It's not good news for Texas children in the public school system.
A new survey released by the nonprofit group Texans Care for Children shows that one out of every three Texas students may not make their way across the graduation stage to receive their diploma.
The survey reveals that Texas is ranked last in high school graduation rates and also found that more children in Texas had to retake kindergarten.
How are we going to fix this?
I know! Put a creationist dentist in charge of the educational system! Are you feeling reassured yet?
And seriously, this is a cruel trick to play on children. People sometimes throw out the idea that colleges ought to just smack down these states with poor science standards and a tradition of misrule by not allowing them admission — that would teach those states, but good — but let's not lose sight of the victims. Those kids get one chance at a decent education, and they are not to be blamed for the short-sightedness and stupidity of their parents and their politicians.
When we are fighting against creationism, we aren't just working for the future advantage of abstract scientific principle, we are fighting for children right now whose brains are being crippled and twisted and poisoned.
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Creationist dentist. That's almost an oxymoron.
Retake kindergarten?!? How do you fail kindergarten?
Man. You said it.
Couldn't have said it better myself, though I wish I had said it first :P
One in three may not graduate? Please tell me that's a misprint.
I heard we have a near 50% dropout rate here in California, but it might just be the Los Angeles Unified School District, or what we lovingly call "the detention center."
Yeah, but the kids will have really shiny teeth.
AAAAAAA-mennnnn.
I'm glad my dad moved us from Texas to New England when he had the chance.
Being paddled on my first day of First Grade has nothing to do with it. Yep.
I only know one person who failed kindergarten. Ironically (given the name of that level of class) it was because he was a German immigrant and did not speak English well enough to advance. He used to chuckle about it when he was older.
I can't help but think that Texas kindergarten statistics may be skewed by a large influx of primarily Spanish-speaking immigrants? That's just a guess.
Well, this IS the state that VOTED to replace Ann Richards with ... George W. Bush.
#2, @lylebot - my thoughts exactly. What kind of placement/evaluation is used for determining whether or not a child "graduates" into the first grade?
Yes, the stats are somewhat skewed from immigration, but its still really bad here. I'm currently going to be attempting a credential program in Texas, but this kind of report makes me wonder what's the point?
@8: Don't those students nowadays go into bilingual programs, where they usually stay? (Which of course implies that they've spent 13 years in school, but still cannot fully function in an English-only environment. Which sounds to me like they might as well have not received a degree ...)
Still, it's pretty clear that creationism is only one of many problems. The "teach the weaknesses" nonsense, while I am very glad to see it (likely) disappear, really wasn't implemented much.
So yes, fight creationist nonsense, but don't lose sight of so much else that's gone wrong there--and elsewhere.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
I live in Texas and have gone through the public education system here. I can tell from experience that this is not a hyperbole. My senior class had 800 students when we began the year. i believe that between 300-400 graduated. Im not kidding. There are serious issues with education in this state. Teachers here teach on a "Memorize" type of style. In my health class the teacher could not utter the words "Condom" "Prophylactic" or "Safe Sex." Thats how backwards education has becomed. The attitude towards education here is also frightening. To me, there seems to be a comtempt towards people who are highly educated. The more ignorant you are the higher your social status is.(I.E Bush) I guess i can partly thank the knuckle dragging ape who currently heads the education system but the problem to me is more embedded in the culture of this state. I dont even know how to beguin reversing that wheel though.
Kindergarten is probably one of the more common grades to fail.
I started to re-take 1st grade since the age cut-off at the new school district was different (September birthdays are complicated!), they put me into 2nd grade after a couple of months (mostly because my parents didn't like the 1st grade teacher though).
I think that statistic just shows they use the "have students who are having trouble re-take kindergarten" technique more often, it doesn't really say anything about their wider educational system.
And don't forget, Texas has a huge influence on the high school science textbook market. It is very much an American problem, not just a Texas problem.
If this was to result in no more Presidents from Texas, I could actually live with this...
Let's not get completely carried away here as far as Texas' graduation rates. A large part of Texas' problems is the immigrant population and their struggles to learn English. The parents of these children are often unable to speak English, and their children come from insular communities that don't go out of their way to learn the language of their host countries. If you look at the following literacy rates on a state-by-state basis, those with the largest immigrant populations are also the least literate. http://nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/StateEstimates.aspx
The fact that immigrants skew the statistics doesn't take the idiot creationists in the school board off the hook, but expecting that their departure will lead to a paradigm shift is a little naive. What must change is the method to which these children learn not only science, but all manners of education. How can they learn science standards when they can't speak English? Thus, immersion classes, tutoring, community activities outside their insular neighborhoods, and other such tools are also needed.
As a Texas highschool dropout, I know how messed up the Texas education system is. There are two things holy the the Texas education system, standardized tests and atheletics. We had to do word problems in art class, math problems in french and and practice essays in debate all to study for the TAAS/TASP tests.
The football teams wanted for nothing but art classes couldn't even afford basic art supplies. Teachers spend out of their own pockets for BASIC teaching materials, but atheltic teams got new gear every year.
Living in the UK (and going to one of the best schools in the country...), I can't possibly imagine how these kind of stats are possible. It just seems unreal.
As a Texan, I think I must make the following defense.
Yes, Texas has a large and growing immigrant population.
Yes, Texas has a large (and hopefully not growing) bible thumping population.
These are two very different problems that require two very different solutions. The people who want wacky textbooks are not necessarily the ones whose kids drop out.
If we are to succeed in improving both situations, we must be active, aggressive, and, above all, rational.
Bad Albert:
Having survived Texas schools, I'm not surprised by this statistic, frankly. Even in my high school, which was in one of the better school districts, my graduating class started at about a thousand students my freshman year. By the time I graduated in 1998, there were about 460 of us left to walk across the stage.
Incidentally, there were two incidents my freshman year that started my disillusionment with organized religion: a book burning banning controversy and one of those mandatory "Be a virgin when you get married or Baby Jeebus will hate you!" assembly-type harangues...
I'm just curious, is there any reflection of this in the universities in Texas? You'd think they'd have markedly higher remediation rates and lower achievement levels than, say, the University of California.
Is that the case?
I know that the state of Nevada has one of the lowest rates of high school graduates ever attending university; I consider that to be a pretty telling statistic. Is there anything like that in Texas?
I consider sports to be a huge contributing factor in this, too. Specifically, football (basketball and baseball to a smaller extent).
NC, where I live and unfortunately teach, is right up there with a 68% grad rate. (NC DPI 2007) This was good news to people who had a 60% grad rate a few years prior to that. Poverty is more of a factor here than immigration, but since the two go hand in hand it's difficult to isolate variables.
Gonna chime in here to back #14, My class (Pasadena, TX) was over 1,000 people(I was in the top 10%) at freshmen and sophomore levels, junior was drastically reduced and graduation was a little less than 300.
Texas is known for lying about this crap.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dkcohen/ED697_PUBPOL695_ClassWebsite_Fal…
(Not the best place, there are articles out there, too lazy to search, but you'll see)
@12:
Probably, but I'm talking about a guy starting kindergarten in 1969. I really don't know what they do in Texas for the language situation.
MikeM @ 23> There is actually a positive correlation between time spent in extracurricular activities (not only athletics, however) and graduation rate, as per Curtin et. al. 2002 (US Dept. of Ed). The studies show a marked increase in grad rate for students with even a minimal extracurricular involvement.
I'm aware that this isn't causal, nor is it a reason to fund athletics to the detriment of other programs, but it also demonstrates that athletics aren't likely to blame for students failing to graduate. I'd speculate that they may be responsible for students graduating without actually attaining the basic requirements, as athletes (in my own experience) tend to get a pass, but I don't have any data to support that idea.
Aww, come on! We can't use the strike tag?
J.A. Baker @28,
Use <s>…</s>
Woo-hoo, Mississippi isn't dead last anymore! At least in that respect? I'm not sure if it ever was actually dead last, but I know it had the 48th worst education system out of all the states at one point.
I think I learned more about science in high school by reading one of Isaac Asimov's old text books I found in the library than I did from any of the classes....
Paconious, did you graduate? If you did, then the criteria in Language Arts must be at an all time low. Hey, no offense. You're just a product of the system.
I am a retired teacher in California. I've taught from 7th grade through graduate school. I left education in the classroom as the constriction on real learning became too frustrating for me. The No Child Left Behind Act did so much more harm than good. Strike three!
I remember the "model" for testing in California was taken from Texas' TASS testing program. Strike two!
Now the Calif. High School Exit Exam. Some publisher's dream. So unnecessary. Unreliable and non-essential. Stike one!
Education has become so increasingly corporatized that little room is left for learning. Skewed results, inoperable curricula, etc.
And it's not just in Los Angeles. In most communities in Calif where the socio-economic status is below median income and parental education, graduation rates are dismal.
In my home town the high school graduation rate is about 55%. Be careful in examining grad rates. Be sure the rate does not include populations that dropped out and returned to receive a high school diploma later. The best picture is looking at graduation rates for all those who graduated in four years or less.
The local school board encourages ignorant parents by publishing graduation rates at 80% and above. This is totally misleading as it includes those who may have returned ten years later (past their traditional four year grad date) and completed the CHSPE, HS Diploma, or some other equivalency exam.
There also has been a huge increase in "independent study." This program is for the non-traditional student who can not or will not be schooled in the traditional modality. This program sector also includes an ever increasing population of students attending Juvenile Court Schools. Also, for religious reasons and otherwise, there are the "home-schooled" population. The success rates can be very high and also very low. Most districts DO NOT enforce the "guidance by a credentialed teacher" requirement as they, the districts, do not want to open a politically huge can of worms.
It is my contention that school, a "traditional" education is not for everyone. It does not guarantee success in life (whatever that is), nor is it an indicator of a lack of or development of intelligence. I was told all my life that "[t]o get a good job, get a good education." This has never been the case, and with the dumbing down of the curricula, this statement takes on even more non-relevance.
To all those who do not agree with creationism being taught in your local public schools: DON'T SUPPORT IT. DON'T ATTEND THOSE SCHOOLS. PARENTS, DON'T TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT AND SEND YOUR KIDS TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AS "BABYSITTER."
" I'd speculate that they may be responsible for students graduating without actually attaining the basic requirements, as athletes (in my own experience) tend to get a pass, but I don't have any data to support that idea."
I really must defend the athlete here. It's really hard to put so much effort into a sport and maintain a good GPA - but that is what is required of student athletes.
Even in Florida (one of the questionable states - and supposed 'football factory') - the student athlete must maintain a 'c' average in every class or they don't play. Period. At least up to the high school level. I don't know about college.
I get upset with the term 'dumb jock'. Walk a mile in their shoes.
Well, this IS the state that VOTED to replace Ann Richards with ... George W. Bush.
Well, to be fair, a lot of Texans thought they were voting for his dad.
I checked out the man's "it's just a hypothesis" article at http://dmcleroy.home.att.net/Textbooks/Historical_Reality.htm
(Yes, the 2nd law of thermodynamics is in there, so you know what kind of article it is).
