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« Energy Costs and the Economy | Main | The SOTU (Again) and the Dumbing Down of the Polity »

January 19, 2011

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Georgi Marinov

A few comments I have:

The fundamental reason for the crisis is in higher education (and it's not just higher education, it is education in general) is the attitude towards knowledge that the vast majority of our society has. The purpose of education is to teach you two main things - first, what we know about the world around us, and second, how to figure out your way in the world in the absence of prior knowledge (which is the case most of the time); i.e. you should acquire knowledge and learn how to think. The purpose of education is most definitely not to land you a well-paying job, but that's how it is currently being seen by the majority of people, and as a result, what happens is that kids go to school so that they get into college, then they go college so that they can get a job, or increasingly, so that they can get into graduate, business, med, law school, where they go so that they can get an even better paying job. But at no point in this process do they go to those institutions with the goal of learning something. The roots of this heavily anti-intellectualist attitude are very deep and there isn't enough time and space to discuss them here in depth. It is probably a natural thing if you think about it, because our biological nature is such that we instinctively aim at improving our societal status as it brings better opportunities for mating and better chances for the offspring. Knowledge and critical thinking have great adaptive value, but mostly in the long term and they tend to benefit the group as a whole, not the individual; in the short term status is something a lot more visible and tangible so most people will aim at maximizing status.

Now what is much more important than the state of higher education in the US, is the observation that the reason we (where "we" means the whole world) are in the predicament we are in right now with respect to our global ecological overshoot is the very same reason why higher education in the US is going downhill. Had we valued knowledge and understanding of the world around us and critical thinking, and used them in real life, we would have done the necessary to prevent the collapse. After all, it is through knowledge and critical thinking that one arrives at the conclusion that we're in overshoot and have to take some very serious measures to stop before it's too late.

But for this to happen, you pretty much need each and every individual in a society to have a minimal level of understanding of the situation (otherwise they will not see the point of sacrificing their current social and material status), and this actually entails acquiring a lot of scientific knowledge that even most undergraduate and graduate students today don't get. That's not such a problem as that knowledge isn't as complicated as some of the fields of modern mathematics are for example, and the reason students aren't taught that stuff is because they are taught a lot of other absolutely useless and irrelevant garbage, but it still means that the educational level that each individual would have in an imagined stable society is much higher than what is currently in the curriculum in high schools anywhere in the world. And this would be much easier to achieve by having people be motivated to actually learn on their own than through enforcing knowledge onto them through, in fact it is the only way.

Now, you are probably going to say "But look at the IQ distribution, what you are proposing is not possible". Which would be true, if that IQ distribution was the result of genetically encoded differences between individuals. Some of it is, but those are the cases where intelligence is limited due to genetic defects, and those are the minority of the people on the left side of the curve and pretty much none of the people in the middle. People have looked very very hard for genetic variants associated with high IQ and they have found none. It doesn't mean they aren't going to find some in the future, but the evidence right now suggests that IQ and the ability to learn are most likely primarily a function of the environment. One has to remember that kids are not born in school, they spend several years at home before they enter school, and even after that, it is the home and immediate social environment that have the most impact on their intellectual development. So if there are no serious books in the house, the TV is constantly on and the advertisement and reality show crap is pouring into the room, the parents spend no time with their kids while they are very young, when they grow up, they drill into their head how important it is to find a well-paying job and have lots of material possession, they raise them into the consumerism culture, etc., it is no wonder that the IQ distribution and motivation to truly learn are where they are. In all likelihood, they could be a lot higher with the necessary investment of effort and care. But, because it is the general societal attitude towards these things that has to change, it is unlikely that it will ever happen.

