Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Not All Children are Equal - Long Article from UK

Lots of information from a social policy researcher using hard data.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article4836557.ece

"Attempts to raise academic ability have focused on the pre-school years, on the assumption that this is the period when the brain and personality are most malleable. Two decades ago a US academic group called the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies conducted an analysis of 11 of the best pre-school interventions and found they produced an average short-term gain of about seven IQ points relative to a control group, which fell off to a trivial three IQ points after three years - and to nothing in the final follow-up. The consortium's bottom line was that "the effect of early education on intelligence test scores was not permanent".

"There is some good news in the independently assessed maths scores: British nine-year-olds showed a significant increase. But maths in the early years is based on simple concepts that almost all children should be able to learn. Then, when mathematics moves to the abstractions of algebra and the logic of geometry, large numbers of children fall by the wayside - they are just not clever enough in logical-mathematical ability to keep up. That's why a test at the age of nine can show improvement while a test at 13 does not."

"This counterintuitive result was first exposed in the United States in 1966, with the publication of the Coleman report. To everyone's shock, the study - whose sample included 645,000 students - found that the quality of schools explained almost nothing about differences in academic achievement. Measures such as the credentials of the teachers, the extensiveness of physical facilities, money spent per student - none of the things people assumed to be important in explaining educational achievement was important in fact. "


"When we turn to the 40%-60% of IQ that is environmental, children of the professional classes also have an advantage, but little of it has to do with money. Reading bedtime stories to toddlers every night does not cost money - but such behaviour goes from "almost universal" to "uncommon" as social class goes from top to bottom. To refrain from smoking, alcohol and drugs during pregnancy costs no money, but such restraint is once again correlated with social class."

What bothers me about this article is that by tying suitability for the academic track to class, the author is giving people permission to ignore talented kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. To his way of thinking, it doesn't matter that the poor kids have crummy schools because the odds of them succeeding academically are low anyway.

Reminds me of "The Bell Curve."

What is interesting are the cites from the literature on education outcomes with respect to the learning environment vs parents (both their care and presence) and innate ability.

She does have a point about the diminishing returns for some education types vs ability in those fields. She can make the case ( as many do on here ) that the one-size-fits-all approach cripples many of the kids. She says that most of the kids can do well at sums, but most cannot do well at Algebra or Geometry. I think she has a point.

I tutored people in College and it was painful to watch so many kids who did not belong there struggle with stuff that I knew in 4th grade. These kids had some amazing abilities in other areas, but the frustration of college ( and the innapropriateness of it) blinded them and others to these abilities.

My MGM suffered through college and they passed her in Math, Greek, and Science because she was the basketball team. She later ran one of the largest firms in the region with men as figureheads. But even in her 80s, she still felt guilt that she was not good at Algebra or Euclidian Geometry or Greek.

What was the point of her taking Algebra and Euclidean Geometery or Greek? A better course of study would have been upper division classes in History and Literature.

Do we assume that only people with College Degrees are valuable?

�Let's start with the simple truth that many children are just not gifted enough to learn to do academic tasks at more than a rudimentary level, and schools can tweak their performance only at the margins�.�

�And yet to say such things in public is to invite shock and ridicule. The educational romantics will pummel you with four objections: 1) when children are below average we can raise their ability; 2) the schools are so bad that children at all levels of ability can learn much more than they are learning now; 3) the rising test scores of the past decade prove that big improvements are possible; and 4) there's no reason why the high educational achievement of children of the professional classes cannot be achieved by all classes.�

I�M STILL GOING WITH ANSWER #2, BUT WOULD CHANGE THE WORD *BAD* TO *MEDIOCRE*. IF THE INSTRUCTION WERE STRONGER, AVERAGE STUDENTS WOULD STILL BE AVERAGE, ONLY AT A HIGHER ABILITY LEVEL.

�Never mind, say the educational romantics. The schools are so bad that even low-ability students can learn a lot more than they do now. And it's true that the worst inner-city schools, in which nothing is taught, can of course do much better. But the vast majority of schools are ordinary rather than terrible. How much can an ordinary British school do to raise the academic performance of its students?

If the question is framed in terms of teaching them factual material about history, politics, science and the arts, the increases in learning across the board can be dramatic. But if the question is about reading and maths, the answer is that the quality of the school makes surprisingly little difference.�

INTERESTING HOW THE AUTHOR DISMISSES THIS MINOR DETAIL FOR AREAS OTHER THAN READING AND MATH. AREN�T HISTORY, POLITICS, SCIENCE AND THE ARTS WORTHWHILE SUBJECTS? THINK OF HOW LESS PAINFULL IT WOULD BE TO WATCH �JAY WALKING�.

Or "A Fish Named Wanda"