What I found funny is one of his conclusions (and advice to board members):
"I urge board members to carefully consider the argument of this analysis and in spite of the overwhelming scientific experts’ opinions, consider what the overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates, and insist that “common descent” be portrayed as a hypothesis in the textbooks"
So what he's saying is that "overwhelming scientific experts’ opinions" are NOT AT ALL in line with "overwhelming scientific evidence".
Are the board members to believe that scientists 'overwhelmingly' ignore scientific evidence?
If they did, they wouldn't be scientists!
Mr. McLeroy: You're confused! It's the creationists who ignore scientific evidence! Not the scientists!
(I'm surprised he actually accepts 'heliocentricity' as 'fact')
Wait, what could teaching creationism have to do with High School drop out rates?
Texas Public Schools do not teach creationism, but Jewish and Christian schools might. Wouldn't it be rational to compare the drop out rates between Christian Schools, Jewish Schools and Public Schools to test whether or not teaching creationism has anything to do with drop out rates?
Wouldn't it make more sense to conclude that because Texas is now a minority white State its educational standards have decreased due to the comparitive increase in minorities especially Mestizos and Blacks who are known to have lower IQs than White and Jewish Students?
I will wager you that the drop out rate in Texas is not significantly different than most any other State based on its proportional racial demographics.
Dr. James Watson, the father of Modern Genetics would agree with me on this. Certainly, having a religious education did not stunt the Gregori Mendela, the father of Genetics who was a monk, Isaac Newton who was a devout religious man or Einstien and Freud who were both raised in Jewish Schools.
If you want to decrease the drop out rate in Texas, you need to segregate the schools and develop an educational platform that best appeals to each racial type for their racial mind, and targeted towards their aptitude. Blacks and Mexicans are not as smart as whites, Jews and Asians so it would only make sense that the lower IQ groups would tend to drop out of High School more frequently.
Also there are cultural and language differences between the blacks and Mestizo students which cannot be properly addressed in integrated schools. Teenage pregnancy, single parenthood, poverty, spanish only homes, households lacking a parent with a college degree, stability issues, crime and drugs all affect blacks and mestizos at a higher rate than whites, Asian and Jewish homes.
I thought this was supposed to be a Science blog!
To Darth Wader:
Hey, just like a teacher (me) to talk too much. You summed it up perfectly! You get an "A" in my book. (If such a thing is necessary, which it isn't.... I don't believe in grades).
Also, correction, thanks to you, Darth Wader, it is "TAAS." I typed TASS. Readers, listen up! What DW is sayin' is what's at the heart of the problem. It's not Spanish speaking, intelligence tests, idiotic rote learning BS. It's the student becoming aware of the LEARNING PROCESS. In this way they can be lifetime learners.
@27 "The studies show a marked increase in grad rate for students with even a minimal extracurricular involvement."
Since this is a science blog (right??) I would try to apply a little evolutionary logic to it. In the animal kingdom, fitness is often observable just by looking at physical activity. For example, if I remember from my animal behavior classes, this fact is critical to many behaviors involved in sexual selection.
So, healthy people tend to be smart and educated. Healthy people also tend to be physically active. These two populations likely overlap quite a bit. Or to rephrase, people who are not healthy enough to be active in sports are also not likely to be smart and educated. And before anyone argues that health is easily obtained, remember that quite a few students are abused, undernourished, and generally neglected in life.
Wouldn't it make more sense to conclude that because Texas is now a minority white State its educational standards have decreased due to the comparitive increase in minorities especially Mestizos and Blacks who are known to have lower IQs than White and Jewish Students?
*insert sound of brakes screeching*
Wait, what? It's known? As in research has proven this? Care to cite your sources?
#35: Wow. Just... wow.
Oh good, so you're a stupid racist fuckwad as well! BTW, Watson is also a racist fuck. Care to cite the data the correlates race and IQ which isn't better represented by comparing something as, say, socioeconomic status and IQ?
You ignorant, racist fuck.
Ok so 42 is the answer, but 35 is the troll.
I'm a grad student in Texas, and I came down from the Midwest to go to one of the best programs in the country. I've been teaching AP Biology labs at one of the better schools in Houston ISD, and overall, it isn't too bad. It's easily the most racially and economically diverse school I've ever seen.
From my perspective, it's the requirements to graduate which may be a problem for the graduation rate. Many students actually take classes to pass the Standardized tests that are required to graduate. If the students don't have a strong grasp of the english language, they're pretty much screwed. The real problem is that every time the kids fail the exam, the next time they take it, the test is harder.
No. I will not "walk a mile in their shoes" because I spent years being stepped on by them.
If you weren't involved in the football effort, you were a second class student.
Jocks can go fuck themselves.
S Scott> defend all you like.. I was an athlete, and I currently coach. They aren't necessarily dumb, but I'm not inclined to listen to anyone who wants to tell me how difficult it is to keep up with an athletic schedule on top of academics. If I can do it at a D1 university, they can do it in high school (and if not, they don't have to). The 'c' average is applicable, but strangely enough, we're able to write waivers for players with a GPA down to 1.0, and I've had coaches of other teams come to me to request that I raise a player's grade so they can play.
You said something about shoes?
Addendum to 44> My issue isn't with your "dumb jock", it's with the coaches who want me to pass the senior who reads on a 3rd grade level (and sports a 73 IQ) so that he can play the rest of the season. If someone had made the child accountable previously, there wouldn't be an issue.
Lt Storm,
yes, its widely known that Blacks and Mestizos have lower IQs than than Whites, Asians and Jews. These findings have long been known and have been tested repeatedly for over 80 years with the same aggregate results. Blacks consistently score about 1 standard deviation lower on IQ tests than whites. Mestizos come in with a Z-score about -0.667 or so beneath the white mean.
These results have been published in the Bell Curve, published around 1993-94, and the IQ and the Wealth of Nations, published around 2003.
You did not think that all people evolved at the same did you? Life in Europe, Asia and the middle east created a positive feedback loop increasing the chances for intelligent people to be genetically more successful than their dumber peers. Over generations this has resulted in very smart jews, pretty smart whites, and smart asians. Negroes living in Africa, had a different culture based on their environment which did not require as much forethought to insure survival, so they did not evolve the higher IQs of the other races. (MacDonald)
Yeah this is all evolutionary psychology stuff. Dr. Kevin MacDonald has written some excellent books, some of which are available for free from his website.
And Johnnyb proves himself to be an ass once again.
And Aaron, that was logic at its poorest, evolutionary or not. FAIL.
What about the black jews in Ethiopia?
It isn't just immigration, as some of the above posters suggest.
Case in point: I come from a suburban community in Texas - high school was primarily white and asian. When I started high school, we had a class of a little over 1000 students. We graduated just under 600.
Part of it is cultural. While the rest of the country sees a high school education as a necessity, it isn't seen that way as much here. With budget cuts eliminating most vocational education, students drop out to get jobs that requiring training, not a degree.
I live in Texas. They wanted to hold me back from first grade and make me go to this "transition" grade. Something about me being too talkative or active. They weren't sure I was "ready for the first grade." My mother had to call up the school and tell them to test me. I took some sort of placement test and tested for third grade. So they allowed me to proceed to the first grade.
I've heard later that it's all about money. The more kids they can hold back and keep going to their schools the more government money they get. I wonder if that's true.
Right on, brother.
I suppose the equivalent in Texas would be called "the dentition center."
#35. "Whites"? You realize that this group encompasses the stereotypical redneck? Gosh, how open-minded of you to segregate the entire human population into such neatly designated groups. I hope you're not in charge of hiring. Dr. Watson is a great scientist, but his racist chauvinistic views do not, in my opinion, make him a particularly great person. Smart people can think some really stupid shit, too. For instance, otherwise smart people using their intelligence to come up with all sorts of excuses to defend their religious beliefs as facts.
I really wish that people would just be honest and say, "I don't know, I can't prove it, but I want to believe it, *need* to believe it."
What about the black jews of Ethiopia? Most of the Jews that we have here are Ashkenazi, and when on references the Jews in America they are usually refering to the Ashkenazi who have average IQs of 115. The Jewish religious tradition created a Eugenic effect that favored smart jews over dumb ones in Europe where they were primarily urban dwellers due to the fact that social conditions forbade them from owning land.
The same environmental condition (urban dwelling) also caused them to develop Tay Sachs, which in its heterozygous form is effective at preventing certain diseases, not unlike heterozygous sickle cell is effective at preventing malaria.
Genetics does not merely affect the physical body but it affects the mind as well. Certainly, you do not believe that its all environment and no nature do you? If it was all environment then what would be the importance of evolution? What is the importance of evolution unless you intend to put evolution into practice?
Jews in ethiopia had different social and environmental pressures than the Jews in Europe, which favored different feedback traits, and the Jews do sometimes marry into the local population only to have their off spring marry back into the fold. It should be noted that consangenious marriage is common amongst the Jews and there were many Bibically documented cases of incest.
I thought that this was a pro-evolution site? Why are people calling me a "racist fuck"? Certainly, in other species we realize that different animals have different intenctual behaviors, drives and intelligence. Why would it be so shocking to realize that the environmental differences that drove our species to evolve different physical characteristics has also resulted in different mental and psychological characteristics as well.
Environment certainly plays a role in development. I do not doubt that one bit, but genes also play an important role in psychology and understanding from an evolutionary perspective why we as humans are different and how we are different should play a key role in understanding the social issues that we are currently facing in a multi-racial society.
If you really wanted to improve human abilities then what we really need is a good eugenics program. No one who believes in human evolution should disagree with this. The healthiest, smartest, most beautiful, and most talented should be given the greatest breeding opportunities. Over the long run this will guide the evolution of our race to be better and give all kids the best chance at life.
@47 "And Aaron, that was logic at its poorest, evolutionary or not. FAIL"
Care to explain?
If you split the population into healthy and unhealthy subsets, you would notice the following trends. Unhealthy people (abused, neglected, sick) tend not to do well in physical activities and tend not to be as cognitively developed. Healthy people tend to be more active and smart (since good nutrition is necessary for cognitive development). Even if there is no causal interaction between physical activity and intelligence, you will observe an interaction because of their combined dependence on health.
@17: Remember, though, that both Bushes went to a private New England boarding school.
hahajohnnyb:
I don't think you realize that with each post, our collective opinion of you sinks even further.
Urban dwelling did not cause Tay Sachs. It is not currently known whether heterozygosity gives a selective advantage.
So. By your statements am I to infer that you would think that Obama would be a complete dumbass if it were not for his white genes? That he's still not as smart as, say, G.W.Bush?
Creationist dentist? So I wonder what his position on wisdom teeth is....
This makes my head hurt to no avail. And looking at the comments on that link to the news article makes it worse- people blaming immigrants etc from draining the resources of the schools etc.
Poe's Law
hahajohnnyb puts the ug in eugenics!
Out here in CA, we've got liberal secular progressives in charge of the school system and there is a large percentage of students who will drop out. Perhaps the problem in TX has more to do with a larger percentage of children from illegals than who is running the school system.
Be careful what you wish for - some schools in the UC system had to introduce racial quotas so their freshmen classes wouldn't be 90% Asian decent. What would probably against your desire to promote the intelligent races by segregation.