Larry Shultz

Georgi Marinov,
My understanding of the study of twins seprated at birth and brought up in different enviroments is that IQ has about a positive .6 or .7 crrelation with the biological parents IQ. You may like reading a Blank Slate by Pinker for some more data on this. thanks for listening
Larry Shultz

Sam

Hi George,
While I think you make many good points in your post, I take issue with what you appear to suggest about intelligence. The way I am reading your post (and correct me if I’m mistaken), you seem to be suggesting that intelligence is mostly a function of inheritance—that is, our society is denying the fact that some people are smarter than others because of their innate qualities. You then go on to mention that “We assume that all children and young adults can learn the same curriculum if we but organize it and deliver it in such a way that they can absorb it, thus transferring the responsibility for learning from the students to the teachers…[but] the anti-elitism that prevails dulls our ability to recognize that there really are brighter and duller people when it comes to learnability and (self)motivation.”

This statement seems to conflict with recent evidence by social psychologists, most notably found in a book by Richard Nisbett, Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count, which argues strongly that the structure of a child’s environment has the predominant role in determining what is widely regarded as intelligence. http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-How-Get-Schools-Cultures/dp/0393337693/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1295568119&sr=8-3

Environments that foster discipline and a hard work ethic produce better results, not because the children coming in were any smarter than average, but because of the work that parents, teachers, and students put in to helping young minds grow. I think it’s probably safe to assume that students attending Tacoma Community College are more likely to come from families with fewer books in the house than the kids at Harvard who went to the Andovers and Exeters of the world. Nothing you’ve said convinces me that the 5-year olds from wealthy, well-educated families who were pushed to excel, read to, tutored, and did summer homework, finally ending up at Harvard are intrinsically smarter than 5-year olds from working class families in Tacoma who went to public school and ended up at community college. Obviously, this is a gross generalization, but background is strongly linked with intelligence. That’s not causative evidence, it’s simply strong correlations, but ones that are highly suggestive when cross-national comparisons of academic achievement are made where gaps between races and classes are much smaller than in the United States. This is not to deny that genes have no effect on intelligence. I'm sure they do, and if all children had identical educational and family environments, then those differences would likely predominate. But as it stands in our society, I'm not convinced those genetic differences matter as much as environmental ones.

But although I am not swayed by your arguments on intelligence, the rest of your post about the failure, not only of the transfer of knowledge, but also of values, was spot on. A system that devalues knowledge and works to push as many people through the academy as possible is doomed to fail. Of course, your piece is extremely timely, given the recent study which came out a couple of days ago, detailing the inability of nearly half of 4-year college students in the U.S. to improve their performance on a reasoning test after their first two years of college. http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110119/us_yblog_thelookout/are-college-students-learning-anything
It saddens me that this is the state of higher education in this country, and I worry that the inability of college to transmit values will make whatever societal crash we have much more painful. Sigh.

John Dyer

When I look back on my high school and college days, I believe I did well because I was inherently interested in what I was learning. I remember the absolute fascination I had with my first college tour, looking at the equipment in the engineering lab. I couldn't wait to get to take various classes and have their secrets exposed to me.

The inherent interest in learning- this seems to be the missing link in all this. The best teachers in the world can't teach someone that is not interested in learning; and vice versa a mediocre teacher can still have success with someone who wants to learn.

George Mobus

Georgi,

Larry points toward the literature I am familiar with on the topic of heritability. It would be good if you could cite some relevant literature on IQ heritability that supports your claim.

Meanwhile here are a few of my references that I have used (in addition to Pinker) for my understanding of intelligence and its native capacity.

Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence Reframed, Basic Books, New York.

Sternberg, R.J. (2003). Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

A few others. Some modern work on genetic markers that do correlate with intelligence. Unfortunately my oldest son (who is studying to become a genomics scientist!) has borrowed my most recent reference there. But if you will take my word for it, there is evidence that there are several genetic factors that are implicated in IQ development. You are correct that defects are most clearly responsible for many kinds of low-end IQ, but the fact that these are genetic defects makes the point that genetics does very much matter, no?

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Sam,

In no way discounting Nisbett's work or claims, but this is in the realm of he said-she said to a degree. Each of us could probably bring lots of citations that support a weighting one way or the other, but to me, the best evidence to date shows that heritability of .5+ is operative. Also, I am not claiming that environment is not a factor in development. I am simply stating what the data tell us. The capabilities for school intelligence is normally distributed whatever the ultimate cause(s). It is that fact that I use to observe that if you lower the average IQ in the classroom, you must necessarily lower the rigor in the curriculum or flunk more people out (and we are talking about college here).

blockquote>Nothing you’ve said convinces me that the 5-year olds from wealthy, well-educated families who were pushed to excel, read to, tutored, and did summer homework, finally ending up at Harvard are intrinsically smarter than 5-year olds from working class families in Tacoma...

