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Loss of Applied IQ Among UK Youth?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jan 29, 2006 02:38 PM
from the duh-whats-iq? dept.
from the duh-whats-iq? dept.
Baldrson writes "The UK Times Online reports that: 'After studying 25,000 children across both state and private schools Philip Adey, a professor of education at King's College London confidently declares: "The intelligence of 11-year-olds has fallen by three years' worth in the past two decades."' 3 years loss at age 11 is an IQ of 100*8/11 or 73 -- a massive loss of 27 points. Although the test measures, not general IQ per se, but general IQ applied to scientific and technical reasoning, it nevertheless appears to blow 'a gaping hole' in what has been called The Flynn Effect: that IQs have been rising in most parts of the world -- particularly the developed countries."
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Wait, I know this one: (Score:5, Funny)
Man, where have I heard that before?
Too many black boxes (Score:5, Interesting)
Even people like Lego (who really fostered creativity a few years back) are now focussing on selling theme toys (Harry Potter etc) that the kids build according to instruction and seldom reassemble in any new way.
Parent
Re:Too many black boxes (Score:5, Interesting)
What it does probably do is stunt the creativity side of things.
Parent
Re:Too many black boxes (Score:3, Interesting)
I recently dismantled an old (germanium transistor-based) radio with my kids. It used OC45s! We were able to reverse engineer some of the schematics to see how some of it worke
Re:Too many black boxes (Score:5, Interesting)
Kids should be learning both the applied and the abstract general concepts. So when learning about HTML, it would be good to know why are people using HTML, why not something else, what is HTML related to, how is it different than Java and stuff like that, while at the same time learning how to make pretty tables with nifty javascript event handlers that makes stuff blink and such.
Parent
Its the ending of the eleven plus (Score:5, Informative)
IQ tests can be taught just like any other skill. The claims that they measure innate intelligence have never been substantiated. I was drilled in them when I was 10, my IQ rose from over 120 to over 140. By the end I was getting every question on the paper correct
Until the 1970s the UK had a two tier state education system. 5% of the kids went to grammar schools the rest went to 'secondary modern's' - sink schools in other words. To get into the grammar school and get a decent education (albeit not quite as good as the private education) you had to pass the eleven plus.
During the eleven plus era large numbers of kids were drilled in taking IQ tests. This continued for a while after the grammar schools had been phased out, partly due to inertia but also because there was tight competition for places at private schools which still have selection today.
so this is not a demonstration that kids are getting stupider, merely that the local effect of one bias in a ridiculous test is greater than the general bias.
Parent
Well perhaps we were lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
Same with a lot of other stuff. I could help out with fixing the car. Well stand by but you could actually see stuff and the adults could actually do things themselves. Todays cars? Black boxes.
I learned a lot about electricity helping out with a model railroad. Pokemon is a nice game but it is played on another black box.
But lets face it, the rot started without especially your generation. YOU are the one raising these 11 year olds and we just don't have the need to get down and dirty anymore.
Odd thing about the sexual revolution? Rather then men learning how to cook as well now nobody learns how to cook. Freaky.
As our tech increases we need less and less knowledge about it. My mom knew how to wire a fuse. I know how to screw in one. My kid knows how to throw a circuit breaker. Wich one of us would be more likely to be able to get a car moving when there is no replacement fuse available?
Maybe parents need to get more involved with their kids. Nah.
Parent
So? Live and learn (Score:5, Insightful)
A nice dose of 220 through your hand will teach you more about electricity then any classroom lecture.
As for wiring a fuse with say a screwdriver. Sometimes you just got to do stuff that is unsafe. If we only did was what safe we would still be up a tree somewhere in africa. (or for the religious people, inside the garden of eden)
Parent
Re:So? Live and learn (Score:5, Insightful)
For example with the Scouts we'd go camping to some of the big organised camps but our leader ( and only adult ) would make sure we got the tent up OK and then go back home for the weekend. Although there were other adults within a quarter of mile or so of us we were basically unsupervised and in charge a number of large axes, saws, petrol, gas and boxes and boxes of matches. Needless to say we had a great time and no one ever got seriously injured because we very quickly learned for ourselves the dangers of playing catch with large felling axes ( and that chopping up trees with them was more fun anyway ). We learned several important lessons about looking after ourselves and as a group from these camps; if no one cooks any food we all get very hungry, if no one gets up early to light the fire cold baked beans don't taste very nice, its better for people not to be constantly arguing with each other, if we look like we are looking after ourselves and everyone looks healthy and happy no one comes to interfere and we can do what we like etc etc etc.
