If you thought “The Bell Curve” was crap…

16 comments »

1. I’m far from being a Charles Murray fan, and I haven’t read the article you excerpt, but I don’t read this as meaning that grade maximization depends on IQ (very problematic, as you note). What he is saying is that intelligence correllates with ability to master conplex concepts:

   “It is not within his power to learn to follow an exposition written beyond a limited level of complexity, any more than it is within my power to follow a proof in the American Journal of Mathematics.”

   We all have our talents and abilities, and the point is to find out what they are and maximize them. I would argue that the problem with schools is that we have tried to categorize kids, usually in trying to train them all for higher education.

   Certainly the less intelligent can maximize their abilities and make their way, but we do ourselves no service when we pretend that all humans are born with equal ability, and it is the job of educators to bring out the genius within.

   Comment by R. Stanton Scott — January 16, 2007 @ 6:54 pm

2. 50% of children are below average intelligence? That’s unpossible! That’s conplex!

   Comment by CatManDu — January 16, 2007 @ 7:32 pm

3. I am a high school math teacher who teaches in a poverty-stricken district. And everything Murray says is pretty much true.

   It is also completely irrelevant. Since we mostly target around the 35th percentile (on a good day).

   The problems in American public schools come from other places than students being above or below average.

   The primary problems as I see them (and actually being there I ought to know) are:

   1. We lump the kids all together, as if there were no differnces in intelligence or ability to learn, and,

   2. 21st century students have little or no respect for teachers, authority, school, or themselves, and therefore are not motivated to try.

   All the money, all the theories, all the standardized tests in the world, are not going to make any difference as long as those two issues are not addressed. End of story.

   Comment by Biff Usually — January 16, 2007 @ 7:46 pm

4. “Half of all children are below average in intelligence. We do not live in Lake Wobegon.” both misses Garrison Keillor’s sly joke and confuses mean and median. That is as meaningless as saying that if you are six feet tall then half your body is below the middle. The search for g - the supposed single number that allows us to stack rank everyone from smartest to dumbest - was Charles Spearman’s folly. The general intelligence factor is more widely accepted out of research psychology than within and is probably second only to Darwinism in being misconstrued to justify racism, cultural imperialism, eugenics, and other social evils. Even standard educational theory prefers a multiple factor model over a single factor model. The SAT, the prime measure in secondary education today, measures three factors Math, Critical Reading and Writing. Measuring success of education is a difficult problem that experts in that field still struggle with, they do not need crypto-racist rhetoric like this confusing the discussion. For an excellent book about g and the follies attempted at finding it please read Stephen Jay Gould’s _The Mismeasure of Man_ Which he revisited after that atrocious _The Bell Curve_ updating it to address yet another wave of bunk.

   Comment by Joshua — January 16, 2007 @ 10:05 pm

5. Greg - I’m thinking you kinda went too far to the other side of this one. Look at the comments here; both R. Stanton Scott AND Biff Usually are correct. And while I also haven’t read the particular article you’re referencing (I got here from TMW, it’s late, and I’m tired), I think the generic point that - maybe - Mr. Murray is making is this: NOT everyone can grow up to be President of The United States, so let’s all cut the bullshit, and stop telling lies to kids.
   I mean, think about what the current policy of “every dumbass is equal to the next one” has gotten us: a commander in chief who has the significant majority of the people on the planet (both those that support his country, and those that hate his country), and more than 2/3 of his own people, saying his latest “plans” won’t work, and that he is a psychotic idiot - but remember, kiddies, ANYONE can become President - so he’s just going to cram his “plans” down everyone’s throats! :-D And that’s just the tip of the “Aw, crap it just melted” iceberg. ‘Cause HE’S the Preznit.

   I’m not saying let’s stop teaching ANYONE. I’m saying, lets stop the bullcrap and realize that some of us are smarter than others at certain things - and that makes all of us inherently UNequal. That does not mean that ANY one person or group should be in control over everyone else. It means, if you’re mechanically inclined, great! And we need to teach kids that isn’t just lip service, or some feel good BS. After all, without those who are mechanically inclined, the college doctorate-holder won’t have anyone to take their car to when it breaks. Without the service and retail inclined, their wait at the drive thru WON’T be “fast” food. And when they go home (back to their parents house, ’cause they have $60,000 in student loan debt), without the horticulturally gifted illegal aliens, they’d actually have to do some manual labor and mow the lawn themselves.

