Poverty Stunts IQ In the US But Not In Other Developed Countries (arstechnica.com) 519
An anonymous reader writes: New research published in the journal Psychological Science (abstract) found that children who grow up in poverty within the United States tend to have lower IQs than peers from other socioeconomic brackets. Previous studies have shown a complex relationship between a child's genetics, his environment, and his IQ. Your genes can't pinpoint your IQ, but they can indicate a rough range of values within which your IQ is quite likely to fall. For kids in poverty, they seem to consistently end up on the low end of that window. Interestingly, this effect was not seen for any of the other countries hosting kids within the study, which included Australia, Germany, England, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The study authors speculate that "inequalities in educational and medical access in the U.S." may be the root of the differences, though another researcher is planning to study the effect of school environments as well.
It's the Parents (Score:3)
In school I did a report on parenting. A child's IQ is set by 3, largely from stimulation: holding them, talking to them, reading to them, etc. --- even though they don't yet know exactly what you're saying.
Aren't many poor families in America a young, single mother, working one or two jobs, and her children? Probably not the best upbringing.
social safety nets WORK, vs cowboy attitudes (Score:5, Insightful)
The experience of many, many other countries shows conclusively and overwhelmingly that society is better off with a good social system that supports the poor and underprivileged. It constantly amazes that Americans are SO insistent on their "every man for himself" mentality, in the face of the evidence. The countries ranked the best to live in are socialist societies, where the rich are compelled to help the poor rather than say "fuck it dude I got mine, so screw you". They have government run medical systems, and high taxes to support a well functioning society.
America has one of the biggest wealth disparities in the world, a poor education system, a health care system that is massively expensive but comes up far short of the best ones in results, has more murder, and a crumbling infrastructure. When will you all wake up and realize that your culture needs to be changed? It's OK. You can join the modern world. The rest of us will be happy to see you do well! We don't wish bad things for you. But you have to give up the cowboy attitude, in order to get there.
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It constantly amazes that idiots like you think America (a.k.a. the USA) is homogenous in anything including it's thinking. We're a melting pot with a lot more variety than almost any country, perhaps any country, because the USA was settled by and built by immigrants from around the world. There is no "American Mentality".
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Sure there is. Once all the differences even out, our "left" looks like everyone else's right and our right looks insane.
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Many here in the U.S. would like to see the U.S. scale back in that department and put it into health care, education, and infrastructure. It's mostly the right that opposes it.
Public Schools? (Score:5, Insightful)
Could this be because the school systems in these other countries are funded in a way where the budget is less dependent on local taxes. If the money is region/nationalized you don't end up with the more prosperous cities having nicer schools because they have higher income from local property taxes.
Also -- college is cheaper/free in many European countries. Less of a financial barrier-to-entry for higher education means more poverty-sicken students get to go to school.
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Could this be because the school systems in these other countries are funded in a way where the budget is less dependent on local taxes. If the money is region/nationalized you don't end up with the more prosperous cities having nicer schools because they have higher income from local property taxes.
School funding in Michigan changed a long time ago, on precisely this theory. (Had nothing to do with sticking a needle in the eye of those evil "wealthy" districts, no no.) School funding now comes mainly from a higher sales tax. Your school has more kids? You get more money. Per pupil stuff.
Strangely enough, Detroit schools still suck, and the "wealthy" districts still don't (as much). So no, that wasn't it.
To all the racists (Score:5, Insightful)
who are just attributing this to the ethnic makeup of the US, you're missing the point. The study isn't saying that poor American blacks are not as smart as affluent American whites. It's saying that poor American blacks are less intelligent than affluent American blacks, and poor American whites are less intelligent than affluent American whites, and the same poor vs. affluent gap doesn't exist in other countries.
Duh. (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in the USA lead abatement in rentals is a thin coat of paint. Elsewhere they require the landlord to remove it ALL from the home.
And who lives in the shitty run down really old homes with lead paint in them? poor people.
My guess (Score:2)
Other developed nations, which have stronger environmental regulations than the US, don't have children living in areas highly contaminated by lead.
"poverty" (Score:4, Insightful)
There isn't much genuine "poverty" in the US anymore. Hasn't been for a couple generations.
