a F*cking cop-out!!!!!!!

This article reminds me of the George Will article taht argued that we should stop welfare because not enough children were starving in the US. Just because some children are not inherently or genetically "intelligent" as others does not mean they don't deserve a quality education. Further, what is "intelligence" and how should it be measured?

Yes, 1/2 will always be below average and 1/2 will always be above average which can be demonstrated on a Bell Curve. What we should do is establish absolute lower limits for the curve, and either tighten the curve or shift it to be above those lower limits.

That's why many test grades are based on the percentage of correct answers, and not on a Bell Curve of the students taking the test. Simply because a child OR adult is "below average" does not mean that they are incapable of reading comprehension and problem-solving skills, or rational thought.

[GeorgeGist]

49. Of course they are...

and the other half are above average.

[mondo joe]

67. Jesus Christ I'm embarassed that so many DUer's think that. That's NOT

what average means.

[athena]

76. That's only a detail.

The mean and median are the same for a distribution that is symmetric about the mean. The distribution of IQ's is probably a gaussian (bell-curve), which is symmetric. People's intuition is correct on this point: saying that half the population has a below-average IQ is stating the obvious.

In focusing on this irrelevant detail, you seem to have missed the highly controversial thesis of the article: that no amount of education will help kids with below-average IQ. The writer -- who, as someone has pointed out, co-wrote the racist book "The Bell Curve" -- seems to believe that money should not be wasted educating the people who don't have high IQ's. (He probably also thinks that people with low IQ shouldn't have the right to vote.) Since it's not clear whether the IQ measures anything relevant, and since a good education tends to make people critical thinkers who are politically aware and active, it would be a very bad idea to base the quality of education a student receives on his/her IQ, as this writer seems to advocate.

[Duppers]

57. I think it's more than that

:rofl:

Just joking, joking....I do get the point.

[hedgehog]

61. Exactly what is the shape of the bell curve?

Some bell curves are tall and narrow which is to say that most of the sample falls towards the middle with only small fractions at either end. Sometimes the bell is bunched at one end or the other of the range. My point is that 50 % of the kids may be below average, but if 95% of the kids are within a few points plus or minus of the average, it doesn't really mean anything.

[Rosemary2205]

62. THIS IS HUGH!!!111!!!!2 aRE THEY SERIES????///??

When I read the title I thought this was the onion. 1/2 are below average? Well, DUH. That's how averages work! --- idiots.

[mondo joe]

66. No, that's NOT how average works. Not at all. You're confusing the median with

the mean.

[muriel_volestrangler]

74. But IQ values are designed so the mean coincides with the median

Since the actual IQ number is arbitrary, it's possible to do this. Specifically, they have a normal distribution.

[fujiyama]

69. Why people on DU are debating

the words of a slightly more eloquent David Duke are beyond me.

Is anyone familiar with the Bell Curve? This guy is vile racist. It's not worth even taking him seriously. His work has been discredited, and I would not believe anything he says.

[salvorhardin]

72. It's like they have no memory.

Murray & Hernstein's arguments have been repeatedly demolished. It's nothing but warmed over social darwinism with the most blatant bigotry disguised in faulty statistics. It's complete and utter crap. Here's what evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould had to say on the matter:

However, if Herrnstein and Murray are wrong, and IQ represents not an immutable thing in the head, grading human beings on a single scale of general capacity with large numbers of custodial incompetents at the bottom, then the model that generates their gloomy vision collapses, and the wonderful variousness of human abilities, properly nurtured, reemerges. We must fight the doctrine of The Bell Curve both because it is wrong and because it will, if activated, cut off all possibility of proper nurturance for everyone's intelligence. Of course, we cannot all be rocket scientists or brain surgeons, but those who can't might be rock musicians or professional athletes (and gain far more social prestige and salary thereby), while others will indeed serve by standing and waiting. (pg 13)

I closed my chapter in The Mismeasure of Man on the unreality of g and the fallacy of regarding intelligence as a single-scaled, innate thing in the head with a marvellous quotation from John Stuart Mill, well worth repeating:The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something particularly abstruse and mysterious. (pg 13)

How strange that we would let a single and false number divide us, when evolution has united all people in the recency of our common ancestry thus undergirding with a shared humanity that infinite variety which custom can never stale. E pluribus unum.
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/bellcurve.shtml#gouldfaulty

[fujiyama]

73. After reading the headline I was curious who wrote it

When I saw that it was Murray, that was enough to tell me what I needed to know.

[phylny]

71. The Blueberry Story addresses a great point

http://www.jamievollmer.com/blue_story.html

[ftr23532]

75. Here's some info on the racist Pioneer Fund that Charles Murray cited in The Bell Curve

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund">Pioneer Fund is filled with lots of http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=3142435#3150201">fun folks.

[salvorhardin]

78. Thank you

That was going to be my next point. Murray and the people from the Pioneer Fund are not nice people, and they will lie, twist and distort science to make their point. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Pioneer Fund as a hate group.

[JCMach1]

80. Gee, if you use the bell curve as a model regardless of the test

1/2 of all people will always be below average.

You get what you look for!

[NuttyFluffers]

83. so what. educate them anyway.

just because they are below/above/inbetween/plutoed speaks of nothing about what they were educated in. and in any society the people need to be educated on how things are run within. this depends on the releveance of information, from herbalism to electronics, but in the end they still need to be educated. humans babies are not born knowing the immediate info necessary to operate their lives in a society -- our world is not wholly run on instinct -- therefore education, by its various means, is absolutely essential to humanity.

so, again, so what, educate them anyway. i really don't care if there can be an argument made that some people "just can't get the higher nuances" of whatever. you are going to have to educate them on how to live in this world anyway, so might as well educate them all in one go. if some show certain aptitude towards certain fields of education, from civics to soldiery, cool, encourage them to explore that. but might as well expose them to all the basic functions crucial to living in this world and give them a chance to find out what they like most.

not really an argument worth discussing in my opinion. it's a no-brainer. the kids are going to have to grow up and receive an education. so who are they going to get it from? why justify bias to exclude others from education if that is only going to weigh down society in the future? qui bono? definitely not a modern society. it would show the height of lack of intelligence to not realize that they are going to get "taught" something anyway, might as well educate them all to avoid disaster.

[burrowowl]

84. I guess Lake Woebegone is above average

SAD!