   The truth is, some people ARE more stupid than others. But part of the reason, Biff usually, that people don’t tend to have respect for each other these days is that consequences are not administered, in too many places, by hardly anyone.

   I used to call some of my teachers by their first names, back in the day. But this was after I had earned their respect - and after they had earned mine. For some very, very few teachers or Professors, I NEVER called them what they preferred - and that was a consequence of being a poor teacher. I also made sure they knew that too - and for most of the teachers I’ve ever known, not reaching a student is the most personal form of failure, and one that sticks with them for the longest period of time. The carrot was their joy in teaching, and getting me to see things they wanted me to see. The stick was me doing the one thing they didn’t want me to do.

   And now, I manage people and information for a living, in an entertaining way.

   That is my talent. I’m smart at doing that. I suck at being brief. I’m a brevity moron. And I don’t mind people telling me that either. That’s the stick to beat me with, in one corner of my life. People seem to think “carrots” and “sticks” are separate items in the universe, but without both, the system fails. The current educational system in the U.S. is FILLED with carrots - but all the sticks have been taken away. And then folks wonder why we have an idiot with the IQ of a three-year old running the country into the ground…

   I say, my grandfather had it right: call a spade, a spade, call a rake, a rake, and call a hoe, a hoe. And if a kid is a goddamned moron, then call him that too. But the likelihood is, the kid is brilliant at something - so I’d hate to be the one calling him a generic moron. Be specific. “Billy - no offense, but you suck at staying inside the lines. Your color choices are WAY better than Jasmine’s though. And since she can’t pick colors for shit, how ’bout the two of you get together and then maybe you can draw pictures the way you say you want to!”

   Carrots are easy to put on paper, and use as quantifiable bragging posts. Sticks are harder to identify, and have to be used just right to get them to work. So politicians use carrots - but we real people need to learn to use sticks better.

   Comment by Silversmith — January 16, 2007 @ 11:06 pm

6. Didn’t look at Murray’s article…so, you know…

   I agree with Biff. I am also a teacher…and some kids ARE better at some things than others. That’s great. That’s fine. As a teacher, I will do my best by each child.

   What stinks is that I’m considered a failure by our current system if a chiild comes in below 50%. On any bell curve about 50% of all who take any test will be above or below median. Schools are set up to fail…or appear to fail.

   Kids know more in many ways than they ever have before. NCLB has hurt education, but the thinking Murray seems to describe runs against the rush to vouchers—which is what NCLB is about. )

   Murray may be a bad guy—I have no idea. But consider his idea again. He does have a point.

   Comment by Bill — January 17, 2007 @ 5:49 am

7. Didn’t look at Murray’s article…so, you know…

   I agree with Biff. I am also a teacher…and some kids ARE better at some things than others. That’s great. That’s fine. As a teacher, I will do my best by each child.

   What stinks is that I’m considered a failure by our current system if a chiild comes in below 50%. On any bell curve about 50% of all who take any test will be above or below median. Schools are set up to fail…or appear to fail.

   Kids know more in many ways than they ever have before. NCLB has hurt education, but the thinking Murray seems to describe runs against the rush to vouchers—which is what NCLB is about. )

   Murray may be a bad guy—I have no idea. But consider his idea again. He does have a point.

   Comment by Bill — January 17, 2007 @ 5:50 am

8. I agree with Silversmith. Except for the moron part. Some of the most “gifted” people I have ever met were the “idiots” in shop class.
   A person should not be considered below average just because they cannot solve an algebra equation. Have you ever been in a car garage after some prick in a BMW condescendingly drops of his car to get fixed, not having a clue what the problem is? When that prick leaves, stick around and see who calls whom the moron. I envy people who can just listen to a car and know what is wrong with it.
   No, the problem is we have WAY too many people running this country (on ALL levels) who think conformity is the only way to live. Schools only “teach to the test” (my wife works in education), there is no room for shop classes, or music or, non-existant-god forbid, art instruction. Sheeple who have only the talent to conform HATE creative people. This country is going down the shitter because so many believe that only after you have made obscene amounts of money will you be happy.

   Comment by mark — January 17, 2007 @ 5:54 am

9. With respect to the teachers in the comments here. My mother-in-law is also a teacher in a low income district, so low in fact that 90% of the children receive free and reduced lunches.