Go watch hood fight videos on WSHH or Darien Long patrolling an Atlanta mall on Youtube. We certainly have ghettos. But the people in them are not suffering grinding "poverty." They're all fat, equipped with cell phones and cars and spend their disposable income on status symbols and various vices. The kids they make are fed good meals in public schools and junk food at home till they're fat. Aside from the pencil whipping "education" they get in government funded schools they're raised by Nintendo and TV.
This is gross neglect, not "poverty." And more benefits and deficits aren't going to make good parents out of the denizens of our proto-idiocracy.
No, I don't have a solution either. At least none that doesn't involve pretty serious compromises of civil rights. And we all know the subjects of such attention would rather the stunted IQs than suffer any impositions.
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Things people actually need costs hundreds to thousands a dollars a month, which they cannot afford, such as regular dental visits, lawyers, tutors, private schools, paid vacations, non-medication based health care, maid service, fully equipped apartment/house, etc.
Those types of things are provided free from the government in Europe.
Whereas the USA blows all that money on silly trivialities like its military that is defending Europe.
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To be fair, you should get your Danish and German statistics from a charity trying to get more money for the cause of 'homelessness'.
There are many ways these stats can be lies. Just off the top of my head I'm betting the German ones don't count foreigners. I was there recently and there are many foreign beggars in the big cities (Berlin and Hamburg).
1 in 30 kids? Only if you count the family stays because mom is temporarily homeless.
America spends millions treating obesity related health care issues
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You have to note that spending one night sleeping on a friends couch qualifies you to be part of that 500,000 for the year.
I was homeless just as I bought my house. The close was delayed by a week and I had to move out of my apartment. Woe is me.
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Two meals a day? Luxury.
Go to Africa and see some real poverty. Poor people cannot be fat. If someone is fat, they are not poor.
Poverty=crappy food=poor development=lower IQ? (Score:2)
Slapping kids upside the head is bad (Score:2)
Slapping kids upside the head, while amusing and culturally acceptable, seriously degrades the academic performance of Our Fellow Americans.
PSA: don't slap your child upside the head.
'Psychological Science' (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah yes, 'Psychological Science' ... that's akin to 'Military Intelligence' and 'Astrological Science'.
When I studied psickology in 1959, and then again in 1969, I couldn't help noticing that the field had changed about as much as the runways of Paris fashion. Since then many more dynamic changes; each generation displacing the previous and 'outing' their theories.
Sorry to demean them, and in fact I believe there is some truth in this observation. I also assume that as their peers and others review this work we will see different conclusions drawn from the same data.
the first thing I thought when I read this (Score:3, Informative)
was that United States poverty actually means extreme poverty where money, education, healthcare, nuturement, homes, cars, transporation, day care, special needs services and all that is completely denied.
and the comparison countries "Germany, UK, Australia,.." are all actually really rich countries with more of a socialism style to their economic systems. In those countries they have completely free healthcare, free college educations, better school systems (although I have no studied each country, I have looked at countries such as Germany which has completely free college education even for people who go there from out of the country, and Finland has a revolutionary system with three teachers per class and 20 student caps, France puts more money into kids and "fixing" life problems, etc).
I grew up in Oregon and as such I was denied all school after the 6th grade, and I had no health insurance and therefore could not see a dentist, psychologist, PCP, or any other type of doctor growing up. Until the year 2011 when Affordable Health Care Act kicked in, there were hundreds of thousands of uninsured children in Oregon .. meaning when they had a health problem, they were denied medical care most of the time.
Oregon just so happens to also have the worst graduation rates .. 70% of disabled kids drop out of school because the services push them out and don't have services for them, and 40% of regular kids drop out.
Compare that to Finland with 95% graduation rate!
In America they also prefer to "drug" kids with medications for mental disorders they don't have, rather than to fix the underlining cause of their problems, which is often times rooted in their homes, poverty, and lack of services and infrastructure for them to succeed in.
Those medications cause IQ drops, autism, brain damage, and prevent learning and fail to actually correct kids/adults problems.