There is no way anyone would let a group of 12 - 15 year olds go camping without any direct supervision nowadays for fear of the inevitable law suit as soon as someone chops their hand off with an axe.
Parent
Re:Too many black boxes (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather be a kid now than then!
ok, I still am a kid, but I no longer live with my parents
Parent
Re:Too many black boxes (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Too many black boxes (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Only a drop of 27 points? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only a drop of 27 points? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it this or mashing biology, chemistry and physics into a half baked mash called "Science"?
Or the complete liquidation of any homework and any home assignments in primary school?
Or the idiotic laws that force the parents to babysit their offspring till they are 14 years old removing any sense of reason and responsibility? I remember that at the age of 7 I had to travel across one quarter of a 10 million city alone to school every day. And I was not the only one to do so. In fact there was not a single parent dropping off or picking up children after the first week. Frankly, before we get to the crazy frog, shooting all the MP critters who pushed this stupid law followed by a selective school run cull may be a better place to start.
Parent
Re:Only a drop of 27 points? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think there is any law which forces parents to drive their kids to school. They do it for a variety of reasons: laziness, paranoia about paedophiles, the fact that more mothers have cars now, etc.
Re:Only a drop of 27 points? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Chavs today, punks yesterday. (Score:4, Insightful)
Even then, it's something that they'll be forced to grow out of. If any of them wish to obtain and retain jobs, even as custodians or trash collectors at McDonalds, they won't be able to act like chavs or punks. And if they don't conform, then they'll likely turn to crime, and end up dead or in prison.
The basic economics of living, and the criminal justice system after that, acts as the good parents that these kids didn't have.
Nevertheless, those with intellectual talent do almost always manage to succeed, even in the fact of punkism or chavism. There won't be a shortage of British scientists or researchers, for instance.
Parent
Re:Chavs today, punks yesterday. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing special about the chav "movement" of today. It's much like the punks of the late 1970s. They wear different clothes, but the attitude is still the same.
Chavs are nothing like the punks of the late 1970s.
The punks were politically-motivated and rebelling against the Establishment, and even the establishment in popular culture.
Chavs are just brain-dead zombies. They're apathetic, ignorant, uneducated, and wouldn't know what Politics were if the Sun or News of the World attempted to explain to them. As for culture, they're at the forefront of the establishment of pop culture. Just look at BBC Top of The Pops. Those orange whingers in the top 10 are just what your average(sic) chav is "in to."
Parent
Two Cultures. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Chavs today, punks yesterday. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think everyone who is able to work should receive no money whatsoever from the government until they've worked continuously for at least 5 years. Give them food and clothes plus shelter for the night, but that's it. It's time the culture of laziness, expecting people to bail them out was over.
Parent
Re:Only a drop of 27 points? (Score:5, Funny)
Time: Last January
Subjects: A thicket of Chavs.
The one started doing a 'Rap' to impress his 'friends' and the chavettes that were with them. The lines of the end of his rap went like this.
You think you so smart because you went to University.
Well I gots more intelligence than you and me.
I think that sums it up.
Parent
Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
That obselete test just fails to keep up with modern applications of science and math. Like manipulating them to support your point, or redefining them for political reasons.
From the links below the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Also in this section:
Nice to see this particular section of the press doing their bit to keep standards high.
Cheers,
Ian
Fair? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is science the only field worth measuring an IQ on?
Re:Fair? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because artists don't conduct scientific studies of IQ. Ponder that for a while...
Parent
Correlation: Food vs. IQ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, "other extreme measures" include farming fish, like salmon, in confined ponds where heavy metals and other chemicals can accumulate because the farmer does not bother to clean the water. Numerous government studies show that farmed salmon had much higher concentrations of toxic metals and chemicals than wild salmon like that in Alaska.
