sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth A. Gordon) (03/22/88)
In article <3933@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> lazarus@athena.mit.edu (Michael Friedman) writes: >It is often claimed that blacks do worse than whites on tests like the >SAT's and Civil Service tests, etc. because the tests are biased. Does >anyone out there have a list of supposedly biased questions? I suspect it's more class than race. Middle- and upper-class people are simply more exposed, in their culture, to the sort of things the tests ask about than lower-class people are. Since the average income level of blacks is lower than that for whites, blacks tend to score lower. I don't know what the stats are for black vs. white when you correct for economic level. I heard an interesting anecdote from my psych. class on men and women. When a draft of the Stanford-Binet (I think) IQ test was tested, it was discovered that women tended to score *higher* than men on it. The designers of the test *removed* some of the questions that women tended to score better on, so that men and women would average the same score. This speaks volumes to me on the relationship between "intelligence," whatever that is, and intelligence tests. -- sethg%athena.MIT.EDU@mit-eddie.UUCP -- CONVERT me, CONTRA lovers! -- sethg%athena.MIT.EDU@mitvma.BITNET| talk.politics.latin-america: YES 40 / NO 3 sethg@athena.MIT.EDU -------------| I need **63** more YES votes by March 31.
pax@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu (03/23/88)
Stephen Gould in 'The mismeasure of Man' explains why the concept of IQ is flawed in the first place. Basicly there is no such thing. Given that, how can a test purport to measure it? (impartially or otherwise)?
werner@aecom.YU.EDU (Craig Werner) (03/23/88)
In article <3943@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth A. Gordon) writes: > In article <3933@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> > lazarus@athena.mit.edu (Michael Friedman) writes: > > >It is often claimed that blacks do worse than whites on tests like the > >SAT's and Civil Service tests, etc. because the tests are biased. Does > >anyone out there have a list of supposedly biased questions? The question on the Wechsler IQ test which shows the most performance difference between blacks and white, and thus should be considered the most "biased" is the following: it is the verbal repetition of a string of numbers 5 or greater in the REVERSE order, as in: Tester says: 5 2 7 3 4 Examinee responds: 4 3 7 2 5 It's not easy, for one. Two, don't confuse this exercise with repeating the numbers in the same order. There is no black-white difference in repeated the string of numbers in the forward direction, making that exercise the least racially biased question. I make no attempt at trying to figure the above paradox out. And one other supposedly biased question: there appears on the Wechsler test, the question "Who wrote Hamlet." While this seems like a bit of cultural imperialism, looks can be deceiving. Not only does this question show no black-white racial bias, but it is almost culture fair, showing only minimal bias against non-English speakers. It appears the knowledge that Christopher Marlowe wrote Hamlet (no, wait a minute, wasn't it that Shakespeare person, I'm not sure) is almost a cultural universal, and knowing or not knowing the answer is a measure of intelligence, not upbringing. I think Shakespeare would be proud. Just a final aside: it seems that most of the people who vociferously attack IQ tests, as well as many of those who steadfastly defend them, have absolutely no idea what is actually in them. It doesn't make for rational or enlightened discussion. ~. -- Craig Werner (future MD/PhD, 3.5 years down, 3.5 to go) werner@aecom.YU.EDU -- Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517) "Low-tech is a lot more effective than low-cal."
jnp@calmasd.GE.COM (John Pantone) (03/25/88)
In article <73600017@uiucdcsp>, pax@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > > Stephen Gould in 'The mismeasure of Man' explains why the concept ^- he thinks that > of IQ is flawed in the first place. Basicly there is no such thing. ^- you believe that > Given that, how can a test purport to measure it? by purporting that both you and S. Gould are wrong, and that there is in fact such a thing as IQ. > (impartially or otherwise)? I happen to admire and respect S.J.Gould - he would NEVER try to claim that his opinions were true because they were his opinions. He does not claim that IQ doesn't exist - he tries to show evidence to that effect; in an attempt to get the reader to believe, as he does, that it does not exist. Do you see the difference? -- These opinions are solely mine and in no way reflect those of my employer. John M. Pantone @ GE/Calma R&D, 9805 Scranton Rd., San Diego, CA 92121 ...{ucbvax|decvax}!sdcsvax!calmasd!jnp jnp@calmasd.GE.COM GEnie: J.PANTONE
smith@cos.com (Steve Smith) (03/25/88)
In article <3943@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth A. Gordon) writes: > ... Middle- and upper-class people are >simply more exposed, in their culture, to the sort of things the tests >ask about than lower-class people are. >When a draft of the Stanford-Binet (I think) IQ test was tested, it was >discovered that women tended to score *higher* than men on it. >The designers of the test *removed* some of the questions that women >tended to score better on, so that men and women would average the same >score. In this light, I remember reading somewhere that two of the criteria for an intelligence test are: 1. Men and women must have the same average scores. 2. High status people must have a higher average score than low status people. In other words, if the scores don't come out like this, the test "isn't valid". This could explain a whole bunch about the way the scores tend to come out. Any IQ test gurus out there to confirm or deny? -- -- Steve (smith@cos.com) ({uunet sundc decuac hqda-ai hadron}!cos!smith) "Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."
werner@aecom.YU.EDU (Craig Werner) (03/25/88)
In article <73600017@uiucdcsp>, pax@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > > Stephen Gould in 'The mismeasure of Man' explains why the concept > of IQ is flawed in the first place. Basicly there is no such thing. > Given that, how can a test purport to measure it? What Stephen Jay Gould argues against is the scientific opinion of the early part of this century, which I should add, is still the prevailing popular opinion, that intelligence can be described as a unitary value. All modern (Post-1955 or so) psychometric testing depends heavily on subtests. In general, however, those who tend to do well on one subtest tend to do well on all subtests, hence the belief that diverse tests combined with sophisticated statistical analysis can tell us something about the underlying nature of "intelligence." However, the IQ score is not this measure of intelligence - it is a weighted average of the subtest scores. I have often compared IQ tests to benchmarks, and as most people here know. It is very easy to cook a benchmark. However, if you enough of them, you can average them to get a good picture of how the systems compare. Intelligence testing is no different, and probably even more complex, since measurement is more difficult. I should also note it is not necessarily true that performance on subtests is absolutely correlated. Some people have selective defects, some have selective talents. -- Craig Werner (future MD/PhD, 3.5 years down, 3.5 to go) werner@aecom.YU.EDU -- Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517) "It's hard to argue with someone who knows what he's talking about."
barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) (03/25/88)
In article <1222@cos.com> smith@cos.UUCP (Steve Smith) writes: >In this light, I remember reading somewhere that two of the criteria for >an intelligence test are: > >1. Men and women must have the same average scores. > >2. High status people must have a higher average score than low status > people. > >In other words, if the scores don't come out like this, the test "isn't >valid". This could explain a whole bunch about the way the scores tend >to come out. Remember, there isn't a univerally agreed-upon definition of intelligence. But, since a test must be intended to measure something, the designers of the test must choose their criteria, and this will involve some arbitrary specifications. Thus, if the designers believe that people usually have high status BECAUSE they are of higher intelligence (or, if the designer believes that environment affects intelligence, that high status results in high intelligence), he would obviously doubt that a test that showed that high status and high intelligence were not correlated was measuring the same intelligence that he defined. Whether this particular definition really correlates with what most people consider intelligence is a separate issue. Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com uunet!think!barmar
pax@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu (03/27/88)
I didn't mean to start any fights about IQ. I only want people to know that 'The Mismeasure of Man' is very interesting reading on this subject, and urge everyone to go read it.
tada@athena.mit.edu (Michael Zehr) (03/28/88)
In article <3943@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth A. Gordon) writes: >This speaks volumes to me on the relationship between "intelligence," >whatever that is, and intelligence tests. Well, I once had an analyst tell me that he and a lot of other psychologists believed that the score you get on an IQ test has about as much to do with how well you succeed at life (college, and other things that are supposed to require intelligence, in particular) as the length of [insert favorite euphimism for male sex organ here]. Furthermore, results from IQ tests can change redically from year to year, so that makes them even more suspect. ------- michael j zehr "My opinions are my own ... as is my spelling."
govett@avsd.UUCP (David Govett) (03/29/88)
> Well, I once had an analyst tell me that he and a lot of other psychologists > believed that the score you get on an IQ test has about as much to do with > how well you succeed at life... IQs are good predictors of one thing: the likelihood that a person will tell you his/her IQ.
wphughes@violet.waterloo.edu (William Hughes) (03/29/88)
In article <4087@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> tada@athena.mit.edu (Michael Zehr) writes: >Well, I once had an analyst tell me that he and a lot of other psychologists >believed that the score you get on an IQ test has about as much to do with >how well you succeed at life (college, and other things that are supposed >to require intelligence, in particular) as the length of [insert favorite >euphimism for male sex organ here]. > >Furthermore, results from IQ tests can change redically from year to year, >so that makes them even more suspect. The new popular mythos, that IQ test are meaningless, is almost as inaccurate as the old popular mythos, that IQ tests are a single, almost perfect, measure of innate intelligence. Despite the beliefs of your analyst, IQ correlates quite highly with scholastic success. The correlations with more general success are not as marked but still quite significant. So, whatever the IQ score is, it is clearly of some interest. True scores do change, and sometimes radically, but on the average not enough to invalidate the use of the instrument. Test/retest correlations have been done (the researchers in this field are not all idiots!) and are relatively high. However, it is true that the inaccuracies of the test make its use for individual evaluation highly problematic (to say the least). Its use as a research tool by those who understand its strengths and limitations is entirely justified. I very much like Craig Werner's benchmark analogy. Check out some of the copious literature on the subject if you are interested. (Be careful some of it is crap!) For a very good, readable, well balanced review of intelligence testing see "Inteligence: nature, determinants and consequences" by E. B. Brodie and N. Brodie, Academic Press, 1976. It should be noted that in "Mismeasure of Man" Gould does not argue that IQ tests are meaningless. He does argue that they have been radically overinterpreted by many scientists in an effort to perpetuate stongly held biases. He also argues that the tests are not in themselves sufficient to establish the hypothesis that there is a single entity called "generalized intelligence" which can be measured. It is a very good book, but it is not the whole story on intelligence testing nor does Gould claim that it is. -William Hughes
weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (03/29/88)
In article <59@avsd.UUCP>, govett@avsd (David Govett) writes: >IQs are good predictors of one thing: the likelihood that a person >will tell you his/her IQ. For those who want an amusing example, Gene Ward Smith and I differ by ~50 points in IQ. Beyond that, I'm not saying--they're about as meaningful as our astrological signs. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
gsmith@garnet.berkeley.edu (Gene W. Smith) (03/29/88)
In article <8100@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, weemba@garnet (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes: >For those who want an amusing example, Gene Ward Smith and I differ >by ~50 points in IQ. What a pathological liar! You know it's more like ~100 points. > Beyond that, I'm not saying--they're about as >meaningful as our astrological signs. This is the sort of tripe I expect from someone born under the sign of Ophiuchus. -- ucbvax!garnet!gsmith Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 ucbvax!bosco!gsmith Institute of Pi Research
cgeiger@ut-emx.UUCP (charles s. geiger, esq.) (03/30/88)
Yeah, well, I scored pretty high my IQ tests, so I think they're the
greatest thing since sliced bread! So there!
(I know, this is keeping the signal/noise ratio nice and low, but if
you look real hard you may find some insight in the above sentence.)
cheers, from
charles s. geiger
ARPA: cgeiger@emx.cc.utexas.edu cgeiger@ut-emx.ARPA
UUCP: ihnp4!ut-emx!cgeiger allegra!ut-emx!cgeiger
gatech!ut-emx!cgeiger seismo!ut-sally!ut-emx!cgeiger
harvard!ut-sally!ut-emx!cgeigermmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) (04/10/88)
In article <73600018@uiucdcsp> pax@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >I didn't mean to start any fights about IQ. I only want people to know >that 'The Mismeasure of Man' is very interesting reading on this subject, >and urge everyone to go read it. I don't usually read this newsgroup, so I may have missed some of the discussion, but I really am surprised that no-one has brought up the subject of motivation at least in what I've read. If someone sits you down with a paper full of daft questions that you could answer but you really couldn't be bothered with, you may just spend your time thinking about what you're going to do tonight, wondering what's for dinner or so on. If that paper happens to be an IQ test you're going to score low. If however you know exactly what IQ tests are, how the world takes them absurdly seriously, and you've also had plenty of experience of doing things under exam conditions, of course you're going to score a lot better. As an example, when I was a kid at primary school in England, one day I came in and the class was all sat down in a different room than usual at separate desks, told to keep quiet and given some work to get on with. Since I liked schoolwork, I went ahead and did it. Now in fact, this was the dreaded 11-plus. If you passed this exam (and it was designed so that about 20-30% would) you got a place at an academically motivated school which would prepare you for higher education - called a grammar school. If you failed it you went to a school which would train you to accept that you would always be a second-class citizen and you should not have ideas above your station - called a secondary modern. Kids whose parents were motivated and knew about the education system prepared them extensively for this exam, and they knew exactly that passing it would fundamentally determine their future lives. Kids like me from a rough area where parents saw school as a kind of child-watching service had no idea of its importance and could easily just mess about because they didn't feel like working that day, particularly since they'd been upset by being put in a strange environment. If you came from a middle class home, it was pretty shocking if you failed the 11 plus. If you came from a working class home it was pretty shocking if you passed it. Needless to say the local grammar school was situated in a wealthy residential area, the secondary modern among cheaper housing. Although in most parts of England this system has now been abolished, there are plenty in the ruling Conservative party who want to bring it back, and they've already passed a law introducing regular tests at various age ranges in schools. Also there are a lot of campaigns to bring it back, or in those few areas which still have it, not to abolish it. Funnily enough, those campaigns always call themselves 'Save' or 'Restore' the grammar schools, whereas in fact what they want is to keep or bring back secondary moderns since that's where the majority of kids go to under the selection system. Matthew Huntbach - Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, London SW7, U.K.
livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) (04/11/88)
I apologise in advance for wasting everyone's time with this. I think that this article is in a completely inappropriate newsgroup. However, since it is here, I'll have to answer it here. In article <253@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes: > > I don't usually read this newsgroup, so I may have missed some of the > discussion, but I really am surprised that no-one has brought up the > subject of motivation at least in what I've read. > > If someone sits you down with a paper full of daft questions that you could > answer but you really couldn't be bothered with, you may just spend your > time thinking about what you're going to do tonight, wondering what's for dinner > or so on. If that paper happens to be an IQ test you're going to score low. > > If however you know exactly what IQ tests are, how the world takes them > absurdly seriously, and you've also had plenty of experience of doing things > under exam conditions, of course you're going to score a lot better. > > As an example, when I was a kid at primary school in England, one day I > came in and the class was all sat down in a different room than usual > at separate desks, told to keep quiet and given some work to get on with. > Since I liked schoolwork, I went ahead and did it. I kind of wonder about this. I took the eleven-plus exam in London in 1956, and we knew ahead of time what day the exam was on, what the significance of the exam was, and what the approximate content of the exam was, since we had a rehearsal exam a couple of months ahead of time. Not only that, but you could buy books of tests which were similar to eleven-plus questions, and try them out as much as you liked. It sounds as though Mathew's memory may be letting him down, or he simply went to a school where the teachers were not quite on the ball. I suspect it's his memory, since I can recall our teacher telling us that the reason we were having a rehearsal exam was that tests like this are simply not valid if some people have tried them ahead of time, and some people have not. Therefore the rehearsal was required, and please take it seriously, and so on and so forth. We did, since even at age eleven, we knew what was serious, just by watching how seriously our teacher was taking it. (By the way, Mathew also seems to be confusing two tests, one an IQ test that we took about a month ahead of the eleven-plus, and the eleven-plus itself which is a fairly standard english-and-math exam. In 1956, at least, we all took both tests.) > Now in fact, this was the dreaded 11-plus. If you passed this exam (and it > was designed so that about 20-30% would) you got a place at an academically > motivated school which would prepare you for higher education - called a > grammar school. Hmm. The 'dreaded' eleven-plus. Perhaps we should live in a country where no-one is ever tested, and educational resources are scattered at random. Can you guess what the value of such an education system would be? Can you imagine how well-educated everyone would be? By the way, Matthew's memory has let him down again here. There was also a thirteen-plus exam, to allow mis-categorised kids to moved from one stream to another. I am a bit confused about just what point it is that Matthew is trying to make. If the eleven-plus was as sudden-death as he says, then wouldn't that be just the kind of motivation that might work, and which Matthew appears to want. The US has no eleven-plus, or equivalent, but you might give it a try. Rigorous testing seems to work just fine for the Japanese, and yet it seems to me that Japanese testing must also divide children who will receive more academic education, and children who will receive more practical education. Are we going to say that it works for them, but not for us? > If you failed it you went to a school which would train you to accept that > you would always be a second-class citizen and you should not have ideas above > your station - called a secondary modern. This is just wrong. In the first place. there are, or were, three categories, not two. Besides grammar school, there were two alternative tracks, one of which was a Secondary Modern school, and the other a Central school. Secondly, if kids were indoctrinated as he describes, who did it, the school? The bricks and mortar? I doubt it. If anyone was indoctrinating kids like this, then it would have to be the teachers. I think you have to ask what kind of teachers would do that, not blithely assume that the system is at fault. If teachers are doing this to children, then the same teachers in renamed schools are not going to do any better. > Kids whose parents were motivated and knew about the education system > prepared them extensively for this exam, and they knew exactly that passing it > would fundamentally determine their future lives. Kids like me from a rough > area where parents saw school as a kind of child-watching service had no idea > of its importance and could easily just mess about because they didn't feel like > working that day, particularly since they'd been upset by being put in a > strange environment. I lived in a rough area of London (Fulham) amongst people who existed from day to day on low wages, and we still managed to know what education was about. We were (very) poor, but we were not lazy or foolish. Coming from a working class area is not the same thing as seeing education as child-watching, If you have that kind of attitude towards your children's education, then you have that attitude. Implying that a working person automatically has that attitude is a) insulting, and b) wrong. My mother was a widow who educated three sons while she worked as a secretary, at a time when women were even less well paid than they are now and all three of us made it to university. Although she was a very kind woman, one thing that could provoke her anger was to see parents who were too uninformed or too lazy to get the best possible education for their children. Education was one of the things she talked most about, even though we lived in a two-room 'flat', with no TV, a radio that worked most of the time, and paraffin heating, since gas was too expensive. She figured that there was some excuse for being poorly educated in a country where you have to pay to go to school, but no excuse whatsoever in Britain, where the government pays you to be educated. Looking around me, I think she was right. Silicon Valley is now infested with well-educated Britons. Of course, it was also possible to veg. out and get nothing at all, but it's possible to do that in any education system. It's foolish to look back and say "The Tories done it to me, guv." > If you came from a middle class home, it was pretty shocking if you failed the > 11 plus. If you came from a working class home it was pretty shocking if you > passed it. That's funny, because passing it didn't cause any shock in my home. I guess some people are more easily shocked than others. Or maybe it is that some people have very low expectations of themselves, and when they fulfill them, they comfort themselves by blaming it on the 'system'. > Needless to say the local grammar school was situated in a wealthy > residential area, the secondary modern among cheaper housing. Which grammar school? One particular one? One that Matthew knows about? In London, grammar schools were in the community, where schools always are, and they tended to be in the older, Victorian, school buildings, with poor physical facilities. The secondary Modern schools were often in new buildings, with swimming pools and fancy laboratories. The grammar school in Highbury, where I lived for a while, is on a bus route close to a body shop. Don't you love sentences that begin 'Needless to say'? It means 'I hope you won't question this'. > Although in most parts of England this system has now been abolished, there > are plenty in the ruling Conservative party who want to bring it back, and > they've already