In most of those European countries they also have social housing programs (for example, housing is free in Germany and you also get free basic income, health care, plus education as mentioned before). In America, if you can't afford the sky high rent, you're probably going to be homeless and completely desolate, stressed out wondering the streets or if you're lucky in a bed bug infested ghetto homeless shelter with crap food and dirty insides (they serve people expired food at most of these places).
So the author missed one thing. It does appear the problem is linked to poverty. Because America and those other countries have vastly different systems. Poverty means way different things in America compared to European countries. In America they expect you to "pay for everything out of pocket" but if you cannot do that, you do not get free service drop ins. The rich therefore are the only ones who can afford to properly raise their children in America because they have the money for private schools, private services, tutors, private doctors, private lawyers, leisure, exploration, etc; everyone else suffers and rots. But in Europe, basic services and living needs are free to the poor.
The only way to fix this is to adopt a new United States constitution perhaps based on the one from South Africa, as some US Supreme Court justices indicated was a model replacement for our own. Other countries are already built with better constitutions, as after World War II President Roosevelt sent aids to European/foreign countries and helped build in economic rights into their new constitutions. The United States was to get a new Bill of Rights 2 with economic rights, but when Roosevelt died prematurely, his work was successfully subverted in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The problem with the United States is purely it's shitty geared for the wealthy and rich constitution.
We don't even have the right to live in dignity, as other nations have. We have no right to basic income. No right to medica
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Finland has a revolutionary system with three teachers per class and 20 student caps
I wonder where this three teachers per class idea comes from, I've never heard anything of the sort, and I'm Finnish and have gone through said system. There is one teacher per class, sometimes an assistant, and two teachers per class in cases where the class size is very big. Because of cutbacks, we've had to stuff as many kids into a classroom as we can -- Finland is not doing too well at the moment when it comes to government finances.
But the system does have a lot of strengths, among other things the fa
Yet another academic propaganda post (Score:3)
Lets compare the US to socialist countries in areas that it supposedly doesn't do as well in, and then make poorly causated links between success and levels of applied socialism. It is never that simple. The US spends more money per student than just about every other country in the world. The problem isn't money or access.
Yet another academic propaganda post implying socialism as the answer. I am sick of these.
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Actually, the debate is over the definition of equality. The US traditionally defines it as equal opportunity while europe's is equal outcome.
Cause, effect (Score:3)
So there is a correlation between low IQ and poverty, more so in the USA than elsewhere. But which is the cause and which the resulting effect?
In countries without a mobile class structure, high or low IQ has much less effect on an individuals than in the USA. Your destiny depends on your ancestry and inherited position. In the USA, people are free to rise or sink to an economic level defined by their individual capabilities. The smart become wealthy, the stupid sink into poverty. The end result gives the same correlation between poverty and IQ, but for widely different reasons.
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So much beating around the bush... (Score:3)
But we climbed the *#!@ out of there as fast as we could, because that's why we came to the US: to do well. We came with ambitions, with the belief that education was one thing the "man", whether it's a Soviet government or oppressive oligarchy, could not take away from you. Not doing well in school simply was not an option. My mother get her degree and my father got a decent job at a factory. While my parents certainly did well for themselves, the next generation, like myself, we did even better. I can say from my limited exposure to the education system, at least here in NY, is that very, very, very few of my classmates had the same ambitions. In fact, most would have seen me as being aggressively competitive but in my eyes and my parents I was only allowed to see myself as still not trying hard enough. I admit that half of my class mates were brighter than me, but I'm sorry to say that few of them tried half as hard nor did as well.
If every kid had that ambition you'd have to be scared of what the US could do instead of can't do. Unfortunately it's my observation that many kids *and* their adult parents here in the US lack any self control. They are far too wrapped up in finding the next source of entertainment than setting up a future for themselves, family, and country. Be it TV, alcohol, music, fame, partying, drugs, games, and sports (yes, I said sports, let your verbal abuse fly!). There's nothing wrong with any of those things are just fine per se, as long as they're done in moderation.
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blah blah unions blah blah leftism blah blah
And this stupid attitude is the problem. The US is the most right wing Western country, and that is the reason why there is such inequality of opportunity - the unions, if anything, are too weak, not too strong.