The key question is whether there is a correlation between the increasing contamination of our food and the behavior of the brain. Has anyone noticed the increasing amounts of psychotherapeutic drugs consumed by people in developed countries? What is happening to our brains? Did people in 1850 need to consume Prozac just to cope with their own lives?
Re:Correlation: Food vs. IQ? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they had other problems that kept them from thinking of those things:
- Starving to death
- Cholera
- Freezing during the winter
- Smallpox
People during those times were depressed too, they just used alcohol (that's what most medicines were then anyway) People who were rich enough that they didn't have to worry about the things listed above had the same 'problems' you allude to the general population having today. It is only that now enough people are well off enough to sit around and worry about such higher level problems.Parent
Rise of technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is bogus... (Score:3, Insightful)
What are the measurements? What are the controls? Who financed this? Who financed them?
And the real question to ask: What difference does it make?
I'm stunned (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's not just MTV. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Society is decadent its the Romans all over again! (Score:3, Interesting)
3 years? (Score:3, Funny)
standards in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the "all shall have prizes" culture where children aren't told "that's wrong, go and do it again" lest we scar them for life and someone brings a law suit.
Re:standards in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:standards in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me give you an example. When I was in college (Computer Studies), we had what I can only describe as a remedial course in maths. This stuff was taught in secondary school to all thirteen year-olds, I don't know how people got out of school without learning it or why it was the college's job to catch them up at the expense of everybody else's time and money. Very few people paid attention in the classes. We got to the end-of-year exams, and three or four of us got 90%+ for this particular module. The pass rate was 40%. Everybody else got 30-40%.
So these imbeciles, who have shown themselves incapable of learning basic maths not once but twice, should have to resit the exams or fail the course, yes? No. Because it was very unlikely that they could pass, and because failing them would mean cancelling the second year of the course and screwing the rest of us, the pass rate was lowered so that everybody passed.
I finished college, and went on to university. Guess what? A huge part of the first year was dedicated to repeating stuff that I had spent the last two years sitting in classes for. Why? Because half the people on my course (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence) had never written a program before in their life. And you know what? By the end of the year, they still hadn't. Not even Hello World. In all our programming assignments, we were given complete programs and told to change a couple of things ("make it print the numbers 1 to 20 instead of 1 to 10"). These people have degrees now.
I left school at thirteen years old due to illness, so I skipped a huge amount of school. And yet most people I meet seem to be way behind me when it comes to education. That's not my opinion, I think I'm average, but everybody else thinks of me as a bit of a genius. The majority of people I know haven't read a book since school unless they were forced to for work.
So how I can do way better than average with moderate effort, even though I'm at a huge disadvantage? Because most people are completely apathetic. And yet they get free passes anyway. At every point in my education, I've felt that you have to be exceptionally bad to fail at anything.
Parent
Explains... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is quite worrying. With falling numbers in technical and scientific fields, this does not bode well for the future of industry in the UK. I can see this applying to other developed nations.
Quoth TFA: "Although the test measures, not general IQ per se, but general IQ applied to scientific and technical reasoning"
Hmm. May explain the rise in belief of intelligent design.
And there was me thinking it was almost cool to be a geek. What I got wrong was that it is cool to look geeky, but not actually be a geek.
Maybe the just have bigger genitals. (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunate (Score:4, Funny)
Unsurprising (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a time when engineers and trailblazers were popular heroes. But a lot of damage was done in the 1980s and 1990s, when there was a culture of outright greed and everybody's dream was to be a fat-cat manager. Education reflected this, and children were trained to be capable pen-pushers, perhaps also possesing relational and organisational skills. (It was not all bad.) Politicians listened to business leaders, and business leaders naturally emphasised the type of skills they themselves had.
However, the people who did this forgot that management does not create ideas or value. Problem-solving, creative and scientific skills took a back seat; some of this was an understandable reaction to the way education was organized in the 1970s. But they were also considered less important because they were not culturally appreciated and besides, they were not the kind of skills a professional human resources department was looking for.
