<p>barrons - thanks for that link, I read through the whole thing. It does confirm that genetics is about half of the equation and environment is about half.</p>
<p>My sister’s kids both tested around 90% on standardized tests but grew up poor with lousy, unstimulating daycare. They both graduated HS near the bottom of the class, more of a dollar correlation that an IQ one. They (and my sister) have managed to scratch their way comfortably into the middle class without ever passing through that 18-and-off-to-college maturation step we typically discuss here.</p>
<p>On a separate note, the relatives in France are getting a far superior public education compared to my children in a wealthy American suburb. There are lots of other reasons not to move to France.</p>
<p>Just because a one party state can govern in a way that is effective at stimulating fast economic growth in a low or middle income country does not necessarily mean that it will. Obviously, some do and some do not.</p>
<p>Of course, the disadvantage of a one party state is that if you are among those who will lose out due to the policies enacted to maximize economic growth, you are less likely to be listened to (or may be punished for complaining).</p>
It’s trite to suggest moving to some other country, but in reality it’s not always that easy. At one point we looked into moving into Canada for work because of economic problems, and were told that one had to apply, and they would see if you had some job skill that they needed. If they already have enough “widget testers” then you’re out of luck. You can’t just pack up and move to Canada (for example) and take up a new life. I would imagine that moving to China isn’t all that straightforward either.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, high-end lectures can only go so far. What this assumes is that the students have the requisite academic skills to attend to and learn from these materials, and that the schools have the facilities to share this kind of media with students. It might seem pleasantly simple to say, “Hey, these kids aren’t learning this, so we should have them watch these supplemental lectures on their free time,” but this just doesn’t pan out when you realize that many of these same students don’t have a computer at home at which to do this, or parents who are invested enough in them to take them somewhere that does. </p>
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<p>Smart and motivated are part of the puzzle, but this alone is not enough. I’ll expand on this later. </p>
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<p>Absolutely, though I don’t know if I would go as far as to say it is society as a whole that is failing. What it comes down to, I believe, is that some people wind up in circumstances that given any level of intelligence and motivation, are overwhelmingly difficult to overcome, and those who do have other factors at play that contribute to their seemingly meteoric rise out of dire circumstances.</p>
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<p>I find it kind of funny that you draw this conclusion, when as Magnetron also pointed out, the link you shared (Wikipedia, no less) presents a lot of contrasting evidence. Some important methodological issues that are inherent in many twin studies is a restriction of range, and even then there are still significant differences between twins in these studies. Sure, IQ is partially heritable, but there are undoubtedly some environmental influences on it as well.</p>
<p>This is also predicated on the belief that IQ and success (academic and otherwise) are strictly correlated, which is false. For example, when Terman performed his famous longitudinal study of extremely gifted children, many ultimately wound up being pretty unsuccessful, and we’re talking about people who are in the 99th percentile of the 99th percentile of intelligence. </p>
<p>While intelligence certainly does play a role in success, invariably there are environmental influences as well. Even if you look at some of the outliers who are used as evidence of an American meritocracy, when you examine their lives more closely the argument really falls apart. I’ll use myself as an example, just for kicks. So, I’m a first-generation college student of a high school dropout, teenage mom, and my dad works at a grocery store. I grew up poor, sometimes on welfare, had issues with family substance abuse, and didn’t have access to many enriching opportunities like Girl Scouts, ballet lessons, what have you because my family couldn’t afford them. In spite of these obstacles, I excelled throughout school, am paying for my own college education, scored very high on my GRE and am hopefully headed to graduate school (though this is yet to be seen, unfortunately). Seems like a pretty compelling case, right?</p>