Hahajohnnyb:
Re: Eugenics. Okay. Human rights aside, let's say, for the sake of argument, that I agree that a robust eugenic program would be necessary to 1) control overpopulation, and 2) control human evolution.
Would you, by your assessment, be on the Breeder List?
Logic -- ur doin it rong. They continue going to a bilingual environment so their Spanish doesn't wither.
Dude, this is a just-so story. Put some evidence on the table, or publish MacDonald's just-so stories as a fairytale book.
If we apply your own logic, how come you're too stupid to immediately notice that it's a just-so story? Surely you aren't <gasp> black? Oops, comment 52 has beaten me to it.
@#55
You are assuming that blacks are generally in poor health. This is certainly not the case, a glance at any sports roster should demonstrate this fact. Blacks excel at sports, especially sports that involve running, yet their academic performance is consistently under-par. Blacks have one of the highest rates of over-nutrition (obesity) in the united States to they are not malnourished.
For blacks in America, environment is not much of case, with the exception of the influence of black culture. In Africa this is a different story where many blacks are malnourished and are infected with AIDS both are known factors which lower IQ. Still blacks in Africa score around 70 on IQ tests while blacks in America score around 85, compared to a mean of 100.
The social and environmental evolutionary feedbacks in Africa were different than those in Europe, and even in Europe they were different for white europeans compared to the condition of European Jews.
To get the blacks and Mestizos on even par with whites, they could intermarry with Jews and their children would come out about average.
"Why are people calling me a "racist fuck"?"
When the shoe fits perfectly . . .
[blockquote]You are assuming that blacks are generally in poor health. This is certainly not the case, a glance at any sports roster should demonstrate this fact. Blacks excel at sports, especially sports that involve running, yet their academic performance is consistently under-par[/blockquote]
wow. just wow.
Change the word blacks up there to negro and you have a time machine to the 50's
The Creationists are not worried because "unversities" like Liberty Unversity will take them.
the Gregori Mendela
Free Mendela!
"wow. just wow.
Change the word blacks up there to negro and you have a time machine to the 50's"
Srsly. There's no small amount of privilege stinking up that troll's comments. I always get a kick out of how unexamined privilege so incredibly dumb.
@#63
I believe that there are maybe 400 men in the United States who are "Breed worthy" these men could easily be recruited at the best schools in the country. I would require that they were all 3 standard deviations above average intelligence. 2 SDs above average height, no family history of mental illness for 3 generations, preferably 20/20 vision unless exceptionally talented. They should be good looking to the opposite sex.
From this pool of 400 men, they should donate sperm from about the age of 20 til they are 30, then retire. This sperm should be distributed through national fertility clinics and women who choose should be able to access fertility services free of charge.
Negative Eugenics would involve paying men and women with dysgenic traits to become sterilized.
Over time this would improve the health, IQ and quality of society.
@65 "You are assuming that blacks are generally in poor health."
Don't put words into my mouth, dimwit.
I said nothing about race. I don't think it is a significant factor, except that economic conditions have favored some races over others because of bad laws and evil people.
"From this pool of 400 men, they should donate sperm from about the age of 20 til they are 30, then retire. This sperm should be distributed through national fertility clinics and women who choose should be able to access fertility services free of charge."
Wasn't that from the end of Dr. Strangelove
Mine fuhrer! I can Walk!
The primary problem with Education in Texas is one of priorities. Texas was a big adopter of the AP, and before that, Accelerated Learning programs. The point of these programs was to provide a more stimulating environment for high-performing kids. As someone who took both types of courses in High school, I can attest that, in practice, the purpose is somewhat different. What do I mean by that? I mean that the priority of AP courses is to teach, and that the priority of normal courses is to contain. I don't really know how best to stress this; what goes on in normal courses is not actual education and what goes on in AP courses is. Sure, work is done in normal classes, but its busy work that demands only the most minimal understanding of the subject, if any at all, and is frequently interrupted by videos of similar monotony. A good example would be economics courses. In AP economics, you discuss basic economic theory, the historical development of this area of study from Smith to Keynes, and case studies of both nations and businesses. In Normal economics they teach you how to write a check. In my opinion, many of the social problems faced by the state come from this willful segregation of our population at childhood between those who we choose to succeed, and those we choose to fail.
It is also important to note how this effects even those in normal classes who do get accepted to colleges. Normal classes in no way prepare one for the work-load or self-discipline required by college which leads to over population and under achievement among our college freshmen.
"Blacks and Mexicans are not as smart as whites, Jews and Asians so it would only make sense that the lower IQ groups would tend to drop out of High School more frequently."
Holy fuck. This cretin has be some sort of wingnut troll trying to leave "proof" that evolution and Darwin leads to a belief in racial superiority. You know how much science this idiot knows when he doesn't realize that there are no genetic races... we are all homo sapiens. He also is ignorant of the fact that IQ tests are prejudiced towards the culture of the people who create them.
At any rate he is a racist idiot. He must wear his hood on nights out on the town.
"I always get a kick out of how unexamined privilege so incredibly dumb."
Who turned off my proofreading machine?
I always get a kick out of how unexamined privilege MAKES PEOPLE so incredibly dumb.
Oh crap. Is hahajohnnyb advocating school resegregation?
Aside from that though,, I went to a Texas high school and would agree that a significant portion of the dropout are those who do not have much of a command of the English language.I don't think that guy in charge of the science department has much to do with it.
hahajohnnyb, you do realize that what you claim as evidence is not respected, evidence-based evolutionary psychology, right? It's pop-EP, which isn't respected by any scientists or psychologists who actually let the evidence dictate the conclusions, instead of having a conclusion and showing only evidence that supports it, as the pop-evolutionary psychology people do.
"Who turned off my proofreading machine?"
The blacks duh! The sameone ruining the schools
I think this guy qualifies as an extreme concern troll. Probably saw Expelled, then a thought started brewing in his head... "hey, if we could get those evolutionists come out in the open about their love of eugenics, then they can be discredited!"
Sorry, doesn't work that way.
Because you're a pseudoscientist. You believe certain things must, must, must be the case simply because they appear logical to you; you don't bother testing your assumptions, and you are blithely unaware of evidence against them that has already been published.
BTW, how the fuck could one possibly segregate the US, where everyone who has any amount of visible African ancestry within the last few hundred years is called "black"? The same person can be "black" in the US, "colored" in South Africa, and "white" in Brazil. What school would you have sent Obama to? Or his children? Or Tiger Woods?
First, it would take hundreds of years, or rather thousands. Go back to your highschool textbook which hopefully explains Mendel's discoveries, and then consider human generation times... oh, and remember that mutations would still happen, even though Mendel completely ignored them.
Second, you are impressively short-sighted. The best protection against extinction is genetic diversity. It's not a bug -- it's a feature.
And third, how would you measure "beautiful" or even "smart"?
The IQ test, remember, measures nothing but the ability to solve the IQ test; and that's something you can train. IQ is just handwaving based on a just-so story.
And once again:
Write, and then perform, some serious traditional poetry in Hausa, and we'll see what your intelligence is like. Keep in mind that 15 million people have this as their second (or fifth…) language, among them some Tuareg, whom you'd probably count as white.
@#72
Bad laws and bad people? Look every other minority of equal or greater ability than whites was initially discriminated against, but ended up thriving in America. Examples include East Asians, Italians and Jews who have always been discriminated against but now enjoy the highest socio-economic status of any group in America.
Poor people are poor because of their personal traits which caused their poverty. Low IQ people must take low IQ jobs, they manage thier money poorly and end up remaining poor. High IQ people get high IQ jobs, manage their money well and end up improving their socio-economic status.
If you had read the Bell Curve, all of this was covered.
Richard Lynn has shown that this same phenomenon affects society in aggregate too. Where high IQ populations tend to be the wealthiest, and low IQ society tend to be the poorest.
I see that by calling me a "dimwit" you have no problem judging one person's IQ higher and another's lower. Knowing the IQ is at least a partially heritary trait, what in the world is wrong with striving to insure that the best and the brightest have an evolutionary advantage of the supid and the sloven?
The problem is not ineptitude.
The problem is attitude.
The problem is anti-intellectualism.
Re-take Kindergarten?
How the fuck do you get kids to fail fingerpainting?
"If you really wanted to improve human abilities then what we really need is a good eugenics program. No one who believes in human evolution should disagree with this."
He has to be a wingnut Poester.
#82
Calling you a dimwit has nothing to do with IQ, because IQ doesn't measure intelligence. As has been said before, it only measures how well you reason in the way the test makers feel is important.
You're clearly intellectually dishonest, trying to twist someones words to mean something they, in context, clearly don't.
@82
I called you a dimwit because you attempted to put words in my mouth that made my comment appear racist. I would have chosen a stronger insult but that one seemed appropriate.
One question: Is spelling ability indicative of IQ?
It also figures in A Boy and His Dog (which makes it painfully clear that being a "donor" may not be all that much fun, depending on the method of obtaining donations...).
Surely hahajohnnyb is a Poe, right? No one serious could think such idiotic things (unless he's black or Mestizo...).
Even as a non-scientist, I can see the flaws in hahajohnnyb's arguments. He appears to be misusing statistical methods to draw misleading conclusions. As far as eugenics is concerned: whilst we might, with impunity, breed chickens or tomatoes for certain characteristics and throw the resulting failures on the bonfire, it would be incautious to say the least, to try the same thing with humans. If we bred chickens or tomatoes for their intelligence they would doubtless rapidly become inedible. Who knows what would become of humans? As far as I know, evolution does not have a purpose; if humans tried to guide the process, it would not be evolution.
I don't know about y'all, but I wouldn't trust any eugenics program that would allow me to breed. I did well in school, but my attention span still isn't worth the shiny things that distract me from work. I'm also red-haired and left-handed, which obviously mark me as part of some Satan-bred alien race which must be kept away from proper humanity. I mean, I'm a grown woman who refuses to wear high heels. There must be some genetic defects in there! Protect the purity of the white human race, and keep "people" like me out of the gene pool!
#81
Diversity is no benefit to evolution? Species evolve in isolation. For example during the Ice Age a certain sub-species of brown bear was isolated and became a polar bear through evolution.
Today we have hundreds of breeds of dogs that were created by isolating breeding stock and inbreeding the line to create a specific type of animal.
Same thing with race horses. All throughbred horses are descented from 4 horses imported into Europe back in the 1700s from Arabia. Today their are thousands of throughbred horses and they are in no danger of extinction.
From an evolutionary standpoint diversity in the gene pool serves little purpose if the intent is to improve the gene pool. Plant and animal breeders have known this for thousands of years, and my isolating their stock they have provided us with thousands of different varieties of plants and animals.
@hahajohnnyb,
Your opinions do not necessitate fact in these circumstances. The situation in Africa cannot be simplified as you wish to do. Africa is an extremely heterogenous continent, with population groups that compete with each other over resources just as other groups. The fact that mestizos and blacks score lower on IQ exams speaks more of IQ exams than their own intelligence. In terms of real life examples of problem solving ability, almost all humans come out equally. The difference is often socio-economic status, coupled with cultural variation on the role of education and educators. Some groups push educational emphasis beyond those of others. The fact that Asians and Jews can do so well in terms of academic education has more to do with their socio-economic status and their parents' instilling educational values than genetic make-up. In fact there is nothing in you that dictates race, and ultimately, we're all Africans. If you look at the mutations that we're undergoing in brain proteins and key enzymes, especially the ones present in the last 10,000 years, it's common among ALL human beings.
