Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What does "rigorous" mean?

Study at the college level doesn't require above-average IQ (let alone above-average intelligence), though college graduates IIRC have a mean IQ that's higher than that of the general population. A well-prepared person with an average IQ could certainly go on to college and do well in a range of different fields-- you don't have to have the makings of a rocket scientist to successfully major in marketing, and degree programs are not all created equal. I believe that the biggest problem is poor teaching at the high school level and below.

It's certainly true that there are only so many highly skilled jobs available, of course, and from that perspective it doesn't make sense to send everyone to college, and the most able students should be the ones to have the educational opportunities required for those jobs, if one has to choose.

ETA: I skimmed the first part of this and found it interesting: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/09/college-is-still-best-pay-off.php

I think that Bostonian meant that getting a degree in a traditional college subject such as English, history, economics, the sciences, etc., requires an above-average IQ (at a minimum, IMO). A traditional college education teaches you how to do a lot more than just the subject matter of the degree. It teaches you how to reason. My HG/PG brother-in-law once told me, "The most important thing I learned in college was how to read and write. Because of that, I understand what's going on around me better than I did before and I can teach myself just about anything."

Yes, people with average IQs can get degrees in marketing, but studies have shown that their abilities to, well, read and write don't improve.


We've watered down college in the same way that we've watered down K-12 education. More homework isn't more rigor, but teaching meaningful subject matter is. It's perfectly possible to adjust the word "rigorous" to each student's abilities. To me, in the context of education, the term means that the material is meaningful (not superficial memorization factoids) and challenging to the person learning it.

Added:

I don't think that that's accurate. It's certainly true that above-average intelligence helps greatly. I'm certainly willing to consider that some courses of study (I think you mentioned tensor calculus once or twice in the past) would require higher than normal working memory to do well. What I'm not seeing is the evidence that high IQ is required just to graduate from a range of even the traditional fields. I think a properly motivated, properly taught person of even average intelligence can do quite a bit of abstract and critical thinking; it's just that few public schools in the U.S., at least, teach these skills, leaving many to rely on their native smarts alone. Abstract logic, critical thinking, creativity, etc. are not magical, and can be taught despite some people having more of a bent for them (I know you know this, and I'm not trying to be pedantic).

For example, it's obvious that someone can become hobbled in math ("innumerate") by bad teaching, which often starts quite early on. Replace that with proper instruction and you might get a different picture. What we need is twin studies, where one twin is brought up in Singapore and one in the backwoods of the U.S.

We could probably start drawing all sorts of boundaries-- one really needs a certain working memory and processing speed to cope with Harvard Law, for instance-- but I just don't see a hard lower limit on intelligence for going to college in general. Of course some colleges and majors are tougher, but I'm sure a great many people with average IQ (or average intelligence) manage to graduate from some college, even in your traditional core fields.

I see the bar for entry to college as pretty low, and well within the capabilities of most people if they were well-taught. When people drop out, I think it's less likely to be because they don't have raw biological thinking horsepower than a host of other reasons, including finances, lack of interest, emotional reasons, poor study habits due to lack of training, and lack of a decent program running on that brain hardware (poor critical thinking skills, etc.).

(I also think that one could permanently improve the intelligence of anyone with normal beginning intelligence through training, and likely more than the ~5-point bump that's been discussed previously as evidenced by the Colorado Adoption Project and other studies, but we can discuss that a different day and in a different thread.)

I'm certainly no expert on anything intelligence-related, but maybe what I'm thinking is that a great deal of intelligence can be crystallized, including the sorts that help people do well in college and succeed at a job. People can be taught how to think and how to learn; higher-aptitude people just do a better job of filling in the blanks for themselves than average people.

Nor am I, but I've done a bit of reading. Arthur Jensen (just google the name) defined two main types of learning abilities: Level I, which related to simple associative learning. If I understand correctly, this means rote learning/memorization of facts, as well as understanding relationships between events. Examples: the war ended in 1945; red lights mean stop.

Level II relates to abstract reasoning and conceptual thought, and their application to problem solving. Level II is closely related to the g factor (g means general intelligence, so this is referring to IQ). Level I abilities seem to be pretty close across the board in people, but Level II differs. This is not surprising, given that general intelligence/IQ differ.

People who lack sufficient Level 2 abilities will have trouble with a classical college education. This is also not surprising, given that you need to reason and solve problems to get a degree in history, economics, or chemistry.