passed a law introducing regular tests at various age ranges > in schools. I read that Maggie's policy is to allow the parents in each district to decide for themselves what school system they want, complete with a voucher system, if they want that. Is that wrong? Are the US papers telling me lies about that? (Oh yes, the 'ruling' Conservative party. Don't you mean the 'elected' Conservative party?) > Also there are a lot of campaigns to bring it back, or in those few areas > which still have it, not to abolish it. Funnily enough, those campaigns always > call themselves 'Save' or 'Restore' the grammar schools, whereas in fact what > they want is to keep or bring back secondary moderns since that's where the > majority of kids go to under the selection system. Ah, the anthropomorphised 'campaign' which is going to do something against everyone's will. That must be something else the US press is lying about. I read that the British voters had just re-elected Maggie for, what is it, the third time now? I also read that getting back to a more traditional school system has been part of the Tory platform for years. Is Matthew saying that the voters re-elected Maggie because they *didn't* approve of her policies, or because they *did* approve of them? Choose one. As you can probably guess, although Matthew has not made it quite clear, education has become highly politicised in the UK over the last forty years. Labour party voters tend to support so-called 'comprehensive' education, in which serious testing is delayed until university entry, and Tory party supporters tend to like traditional education. Unfortunately, it has become one of the 'religious' political issues, like School Prayer in the US, and people tend to damn one policy or another, without admitting that both policies have some good and some not-so-good features. In particular, people tend to slough off their own responsibility in education onto the system, and blame it for whatever happens to them. When I passed the eleven-plus, my mother calculated that she literally didn't have the money to pay for my uniform, books, bus fares, and school lunches. Guess who paid. Yes, the wicked ruling party paid the whole shot, and gave me a grant in aid for the next six years until I went to university, whereupon they gave me another, larger, grant for a further three years until I graduated. As you can tell, I still feel grateful for that, which is why I resent seeing a very good education system trashed to make a cheap political point. jon.
livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) (04/11/88)
In article <48986@sun.uucp>, livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: > [Quite a lot in defence of the old British education system.] After writing all that stuff, I felt impelled to dig out some more information about Maggie's proposed reforms, so here is some stuff from "Testing Britain's School 'Reform'" in today's New York Times. It's only an excerpt, because I don't want to type in the whole thing, and you can't make me. "In Britain, new national tests will be a key tool in the Government's effort to enact the most far-reaching changes in that nation's education system in 40 years. Introduced in Parliament last November, the education reform bill calls for a unified national curriculum backed up with a series of tests administered to children at the ages of 7, 11, 14, and 16. The overhaul of the system reflects [Maggie's] free-market philosophy and her committment to modernising British classrooms to strengthen the national economy. "Under the reform legislation, [.......] the test results of individual schools will be publicly reported, parents will be free to place their children in the nearby school of their choice, effectively forcing a school to bid for students by improving its test-rated performance. [...................] "[.....] This year, a new general certificate of secondary education exam is being introduced in England and Wales to replace the traditional ordinary, or O-level, examination. Because it includes questions on such subjects as technology, business studies and design, the new test has required many secondary schools to broaden their course offerings. Greater emphasis is placed on analysis and everyday skills; the old exam mainly gauged students' ability to memorize facts. In addition, more than twenty percent of a student's grade under the new system will be determined not by a one-time sritten test, but by continuous assessment by teachers of course work and oral presentations. The article goes on to say that reform is needed, since British students seem to have caught the american disease, and are now some years behind their German and Japanese contemporaries, especially in Mathematics. It comments that to some extent this is a political issue, but it says that there is a very wide range of support for the reform across all parties, including the socialist Teacher's Union, based on ".. the recognition that the well-intentioned drive in the 1960's and 1970's to make schools more egalitarian, pulling away from class patterns and abolishing state 'grammar' schools in favour of all-inclusive 'comprehensive' schools, also resulted in an erosion of standards." I have to say that I can't for the life of me find the basis for the rather sinister interpretation that a previous poster put on all this. (teaching children to be second class citizens, etc). It all seems like good sense to me. Any comments? jon.
chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (04/11/88)
In article <1689@aecom.YU.EDU> werner@aecom.YU.EDU (Craig Werner) writes: >... the verbal repetition of a string of numbers 5 or greater in >the REVERSE order, as in: >Tester says: 5 2 7 3 4 >Examinee responds: 4 3 7 2 5 There are only two numbers in there 5 or greater :-) (I think you meant `of five or more numbers'). What sort of score would I get for answering `7 5'? This, by the way, is a real problem: tests with mistakes in the standard answers, and more common, tests with ambiguities. >... the knowledge that Christopher Marlowe wrote Hamlet (no, wait a minute, >wasn't it that Shakespeare person, I'm not sure) I thought it was Sir Francis Bacon. :-) (He also wrote half of Bach's music; Mozart wrote the other half. Sorry, musician's jokes.) Like SATs, it is clear that IQ tests measure *something*. What is not clear is exactly what it is they measure. It is probably related to intelligence. Now if only we can figure out what intelligence is.... (I have it: intelligence is inversely proportional to UseNet! :-) ) -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris
mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) (04/14/88)
Jon Livesey writes
:In article <253@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
:> If someone sits you down with a paper full of daft questions that you could
:> answer but you really couldn't be bothered with, you may just spend your
:> time thinking about what you're going to do tonight, wondering what's for dinner
:> or so on. If that paper happens to be an IQ test you're going to score low.
: I kind of wonder about this. I took the eleven-plus exam in London
:in 1956, and we knew ahead of time what day the exam was on, what the
:significance of the exam was, and what the approximate content of the exam
:was, since we had a rehearsal exam a couple of months ahead of time.
:only that, but you could buy books of tests which were similar to eleven-plus
:questions, and try them out as much as you like.
The point I was making was that tests are influenced by motivation.
So merely passing round IQ numbers as if they were height measurements is
ridiculous. Of course my teachers were wrong not to tell me in advance
what was happening, but maybe someone gets stuck with a low IQ measurement
because they too weren't told what was happening.
: By the way, Matthew's memory has let him down again here. There was
:also a thirteen-plus exam, to allow mis-categorised kids to moved from one
:stream to another.