   Many of these children have parents working 2 or even 3 jobs and the only warn meal they get is at school.

   compare this to children of middle to upper income who have parents that send them to pre-schools, and who are there for them and help them learn.

   which of these children will perform better on school tests?

   Now tell me how do you we know the potential of the first child when they have never been given the chance or the resources to succeed.

   Comment by mindtron — January 17, 2007 @ 6:32 am

10. There’s a very telling line in the Murray quote, saying of a child that is slightly below average (49th percentile):

    “It is not within his power to learn to follow an exposition written beyond a limited level of complexity, any more than it is within my power to follow a proof in the American Journal of Mathematics. In both cases, the problem is not that we have not been taught enough, but that we are not smart enough.”

    Now I haven’t myself tried to follow any proofs from Mathematics journals, and I’d probably have a hard time doing so, primarily because I don’t know the many of the common symbols that are used. Most nonmathematicians would have that problem, but, absent serious impairment in cognition or memory, that is something that can be addressed by education. There will probably also be reliance on theorems that are known to have been proven elsewhere, but again these can be learned.

    Beyond this, such proofs are going to rely on the application of a number of basic rules of inference. Now constructing novel proofs with these rules can be difficult, requiring above average intelligence (at least in some respects) and also a certain element of creativity. But Murray didn’t say he couldn’t be taught to write an article in a mathematics journal, he said he couldn’t be taught to follow one.

    This means either that he is incapable of grasping and applying basic rules of inference, or that he lacks the cognitive capacity to keep track of multiple applications of such rules even when the steps are written out in front of him. If true, either of these possibilities would go a long way toward explaining his unwarranted inferences in The Bell Curve and in the quote above.

    He now faces something of a dilemma. Either he is right about this case, in which case he is an unreliable source for explaining the logical implications of anything (including the statistics he uses), or else he is wrong about this, which suggests he’s an unreliable source about the relationship between education and ‘intelligence.’ Now where he gives actual arguments (I didn’t see any in the part you quoted), those will stand and fall on their own, since a spelled out argument shows us the basis for an inference that is independent of the person giving the argument.

    On the other hand, where we are forced to rely upon him as an expert source (either because we don’t understand the statistics he uses, or because he doesn’t give us enough information) Murray himself has given us ample reason to discount his ‘expert’ testimony.

    Comment by Derek — January 17, 2007 @ 7:54 am

11. Silversmith wrote:

    …part of the reason…that people don’t tend to have respect for each other these days is that consequences are not administered, in too many places, by hardly anyone.

    Very true. This is clear especially in the role models poverty-stricken children see; athletes, entertainers, and politicians.

    mindtron wrote:

    With respect to the teachers in the comments here. My mother-in-law is also a teacher in a low income district, so low in fact that 90% of the children receive free and reduced lunches.
    Many of these children have parents working 2 or even 3 jobs and the only warn meal they get is at school.

    This is quite common. The district where I teach is one where the social services people would send food home with the children for the weekends if the authorities would let them.

    These sorts of facts reinforce my point, which I realize I didn’t clearly state before. The point is, no one is addressing the real issues. Until the students come to school in the mental, physical, and emotional condition necessary for learning, they will not learn no matter what theories, experts, or tests are thrown at them. And even then, unless we find a new fundamental paradigm to teach from, even that won’t matter.

    Comment by Biff Usually — January 17, 2007 @ 11:08 am

12. Murray’s 2% right, in the sense that some of the Get Tough on Stupidity initiatives (MCAS in Mass, NCLB in USA) posit the ridiculous goal of 100% passing, even children who are severely disabled, whose parents have a goal of getting them into an Independent Living group home when they grow up. That’s just insane; once you get to the 2nd percentile and below, there really are limits.

    On-the-other-hand, almost everyone, even the quite disabled, can have their outcomes improved by “expending resources” (hiring good people, not overworking them, being sure that the parents get good advice). Murray is a vile asshole, who equates not being able to learn calculus, with not being worth helping. It might be different if we were a poor country, but we are not.

    It’s also not just about improving the lot of the bottom of the curve, either. When schools, or schools in an area, decide that something is important, they can do much better at the top. 3 towns in Massachusetts qualified as many kids for the Math Olympiad last year, as the entire state of Florida. This happens both because of an incredible concentration of talent, but also because all these schools have math teams, they compete, and the kids who do so (unbelievable to this graduate of a football-centered FL high school) get respect for it.