That was never my intention! The elitism I refer to is not wealth elitism, it is intelligence (and intellect) elitism. I never claimed that these should be conflated.

What seems to be more important in the developmental environment is not wealth per se but the richness of intellectual challenges that the child has. Wealthier families can produce more such opportunities, but that doesn't mean they necessarily will.

So, even though you might have some problems with arguments about the 'sources' of intelligence distribution, the fact remains that it very definitely is distributed. And we have, as a society decided that people with average intelligence (or slightly below) are just as deserving of more education beyond high school. The problem is that we have also adopted a one-size-fits-all approach, or forcing all feet into one shoe size even if those shoes flop around on the smaller feet.

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John,

Our experiences were similar. I only had a few teachers that ever impressed me as having something to teach me. The rest provided weak pointers at best. I took the initiative and pursued what interested me regardless of its relevance to the classes I happened to be taking. It seems to have paid off!


George

Georgi Marinov
Georgi,

Larry points toward the literature I am familiar with on the topic of heritability. It would be good if you could cite some relevant literature on IQ heritability that supports your claim.

Meanwhile here are a few of my references that I have used (in addition to Pinker) for my understanding of intelligence and its native capacity.

Gardner, H. (1999). Intelligence Reframed, Basic Books, New York.

Sternberg, R.J. (2003). Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

A few others. Some modern work on genetic markers that do correlate with intelligence. Unfortunately my oldest son (who is studying to become a genomics scientist!) has borrowed my most recent reference there. But if you will take my word for it, there is evidence that there are several genetic factors that are implicated in IQ development. You are correct that defects are most clearly responsible for many kinds of low-end IQ, but the fact that these are genetic

It does matter, of course, but it seems to matter more on the low end than on the high end. I guess here are the relevant correlations:

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/heritability-of-human-intelligence-iq-and-eugenics-796

The problem is that, as I sad, when you look at the very high end, you can't find genetic variants that explain the variation. People have been doing plenty of GWAS targeted at that, the reason you don't see them published is that the results have been negative and this doesn't make for a sexy publication in a prestigious journal (GWAS has been around for quite a while at this point and has been applied to hundreds of traits). So while there is definitely a not insignificant heritable component, it is likely to be the product of very complicated interactions between a great many genes. And of course, there is the Flynn effect too.

Also, one should not commit the sin of equating a person's IQ with his ability to be a intellectually functional human being; you don't need to have an IQ of 170 for that. If, say, 130 is enough, and there is no genetic barrier to most human beings reaching it, then we have to focus on changing the environment we raise kids in and we can achieve a lot by doing so.

I am by no means contradicting your positions that everyone should attend college, quite the opposite. But I think that there is a minimal level of knowledge and of critical thinking skills that everyone should possess for a society to be functioning properly, and that level seems to be higher than what is currently being taught in college. I think that there is no reason why that level can not be achieved in high school provided that students are sufficiently motivated to learn and that their intellectual development has not been irreversibly stunted during the crucial years before they even entered school. Never going to happen, of course, but that's how I see it.

mikkel

It's my understanding that there is a pretty strong inheritability factor for intelligence but that there is also mean reversion over two-three generations. The way I look at it, genes affect the expected value of the normal distribution but that it'll be biased towards the population mean. So say I have an IQ of 145, then assuming the mother has a similar one our children will have an expected value of 130. That means they'd have a 15% chance of having my IQ or 115, 2% being one standard deviation above me or 100, etc. Then over the population of my children, the population of their children would be 115 and eventually the population of my great grandchildren would be back to normal.

That said, this line is factually incorrect: "People are no more intelligent today than they were in 1940."

The fact is that IQ is rising in the population and they have to renormalize, aka the Flynn effect.