One point I didn't make is that some kids weren't even allowed to take
the 11-plus. I have heard of someone who wasn't allowed to take it because
her handwriting was bad. Much later on she went to university and got a
good degree. Once one is labelled it's very difficult to shake off the
label - I have heard of very few who were regraded at 13+.
:Rigorous testing seems to work just fine for the Japanese, and yet it seems to
:me that Japanese testing must also divide children who will receive more academic
:education, and children who will receive more practical education. Are we
:going to say that it works for them, but not for us?
How perfect are the Japanese? - they have a very bad problem with creativity
which they have acknowledged themselves. Also we very rarely hear about the
working class Japanese - a lot of what people say about the Japanese
only applies to the top 30% or so.
:> If you failed it you went to a school which would train you to accept that
:> you would always be a second-class citizen and you should not have ideas above
:> your station - called a secondary modern.
:
: I lived in a rough area of London (Fulham) amongst people who existed
:from day to day on low wages, and we still managed to know what education was
:about. We were (very) poor, but we were not lazy or foolish. Coming from
:a working class area is not the same thing as seeing education as child-watching,
:If you have that kind of attitude towards your children's education, then you
:have that attitude. Implying that a working person automatically has that
:attitude is a) insulting, and b) wrong.
:about? In London, grammar schools were in the community, where schools always
:are, and they tended to be in the older, Victorian, school buildings, with poor
:physical facilities. The secondary Modern schools were often in new buildings,
:with swimming pools and fancy laboratories.
My point was that testing can be biased not that it necessarily is.
Of course some among the working class are very keen to get their kids a
good education, but some are not. I was brought up in Britain's wealthy
'Deep South' (Sussex) where the middle class are so dominant and the
working class small in numbers, demoralised and poorly organised that it was
very difficult to break through, and there were no local politicians to
speak up for you.
:
: I read that Maggie's policy is to allow the parents in each district
:to decide for themselves what school system they want, complete with a voucher
:system, if they want that. Is that wrong? Are the US papers telling me
:lies about that? (Oh yes, the 'ruling' Conservative party. Don't you mean
:the 'elected' Conservative party?)
No - that's what it is at present. Maggie wants to introduce national laws
governing schools, and more or less destroy local government which currently
runs schools.
Also the Conservative party only received 41% of the votes in the last
election, but got a landslide victory because of our distorted voting system.
:
:> Also there are a lot of campaigns to bring it back, or in those few areas
:> which still have it, not to abolish it. Funnily enough, those campaigns always
:> call themselves 'Save' or 'Restore' the grammar schools, whereas in fact what
:> they want is to keep or bring back secondary moderns since that's where the
:> majority of kids go to under the selection system.
:
: Ah, the anthropomorphised 'campaign' which is going to do something
:against everyone's will. That must be something else the US press is lying
:about. I read that the British voters had just re-elected Maggie for, what is
:it, the third time now? I also read that getting back to a more traditional
:school system has been part of the Tory platform for years. Is Matthew saying
:that the voters re-elected Maggie because they *didn't* approve of her policies,
:or because they *did* approve of them? Choose one.
:
I am very tempted to answer that, though it would be getting off the subject.
Anyone who wants a polemic on why Maggie was re-elected despite her
records and policies should mail me (incidentally isn't it strange we're talking
about "Maggie" and not the "Conservative Party" here - Britain is supposed to
have a parliamentary not a presidential government ... oops back to the subject)
: As you can probably guess, although Matthew has not made it quite
:clear, education has become highly politicised in the UK over the last forty
:years. Labour party voters tend to support so-called 'comprehensive'
:education, in which serious testing is delayed until university entry, and
:Tory party supporters tend to like traditional education. Unfortunately,
:it has become one of the 'religious' political issues, like School Prayer in the
:US, and people tend to damn one policy or another, without admitting that both
:policies have some good and some not-so-good features. In particular, people
:tend to slough off their own responsibility in education onto the system, and
:blame it for whatever happens to them.
:
I went to a comprehensive school and passed with flying colours.
There was regular testing every year, but at least the fact that you
weren't permanently divided at the age of eleven meant you weren't
labelled as a success/failure for the rest of your life.
If those who want to bring back selection made a genuine argument that
the less academic were better educated in a separate school, I would have a
lot more respect for them. There is a good argument here, but I've never
heard it made without prompting from anti-selectionists like myself.
Selectionists give no sign of even thinking about
the sort of education the majority would get so long as the *Grammar Schools*
are restored. The problem with education in Britain isn't with those who
would go to the grammar schools - they're getting on perfectly well at the
comprehensives as the records on exam passes show. The problem is with
the less able whose needs tend to get ignored in the fight for prestige at
the top end.
Matthew Huntbachmmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) (04/14/88)
In article <49000@sun.uucp> livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: > > [Quite a lot in defence of the old British education system.] > [Some stuff about replacing O-levels] > I have to say that I can't for the life of me find the basis for >the rather sinister interpretation that a previous poster put on all >this. (teaching children to be second class citizens, etc). It all >seems like good sense to me. Any comments? > >jon. The replacement of the traditional O-levels with a more broadly based examination system is a good idea, and I would see it as a natural extension to the replacement of a selective by a comprehensive system. It has nothing to do with teaching children to be second-class citizens and doesn't really fit in with government ideology, rather it's something that's been planned for a long time, and the government hasn't got round to stopping it. The more sinister plans are the introduction of regular national tests. As Jon himself admitted in his previous posting, such tests can be subverted by the different motivations of teachers and pupils (I think we differed on exactly who motivated who) and by the existence of books coaching you on how to pass the tests. The new system to replace O-levels involves more teacher-assessment and less sit-down examination. Unfortunately, I think teacher assessment can be as biased not more so than blind examinations. Matthew
livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) (04/16/88)
In article <258@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes: > Jon Livesey writes > > :Rigorous testing seems to work just fine for the Japanese, and yet it seems to > :me that Japanese testing must also divide children who will receive more academic > :education, and children who will receive more practical education. Are we > :going to say that it works for them, but not for us? > > How perfect are the Japanese? - they have a very bad problem with creativity > which they have acknowledged themselves. Also we very rarely hear about the > working class Japanese - a lot of what people say about the Japanese > only applies to the top 30% or so. > I hear this all the time, and yet I have never seen any evidence for it. Does anyone have a reference showing that Japanese, either as a race or as a culture "have a very bad problem with creativity"? Come to that, does anyone have a reference to Japanese acknowledging that? Unless they do, I am inclined to write this off as unthinking racism. Everything I have seen recently in science and engineering leads me to think that Japanese have absolutely no problem with creativity, and I think that the onus is on someone who thinks that they do to produce some evidence for it. jon.
livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) (04/16/88)
In article <259@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes: > > The more sinister plans are the introduction of regular national tests. > As Jon himself admitted in his previous posting, such tests can be subverted > by the different motivations of teachers and pupils (I think we differed on > exactly who motivated who) and by the existence of books coaching you on > how to pass the tests. No, don't draw me in support of your ideas by misquoting me. I said nothing at all about teachers' motivations subverting tests. The single thing I said about teachers is that if they follow a political agenda in one school system, they will follow it in another. I can see nothing in the least sinister in having national tests which are graded equally across the country. The xSAT and xCAT tests in the US work well enough to show that. I think you have totally misunderstood the function of books of previous tests. The idea is not to subvert the tests, but to allow everyone an equal opportunity to rehearse. I can think of nothing better than a series of tests which allow parents to track the progress of their own child from year to year, coupled with publication of the scores achieved by individual schools, allowing parents to choose which school is the best for their own child. I can quite understand that some teachers would have a problem with the publication of results which have previously been confidential, especially if those results compare the performance of one set of teachers with another, but after all, the function of an education system is to educate pupils, not to provide a sheltered career for teachers. If Maggie can get herself re-elected three times with that agenda, it sounds as though a good number of people in the UK agree. jon.
lindsay@K.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Donald Lindsay) (04/16/88)
So far, no one has mentioned that tests are biased against programmers. I am referring to the fact that programmers mostly are the type to keep "programmer's hours", known to a previous generation as "musician's hours". The more important a test is, the more likely it will be run early in the morning. Is this a sinister plot by the "getting up is virtuous" conspiracy ? -- Don lindsay@k.gp.cs.cmu.edu CMU Computer Science
govett@avsd.UUCP (David Govett) (04/19/88)
> Does anyone have a reference showing that Japanese, either as a race > or as a culture "have a very bad problem with creativity"? Come to that, > does anyone have a reference to Japanese acknowledging that? Unless > they do, I am inclined to write this off as unthinking racism. Everything > I have seen recently in science and engineering leads me to think that Japanese > have absolutely no problem with creativity, and I think that the onus is > on someone who thinks that they do to produce some evidence for it. > Many Japanese have commented on the rigidity of the Japanese educational system and the consequent lack of creativity. It's difficult to discuss creativity objectively because it's difficult to define and quantify. However, one can generalize in the area of science and technology. It's difficult to think of many scientific "breakthroughs" or technologies that originated in Japan. Until that changes, Japan will remain subject to charges of freeloading on the basic research of the U.S. and Europe.
livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) (04/19/88)
In article <111@avsd.UUCP>, govett@avsd.UUCP (David Govett) writes: > > > Does anyone have a reference showing that Japanese, either as a race > > or as a culture "have a very bad problem with creativity"? Come to that, > > does anyone have a reference to Japanese acknowledging that? Unless > > they do, I am inclined to write this off as unthinking racism. Everything > > I have seen recently in science and engineering leads me to think that Japanese > > have absolutely no problem with creativity, and I think that the onus is > > on someone who thinks that they do to produce some evidence for it. > > > > Many Japanese have commented on the rigidity of the Japanese educational > system and the consequent lack of creativity. The Japanese are chronically self-deprecating. It's a quality they have in common with the British, and quite as deceptive. > It's difficult to discuss creativity objectively because it's difficult > to define and quantify. Let me see if I understand this. It is "difficult to discuss creativity objectively" and therefore we are entitled to made objective statements like "The Japanese have a very bad problem with creativity"? Can that really be what you are saying? If so, what it really boils down to is explaining away someone's objective success by appealing to some poorly quantified concept like 'creativity', asserting that objective statements cannot be made about it (so that you cannot be contradicted by evidence) and finally asserting that Group X has this and that negative quality as a result. > However, one can generalize in the area of science and technology. > It's difficult to think of many scientific "breakthroughs" or > technologies that originated in Japan. So what? That has more to do with how they spend their research money than with any quality of the japanese themselves, or of their education system. Almost all of their R&D is funded by companies, and so it concentrates on issues of design and production rather than what we call 'basic' research. For that reason, a growing number of US patents are actually filed by Japanese companies. Are you now saying that an advance in manufacturing technique is less 'creative' than an advance in micro-biology? If so, I would like to see some evidence that this is so, rather than a bald assertion. On the face of it, spending R&D money and accumulating a more efficient and reliable manufacturing process sounds just as creative as spending R&D money and finishing up with SDI or yet another programming language. It sounds as though you have simply redefined 'creativity' so that in addition to being hard to discuss, it also applies in only very narrow fields. Fields we happen to specialise in, at that. > Until that changes, Japan will remain subject to charges of freeloading > on the basic research of the U.S. and Europe. Which is exactly what Europeans said about the US before 1945. Although the US economy became very large in the second half of the last century US science was a minor force until well into this century. Of course, that is a huge 'so-what', and any European that comforted themselves in their decline with the thought that America did little science was simply whistling in the dark. No-one would seriously make conclusions about Americans' creativity based on how they chose to spend their R&D money a century ago. We think of people like Bell, Whitney and Henry Ford as being highly creative, even when they took existing science and created new products therefrom. The idea that creativity must be in the area of basic scence, and not in product- oriented areas is just made up for the occasion, I am afraid, and it invites the obvious rejoinder - "If Americans and Europeans are so all-fired creative, then how come we can't create an efficient manufacturing technology base?" jon.
govett@avsd.UUCP (David Govett) (04/20/88)
> > "If Americans and Europeans are so all-fired creative, then > how come we can't create an efficient manufacturing technology > base?" > If Beethoven was such a great symphonist, why did he write only nine? After all, Haydn wrote 104.
livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) (04/20/88)
In article <114@avsd.UUCP>, govett@avsd.UUCP (David Govett) writes: > > If Beethoven was such a great symphonist, why did he write only nine? > After all, Haydn wrote 104. If the Japanese know so much about electronics, how come they don't have twenty four RISC architectures?
mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) (04/22/88)
In article <49690@sun.uucp> livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: >In article <258@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes: >Does anyone have a reference showing that Japanese, either as a race >or as a culture "have a very bad problem with creativity? The obvious reference is the setting up of the Fifth Generation research project which deliberately broke standard Japanese styles of management in order to encourage creativity. I can't, sitting at this terminal, think of any other reference though I'm pretty sure I remember reading it has been discussed quite widely in the Japanese press. I don't mean to be anti-Japanese in this as the lack of a certain sort of creativity (by which I mean perhaps a willingness to step outside conventions) is balanced by the qualities for which the Japanese are renowned and which have led to their economic success. In article <49691@sun.uucp> livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: > I can see nothing in the least sinister in having national tests >which are graded equally across the country. The xSAT and xCAT tests in >the US work well enough to show that. I think you have totally misunderstood >the function of books of previous tests. The idea is not to subvert the >tests, but to allow everyone an equal opportunity to rehearse. In Britain these are seen as a step towards the reimposition of a rigid selection system. The tests start at the age of 7. Is it right to label a kid of age 7 a failure simply because he or she came from a family where no-one much cared for education so s/he wasn't coached into the little tricks of passing tests, and didn't know what s/he was doing on the day of the test? The danger is that schools will just teach to the tests, damaging the more creative aspects of education, and encouraging a dangerous uniformity (any social Darwinian ought to know the advantages of diversity! (I don't mean by this to imply that Jon necessarily is a social Darwinian)). Of course, at some time tests of actual competence are required and it's tough if you fail because you haven't put the work in, whether it's your fault or not. But at the age of 7-11 I doubt these tests measure anything much more than the ability to pass tests. Interestingly, opposition to Maggie's education policy is coming not only from the left in British politics, but from some of the intellectual right who can see the danger of state imposition of uniformity. Matthew Huntbach
cs4l3az@maccs.UUCP (....Jose) (04/22/88)
In article <50123@sun.uucp> livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: >In article <114@avsd.UUCP>, govett@avsd.UUCP (David Govett) writes: >> >> If Beethoven was such a great symphonist, why did he write only nine? >> After all, Haydn wrote 104. > > If the Japanese know so much about electronics, how come >they don't have twenty four RISC architectures? If this is a science conference, then why do we keep bringing up silly, irrelevant, meaningless nationalist gibberish? ...Jose ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Fighting for Truth, Justice Kenneth C. Moyle and anything else that might Department of Biochemistry seem like fun at the time.." McMaster University cs4l3az@maccs.uucp ------------------------------------------------------------------------
livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) (04/22/88)
In article <265@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes: > In article <49690@sun.uucp> livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: > >Does anyone have a reference showing that Japanese, either as a race > >or as a culture "have a very bad problem with creativity? > > The obvious reference is the setting up of the Fifth Generation research > project which deliberately broke standard Japanese styles of management > in order to encourage creativity. Let me see if I have it. It's not creative to set up a new style of management whose purpose is precisely to encourage creativity? How interesting. > I can't, sitting at this terminal, think of any other reference though I'm > pretty sure I remember reading it has been discussed quite widely in the > Japanese press. I don't mean to be anti-Japanese in this as the lack of > a certain sort of creativity (by which I mean perhaps a willingness to > step outside conventions) is balanced by the qualities for which the > Japanese are renowned and which have led to their economic success. A couple of other articles (see <1238@petsd.UUCP>, for example) have answered this better than I could. I think it's quite clear that you have decided that the Japanese style of concensus society is ipso facto a sign of lack of creativity. I think this is to mistake the finger which points with the moon itself. > In article <49691@sun.uucp> livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: > > I can see nothing in the least sinister in having national tests > >which are graded equally across the country. The xSAT and xCAT tests in > >the US work well enough to show that. I think you have totally misunderstood > >the function of books of previous tests. The idea is not to subvert the > >tests, but to allow everyone an equal opportunity to rehearse. > > In Britain these are seen as a step towards the reimposition of a rigid > selection system. The tests start at the age of 7. Is it right to label a > kid of age 7 a failure simply because he or she came from a family where > no-one much cared for education so s/he wasn't coached into the little > tricks of passing tests, and didn't know what s/he was doing on the day of the > test? The acute reader will notice the insidious way in which this sentence slips from testing to "label a kid of age 7 a failure", as though one were the inevitable result of the other. The creative use of the passive voice is good, too "In Britain these are seen..." means "I personally think....". If parents don't want to know how their children are doing, then they are fools. If they consent to having their children 'condemned' to anything, then they are worse than fools. > The danger is that schools will just teach to the tests, damaging the more > creative aspects of education, and encouraging a dangerous uniformity > (any social Darwinian ought to know the advantages of diversity! (I don't mean > by this to imply that Jon necessarily is a social Darwinian)). I am sure we are all aware that measuring academic progress leads inexorably to 'dangerous uniformity'. After all, that's why we measure progress in Universities, to encourage uniformity, no? If I knew what a "social Darwinian" is, I would know if I was one, but it sounds properly frightful, whatever it is. Wasn't Hitler one, or someone of that ilk? > Of course, at some time tests of actual competence are required and it's > tough if you fail because you haven't put the work in, whether it's your > fault or not. But at the age of 7-11 I doubt these tests measure anything > much more than the ability to pass tests. Perhaps that is why the actual proposal, which you appear to be misrepresenting here, is for testing at ages 7, 11, 14, and 16. - // - I have to say that I think there is some pretty shoddy thinking here. The actual proposal, if I can believe the N.Y.T., is for a national curriculum and nationwide testing. It does not propose packing the little ones off down the coalmines if they flunk improper fractions. It mainly makes schools responsible for their performance, and allows parents, for the first time that I know of, to have the information which allows them to figure out which schools are actually teaching something, and which are not. In Matthew's hands, this gets dressed up in a variety of emotional language. We have 'rigid' testing, 'reimposition', 'condemning' kids to 'failure', 'damaging', 'social Darwinian' and so on. But then, when I ask for some evidence to back all this fluff up, there is none. Sorry, but I am not impressed. jon.
livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) (04/24/88)
In article <1148@maccs.UUCP>, cs4l3az@maccs.UUCP (....Jose) writes: > In article <50123@sun.uucp> livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: > >In article <114@avsd.UUCP>, govett@avsd.UUCP (David Govett) writes: > >> > >> If Beethoven was such a great symphonist, why did he write only nine? > >> After all, Haydn wrote 104. > > > > If the Japanese know so much about electronics, how come > >they don't have twenty four RISC architectures? > > If this is a science conference, then why do we keep bringing > up silly, irrelevant, meaningless nationalist gibberish? Because it's none of these things, and because creativity is probably an acceptable subject for sci.misc. In case this is exchange has been too cryptic, and it might easily be, given that I was answering a koan, I'll try to spell it out. Messrs Huntbach and Govett variously allege that the Japanese are not a creative bunch and are 'freeloading' on 'US and European' science. Others reply with examples of Japanese scientists and mathematicians (We forgot Yukawa of meson fame) and I added that creativity may be wider than simply classical science. Govett, points out, above, that quantity is not quality, and I have replied by noting that while we are busily creating something like two dozen RISC architectures, they appear to be waiting to see which win, and then, if past performance is any guide, they may just adopt it/them and run. Now, which approach is more creative? I think that they both are. jon.