You site studies that have been shown to have extensive methodological errors. The one about Ashkenazi Jews has been conclusively shown for the piece of trash that it is. Just because Watson supports certain racist notions does not mean that his authority figure extends to the role that people's race plays in intelligence. Just look at Francis Collins and his support for an invisible man in the heavens dictating his life. Yes, he's well educated, and is a scientist, but that does not make his idiotic beliefs correct. This appeal to authority falls flat for the transparent crap that you seem to believe.
Ultimately, we disagree with you because your notions are not well supported by all the evidence available. It is possible that race might have something to do with intelligence, but it has never proven conclusive, and in fact, the more proper research that is done, the more we realize that race is a useless indicator of certain traits that perhaps some of us wish for others to have.
#91
This comment right here shows how little you understand of evolution. A species' evolution does NOT happen mainly in isolation of a species. Speciazation, ie: the evolution of new species happens in isolation.
Denying that variety is important to healthy evolution also shows what a wingnut you are.
Random thoughts (speaking as someone who graduated from Friendswood HS, Class of 1977):
There's truth on both sides of the athletics question: Yes, athletes (similar to students pursuing any extracurricular activity) have to balance the demands of the classroom with their sport, and athletics is subject (to an even greater degree than other extracurriculars) to academic eligibility requirements. OTOH, the degree to which high school sports (and football in particular) is a virtual religion in Texas encourages both coaches and players to cheat on the eligibility requirements, and gives the players a lordly sense of their own importance.
That said, students who participate in extracurriculars — including sports — graduate and attend college at higher rates than those who do not (or at least, that was so the last time I heard any stats).
BTW, even though we had a Bio teacher who refused to teach evolution, I can't recall any larger conflicts between religion and the curriculum. That may have been because my town was largely populated by NASA personnel who had come from Somewhere Else™... or it may be that the Bible Belt was a little less radicalized in the 70s than it is now.
Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention; you never know.
Hey! I had to take re-take kindergarten!
However, the reason was because I entered in on the young side of birthday cut date, and my teacher noted that it would be cruel to send me on to first grade as-is. Plus the fact that I had previously been in a Norwegian-language pre-school and kindergarten was all in English.
That extra year allowed me to stabilize my language skills (I was upgraded from "slightly retarded" to "gifted") and I later on advanced as an A (sprinkled with Bs) student for the rest of grade school and most of high school (then senioritus took a hold of me, bleh :-P).
It's just that by definition, you are one. Do you think pro-evolution means anti-dictionary?
So I take it that you are unaware of the health problems in inbred thoroughbreds and dogs? And the sensitivity of many monomorphic plant varieties to disease?
hahajohnnyb, you have twice cited that completely discredited work, The Bell Curve.
It's been many years since I read that turgid volume, but you should be aware of the statistical errors in their analysis.
For your information, Stephen J. Gould reviewed the work, and found that he had written the rebuttal many years before in his work, The Miss-Measure of Man. Gould updated that classic work, and I'd strongly suggest reading a copy of it. He clearly points out the errors of The Bell Curve in his updated version.
Before you rely too much on intelligence tests, remember that there are some assumptions made by many of them. (Including the ones used by the authors of The Bell Curve.)
First assumption; intelligence is static. That is, someone scoring well on a test today will not score the same on the same test tomorrow. This assumption is unproven.
Second assumption; intelligence cannot improve. That is, the person scoring an 85 on a test during high school cannot score 120 on the same test after attending college. This assumption is unproven.
Third point, intelligence tests are cultural artifacts. An African man will score poorly on a Western intelligence test, but not because he lacks intelligence. This is not an assumption, but show by the literature on intelligence tests.
Fourth assumption, intelligence is strongly hereditary. Clearly some portion of intelligence appears linked to heredity. How much? No one knows for certain. I've seen predictions of between 0% to 85%. However, if even 85% of intelligence is inherited, that still swamps out the differences suggested by the mis-leading statistics in your favored tome, The Bell Curve.
So pull you head out of your ass and learn to think critically. Just because a book has a lot of pretty charts and tables doesn't mean its true. Take a look at the underlying assumptions of any argument before accepting it.
Of course, hahajohnnyb could just be a Poe. If so, I still had an enjoyable 15 minutes writing this.
I believe that by using the evolutionary theory, my posits and the posits of other well known scientists including James Watson and Kevin MacDonald are sound. I believe that there is evidence to support these conclusions including but not limited to the Minnesota twin studies. The only way to full test this theory would be start a long term eugenics program, which would have to span the course of several generations to prove whether or not eugenics could be an effective tool to better the human population.
I might also mention that Charles Darwin came from an exceptional family, married his first cousin and had exceptional children, these children went on to have exceptional children.
Yes, I understand that intelligence is a polygenetic trait and there is no single gene that controls intelligence, but this does not mean that the entire system of genes gets scrambled entirely for every kid.
I would never claim that there is nothing to environment, environment is probably half of the picture, we all stand on the shoulders of giants after all, and our ability to do what we have done owes a great debt of gratitude to those who have come before.
Posted by: hahajohnnyb | January 13, 2009
If you had read the Bell Curve, all of this was covered.
Was not this book discredited fifteen years ago?
hahajohnnyb, you wouldn't happen to be a Mensa member, would you?
hahajohnnyb: racist dolt with delusions of adequacy.
How did that dentist do so much in a year and a half? He must have entered office running.
"Poor people are poor because of their personal traits which caused their poverty. Low IQ people must take low IQ jobs, they manage thier money poorly and end up remaining poor. High IQ people get high IQ jobs, manage their money well and end up improving their socio-economic status."
Yet another douchebag who apparently thinks 1) nothing but money is a valid motivator, and 2) that high intelligence must involve being able to manage money well.
I'm sure Paul Erdos, for one, would have found your theory fascinating.
Oh, and it's spelled "their."
From my (European) perspective, the accreditation by SACS/COC cannot mean a damn thing if it has allowed a YEC nuthouse to call itself a university for over 20 years — how awful for those who go to the real universities in the South.
@hahajohnnyb
You could vastly improve your knowledge of evolution if you spent 90 min. watching Idiocracy. You might actually be more accurate, and you would undoubtedly be much more funny.
Blondin,
What is the purpose of posting one's IQ on line? I could say that I graduated from MIT and currently work for Monsantos genetic engineering program (which would be bullshit) or what I really am it matters not, because this is internet. You are free to think whatever you want, and judge my posts however you want.
For what it is worth, I would not choose myself to be part of my eugenic 400. Only the most exceptional men would be chosen for something like a Eugenic breeding program.
Mensa is no big deal anyhow, Mensa only requires a person to be in the top 2%, so one in every 50 people you meet is a potential member of Mensa.
IQ is only one benefit of many from a eugenics program, another would be good health, athletic ability and good looks. Who amongst us would not want the future to be as healthy, fit and physically attractive as possible?
Further, by promoting a broad spectrum eugenics program more people would share the same genes which could be a huge benefit for society and might be the only solution to get out of this multicultural mess that we have made in America and Europe.
The statement about Mensa was a joke.
If IQ is genetic and stable, why did average IQ scores increase about 3 points per decade in the twentieth century? (This is known as the Flynn Effect.) Further, even taking the Flynn Effect into account, blacks have gained 5-6 points on non-Hispanic whites since the '70s, thus reducing the observed gap in scores.
I strongly suspect that the comments from hahajohnnyb are a joke, if not in the best taste. They seem designed to wind people up and invite a vicious backlash. At least I hope that is the case as it would be a shame if such questionable assertions were sincere. I was under the impression that human beings have been getting taller, living longer, and looking better for quite some time based on better nutrition and medical science. I don't know if this is confined to the western world or if it is a global change. Does anyone have any studies to support my impression?
The idea of Eugenics has always left a bad taste in my mind - who decides what is "perfect" anyway? I love variety but I sometimes wonder if the world would be better off if we all ended up coffee-coloured (double-double, I suppose). Of course, there would still be religion to fight about...
I hope that parents in Texas and elsewhere and the students as well will take more responsibility for their own education. Exposure to new ideas, new books, and other ways of looking at the world should help reduce the narrow thinking displayed in hahajohnnyb's posts - whether those posts are serious or not.
The extent to which intelligence is inheritable depends on the environment. Intelligence is an important human trait and it should come as no suprise that it is robust in its development. Since the twin studies controlled for the genes, what they really showed was that intelligence development was pretty robust to the variability in the middle class adoptive environment. Those amazing anecdotes about the similarity of twins brought together in adulthood, might have been quite different if one raised in a western middle class household, were contrasted with one raised by the taliban. It would perhaps be even more revealing if they were female.
@#104
Thank you typo police!
Money has everything to do with socio-economic status. Your socio-economic status is directly determined by how well off you are.
So yeah, a negro who invests their money in new rims and a booming system is going to be less wealthy in the future than a guy with the exact same income who buys a bond with his extra money.
This does not mean that Mr. Responsible is going to be as genetically successful, because Mr. Rimms and Stereo might be able to get laid easier because of his investment, but his children will have a lower socio-economic status.
Rynaldo, we are dealing with a person who cannot tell the difference between animal husbandry and natural selection.
Mu @62: That's mostly correct, but there's one thing you have to note... A lot of the parents of first-generation Asians pretty much tell their kids that if they don't get into UC Berkeley or UCLA, they haven't really gone to school. It's basically all-or-nothing.
I've had a lot of experience with such families because of my own mixed-"race" family. It's truly an astonishing attitude, and it only robs them.
UCB/UCLA: Well, that's what we expected of you.
UCD/UCSC/UCSD: I'm gonna disown you.
I'm really not exaggerating much. I wish I was.
Yeah, they had to introduce quotas to UCB, but only because of the attitude of applicants.
I saw athletes get pass after pass after pass when I was in high school. This was cross-country, but my coach convinced my geometry teacher to allow me to retake many tests. I'm ashamed of it now, but if you don't think high school football players today get similar considerations, guess again.
(For the record, I work out pretty much every day. I'm still a "jock", but I wised up, and got a UCSC degree. You can be a student-athlete, if you're willing to put "student" first, and for those who do, most end up being average athletes.)
And, JohnnyB, blech. Bell Curve is long-discredited. You can look it up.
hahajohnyb is clearly just yanking chains, not worth responding. References to Watson, The Bell Curve and eugenics are clear giveaways. What's next, Vox Day quotes?
The racist troll has crossed the line to fucking offensive.
So yeah, a negro who invests their money in new rims and a booming system is going to be less wealthy in the future than a guy with the exact same income who buys a bond with his extra money.
This statement would be perfectly valid by replacing "negro" with "person". You chose to put in "negro". Think about why you did that. Then tell us again that you are not a racist. Or a deluded moron, for that matter.
Yeah, we suck.