<p>What you don’t see is the other factors in my life that played a role in my success. My mother may have been a high school dropout, but she is by all accounts very intelligent, she just had a really rough childhood and didn’t have the same opportunities that I had. While my parents may have their issues, they have also always been extremely supportive of my siblings and I academically, have attended our out of school functions such as plays and athletic events, taken an interest in our success, and all around provided the environment that we needed to succeed in spite of the other factors in our lives. Also, my grandmother was a manager at a publishing company, so I grew up in a house with literally hundreds of books to read (and read I did). It’s simple to look at the details of a person’s rise to success out of context, but I’d challenge to you find a single success story that had no other contributing environmental factors, and came down only to the grit, determination, and intelligence of the person in question. </p>
<p>If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because you may have recently read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. A lot of what I’ve said here is taken from/inspired by this book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has any sort of interest in this topic. I’d also be very interested to hear what people find problematic about it, because it overwhelmingly rang true to me but that may be shaded by my own experiences.</p>
<p>Something during the SOTU address prompted my S to mention a study he read that showed most of the gap in student achievement test results occurred not during the school year (from fall to spring) but during the SUMMER. Students in poor households fell behind during the time they were not in school, whether from lack of access to books, or dearth of enrichment activities, camps, etc.</p>
<p>Seems to be an argument for year round schools.</p>
<p>Edit: Also seems to be an argument for the position that teachers really are doing the best they can, and otherwise capable students are being hurt by a poor home environment.</p>
<p>I would think that academic 1%ers are most often oldest or only children. Economics aside, these are the kids who benefit from the most contact with their parents. I think that is a more likely factor in success. Someone on this thread said academic 1%ers were the children of economic 1%ers and quite honestly I am sick of the whole 99% obsession, but aren’t those the kids who are raised by ESL nannies? So many parents read outliers and have held their kids back a year or two or three to give them some sort of advantage in school in sports or whatever. So is ninth grade easier when you are 17 instead of 14? nyway I am going off topic. Only or oldest children, I think, is the answer.</p>
<p>As a teacher, you hit the nail on the head. The parents absolutely define how driven or hard-working their child is in school. The best teachers cannot get throught to kids who don’t but into the educational system…duh!</p>
<p>There is a very compelling argument for year-round schooling. The idea of breaks was developed back when educational reformers believed that too much schooling would overtax students and ultimately prevent them from being successful. Yet we see in countries where students are more successful than in the US, such as China and Japan, they spend much more during a day and many more days a year in school than US students. </p>
<p>There was a study by a sociologist named Karl Alexander that found that looking at scores on a standardized reading test administered at the beginning and end of each school year, broken up into lower, middle, and upper class students, that students across all classes were gaining similarly during the school year. However, the lower class students were either regressing slightly or remaining the same from one year to the next, while middle and upper class students showed gains over the summer. It may not be entirely that the school system is failing a certain subset of students, because it seems that there are gains across the board. It’s just that certain groups are falling behind in the summer while their high SES counterparts are using enriching environments at home to pull ahead. Over a lifetime of summers, it all adds up to a big difference.</p>
<p>Good idea but an unrealistic one for many poorer schools. Education starts much earlier. You can give a high school dropout a million dollar support a year and he/she won’t be able to become a math PhD student in 4 years.</p>
There might be truth in that, but don’t you think that it’s easier after the fact to look at the person’s life and say “well this contributed, or that contributed” when we might not really know the weight that those contributions actually made relative to all the other factors? In my case, for example, one might say “well her parents were very intelligent”, or “she had an adequate supply of vitamin D”, or “she got a lot of sunshine and fresh air”, or what have you. </p>
<p>Anything could be seen as a contributing environmental factor - that in itself seems rather vague to me. Wouldn’t just the fact that the person had enough food provided to survive be a “contributing environmental factor” beyond grit, determination, and intelligence?</p>
<p>I think that summers present opportunities for student enrichment in other ways and to get work experience. Not everyone becomes stupid over the summer. Don’t year round school countries have high suicide rates? Since this loss of memory doesn’t affect everyone, how about sending the ones who need it to summer school. Those are probably the ones who are poor performers in the first place, I wonder if there is a study on THAT.</p>