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Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Most people who put up those kinds of TV numbers don't actually watch it for five hours. The TV is just always on while they're home and doing other things.
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Interesting)
The TV is just always on while they're home and doing other things.
I was listening to NPR, and the interviewee mentioned that her research showed that for 40% of American children, the TV was on, and visible, during all three meals.
So, yes, Americans watch a lot of TV, but is there any evidence that watching TV lowers IQ? I would suspect that the causation is the other way around.
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You sayin that American TV might be BAD for kids? I think there might be laws against asserting that. If not, there probably will be.
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Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Interesting)
Family emphasis on scholastics outweigh anything else.
Several studies, described in Freakonomics and elsewhere, found that this is not true. Parental attitudes make surprisingly little difference. Who the parents are, makes far more difference that what the parents do. Family income, and the IQ of the biological parents (but not adoptive parents) makes much more difference than reading to your kids, helping them with homework, etc.
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Hmmm... True. But consider this: Freakonomics was talking about overall IQ, where genetics dominates. But this article is saying that, taking into account the genetics, poverty puts them at the low-end of the IQ window. So taking into account the genetics, within that IQ window, perhaps family emphasis on scholastics does outweight anything else. To know this, we would need to correlate family emphasis on scholastics, poverty, and IQ while controlling for for genetics.
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Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure European unions operate the same way American ones do. For one thing much of Europe doesn't have a political system where influence is correlated to forking over cash to politicians. Not nearly to the same extent anyway. Meaning they get to spend contributions toward collective bargaining.
Having said that, I guess some of the above posts are just reflexive "unions baad" bleats.
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I'm not even sure unions exist to serve their constituents. It seems they exist to take money from their members, to be used to increase the power of the union leadership, who only care about themselves.
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Re: Schooling, perhaps? (Score:4, Insightful)
False. My wife is a teacher. She interviewed at several private schools. The pay is awful, and the facilities are often not as nice as public schools. Don't confuse expensive school with high teacher pay. Parental involvement is what matters most.
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:4, Informative)
Schools without unions are private, meaning they get lots more money than public schools
Charter schools are seldom unionized. They are publicly funded, and often receive less per student than public schools. They also are not allowed to select their students, and must take anyone who applies, ether on a first-applied-first-admitted basis, or by lottery.
Private school teachers are paid more than public school teachers
Nonsense. Most private school teachers are paid significantly less than public school teachers.
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Each charter school is different though. The point is they get to make up their own charter. They aren't required to follow the same rules as public schools, though they do remain public schools. I suppose they could have a union if they wanted, though I doubt the school boards would like that.
If private schools pay less then it's different than when my family were teachers. But either way it's not a lot of pay and you don't take the job for the money. And definitely not for the lousy retirement plan (
Ug, this is the most loaded post (Score:3)
1. They're mostly filled with upper class or rich kids who can afford tuition. These kids have private tutors, stay at home moms that drive them to school and make breakfast, clean, violence free living spaces, etc, etc. This is what people are referring to when they use the word "privileged".
2. The few low income kids that are there have behave like angles and keep their grades up or get booted out. Imagine how much better the public school's sc
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This doesn't happen as much as hysteria claims. Teachers are a part of the union and teachers *do* want the best for the children. No teacher would take such a lousy low paying job like this if they didn't care about the children. Yes, the unions have problems but the unions are also vital because the school boards often try their hardest to ruin things even more.
The biggest problem I see is white flight. All the rich and upper middle class people have moved their kids out of public schools. Maybe they
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Well, it works in developed countries, the US still hasn't managed to rise to either civilised or developed.
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Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
The US is the first empire to go from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilisation.
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Ohh, that sounds like a well researched and thoughtful comment. Did some teacher give you bad grade one day to leave a chip on your shoulder?
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Interesting)
a good 1/2 of my friends are teachers
every single one of them complains about how they are stopped from doing the right thing because of the unions
bad teachers cant be fired, and good teachers are pushed to the "good schools"
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unions do good and bad things. The question is do you throw it all out because of the bad things, then let the teachers work for near poverty wages? Which is not hyperbole, the school boards are always trying to cut back anywhere they can.