I had to explain the idea of falsifiability to my science teacher in an honors class.
"And third, how would you measure "beautiful" or even "smart"?"
And why the fuck was height in Johnny's list of criteria? Is he an investor in an ankle brace company?
Ditto on #6. The graduation rates in California for black males is 50%, and for Latinos, 54%. (http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2005/03/30/29grad-b1.h24.html)
Here is Cali we would _love_ to have only 1/3rd drop out. :( Not that there are any jobs left for graduates anyway...
So Johnny. There are approximately 400 breed-worthy men? Four hundred, out of roughly one hundred million candidates?
How many breed-worthy women? Oh - YOU DIDN'T SAY. That doesn't matter. Just the uber-men, breeding with the willing incubators. Got it.
You're rolling up quite an impressive collection of quotes here, Johnny Boy.
No one?
LMAO. You are assuming that you have a fucking clue about what the commenter meant. Fail.
Wow.
LOL... are you aware that there's more to good vision that acuity alone?
Ah! Johnny's a Republican!
Good health? Narrowing a gene pool to breed for specific traits rarely results in more robust offspring.
Listen to your blog neighbors, Johnny. The Bell Curve has been widely discredited. Think about what that means, and what it means if you ignore this fact and continue to rely on that particular book as an authority to back your beliefs.
MikeM,
Do I seem like the sort of person who has not done my homework?
The Bell Curve has not been discredited, neither has IQ and the Wealth of Nations.
One thing that you people need to understand is that the Franz Boaz School of Social Anthropology was bunk from the beginning, it was nothing more than propaganda generated in unison with the Frankfurt School invention of Political Correctness. If you do your homework you will learn that all of these people were associated with Marxism and heavily influenced by it. They were also all Jews, with the exception of Marget Mead.
The Jews have a distinct cultural pattern of behavior, which is fully covered in "A Culture of Critique" and seems to be a trait in the Jewish population who are working on an entirely different level than us dumb goyim. Basically, Social Anthropology is a hoax that was designed to further Jewish group interests as well as cultural marxism.
The joker's quip about Franz Boaz was his tip.
I did a search of hahajohnnyb and Vdare and got this
Hahajohnnyb is registered to Stormfront. The piece of shit is an out and out white racist.
"...dumb goyim ...designed to further Jewish group interests as well as cultural marxism."
He's a racially insecure paranoid commie-fearing anti-semite as well... this is one fucked up and very probably dangerous wingnut. David Duke... is that you?
I'm a Jew! Using my exalted intelligence, I have solved the conundrum of this thread! Hahajohnnyb is not a racist fuck, after all! He's a racist asswipe!
"Do I seem like the sort of person who has not done my homework?"
As many other posters have already pointed out, yes, you do.
Well, no. let me rephrase. You've clearly done a lot of research at World News Daily.
Yes, 400 breed worthy men for the United States at any given time. Age would be part of the key here, because I would only want men under 35 or so.
There would still be amble genetic diversity, as I would place few if any limits on women willing to take part of the program. The mentally retarded, insane and physically debilitated as a result of poor genes, maybe.
Assume a man can make 260 babies a year through artificial fertilization, then over 10 years his contribution would only be 2,600 births. 400 of these men would result in little more than 1 million births total, a fraction of the aggregate births. The hope would be that these children would mix with the general population, and someday be sperm donors themselves.
Of course segregating your breeding stock is going to improve the genetics of the herd. This is basic farm knowledge, and really eugenics is no more complicated than what farmers have been doing for thousands of years. The efforts of farmers and knowledgible biologists have resulted in better species of every kind of domestic plant and animal.
Coming from a limited gene pool certainly did not hurt the Darwin family.
Basically, Social Anthropology is a hoax that was designed to further Jewish group interests as well as cultural marxism.
And for that, you get this pretty white pointy hat.
Now I see where the eugenics fixation comes from. Only serious inbreeding can produce this kind of knuckle-dragger.
well no shit. someone who hates school(or considers it a waste of time, or can't keep up) enough to eventually drop out isn't gonna be particularly interested in spending any more time there than absolutely necessary. that's not a cause-and-effect, it's far more likely two effects of the same problems
*disclaimer: German High-School dropout here
"Only serious inbreeding can produce this kind of knuckle-dragger."
ha! At least this psycho bigot can be assured he has a pure blood line. Pure crap, but hey, got work with what gawd gave ya!
Rynaldo,
There are many studies demonstrating longer life and increased height. Life insurance companies have reams of data about life expectancy in this country and so do government agencies. One study is particularly noteworthy, because it had a huge data base to pull from - both times. During WWI and WWII, height was one of the measurements taken of new recruits. When the numbers were crunched, it showed beyond a shadow of a a doubt, that the height of American men increased a full inch from one war to the next.
This is a stunning increase over such a short period of time - one generation.
@Janine #123
Nice find, has Pharyngula had one of those before? So much for the people who called Poe.
I think hahajonnnyb is an ignoranus: he is both ignorant AND an asshole.
Sigh... hahajohnnyb is making a classic mistake with his advocacy of a eugenics program. Evolution does not only act at the level of the individual, but at the level of the social group. Given two groups of individuals, where one has a more efficient social cooperation network than the other, and the groups are otherwise equal, the group which cooperates better will prosper more. Improved individuals does not necessarily improve the overall society.
Additionally, the methods suggested include major risks resulting from development of genetic monoculture with the inherent ecological hazard thereto.
The detrimental side effects at the social level which appear likely to result from attempting a eugenics program would appear to outweigh the benefit resulting from an effort at the present time.
Or, in short... "What an amazingly FOOLISH idea! You don't understand evolution very well, do you?"
hahajohnny: You are right that in the US, blacks and Hispanics have lower IQs than whites and Asian Americans. IQ being, or course, the score on IQ tests. In 1974 I (purebred Teuton-Celt-Pict-Saxon-Angle-Jute-Norman-Viking-Moor-Mongol)took a black IQ test in the US Army, and in a company of 200 men, the blacks scored about 100 on the average. I was the only white to pass, with a score of 70 ("Run, Forest! Run!") In WWII northern blacks scored higher than southern whites. Must breed 'em smarter up there, eh?
Curiously, we all seem to be getting smarter. At least, our collective IQ scores are rising. (See "Flynn Effect"). Are we evolving more intelligence? Not freakin' likely - not at 10% every generation.
It's pretty clear that cultural and economic factors swamp the effects there might be of any average genetic differences in race. Unless you know of any double-blind studies of ethnic IQ testing...
Girls score lower on math tests, right? There were all sorts of evolutionary psychology explanations for it, which made sense. Except that it's no longer true; in the US girls at all levels now score the same as boys on the average in math. So what happened - did girls evolve more than us boys, or did the cultural milieu change? The signal to noise ratio of genes to environment is too low.
BTW, your claim that different groups of humans evolved at different times is profoundly stupid. Even if it turned out that one group of humans were slightly smarter than another on the average (some are certainly taller on the average or darker), we have *all been evolving for the same length of time. Sheesh.
Yes, but to what may we attribute this remarkable growth spurt? To genetics, or to improved developmental conditions?
Inbred? Hardly, I do not have 2 ancestors who came from the same state for the last 3 generations, much less the same family. Like all Americans, I am excessively out bred, and as a 16th generation American even more so, because my ancestors came from all over Northern and Western Europe. I'm part every European Nation.
That's part of the problem with America, is that we are too excessively out bred and excessive outbreeding is little better than excessive inbreeding. Once again this comes down to a true understanding of the theory of evolution in its application to psychology and sociology. Humans are tribal animals and we are genetically predisposed to favor our own kin. The more genetically homogeneous the tribe the greater sense of common identity that tribe has, and the more they spend on social welfare for its people. Take for example the United States versus Sweden. The Swedes have a much higher level of social spending because they are a more homogeneous society where the USA is more of a dog eat dog winner take all society. Social harmony results from more homogeneity while discord is generated by diversity. Diversity sucks.
In interpersonal relationship, people prefer the company of other who are most like themselves. People tend to choose friends and relationships with people who are usually close to them socially and genetically. This is a fact that can be witnessed everywhere. No need to address this as a social problem, best to just acknowledge it as human nature.
I really do not know what a racist is. Someone who thinks that one race is superior to another? So if I think that blacks can run better than other races, or think that Asians are the best at accepting discipline, or that Jews have the highest verbal intelligence. That makes me a racist? So be it. I am a racial realist, and there is no reason why any person who understands evolution would accept the premise that all people evolved exactly the same mentally, when they obviously did not evolve the same physically.
I believe that if a white man, or Asian, or Jew, were made to live as an African in an African tribal village, he would be far inferior in nearly every regard at adapting to tribal African life. By the same merit, I believe that it is not rational to expect Africans or Indians (Mestizos) to function in a society that was created by men who evolved in civilization for thousands of years. So what? Acknowledging the obvious and demonstrable fact makes a person a racist? Scientific thinkers accept facts the way they are and call it data, they do not make up Marxist lies to explain it all away.
Seriously, what is with this nut job? I was tested in like 8th grade for IQ, as part of trying to figure out why I was doing poorly in some classes (which where boring the hell out of me), and got over 120. My parents "still" refuse to tell me what the actual number was, which is damn silly, given that I think IQ tests are pure bullshit. But, I also spent nearly every waking moment when not in school, or playing with the few friends I had, reading damn near anything I could get my hands on. I am now $20,000 (college loans, the education I got from which I felt was a near total waste of my time, and not just because of the fact that a year later the entire curriculum changed and in 4-5 years after, almost no one was using a damn thing I learned, and thus haven't used) in debt, don't have a car, since I never learned to drive, and work at Safeway bagging groceries for little over minimum wages. So, am I an idiot, or a genius by this dipshit's estimation?
The only thing I think I can be sure of is that I am smarter than he is at this point, in that I don't fall for total bullshit, or ignore evidence that contradicts my favorite books. He sounds exactly like some twit insisting that gay people are evil because all the people in some "other" basically self contradictory, statistically invalid, evidence ignorant, book tell them so too.
The asshole is babbling. He is to be found at Stormfront.
White Nationalist Community
White Pride World Wide
Time to ignore the worthless pile of toxic sludge.
In others, fuck off you fucking nazi!
@hahajohnnyb
you're a singularity of Fail. not a single statement you've made abotu genetics (among other things) was correct
1)the greatest variation withing the human genome is found in Africa, to the point where in comparison, non-Africans are virtually inbred; thus, if intelligence was primarily genetic, and stable within populations (i.e. "races"), then we'd see great variation of intelligence between the distinct African groups, but all non-Africans would have virtually identical IQ's. unless you're hypothesizing that intelligence is decided by the same genes as melanin expression, which would be a whole new level of genetics-fail
2)genetic diversity is essential for robustness of a population. all highly specialized species are more likely to go extinct when the environment changes (like that polar bear you've mentioned, for example), and they're also less likely to be healthy (as evidenced by the massive problems with purebred races of ANY animal, which survive only because of intense human protection and intervention)
3)genetic determinism doesn't even work for chickens, nevermind animals with more and higher brain functions. look up some neurology about how environment and behavior change brain patterns/function etc.; that is far more important in matters of "intelligence" of healthy people than the genome
Agreed... good job Janine. I think I previously mentioned we out outed David Duke at HuffPo a couple of years ago and the thread was swarmed by bigots.