The result has been a loss of cognitive ability, in part a lack of creativity, but to substantial degree a loss of interpretative ability. The generation that was still educated in Latin and Old Greek may have wasted time on subjects managers now consider unimportant, but they did have a knack for extracting meaning from obscure and incomplete evidence.
A general downturn in the western world? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be curious to see the rate of IQ change amongst various western countries. Has the common "easy" life stopped working in our favor and started working against us? So many things we had to do before are now done automatically (or not at all,) and so our minds don't have to work nearly as hard to get stuff to happen. Granted, modern life has allowed us to focus more on things lik science and mechanics, but the lack of necessity is keeping many from allowing themselves to be educated.
I also blame America's increasing "stupid" problem partly on the parents that let their kids do whatever they please, with little in the way of punishment. The lack of respect I see everyday from my generation (I'm 20) is just appaling.
er... (Score:5, Funny)
That's unpossible!
Kids have lost conservation laws (Score:5, Interesting)
I've noticed something else in the last year that worries me. I own a horse, and I recently had to move him to a barn that mostly teaches 6 to 14 year olds to ride. Often, the parents have non-riding kids in tow, and they hang around the barn. Many (not all) of the non-riding kids have no clue how to deal with an environment that isn't entirely kid-safe. Some basic survival skills seem to be missing. They don't notice, let alone get out of the way of, horse traffic. They're unaware of what's happening behind them. They have no sense that they need to have some caution when near these huge animals and their big, steel-shod hooves.
I've seen a horse, faced with an 8-year old child in his path, stop, reach down with his nose, and nudge the child out of the way, as a horse would do with a foal. The horses have more sense than some of the kids.
These are school-age kids from rather well-off families. They're not retarded or autistic. But they have no sense of what's hazardous.
Re:Kids have lost conservation laws (Score:4, Insightful)
In Australia, its called Occupational Health and Safty. I can see its purpose, making our lives safer through law, but the negative effects could be as large as what the article describes. A wildcard example that is very common, through law, in all workplaces now, is that kettles now have to be labled as hot. Toasters need to be labled as dangerous because of their electric contents.
Darwin described it many years ago, and called it Natural Selection. Developed society has removed the implications of being weak, and therefore made them as equal as the strong in their chances for success.
Its tough to say, but these days, to many children are stressed beyond belief at school, but in the wrong way. At school more work = smarter children, but this never happens if all that work is done incorrectly and then not corrected. To much these days children arn't told: You failed or Thats incorrect, do it again. In the current education system in Australia there is no fail. the marks on every single course range from 50 to 100.
People learn via a combination of things. 1. The rewards of succeeding, 2. Fear of failure and 3. Having initative enough to learn from mistakes.
The ultra clean environment we have made for our children is apparently weakening their immune systems. The ultra safe environment, is removeing their addaptive ability. The ultra success society, is removeing the distinction between success and failure. And the ultra information society, is removing the need for general knowlege. Sure, there are alot of good kids out there, alot of smart kids, who take the initative. But society is focused on protecting, not helping those who fail.
We have smart people, working, to pay taxes, to ensure that the people who dont work, have enough money to pay their bills for pay tv and alcohol while their kids run wild. All the same time as the smart people are having fewer and fewer children.
Another problem is that these days, the devices and tools the occupy out childrens lives cant be as easily taken apart. When i was young, i remember building a radio, playing with instructionless technic, playing with electronics, looking at motors. But now, the iPod cant be oppened, the motors in lawn mowers can only be touched by a licenced dealer, and Lego comes with specially designed pieces and themed instructions.
I hate to say it. But society needs to bring back the difference between success and failure, and therefore provide the impulse for people to learn from their mistakes, not their text books.
We need to bring back natural selection.
The best tool we have left in our stock now, is the combination of the economy and law enforcement. If the failures turn to crime, they might die or be arrested. If the failures want a job to support themselves they have to conform to that jobs regulations: pants, a tie and knowlege on a specific area. Sadly, the huge amount of welfare and the effect of liability in decreasing the law enforcement powers of the police have made these weapons weak.