I grew up with teachers. My family was pretty conservative and anti-union. But when it came time for contract negotations my anti-union father was out there on the picket lines when they were being shafted by the board. And that's because the unions are the only thing we have in any form that protects rights of workers and that can balance the power of the employers. For every bad thing a union has done there are even more bad things the employers and governments do.
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And if you get rid of the unions then what protection do teachers have left? Remember that the school boards, administrators, and politicians do not care about the interests of the kids either. If they could put 60 students in one classroom they would because it would save the cost of one underpaid teacher.
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The enormous benefits given to the very wealthy, the privileges for the very wealthy here, are way beyond those of other comparable societies and are part of the ongoing class war. Take a look at CEO salaries. CEOs are no more productive or brilliant here than they are in Europe, but the pay, bonuses, and enormous power they get here are out of sight. They’re probably a drain on the economy, and they become even more powerful when they are able to gain control of policy decisions." -- Noam Chomsky
In the USA it is considered completely normal for the big end of town to finance and control policy decisions, either through legitimate channels, or with "hooker and blow" deals. The moment another grassroots group, like a Union, has coordination or funding to present a defensible point of view, it is considered a travesty.
All these other countries in the study also have healthcare, public transport, and so forth. The USA is the lone wolf. I live in a third world country and the similarities to the USA are striking. Here we have powerful elite can do what they want, there's a tiny middle class and most people get shit on. Of course a missing middle class means a missing consumer base, so the business interests of the elite are mostly export oriented, just like the USA with its IT services. And IT products/services is arguably the only thing currently keeping the USA afloat.
My wife, who is usually pretty open-minded, having grown up in a house without basic amenities like running water, was shocked when we visited San Francisco. There was one particular street made entirely of shit - people just shitting all over the road everywhere. Not at all what was expected, after having visited some other first world nations, previously. The expectation was the the USA would be like these, and yet given its wealth and image, even better. Nope. Streets made of human shit.
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
My wife, who is usually pretty open-minded, having grown up in a house without basic amenities like running water, was shocked when we visited San Francisco. There was one particular street made entirely of shit - people just shitting all over the road everywhere. Not at all what was expected, after having visited some other first world nations, previously. The expectation was the the USA would be like these, and yet given its wealth and image, even better. Nope. Streets made of human shit.
Lucky you! You got there just in time for the annual Shit Festival.
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Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Informative)
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Wonder why Wisconsin Democrats when absolutely ape shit when Walker got rid of that mandatory union membership and the funneling of those dues to Democrats?
Yes, where did Saint Walker send all that money instead? Where indeed?
Hint: To his own supporters.
But hey, maybe he can teach Rick Perry to remember a list of more than three names!
Oh wait, Rick's out, and we've got Trump left.
Huh, I wonder who he'll feed?
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Sorry, but that's crap. Some of the worst schools in the U.S. are in states that have bans on teacher unions, e.g. most of the American South. Others are in some parts of heavily unionized states, such as California. And some of the best public schools are also in other pa
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever notice how politician's kids go to private schools?
It couldn't possibly be because they've systematically done everything they could to destroy the public schools could it?
Nah.
Re:Schooling, perhaps? (Score:5, Informative)
Twelve of the thirteen states with the greatest poverty are solid red states where the teachers unions have been curbed or eliminated. These are also twelve of the thirteen states with the worst schools.
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Blame the teachers, but no one ever blames the school administration and school boards. The teacher's unions are there to protect their interests against that of the administrators. They already have some of the lowest paying professional jobs.
Re:Um... (Score:5, Informative)
The study accounted for genes. Genes predict the window, but only in USA, socioeconomic factors predict where in the window you're likely to be.
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They do: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
Assuming that is accurate. There is also a reason why asians are considered for affirmative action: their average income is larger than whites (as well as average years of education if I recall correctly).Meh. Ghettos in the US I'd say probably does the correlation, old Chris Rock joke something like "Blacks are only in like 4 places, NY, Atlanta, Chicago (forget the other))". Not quite true but close enough to effect the trend I think. if inner city is poorer and w
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Re:Um... (Score:4, Insightful)
I live in London, England and my daughter is the only white English girl in her class at an outstanding school. There are lots and lots of people of African descent living in England, they are as bright as the rest of us, if not brighter. The parent post is just racist twaddle.