Here is a Stormfront quote from hahajohnnyb:
"Once we started letting non-whites into this country in addition to the blacks that have been our burden for centuries, we started to go into decline as a nation. This shift in policy was not our choice, and it was not the popular will of the American people at the time. This was a policy of the United States Government at the behest of Jews."
PZ, I spent enough time in Universities (8 years) and had enough liberal arts professors (godless liberals like yourself) to know who it is that pushes the poison. It's not the creationists, that's for certain.
Actually many of the smartest (defined as quickest to learn, grasp abstract ideas and problem solve) do poorly at sports. Many are overweight or even obese which shoots your theory down. Granted, if they were in better physical shape they may perform better mentally, but there isn't enough data to bear this out that I'm aware of. What you are proposing is pure conjecture.
So, Nathan, you crammed a four year degree program into a mere eight years?
Very impressive. I'll bet you could be great friends with our troll "handjob", er I mean "hahajohnnyb".
Nathan... meet hahajohnnyb. Seems like you he will understand each other.
You can't help but pity people like hahajohnnyb. For they actively prevent for themselves a good life, and think nothing of it. Those StormFront links posted above echo a line of argument I heard recently by some similarly pitiable mess pushing his new racist book. He was being interviewed on The Young Turks, and was handed his ass quite thoroughly. I love how white supremacists have now resorted to the attention-directing tactic of "showing" Asians to be the smartest of all races. "What?! I can't be racist! I think Asians are better than me!"
Until one knows that every person is equal, and conducts his or her life as if they realize this in all things, they do not truly participate in their own humanity.
Alyson, I think I love you!
What the fuck, I out a real nazi and then some fuckwit accuses PZ of being a mass murderer. Nathan, be honest with yourself and check my link at #123.
Prove it.
HAHAHA. Johnnyb. Are you really that stupid??? So funny.
Watchman #136
I don't think genetics had anything to do with it. More likely nutritionn
@ 139
What's the problem can this forum not handle real debate? Sure I could go to Stormfront, but there I am just preaching to the choir. No debate there. Besides most of those people do not agree with me about Eugenics anyhow.
#140
I do not think that a great deal of variation is a good thing. My Eugenics program is designed with the intent to limit genetic diversity over time. This is a good thing, because diversity sucks. Africa sucks too which is why negro africans have never advanced beyond tribalism, too much genetic diversity leads to constant tribal warfare, which is what is always going in Africa.
2) within limits you are correct, but the eugenics program I have described would allow for plenty of diversity because it would not interfer with natural reproduction which will always out number eugenic births. It would take dozens of generations for everyone to become inter-related which is the ultimate goal, and that is a good thing.
3) Jungle fowl are the wild ancestors of Chickens, they lay about a dozen eggs a year, A Domestic chicken will lay an egg every day, sometimes more. There are many varieties of chickens, and as a kid I used to own some. I had all sorts of different breeds of chicken, Rhode Island reds, Bantums, Polish Crested, Belgium hens. All sorts. Let them all breed for a few generations and over time thier egg output dropped to a 3-4 a week. That was my first lesson in genetics.
Okay, Johnnyb is too fucking stupid to know he's stupid.
Two concepts for ya, Johnny boy: a)culture. b)cognition
If you actually believe there is a mean difference in healthy individuals of any given race and their intellectual potentials then you are a NeoNazi prick. Whites are not the evolutionary top of the human animal. We simply stopped producing the same amounts of melanin due to our geographic habitat once we migrated to what is now Northern Europe. All human ancestors were from the Afarensis Triangle and were all dark skinned because they were close to the fucking EQUATOR. You don't tan when your tribe moves to a geographic region where it's night time six months out of the year. Light skin does not = superiority, it = lack of melanin. I'm of Irish and Welsh ancestry. Blued eyed, dark haired (well, more salt than pepper now) and as light skinned as one can be without being an albino so there's no hidden "race" agenda from me. You need to read Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. UUUUGHHHH!
You are a fucking waste of humanity, you white supremacist asshole.
Alyson: "I'm a grown woman who refuses to wear high heels."
/points and makes hissing sound, a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(I love shoes.)
Lee: Yes, I agree, and that's what my question was meant to imply. Individuals may be predisposed to be tall if tallness has been expressed in their family tree, but they ain't gonna get there if they're not well-fed. I suspect that better health care and nutrition were behind the growth spurt. Ironically, however, the WWII generation grew up during the Great Depression. Go figure. Maybe someone more learned than myself can shed some more light on this subject. JohnnyB?
@143 "Actually many of the smartest (defined as quickest to learn, grasp abstract ideas and problem solve) do poorly at sports."
You seem to be countering my conjecture with conjecture plus anecdotes. Well done.
Here's a better analysis:
http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2006/08/childhood-poverty-and-neurocogn…
Specifically, a key quote from Farah et al. (2006) about neurocognitive development:
"Important psychosocial factors include the presence of both parents in the home and parental stress and depression. Physical factors include nutrition and exposure to pollutants."
Based on your phrasing, you seem to be espousing the "computer geeks who eat poorly and don't exercise but are smart" line of thinking. That's terribly cliche, but if you have some data, please give it a try.
"...Besides most of those people do not agree with me about Eugenics anyhow."
Gotta hand it to you johnny. You figured out a way to stoop lower than StormFront devotees. No mean feat, that.
As for your assessment of Africa: EPIC FAIL.
genetics fail
husbandry fail
history fail
causational fail
genetic drift fail
category fail, husbandry fail, natural selection fail, genetic drift fail
oops, replace the first "genetic drift fail" with "signal-to-noise fail" :-p
Uhg. Now I'm wondering if Ildi has hot legs.
I'm a bad bad man.
Dear Everyone,
Why have you allowed hahajohnnyb to completely derail and usurp this post/thread? I mean really? I guess its like poking that sore spot on your arm, but still.
Sincerely,
Lorax
Holy crap, can we ban the racist asshole please?
It's gotten sad already.
Aaron, cliche? Are you an undergrad?
Your overgeneralized "logic" is easily refuted, even anecdotally. Look at Mensa members cross reference their athletic ability and fitness and you will get enough non-physically fit people with high cognitive abilities who blow your criteria out of the water. Don't bother replying, I won't bother reading.
Lorax, give us some time. I am done commenting on the person. Jadehawk did a wonderful job refuting his eugenics bullshit. That should be all that is needed.
But this will end very shortly. Just let it work itself out.
"I suspect that better health care and nutrition were behind the growth spurt."
Which sort of makes me wonder why height is being selected in the eugenics program as some marker of genetic fitness. What, objectively, is good about height?
@ Janine #123, thanks for the research.
And here I was considering that he might be a someone from the previous thread trying a Poe to see how civil our responses would be to him. After all the opinions of hahajohnnyb are seriously lacking in rationality.
Boy, was I mistaken. Turns out he's just another idiot.
However, for all the complaints about rude behavior at Pharyngula, I think this does show that we generally wait until someone has demonstrated a complete inability to learn before the generally assessment of a commenter becomes that they are an ignorant fuckwad. (Or is that term reserved for creationists and I really should be using the term racist asshat? It's hard to keep the terminology straight sometimes.)
Jadehawk@140,
the effective populations inside africa is about 10000 versus 3000 outside. That is not that large a contrast to call one inbred and not the other. Humans are remarkably homozygous at most locations. Even with 3000 there is plenty of room for novel combinations of genes that have never existed before.
Let's not confuse lack of diversity with specialization. They create a risk of extinction for quite different reasons, for example the former my be more vulnerable to disease but still a generalist in habitat and food sources, while the latter may have a large effective population size but more vulnerable to loss of habitat.
I suspect the polar bear will return to ominivoury if AGW returns vegatation and brown bears to its habitat. It raids garbage dumps just like its cousins. It probaby will lost its genetic isolation through interbreeding with the brown bear however.
it's not just about the number of distinct populations, but also about the genetic difference between them; on average, the diversity among the African populations is greater, in some instances 50% greater than that among non-African populations.
in husbandry (and by extension in eugenics), lack of diversity and specialization are highly linked because of tendencies to develop monocultures; and further, specialization is steered by genetics, and shifts in specialized traits can only occur if there is great diversity. thus, a breeding program that aims for specialization will result either in great genetic diversity but loss of desired characteristics due to the signal-to-noise problem I've mentioned, or will suffer form lack of genetic diversity and will be vulnerable to change.
@hahajohnnyb
I really do hope you're a Poe.
Twin-Skies, he is the real deal. Check the link at #123.
Jay Gould is a Jew and a student of the Franz Boaz school of Anthropology. As a mentioned before, Boazian Anthropology is a fraud, and entirely without scientific merit. Jews are ethnocentric racial supremacists who organize themselves to promote their group interests, AIPAC anyone?
More diversity does not lead to more evolution. Diversity exists as a result of species evolving in Isolation from each other. If you people actually understood Darwin and evolution would would understand this.
The reason that a great deal of diversity exists in Africa because its populated with thousands of tribe all of whom practice cousin marriage so the genetics of each tribe stays within the tribe.
Europe was not that different 1000s of years ago before the concept of Nationalism. It was at this time European States came and forced the people out of their village and thier clans and encouraged them to marry outside their tribes. As everyone mixed together, diversity decreased, but people began to identify themselves as members of the Nation State, instead of a member of the tribal clan.
For most of human history and about 80% of the marriages today are between close cousins. It is by keeping the gene pool limited that evolution occurs, because if the gene pool is too large minute mutations that cause such traits as genius to emerge get lost. This is precisely how evolution happens. If a unique variety occurs, the genetic mutations that make it unique will die out unless it breeds into other members of its tribe who are genetically similar.
Chimps also live in tribal groups, and they to practice breeding within the tribal group. This system of shared genetics allow them to identify their fellow clan member and distinguish them for chimps outside the clan.
The reason that Bonobo chimps are because they are isolate from other chimp populations. Should they be mixed the 2 different races of chimps can interbreed, but over several generations the unique bonobo qualities will be lost.
The premise that diversity is good for evolution is entirely false. The Jews are a small population globally, only about 6 million live in the US, which is the world's largest population. Genius is most likely to occur within the Jewish race, they Jews know this and they are proud of this fact. Thousands of years of inbreeding has had negative consequences for the Jews as well, as they are more prone to mental illness and some other genetic disease (Tay Sachs) as a result of a limited gene pool.
When dealing with human populations you have to consider the environmental and social conditions the people have been exposed for many multiples of generations remembering that most people do not outbreed like Americans do. Evolution is a continuum, in that it is always happening, either we take control of our evolutionary direction or we will revert back to tribalism, or we will all mix together and become like Brazil or Mexico, then we will have to resort to tribalism for evolution to occur again.
I do not understand why this site wants to promote evolution in education, but does not want people to apply the principles of evolution to improve the human condition. It this simply an anti-religion site? If you are simply anti-religion then why pretend to be about science? What good does knowledge of evolution do for people if you do not intend for people to use it to make society better?