I'm not at all surprised by Academically Adrift's finding that people who majored in business and other easier subjects didn't score well on tests of complex reasoning skills. If they lacked sufficient Level 2 abilities to begin with, the finding isn't surprising. Alternatively, they wouldn't have picked a major that required complex reasoning ability (this idea reminds me of a recent thread about people leaving STEM majors because they're "too hard." They are too hard for a lot of people!). I'm sorry to say that education majors are in the lower-performing group.

Based on this information, the idea that there is a minimum IQ for getting through a college degree in more traditional subjects makes perfect sense.

Val: And this explains why so few people are actually prepared for college... because since NCLB, the schools are throwing all their effort at Level 1 knowledge to pass the basic skills test... leaving little for Level 2.

A couple of years ago, I got all excited about a framework for persuasive paragraphs and essays I'd learned about on an accreditation visit to another school. I came back to my school all ready to launch it in my own classroom, only to discover that our state tests no longer required "constructed responses", so nobody but the Language Arts teachers cared about paragraphs anymore.

I rolled my eyes, and taught my students to recognize and use stance and supports anyway. Then the Common Core standards came along, and I said, "Guess what! I'm already doing this!"

But you'll enjoy what Alfie Kohn has to say about rigor:

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/feelbad.htm

Or you go get a post-bac in education when you already have a master's degree in an academic subject and work experience at a major publication, but are, like, so over money and prestige.

:^P

Coincidentally--or not--I had a conversation with my VP today in which she said she'd heard that there was too much rigor in my class, and that she'd never had to deal with that complaint before!

When she came to my classroom and saw my materials, she realized that I was writing assignments that I would have enjoyed and appreciated when I was a gifted 6th grader. Busted!

I would like a nice secure government job - is that supposed to be a criticism of a group of people's character? I don't think it makes sense to say that education isn't a 'real college subject.' It's offensive, for one thing, and it's not true.

Now I've had a lot of people tell me that smart people are stuck up and judgmental because smart people believe that they are better then average people. Do you think it's a worthy ambition to be respectful of all people? I find that I can learn something valuable from everyone I meet, independent of overall intellectual ability.

Can others perceive the difference between these 2 statements?
and


To my eyes - the first is a building block for an interesting discussion and the second is rude. But I've been told that I'm 'too sensitive' enough times that I'm trying to take that into account.

I can think of plenty of jobs that aren't a good match for individuals based on their intellect, but are a good match for their temperament, or other important factors. I think teaching at the elementary school level is a great job for a gifted individual with a good temperament for it, because the more intellectual strength a person has, the more they can bring to their work. And because lots of us care a lot more about 'are we doing palpable good in the world' than 'do we relate intellectually to our co-workers?' or 'are we working the job that makes the most possible money we could?'

I'm pretty sure that if the majority of people in a US state had IQ of 130, then that geographic area would create ways to insure that their teachers were also of a similar average IQ and to insure that those teachers were respected and paid commensurate with the value the citizens place on their children being educated by people with that level of intelligence.

This isn't the case, and we have what we have. I read a friend's graduate level education book, and it was really hard to read - not because it was challenging, or because I didn't have the background, but because it was written from a very specialized theoretical point of view that I highly doubt has much to do with reality. One can make a subject difficult to understand without adding value. In biology, the best understood concepts were the easiest to learn.(after effort) In other areas the teachers spoke on and on and I'd be all muddled up. Classmates with similar blank looks. When I asked them about it after class, the teacher'd say, 'we don't really understand how that part works yet.'

We used words like 'elegant' for the first situation and 'lots of heat but very little light' for the second.

I'd love to think that people who had 90th percentile empathy and self awareness, 90th percentile charisma, 90th percentile social skills and 90th percentile intellectual vitality could design and execute an education system that would meet the needs of all learners and get the most out of whatever students bring to each classroom. I'd prefer an actual scientific experiment (with 1000s of subjects, not 10s)that rated teachers on various personality traits and had reliable ways of measuring and developing the ones that matter most to education. Then we could measure which ones created the most point gain in the most students on a test like MAP over the year.

((shrugs and more shrugs))
Grinity

I don't think it's fair to slam education majors as a class. I've met some crackerjack ones. Also some less excellent ones, but honestly, the reputation of teachers is often unfairly maligned.

Things would be radically different if teachers were paid appropriately; the history of teaching as "women's work" still haunts their professional standing.

DeeDee