mls@whutt.UUCP (SIEMON) (04/25/88)
In article <50475@sun.uucp>, livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: > > If parents don't want to know how their children are doing, then they > are fools. If they consent to having their children 'condemned' to anything, > then they are worse than fools. > I tend to think, rather, that it's the majority voting for Maggie that are the fools. Since legitimacy in a "democratic" polity requires an assumption of "consent" by the defeated party, many parents may well be in the position of (forced) consent to precisely that. The political defense of privilege is ALWAYS done at the expense of those without the priveleges. Jon, we realize from your postings that you fervently defend the Thatcherite position; many others do not -- and the discussion surely belongs somewhere else (soc.politics.misc?) than sci.misc. -- Michael L. Siemon contracted to AT&T Bell Laboratories ihnp4!mhuxu!mls standard disclaimer
gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) (04/26/88)
> Now, which approach is more creative? I think that they both >are. Talk about koans! Are they each more creative than the other, or are they both more creative than the unnameable? I think they are both.
mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) (04/27/88)
In article <50657@sun.uucp> livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: >In article <1148@maccs.UUCP>, cs4l3az@maccs.UUCP (....Jose) writes: >> If this is a science conference, then why do we keep bringing >> up silly, irrelevant, meaningless nationalist gibberish? > > Because it's none of these things, and because creativity is >probably an acceptable subject for sci.misc > > Messrs Huntbach and Govett variously allege that the Japanese >are not a creative bunch and are 'freeloading' on 'US and European' science. Science is meant for 'freeloading' so don't count me in as a Japan-basher on this. If they can come up with the products based on our ideas that's fine and it's our fault that we couldn't do it first. The argument is over whether various forms of education system affect nations. If they do then clearly when discussing these education systems we ought to be able to use statements of the form 'Nation A is more <some quality> than Nation B' without being accused of nationalism. What we have not covered is cause and effect - e.g. is there something in Japanese society which makes a rigid education system more acceptable there than elsewhere, rather than what effects does the rigid education system have on Japanese society. An education system which is divisive is probably more acceptable in a country with high social cohesion than in one which is already socially divided. In the USA that division is between blacks and whites. In Britain there are still very strong class divisions so any education system or system for measuring intelligence which starts on the assumption that everyone is equally motivated won't work unless one doesn't care about race/class bias. Matthew Huntbach
livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) (04/27/88)
In article <3104@whutt.UUCP>, mls@whutt.UUCP (SIEMON) writes: > In article <50475@sun.uucp>, livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: > > > > If parents don't want to know how their children are doing, then they > > are fools. If they consent to having their children 'condemned' to anything, > > then they are worse than fools. > > > I tend to think, rather, that it's the majority voting for Maggie that are the > fools. Since legitimacy in a "democratic" polity requires an assumption of > "consent" by the defeated party, many parents may well be in the position of > (forced) consent to precisely that. The political defense of privilege is > ALWAYS done at the expense of those without the priveleges. If I could figure out what is being said here, I would reply to it. What privilege are we talking about here? > Jon, we realize from your postings that you fervently defend the Thatcherite > position; many others do not -- and the discussion surely belongs somewhere > else (soc.politics.misc?) than sci.misc. You have a reasonable point, but the wrong guy. This discussion began when Mr Huntbach, who does not, I think, receive soc.politics.misc, seized on a discussion of IQ testing to make an impassioned denunciation of proposals for changes to the UK's education system. Since the article was misleading, and contained a good many non-facts, as I demonstrated by quoting a comprehensive article from the NYT Education Section, I though it worth answering, and did. (However, I am not going to answer your comment about UK voters above, since that is really a purely political comment, and has no place at all here.) Since you have been posting here as long as Huntbach has, I find myself wondering why you did not invite him to take his postings elsewhere, around about, oh, say 9 Apr 88 19:39:21 GMT. If you had, that would have cut this short from the start. Is it possible that only postings that you personally disagree with ought to go to soc.politics.misc? Given that we have a science education problem of some magnitude in the US, I have to say that I think discussions about education policy, are at least as relevant to sci.misc as, say, discussions about astrology, a pseudo- science at best. What do you say? Am I being unfair? jon.
mls@whutt.UUCP (SIEMON) (04/27/88)
In article <50987@sun.uucp>, livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes:
+ You have a reasonable point, but the wrong guy. This discussion
+ began when Mr Huntbach, who does not, I think, receive soc.politics.misc,
+ seized on a discussion of IQ testing to make an impassioned denunciation
+ of proposals for changes to the UK's education system. ...
+
+ Since you have been posting here as long as Huntbach has, I find
+ myself wondering why you did not invite him to take his postings elsewhere,
+ around about, oh, say 9 Apr 88 19:39:21 GMT. If you had, that would have
+ cut this short from the start. Is it possible that only postings that you
+ personally disagree with ought to go to soc.politics.misc?
+
+ Given that we have a science education problem of some magnitude in
+ the US, I have to say that I think discussions about education policy, are at
+ least as relevant to sci.misc as, say, discussions about astrology, a pseudo-
+ science at best.
+
+ What do you say? Am I being unfair?
+
I had (and have) no objection to the original postings by either side; it is
the continuing vitriolic and entirely political followups that I protest.
(And obviously, I ask the side I disagree with to end the exchange :-) :-))
You obviously saw my note on astrology and took it to mean that I support the
stuff; frankly I think that astrology is a load of pseudo-scientific garbage
at about the same level as intelligence testing. My interest in it is purely
historical. Is that clear enough?
--
Michael L. Siemon
contracted to AT&T Bell Laboratories
ihnp4!mhuxu!mls
standard disclaimermmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) (04/30/88)
In article <3104@whutt.UUCP> mls@whutt.UUCP (SIEMON) writes: >In article <50475@sun.uucp>, livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey) writes: >> >> If parents don't want to know how their children are doing, then they >> are fools. If they consent to having their children 'condemned' to anything, >> then they are worse than fools. >> >I tend to think, rather, that it's the majority voting for Maggie that are the >fools. I tend to agree this discussion has gone far enough - I will leave Jon's last comment to stand. No we don't get soc.talk.politics here which is why political discussions involving Brits tend to crop up all over the place. (If this is because the news groups we get are supposed to be restricted to those that might be of professional use why do we get all those obscure rec.music ones ???). One last point though - the majority did NOT vote for Maggie. The Conservative Party landslide victory was entirely the fault of our voting system which distorts the results. About 41% voted for Conservative Party candidates. Matthew Huntbach