You people pretend to see all these evils in religion, these evils you make believe to see are not the real evils. The real evils are tribalism and Zionism. Zionism being a specific Jewish form of tribalism. With multi-culturalism we invite tribalism back into our advanced civilization, and they will destroy it.
Please, I beg you all to go back and read Darwin's "Origin of Species" and make sure you really understand what you are promoting by promoting atheism through Darwinism. The impression that I get from you all is that you all haven't a clue about the fundamental principles behind evolution. This makes you all frauds and cowards because you are afraid to understand science that is deemed politically incorrect. If truth is your weapon, hone it by studying everything until you can discern the truth from a lie.
Pretenders!
@Janine, Bitter Friend
Okay, how did that fucker find its way here?
As for the Texas report, while it's disheartening to hear, I've comee to expect it given the amount of loathing that Bush's No Child Left Behind policy has been getting. Figures - Bush is a retard, and he's probably doing everything in his power to make sure all the kids of our generation think like he does.
@Janine #123
Nice find, has Pharyngula had one of those before? So much for the people who called Poe.
Got me! Yes, I called "Poe", but it just goes to prove Poe that sufficiently extreme wackoes are indistinguishable from parody.
Ok. Can we boot this guy for racist stupidty????
He's probably a fan of Icke too.
You're fucking pathetic hahaj. Go the fuck away.
@hahajohnnyb
There is big difference between eugenics and evolution. As far as I can remember, even Darwin was strongly opposed to any means of "forced evolution" of the human race (genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc.).
Folks, it really doesn't matter that Hahajohnnyb is wrong about, as far as I can tell, everything.
What matters is that he is evil. So while he is undoubtedly made of fail, it's more important that he is made of pure, slavering wickedness.
This piece of human garbage is as bad as it gets, because he is intelligent enough to persuade his more moronic fellow-travelers into action.
PZ, I beg you, ban this poster and refuse to let him use your blog as a platform for preaching evil. He is not worthy company for civilized people. Let him spew his hate on Stormfront, where no doubt the FBI is watching him closely.
For fuck sake... A stormfront fucktard troll. I'm sure he will be dropped in the dungeon soon. No worries johnny boy, you'll find little diversity in there.
@hahajohnnyb
if you had more than 2 braincells, you'd be capable of understanding three very basic points:
1)husbandry leads to much different results than natural evolution, especially in term of viability; what you're suggesting is human husbandry, not human evolution
2)knowing and understanding a basic scientific principle does not equal trying it out on humans. we don't throw people off tall buildings just because we believe in gravity, either. both are violations of human rights.
@#162
Nah, let's just keep bashing this troll.
hahajohnnyb, you may not realize it, but there are definitely societal effects on how educated someone is. It is usually not determined by genetics, or, at least, nothing has shown that genes determine intelligence.
my third point got eaten :-p
3)unless you can present scientifically show which traits are best suited for human survival, you're just airing ignorant prejudices; lack-of-melanin is not a survival trait.
A problem? Shoot, this is but one of many problems we've got in Texas. A Board of Education run by creationist kooks, a worthless GW Bush-loving governor, U.S. Senators that are just as bad, underfunded public education, groundwater permitting and rights issues...shall I go on?
Just in case you do not know, Stephen Jay Gould was a paleontologist and biologist. He was not an anthropologist. Ah but it is fun to watch Jadehawk fillet that toxic pile of sludge.
@Eclogite
You forgot to mention texas' gun fetish and obesity issues.
hahajohnnyb has met an appropriate fate.
I believe that if a white man, or Asian, or Jew, were made to live as an African in an African tribal village, he would be far inferior in nearly every regard at adapting to tribal African life.
You seem to be subscribing to the belief that prior to European colonialism, Africa only had primitive tribes. This is not accurate. Ever heard of Mali, Great Zimbabwe, Kush, Axum, or Egypt?
Ah dammit. He was supposed to explain why we're selecting for height.
Sam B Wrote: | January 13, 2009 1:40 PM
Living in the UK (and going to one of the best schools in the country...), I can't possibly imagine how these kind of stats are possible. It just seems unreal.
I write: Living in the UK (and going to not one of the best schools on the country...). I still can't believe it. I thank lady luck (and my parents) that i'm genetically entwined with this bit of the planet instead. Its quite comfy right now, although a bit cold. Seriously though, what on earth is going on. I read some of his website. What does it take to be certified as barmy. I think the hedgehogs built the universe (the ones on the outside obviously). Given a choice between hedgehogs and nothing then they must have. Utter nonsense. I'm very happy us geologists are starting to wade in also. Its about time the clink clink clink of our hammers were heard again.
Looks like hahajohnnyb bred himself right into the killfile.
That's what happens to racial bigots who fucks themselves stupid in public.
Oh, thank PZ!
Back on subject, I wonder how far Oklahoma (my home state) is behind Texas in attempting to adopt some stupid creotard bullshit?
Pardon me for asking, but what kind of electoral system enables people like McLeroy to get voted into power in the first place?
ok then, back on subject: I think it's the culture of "anti-elitism", i.e. anti-intellectualism, that's the source of the problem for the drop-outs, the creationism, and the low regard for schooling in general; i also think that creates an endless loop of poor education, followed by bad economic status, which leads to more anti-intellectualism or to the kind of life-disrupting events that lead even intellectually curious people to drop out. I'm not sure what can be done here... how do you break such a vicious cycle?
cronyism and popularity contests. you know, standard local democracy :-p
@#191 Jadehawk
Here is a simple solution to U.S. anti-intellectualism!
Improve U.S. culture!
Or... get rid of it! Whatever you choose.
You know that culture in the U.S. right now consists mostly of mass-media.
How about get rid of U.S. mass-media?
I find most of mass-media in the U.S. incredibly stupid nowadays. I don't know, is it politics, or is it commercialism (i. e. the kind where the creators go like "let's make as much money possible by ignoring the worth of what we create and just try to entertain people with junk), or something else?
great post!
A little something about height:
When the British Army was greatly expanded during the First World War, it was discovered that officers (who were almost exclusively drawn from the middle and upper classes) had a mean height some 4" greater than the enlisted population (who were mostly drawn from the working class). This turned out to be more due to the poorer nutrition available to working-class children than to anything heritable.
There was an opposite effect in the WWII Japanese Army. Their officers usually had been through a program beginning in childhood, which was very Spartan- cadets weren't fed very well. The result was described by, IIRC, William Manchester, who fought as a Marine in the Pacific. He wrote that you could usually spot the officer in a Japanese unit- he was the really short guy out in front waving a sword.
Regarding jocks- my experience back in high school (class of 1975) was that some of the jocks did indeed fit the stereotype- dumb, proudly ignorant and belligerent, while some thrived in the most difficult classes. I'd really hesitate to generalize about jocks as a class.
We didn't have AP classes in my day, although we did have some "accelerated" programs- I was in an accelerated math program in which they cracked the whip over us and drove us through the normal 7th and 8th grade math curriculum in 7th grade, which gave us a 1-year head start- and then drove us harder in our successive classes. Where the regular Algebra I or Geometry class might get 2/3 of the way through the textbook by the end of the year, we would be just a few pages from the bitter end. Instead of basing assignments on tests, they seemed to rely on teacher judgment. I was kicked two years ahead in English and two years ahead in Spanish based on the recommendation of my teachers in those subjects.
They did divide us into "college prep" and "industrial arts" programs. The real difference between them lay in what was being taught by example: if you were in the "college prep" program, what you were really being taught was to go to the office at 8 AM, spend the day covering pieces of paper with writing, take some of it home at the end of the day and then repeat the performance. If you were in the "industrial arts" program it was essentially the same, except for "office" read "plant" and delete most of the writing.
And, just in case you couldn't manage either lesson, our gym teachers made sure we knew how to march.
To hahajohnnyb, #35:
Please read The Mismeasure Of Man
As for segregation, it was tried, as you would know if you knew any history. Graduation rates for blacks went up when the schools were desegregated, and graduation rates for other races stayed the same.
@163 "Your overgeneralized "logic" is easily refuted, even anecdotally. Look at Mensa members cross reference their athletic ability and fitness and you will get enough non-physically fit people with high cognitive abilities who blow your criteria out of the water. Don't bother replying, I won't bother reading."
I'll reply anyway, since this discussion is useful. I made the point that health is necessary for cognitive development. If you visit 3rd world countries where malnutrition is rampant, you'll see evidence of this fact. If you visit families in America where children are underfed, ignored, and abused, you'll see evidence of that fact. Nowhere did I say that you had to be a star football player to be smart, but you seem to be making that assumption, for some bizarre reason.
I posted evidence, you did not. I presented an argument, you presented Mensa anecdotes. Mensa!? really? that was the best you could do? As far as calling me an undergrad, you were the one who responded "FAIL". That's very 12-year-old-on-MySpace of you. Please don't troll my posts if you won't bother to back up your nonsense.
personally I think a lot of the media is actually a reflection of the society, not necessarily what shapes it. or maybe it's simply another reinforcing loop. either way, nothing would change if all mainstream media disappeared tomorrow; I really don't know how to change an attitude pervading culture so deeply
[looks down at gut, then raises hand]
Problem with many kids today, they sit too much in front of a computer playing video games. They are more dedicated to those video games than they are with school work.
Howdy from Texas, and yes, we need help here. The creationists are creating a future sub-class for our state. It will cause an entire generation (or more) to be forced into service industry jobs as careers. Janitorial, fast food, used car sales, shoe salesman and mall security guards will be the domain of these Texans, all the while leaving the higher level jobs (except lawyer) to anyone with a 'real' education that is willing to relocate to Texas.
Re-take Kindergarten?
How the fuck do you get kids to fail fingerpainting?
My son had over an hour's worth of homework 4 days out of five a week in kindergarten here in Texas. It's not just fingerpainting anymore. It was a lot of busy work that covered things he had learned before going to school. I'm wondering what parents did with their kids between birth and school if his kindergarten work for that level of work to be what the educational system thought represented their educational objectives. But don't get me started on that. I was the scourge of three school districts in South Texas over their idea of education. It might have been four, save for having to move before I reached critical mass.
While many of the teachers were exceptional and wonderful, some of them were so profoundly ignorant that it made me wonder a) what the teaching programs in TX are teaching the people who have, or will, become our teachers, and 2) who dressed them in the morning. They couldn't have done it themselves.
No kidding Texas has a problem: Bush is coming home!
@Michael
I can't even begin to tell you how wrong statement was. Sure - it's not the crappy educational policies, slashed budgets, or poor parenting that are probably factors in the kid's decline.
We'll blame video games instead, and deflect attention from the real issues!
@Johnny the racist asswipe
Good plan, if you can't amble you don't get to contribute to the gene pool. So no drunken orgies in the Fatherland then? Sounds dull, count me out.
Although I loved college, count me into the crowd of people who thought school was boring. Actually, it was evil. I can't remember ever wanting to go. Not one single day. I viewed school pretty much like Sisyphus must have viewed rocks. So many things went into it, but most of it was my utter contempt for the quality of education itself. And then there was the viciousness and pettiness of the people there... I know a lot of people talk about how wonderful teachers are, but, honestly, I crossed paths with so many malicious, bigoted, sexist, judgmental, nosy, perverted and fucking stupid teachers that the good ones can't offset my less-than-flattering regard for the lot of them.