    And the middle matters, as well. My cousin, a contractor, once grumbled to me about the difficulty of finding workers who could reliably do carpentry arithmetic. Whether Joe 49th-percentile makes a good carpenter or not, might depend on whether someone cared to go over fractions a third or fourth or fifth time with him.

    Comment by dr2chase — January 17, 2007 @ 11:22 am

13. A lot of good points in this thread.

    Look, the goals in basic education aren’t that high. Basic arithmetic and even algebra isn’t that difficult. Reading and writing aren’t hard, barring a condition like dyslexia. Spelling English can be a bitch, but learning how to look up words isn’t. Basic science isn’t hard to understand.

    It’s not like getting an A in high school is only achievable by the very brightest kids. Anybody of average intelligence should be able to get a B or an A in just about any subject, they just might have to work harder than the brightest kids to do it.

    However, given bad home situations, improper nutrition, emotional trauma, other students being disruptive, a general anti-intellectualism prevalent in our culture, underfunded schools, crappy teachers, etc. etc. even a lot of kids with above average intelligence underachieve.

    I am constantly amazed at how ignorant many people even WITH college educations are about what I consider basic frickin’ knowledge. English majors who can’t punctuate, for example. People retiling their floors who can’t calculate how much tile they’re gonna need. Cashiers who can’t calculate what a 20% deposit on something is. It’s really ridiculous!

    An example of basic skills that people need is in a tile warehouse. In order to count how many square feet of a given item you have, you need to be able to figure out how many pieces, boxes, and crates multiply by the area of 1 piece to give you the result. Yes, you can use a calculator, but you need to understand the principle behind what you’re doing. Easy to do, easily done by many immigrants with little formal education. But, surprisingly hard for many American born applicants to grasp.

    The rampant innumeracy in particular really gets me. If the average citizen understood percentages, the credit card companies and politicians wouldn’t be able to get over half of the crap they pull.

    The thing is, most people are pretty smart when it comes to things that interest them. Guys who do nothing but play Madden football have a much better grasp of play-calling than I do. Shit, even if you’re going to be a drug dealer, you’ve got to be able to to fractions, keep accounts, a little metric/English conversion.

    Anyway, that’s my little rant.

    Comment by dAVE — January 17, 2007 @ 1:34 pm

14. I was on my way to bed when I sent my last post… Please let me be clear that most teachers are not in the game of deciding which kids will do well in life. We just try to do what we can.

    Achievment is a big deal and it drives education. NCLB has made it the central goal of schooling. The factors that contribute to individual achievement are vast and complicated, and I won’t pretend to really understand how they all play together. Income is a factor. Getting hit by a parent is another. Self-esteem, personal goals, interests, teacher quality, community are big factors too. And so is talent, which in educational terms might include IQ. This debate stems from the fact that achievment in the political world is marked by test scores.

    When I said IQ really matters, it was couched in this debate. Tests are such that High IQ relates directly to higher scores on what is tested.

    I do not think achievment should be most important goal of schooling. Preparing children to be able to discover some kind of truth should be, in my opinion. Our schools can’t really do this now, because a teacher’s job depends upon teaching the same thing to everyone as if we were all the same. “You have no interest in math? Too bad, learn calculus. It’s real important.”

    The real debate should be centered around why we teach what we teach in the way we teach. If you look closely, you will see that children are very prepared to be cubical workers when they leave school. Is that good? Informed cubical workers? Is that a good goal? It is in some countries.

    And then, certain schools will always score lower overall because of a complex web of internal and external factors beyond their control. But—low scores and failing schools send a message to voters, “Public schools are failing, especially the ones poor kids go to!” OUTRAGE! If we could only send poor children to private schools…then the everything would be so….

    The debate is much bigger than IQ.

    Comment by Bill — January 17, 2007 @ 3:06 pm

15. Some people are just “inferior” so we shouldn’t waste our time trying to help them. It’s a bullshit idea regardless of where you try to apply it …

    Actually, I call these people “Republicans.”

    Comment by Cakesniffer — January 17, 2007 @ 10:39 pm

16. It is obvious that half of a population must be below average and the other half above average. The goal of education should be to help students to learn to the best of their ability while allowing them to nurture their talents. Nobody has to be good at everything. One merely have to be better than average in the field he chooses to earn a living.

    Comment by emre — January 20, 2007 @ 2:45 pm

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