I was also interested to see what folks who follow education (and cognitive difference/development) research thought of the piece.
I was perplexed by the apparent oversimplifications inherent in it, personally.
I was also disappointed with the oversimplifications, but not surprised. I suspect that most people either can't or don't want to dig into the complexities of a problem. I realize that no one can dig into the details of some question every time, but the education problem in this country seems to be particularly resistant to thoughtful, nuanced debate (or even recognition) of its complexities.
People get offended and start shouting when they hear an idea they don't like (which is already starting on this thread). Perhaps this tendency is one reason for why it's so difficult to really get into the details of the problems in our education system.
Yes, and I was perhaps MOST intrigued by the comments which, even in the most reasoned and logical/informed among them...
mostly ignored what the article actually suggested-- which is that schooling makes quite a small difference. Most of the difference is coming from influences that:
a) started well before school age
b) occur in the "non-school" portions of children's lives, and that furthermore;
c) all of those hours in classrooms pretty much SLOW the natural trajectory of kids in the top 10%, not "help" the trajectory of the lowest 10%.
That part of things, I find fascinating. I wasn't terribly surprised that few commenters picked up on it specifically (and no telling how the social Darwinists/assortative mating people felt, because they stayed on their particular message and maybe they felt it was too obvious to bear remarking upon). I assumed that others here would note the over all trend as well, given how common afterschooling and enrichment is with HG kids.
Whether or not 100K + is "middle class" seems to me to be arguing semantics, here. 185K
definitely pays for things-- "extra" and "nice" things-- that 50K doesn't, I think that we can agree. Just how far that income goes depends heavily on location, true. It
is in the top 10%, however-- that is simply what the math suggests. In some locations, it might be top 1%, and in others top quartile, which blurs the lines a bit, but the trend probably remains intact.
The trends observed in this research are not about just WHICH benefits of high income are available given a particular level of purchasing power, anyway-- they are about retrospectives on how achievement is tied to income LEVEL, and they've chosen levels sufficiently far apart that the 'noise' in that signal should be minimal. Nowhere does 180K annually lead to a lifestyle enjoyed by a family living on 15K anywhere else, right?
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I've not ignored the possible contribution of assortative mating. It's just that I'm not willing to ASSUME that those factors are insignificant without noting them. ARE they insignificant? I think that they probably are far from small, those caveats. Like marries like, all right. But 'like' there means a lot of different things, not just intellect.
Is there a study that supports that spouses are within 10pts of one another in IQ? Given the (apparent) spread in many college programs, even, I doubt it.
Plus many MEN raised in traditional homes
prefer women who are not at or beyond their own IQ level. That one I
have seen studies to support.
Which means that yes, "like" may marry "like," but what that probably means instead is that people of more-or-less equal SES are marrying one another. If SES is not a good correlation for IQ (and I do question whether or not it is), then as we move down this chain of conclusions to assortative mating widening the bell curve...
the errors are not
additive... they are propogated and increase as we go along. So yes, that makes the notion of assortative mating/social Darwinism little better than an unsupported hypothesis at this point.
What is also true is that there are 'break-out' cases that suggest it is flawed, too. I think of this as the Trading Places effect. Anecdote isn't data-- but it is sufficient to serve as a counter-example in a hypothesis.