Parent
27 point IQ drop? Where is that reported? (Score:5, Informative)
OK. Now for some real background. The study the researchers are repeating is part of a group of studies done by Jean Piaget [wikipedia.org] back in the late 1960s through the 70s. Piaget was a developmental psychologist was was interested in discerning developmental stages in childhood that could be predicted and potentially nurtured with special education. He broke development down into four stages:
1) Sensimotor Stage: birth -> 2yo (a child who developed object persistence, or the recognition that a physical object persists even when out of the visual field and across time, would pass to the next stage)
2) Pre-Operational Stage: 2yo -> 7-8 (a child who developed conservation skills, recognizing that certain abstract things which appear different are actually the same, would pass to the next stage
3) Concrete Operational Stage: ~8-11yo (a child who developed abstract reasoning, such as manipulation of abstract variables in math or algorithmic reasoning, would pass to the final stage
4) Formal Operational Stage: cognitive adulthood.
This study -- cited in the article -- tests when children move from Pre-Operational to Concrete-Operational stage. They do so with a conservation skills test. In one test the researcher takes a tall and thin beaker and fills it up to a certain amount in front of the child. Then the researcher hands the child a light block and a heavy block and asks the child where they think each will displace the water in the beaker. If the child realizes that both displace the water equally, the child understands conservation of water displacement.
They then move to another test where the child is faced with a tall set of blocks stacked upon one another, and a short and wide set of the same blocks stacked upon one another. The researcher asks the child to use the short and wide blocks to build the same tower as the tall and thin one. If the child realizes that since both contain the same number of blocks it is actually possible for him/her to complete the task, the child understands volume conservation.
In yet another test, the researcher takes one cup of water and pours it into several smaller cups and then asks the child where the water line will be if they pour all the water from the smaller cups back into the larger cup. Ya'll get the idea.
Now, these researchers are testing children today using the same methods as Piaget back in the 70s. What they found is that the mean for transitioning out of Pre-Operational Stage is today later than it was back in the 1970s. They don't know why. Is it due to changes in our educational system? If it due to environmental changes? Hell, how about: does Paiget's development model hold any factual water? *cough!* Are these results meaningful, and what do they mean?
I don't know.
But one thing I do know is that these results say NOTHING about relative IQ differences from then and today because neither study measured IQ!!!! It is a gross misunderstanding of this work to compare the actual results of relative changes in children developing specific conservation skills over time, and then claiming that these results can extrapolate general intelligence changes in children over time. They are not the same!
To sum up, baldrson misses this "IMPORTANT LAB RULE": know what you are measuring and confounds it with a second "IMPORTANT LAB RULE": take accurate measurements. So, now that we have that all cleared up, how 'bout heading over to the pub for a Guinness?
The intelligent aren't having children (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligence is aborting/abstaining/contracepting itself out of existence and leaving the world to the idiots.
Re:UK Schools (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Flynn (whover he is) is an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Recall that places like India and China have, for various reasons, not been the best places to foster intellect in recent times (the last two or three hundred years). The people there are just as intellectually capable as anyone from a Western nation, but did not have many of the advantages that Western society was able to offer due to its better economic position, and so forth.
But times have changed, and education is far more available in places like India and China, in addition to many other developing countries. So it's no wonder that the comparative IQ gap between Western and Eastern cultures is closing, and closing quickly. It's not because people in the Western world are becoming stupider; it's because the people in the East are now able to take advantage of better educational opportunities.
Parent
Re:IQ is linear with age? (Score:3, Informative)
IQ = 100*MA/CA where MA = Mental Age and CA = Chronological Age. It helps to look things up rather than try to guess the meaning of a formula.
Re:IQ is linear with age? (Score:5, Informative)
Three years difference in scores is likely going to be substantially less than 27 IQ points. Figuring it out precisely is difficult because there is a huge spurt and then dropoff in the rate of increase in intelligence on a ratio (Rasch-based SB5 CSS score) scale from about 8 to 12, peaking at age 10. Testing would be a more accurate way of finding out the IQ equivalent of 3 years difference at that age in that population than attempting to calculate it anyway.
Parent