"The survey reveals that Texas is ranked last in high school graduation rates"
Of course, one state HAS to be ranked last, and this is not per se any indication of the quality of education (or lack thereof) in Texas (or, for that matter, elsewhere)...
Aquaria,
Sounds like you had a rather worse set of teachers than I did. I had a few idiots, a handful of great ones, and the bulk of them were mediocre.
I look at what I learned in school versus what I learned at work and from my own reading, and I have to conclude that even though I got to go to better schools than most kids do, many, maybe even most of the classes were a complete waste of time.
I really hated math until I got to geometry. History bored me to tears until several years after high school when I encountered shows like James Burke's connections, and I realized how much more there was to history than the trivial outlines we were given in school.
I've read about the Sudbury school model, and I think it would have been a far better match for the way I learn, and probably for most other kids. It's just not natural for kids to sit and pay attention for hours on end, day in and day out, on subjects that don't interest them.
-jcr
Genius is most likely to occur within the Jewish race, they Jews know this and they are proud of this fact.
I think just about any Jew would tell you that we don't have any particular genetic advantage, but rather that Jewish culture values studying more than most other cultures do.
-jcr
I'm from Northern California. I've been stranded in Small Town, Texas and my kids are victims of the Texas school system. I also work as a substitute teacher. Believe me: It's worse than you even imagine.
At this point in the thread, I suppose I can relate a few anecdotes.
I was chatting with a co-worker who recently pulled his child out of third-grade public school because of performance problems. Now that the child is in a charter school, he is doing far better, rising to the top of his class. His father feels that it may be the reduction in the amount of homework. In the public school the child had 2-3 hours of homework every night, and hated school. The charter school allows the 3rd graders to complete their homework during school time and the kid had time to play after school. The child enjoys going to school again.
I mentioned this to a friend who is a public school teacher in the 6th grade. She had a couple of comments. She pointed out that the charter school has an interest in keeping the children happy, i.e. if the children are unhappy the parents may stop bringing them to the school and stop paying them. So the school has an interest in keeping the children happy, even if it means they are not learning as much. Now, I'm not suggesting this is happening, and neither is she, but there is clearly the potential for a conflict of interest.
Her other point, and I felt it was an interesting one, was that in her opinion the difficulty of the subject matter has increased. She has been teaching for close to fifteen years, both in Texas and here in Michigan, and she says that subjects they used to introduce to ninth-graders are now being introduced to sixth-graders. The state mandated educational standards are requiring students to study concepts they are not yet ready to learn.
Now, there has been a great deal of study done on at what point in childhood development certain concepts become comprehensible. Piaget did a tremendous amount of work on this, and when I was studying the nature of the development of consciousness (on my own, I realize I'm not an expert, simply an interested layman) I came across Piaget's work and found it fascinating. There does appear to be stages of mental development during childhood which preclude complete understanding of some of the more obscure ideas.
As an adult, who doesn't teach and hasn't raised children, it's hard for me to remember that some fairly complex concepts which I currently find simple to comprehend may by nigh impossible for a child to grasp. I recall Piaget's discussions about when a child can actually grasp the concept of bouyancy. At my age it seems obvious, but at some point I had to learn the difference between bouyancy and weight. Yet,... at some point my mental development I was at a stage where I couldn't understand the difference.
I've dwelt on this at length because my friend may have a point. If there has been an increase in the difficulty of the material taught, you would expect an increase in the number of students who fail to understand the material.
I'm not advocating any changes. It may be that our children should be exposed to more advanced concepts at a younger age. Alternatively, it may be that children should be divided up by ability rather than chronological age, and high school graduation should occur when they master the material, whether the children are 12 or 25. Further, I'm certian that, as mentioned above, language and other cultural aspects contribute strongly to high school graduation rates.
So I don't have any answers, but I'm fascinated in the discussion. And I hope I didn't step on too many educators toes in my ignorance. ;)
I'm working in a Texas Elementary school right now. They keep putting the Spanish-speaking kids in what they call, if memory serves, "bilingual education." So the Spanish speaking kids go K-through-third without being taught in English, then placed in an English class. As if they know it now, for some reason.
They should be taught in English for the time when they can acquire new languages easily, so that they're not so incorrigibly behind later. If you're three years behind your peers in terms of language comprehension, then you're going to do poorly in school, through no fault of your own. I've had at least one kid, a fourth-grader, come up to me and complain that she doesn't understand English well, and explicitly said "because they used to teach us in Spanish."
Flex> Piaget's work was wonderful, and there is corraboration (sp) that his stages were correct in their progression. There has also been work following Piaget that demonstrates that his time line was a bit off, at least in some cases. A number of children are capable of developing the cognitive abilities he restricts to late adolesence (i.e. abstract thinking) at earlier ages, while others fail to develop to that point. Check out Dewey and Vygotsky.
Kinda disappointed that jonnyb went down the drain; he injected a new kind of troll into the discussions, and at least he was quoting something else than the bible as his authority. And vile is a new definition of banable offense as far as I can see from the kill file.
Texas has another problem:Texas State Dinosaur Facing Name Change: Case Of Mistaken Dino-identity
Thanks IST,
I'll look into Vygotsky, I've read some Dewey (and should read more), but never heard of Vygotsky. Like I said, my education in this area is very spotty. (The main problem with being self-taught is you miss vast chunks of stuff that a formal course would expose you to. The main benefit of being self-taught is that you can delve deeply into one facet of a subject, far more than you can through more formal coursework. I think I've read every word of Piaget, I love his style, which is more than any of my teacher friends have done. But they are far more likely to be aware of Vygotsky because they've studied educational theory.)
I agree, and based on my reading of Piaget I think he would too, that there is a range in development with many children developing abstract thinking and other traits at a far younger chronological age than others.
Which suggests that the industrialization of education may result in poor alignment of the curriculum with individual students. That is, if the level of the curriculum is established by the average the student ability, those students who are beyond that stage are bored and students who have not reached that stage are lost.
Further, since even the average stage of students is going to vary over time, the curriculum would require continual adjustment even if meeting the average student stage was the goal.
And, of course, the further the authorities who set the curriculum are away from actually teaching students, the less likely they will have any idea what stage the students are currently ready for. Not that proper evaluation couldn't gather that data for local or state level school boards to use.
I checked the latest science skills required for High school and evolution is mentioned and nothing on creationism is.
http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/Sci_TEKS_9-12_Clean_010509.pdf
Rey:
Because, you know, regular people look up to tall people, so when everybody's tall, everyone will look up to everyone else.
Got that?
On the other hand, to paraphrase Buddy, aka Syndrome:
"Because when everybody's tall... no one will be."
[Disclaimer: I'm 6'5" and it's a mixed blessing.]
yeah, because video and computer games do not exist in Asia... oh, wait...
seriously, what's with everyone blaming the "newfangled" media and entertainment?! like kids didn't rather play than do homework before there was TV or the XboX?!
I have to say I agree. Sure, there should be basic, additional ESL classes for the youngest so that they're not completely clueless, but it's very hard to learn a new language properly when you can cheat and talk in your old language when the new one won't quite do.
It's the reason my mom kept me in an Elementary School with almost no other Polish students, even when we moved away from that area; she wanted me to learn German properly first! (I spoke no German when I went to 1st grade) And I have to say she was right. when she finally transferred me into the local Elementary School in 4th grade, my German was far better than that of the Polish kids in the new school, because they still talked Polish to each other most of the time, and learned broken German from each other.
And no, I did not forget Polish because I didn't have bilingual classes. after all, I spoke it with my family on a daily basis. And ironically, now that I live in the U.S, and rarely get to use Polish or German, I've more problems with German than with Polish (English and German are too similar, I keep mixing them up when trying to speak German)
One out of three? That's not too bad. My freshman class had about 600 students. I walked with 112 graduation day.
My favorite anecdote from high school was sometime around my junior year. Since we had one of the lowest test scores in the state the budget was cut. What was their solution? To close down the library for the year because they couldn't afford to run the library AND build a new football stadium.
... I wish I was joking.
you guys have enormous class sizes (my entire High-School, classes 7-13, was 450 students strong)... I wonder if lack of small schools has something to do with the drop-out problem?
I have you beat Aphrodine, my freshman class was 900 and I graduated with 109.
Our culture of celebrated ignorance certainly bore ugly fruit in my generation.
They keep putting the Spanish-speaking kids in what they call, if memory serves, "bilingual education."
They do that in California too. The liberal racists in this state have found a very clever way to practice segregation in the guise of helping hispanic kids' self esteem. There was a bit of a dust-up in the press here a few years ago because they were assigning kids who'd always spoken English to the Spanish classes if they didn't look white and had Spanish surnames.
-jcr
Flex> One of the hallmarks of Piaget's early cognitive development work is that he put age constraints on the stages of development he described. It is quite possible that he adjusted this afterward, and that I haven't read that portion. My introduction to the topic came in one of my teaching classes, but I actually took the time to read some others as well, unlike many if not all of my classmates (Howard Gardner is an interesting read also, although I find his evidence to be scant).
The curricula are written by people who were in a classroom quite a while ago if at all, and not necessarily by anyone with a realistic perception of child development. The most unfortunate aspect of NCLB is its treatment of all students as identical (despite supposed moves to the contrary). My class sizes being 33, 36, and 39 in high school science courses isn't particularly helpful in my attempts to individualise education either.
January 21, 2009 the Texas Board of Education will be meeting to discuss science text books using the language "Strengths and Weakness of Evolution" The turn out of scientist opposing this language, I am hoping will be tremendous. The creationist will also be there in full force. If you live in Texas and are concerned about how we are educating the future, then you need to be there. Go to the Texas Board of Education website for time and location.
IST wrote, One of the hallmarks of Piaget's early cognitive development work is that he put age constraints on the stages of development he described. It is quite possible that he adjusted this afterward, and that I haven't read that portion.
IIRC you are correct that Piaget put age constraints on the stages he described. I don't believe he adjusted them later. However, one thing I like about him, and the work he did, was that he was willing to let the experimental data guide his work. I feel, without knowing him except through his work, that with the additional knowledge we have today he would be open to adjusting his age contraints. I admit this is simply my opinion of his personality as learned through his writings.
Hmm, that is sad. But that probably isn't an evenly distributed statistic. In other words, not ever school has a 1 in 4 rate. Some schools are probably really really bad. A lot of this has to do with migration from Mexico too, it is hard to teach someone at an English speaking school if they don't speak English, and it is expensive to set up multilingual teaching environments. Right or wrong, many texans wouldn't don't feel obligated to set something like that up.
Also, the creationism vs. evolution issue probably barely touches with this if at all. This is a far reaching problem that has been caused by many factors. More indirectly there might be something said about lack of respect for education and taxes (which pay for schools and teacher's salaries) amongst rural evangelicals, but that is probably hard to pin down. Being from a high school in Texas and currently being at the university of Texas, which is a VERY good school, I know that it is quite possible to get a good education here, even if not all do.