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2% of the population is not "a lot".
On the other hand, this can be stratified even further between those that are ex-slaves and those that are not as well as those that have escaped from the ghetto entirely. You could even break this down in general between poor non-immigrants and poor immigrants.
I would not expect the trailer parks to do any better than the ghettos.
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How egoistical of you! I, for one, still remember flaming Leftists arguing for the Greater Good and the Common Good... Sad, really sad, as one Republican candidate for President would say...
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Teaching to the test is a very valid educational method - IF the test is any good. Unfortunately, this is the Final Exam of the course called Life that we should be preparing them for... and we aren't doing such a good job of it.
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Re:75% of intelligence is inherited (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the US system reinforces poverty - schools are funded from local sources and poor districts provide poor education. Add to this a high rate of de-facto segregation.
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Citations needed.
Rather gloomy. What makes you so convinced? All I found was talk of potentially dangerous [go.com]...
Relax, pal — a town spending less money on water-supply has more money left for public schools, has it not?
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Your comment is excessively extreme. Flint is an outlier...admittedly not as much of an outlier as one would wish. And many rich children are also poisoning themselves, admittedly usually by choice and in different ways.
I, personally, suspect that poorer US citizens feed their children more junk food than wealthier ones do. That would probably be sufficient environmental degradation to explain most of the statistics.
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Indeed, at most, you can accuse the US system of not helping the dumb become rich(er). However, because the wealth is relative, that's the same thing as preventing the smart from achieving their full potential
It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between wealth and IQ (and bonus points for showing that correlation doesn't exist or does exist in European countries as well).
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Is it? I wonder, why TFA — which you made me read — does not even have the word "excercise" in it...
It is. It's not in TFA, though.
Or, maybe, they are smart — and leave the safe-but-low-paying academia jobs for the much more rewarding private sector?
Most academics eventually make it into private industry.
Re:75% of intelligence is inherited (Score:4, Insightful)
We see the same "sorting" effect in Canada, where being the child of well-to-do parents is absolutely wonderful, and leads to success in business and industry, roughly commensurate with the sum of (intelligence && opportunity). Starting out the child of poor parents gets you no respect, and people assume you're stupid.
The smartest three people in my high schools were a poor kid with parents from the Ukraine, me, with mostly white middle-class parents and the son of a successful businessman. In business success over the years, the businessman's kid came first, then me, then the poor kid. We all did better than the merely not-dumb folks, and really really well by comparison to the dumb kids, with one exception...
Some immensely likeable dumb kids went into sales and did better than any of us (;-))
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Re:75% of intelligence is inherited (Score:4, Insightful)
From your own link, Mr. Deepshit:
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Far more likely, the poor in the US live in high density highly polluted environments ie inner suburbs where loaded up with lead from traffic jams and those environments remain polluted. This in conjunction with poor diets, dominated by cheap junk food, results in double the impact. This added to cut backs in planned parent hood and you have the recipe for failure.
Theoretical intelligence is theoretical outcome and when it comes to reality, the environment in which people live will dramatically subvert g
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It also doesn't help that they have a culture that is specifically anti-assimilation. Doing well and trying to fit into the larger culture and be a success is considered "selling out". That's probably one key difference right there between blacks in the US and blacks in the UK.
Liberals telling them that they're helpless victims all the time probably doesn't help.
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The crux of your argument is incorrect probably due to either a misreading of the article or an intentional skewing of what the article is saying to make it say what you want it to.
From your article's introduction (the only place this is mentioned): "Researchers have believed for some time that intellect is inherited with studies suggesting that up to 75 per cent of IQ is genetic". The bold text being what you missed or are glossing over.
In summary, there is no consensus on how much IQ is inherited and you
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Supposedly, 75% of intelligence is determined by genes [telegraph.co.uk]
Only in young children it goes down to 40% by the end of school and 0% by the end of university.
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Spain also doesn't have dirt poor 3rd world displaced farmers that have a great work ethic but simply don't see the value of literacy or a lot of formal education.
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That's the long and short of it. Until and unless we get competition in primary schooling, poor kids are going to keep getting ignored.