No argument from me. The question still stands though. Why some do and some dont? IOW, what are the necessary ingredients for development? </p>
<p>When I looked at this issue couple of decades ago, I could only find 4 countries that were in fact developing. They were and still are as rare as hens teeth. What did they have in common? They are small and rather homogeneous, follow capitalism, and have a long culture of discipline and work. (Looking from the other end, I also found 1 country that managed to undevelop herself, and the blame can be squarely placed on the leadership).</p>
<p>I think I was only partly correct of course, but it was the work of a college student after all. My fascination of this topic to this day has not changed though: How do you discover, train, and get top talent into power where they can do the most good. I personally do not think we are doing a good job here. Holistic admission, grade inflation, nonspecific admission and such are helping to obliterate the difference between the privileged and the talented, and our ruling class doesnt want it any other way. The elites are simply handmaiden, to power.</p>
<p>When I see some posters trying to derail me, I know I am hitting some raw nerves. So be it.</p>
<p>The President also wants states to require students to stay in school until they graduate or age 18. Sounds like a fine idea when you envision these students hunched over their desks learning rather than as drop-outs roaming the streets unemployed. But it’s a terrible idea when you consider that your kid and mine are going to have their education impacted by the presence of more derelicts, gang members, drug pushers, and general trouble-makers who don’t want to be in high school. And forget about the learning bit. They’ll just get warehoused at taxpayer expense in those alternative school programs where they currently put the incorrigible kids they can’t control.</p>
<p>Except in a handful of cases, getting into HYPS is indeed a meritocracy. You seem to think that HYPS is reserved for the children of one percenters. Or that it is somehow unfair because the children of one percenters tend to do better academically than the children of non one percenters.</p>
<p>Shall we now make everyone go to the same college, no matter what their abilities and intelligence, just so everyone can be “equal”?</p>
<p>It should be no surprise that the offspring of a Harvard educated doctor and a Yale educated lawyer might indeed be in the top 1% of intelligence, even if that kid was born, as you say, already on third base.</p>
<p>Since the responses to your post have become very political, let me throw my two cents in. I am not a one percenter. However, this constant attack on the one percenters is becoming nonsensical and almost comical. If a person becomes a highly skilled surgeon after going to school for a zillion years, he or she DESERVES a high salary. And even if he or she pays the same tax rate as Warren Buffett’s secretary, that is STILL a ton of money he or she pays in taxes. </p>
<p>You might also note that these evil one percenters have donated a ton of money to charities, such as college scholarship funds. There is a wall at Johns Hopkins, which lists the names of a number of people who gave $ 8 million each. For example, Romney is under attack for paying just 14% in taxes, but the press conveniently fails to mention that he donated almost that much to charity.</p>
<p>I am with you floridadad, I am sick of it too. Hard to believe our leaders think we’re so stupid that they can continue with the class envy line for much longer. And that people don’t realize that some pay lower tax rates because it’s on capital gains and not salary. If the cap gains rate is too low, then how about some tax reform and simplification to fix the system?</p>
<p>I personally would far rather give my money to a well run charity than a top heavy government that uses it to buy votes and tosses it down the drain. Not that I have any money left after paying for S1 and S2’s college!</p>
<p>One party state or otherwise, leadership and policies can make a difference. The PRC itself was a one party state since its founding, but different generations of leaders pursued different economic policies with different results.</p>
<p>Of course, a necessary ingredient for development may not be sufficient.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you strip away the attacks on the 0.1%ers themselves and look at the general socioeconomic trends where the 0.1%ers are capturing most of the gains from economic growth, the 99.9%ers are stagnating economically, and (most importantly) economic mobility is declining, the trends are not ones which predict an optimistic future for the country, even if you are a 0.1%er. (And the focus on cutting the estate tax in the early 2000s was misguided in this respect – why did it seem that politicians were so focused on preserving inherited wealth rather than trying to make a better environment for people to work their way up?)</p>
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<p>That is presumably something that everyone agrees with in principle, but eliminating a loophole, deduction, or credit for some special interest will result in significant lobbying from that special interest. It is no surprise that politicians have no incentive to clean up the tax code.</p>
So be it.</p>