So are they not shit in those other countries? If not, what's responsible for that?
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Depends on which country you're talking about.
-jcr
I'm talking about all of them. Are there any in which government schools aren't shit? If so, for each of those countries, what are they doing differently that makes their schools not shit?
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How would competition in schools work? Are midyear transfers a frequent thing? Is there no priority to remain where you are, so that children in a good school have to recompete with people fleeing a bad school every year? And if so, how. If not, how does the good school get transfers in at any real rate? Or is a lottery at Kindergarden the determinate factor. If you move to a new place, are you guaranteed everywhere with a spot is a bad school?
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You are laboring under the misapprehension that all US states do education the same way they apparently do in our part of the country. Students in some states get world class educations; if Massachusetts were a country it would be tied with Japan [forbes.com] for student math achievement.
Massachusetts does have charter schools, but they're a relatively small part of the system. Although Massachusetts charter schools perform well, so do public schools there on average. Only about 3% of students attend charter schools
Re:'murkans r stoopid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if the data said we're stupid then that'd mean we're stupid -- even if we wouldn't like to accept that. But that's not the data is saying.
What the data says is that growing up poor in the US limits your intellectual development in a way it doesn't other countries. Since this is based on siblings-raised-apart data this excludes the explanation that poor people in America are poor because they're inherently stupider than people who are wealthier. Since this discrepancy between siblings raised apart doesn't happen in similarly advanced countries, it is not something that is inherent in poverty, either.
Provided that the data stand up to scrutiny, this indicates that America squanders at least some of its intellectual potential.
Re:'murkans r stoopid? (Score:5, Insightful)
it is not something that is inherent in poverty, either.
No that is the exact opposite conclusion actually. It has EVERYTHING to do with REAL poverty.
The problem with comparing the US to other advanced countries is that with the social services and money that is spent on them in those countries, even when you are born into a poor family in Sweden lets say, you are immediately and profoundly more wealthy than your American counterpart. This wealth isn't judged in dollars, cents and purchasing power however in excellent public transportation, strong workers rights, disability programs, top notch education for all, excellent first world healthcare, retirement benefits and more.
Societal wealth makes all the difference here. A better comparison to America would be a country like Saudi Arabia. You have a handful of disgustingly wealthy people who control almost all of the actionable power and wealth in society, a single digit percentage of REAL middle class (and I mean the real definition of middle class not this bogus American definition that was created for political expediency). If you are REALLY middle class then you are afforded modern conveniences and a level of financial, retirement, educational and healthcare security to where you don't have to frequently worry too hard about being poor in the near or long term future.
Also just like Saudi Arabia, the rest of the society is so broke they're broken, so poor they can't even pay attention.
Re: 'murkans r stoopid? (Score:3)
I've lived it dude. I came from poverty in the EU. I went to bad schools because that's what we could afford. I walked and later biked to school because we couldn't afford the bus and we maintained chickens for food. And yes we had government support for food and housing. Electric was only paid up to 100W/h during the day and 500W/h at night (dual metering is standard there). Gas subsidy was calculated to maintain 18C in the house.
In the US families on government support have at least 1 working car, a decen
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I'm not sure the school meals pay a very large role, they have that in the US as well (but an argument could be made about the difference in nutritional value of the school food...).
The likelihood of anyone suffering from malnutrition in Australia, Germany, England, Sweden, or the Netherlands are very close to 0%, no matter how poor you are. This is not true for the US. I'm not talking about just getting enough calories, but getting the necessary nutrients to not limit brain development.
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No.... the IQ test as an intelligence test is biased in favor of people with certain experiences, showing lower IQs for Poverty, but only in certain regions, is more evidence against the validity of IQ tests as a measure of fluid intelligence.
This reminds me of a friend from Philly. He had a really smart kid who lost points on one of those standardized tests because he had no clue what a "fire hydrant" was. In Philly where he grew up, those were "fireplug"s. His kid had no chance on that. Basically, the "verbal" parts of those standardized tests are dialect tests. If your native dialect isn't American Midlands, your kids are at a disadvantage.
Note that the native dialects for people from particularly poverty-stricken places tend to be pretty d