I view an increase in anti-intellectualism as being linked to a breakdown in egalitarianism and a rise in consumerism. Societies accept or even rapidly embrace the concept of the intellectual elite when the blue collar and service workers have a guarantee of jobs that can provide the foundation to satisfy their basic Maslow stages 1-4 needs. Our society has broken that social contract [yeah a few blue collar jobs like you mentioned still qualify but that's only because of fierce unionism and licensing where it is VERY difficult to get into the club as an outsider] and basically tells everyone without a college degree tough shit if they can't meet their needs. That has an extremely corrosive effect on intellectualism because it breeds resentment, even though the majority of people responsible for this shift aren't intellectuals either, they are money oriented parasites. Parasites who just happen to be able to get the masses to ignore this reality by siccing them on the "pompous out of touch" intellectual elite.

In my personal and secondary experience, the countries that most value intellectualism at the moment are either the fast developing countries trying to increase their share of the pie as fast as possible or the mature social democracies that have egalitarianism as a core value like Scandinavia, Germany, New Zealand/Australia.

Therefore I think the best approach for the intellectual elite to reclaim its status is to fight for social justice and living wages for all good workers.

George Mobus

Commentators,

I had not wanted to get into an extended debate over intelligence and the genetic vs. environmental basis for where one individual may be on the bell curve. But it seems several of you have decided to focus on questioning the genetic basis of intelligence as a foil to the idea that intellectual elitism has been compromised by widening the "umbrella" of who gets into institutions of higher education. Or at least seem to have difficulty appreciating the role of 'native' intelligence vs. the benefits of our social milieu.

The Flynn effect has been mentioned twice so I dug out my copy of Flynn's latest book to refresh my memory on what he, himself, says about it. Lets start with some basics. When I used the term IQ I was a bit sloppy, using it as a generic placeholder for the concept of intelligence competency not just scores on IQ tests (although they are quite highly correlated). There are, in fact, many various tests and probes for intelligence that do not involve standard IQ tests at all, but rather look at physiological and psychophysical phenomena. There are a large number of factors that contribute to general intelligence and these are largely tied to brain function rather than learned abilities per se. General intelligence is called 'g' and has several important components, a few of which are:

General intelligence g(IQ).


  • Working memory (size and retention)

  • processing (reaction) time

  • explicit memory (memorization of facts) size and recall ability

  • tacit memory (judgment tasks - lesser effects of biases)

  • pattern encoding (committing to long-term memory) and recognition (recall and matching)

  • mathematico-logical (reasoning)

  • creative problem solving

General intelligence underlies all forms of intelligent capacity and is highly correlated with genetic similarities (twin studies). Various testing of general intelligence (collected under the rubric, the g factor) depend on native capacities (e.g. speed of processing is thought to be based on speed of nerve conduction) vs cognitive task performance as measured by IQ tests which tend to test acquired capacities such as facts and skills. These are more likely influenced by social emphases. According to Flynn ("What is Intelligence",2009, Cambridge University Press) the extreme rises in IQ scores were seen in cognitive tasks represented in selective subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) most susceptible to social importance. Subtests highly reliant on g loadings (e.g. reaction times and arithmetic/reasoning) have shown much less change and what changes there have been might yet be explained by test modifications made over the years (reflecting social importance again - think new math vs. standard computation).

As Flynn, himself, points out, there are ridiculous paradoxes implied by over interpretation of his, and others, results. For example we should conclude that our grandparents were idiots. Does that really ring true? My claim that we are no more intelligent than folk in 1940 remains intact.

However, my real point still stands. Regardless of the relative effects on intelligence from genetics or environment, the population is normally distributed. And the rate at which we have been increasing the numbers of people clustered around the mean of that distribution has lowered the overall average intelligence (and competencies) of those in our institutions of higher education.

Ironically, I have recently heard that the Flynn effect from 1950 on may actually reflect the increase in emphasis in high school education curriculum on college preparation for a greatly expanded number of students! The effect is, after all, seen highest on subtest factors that reflect possessing knowledge that the average person of an older age might possess! In other words, ever since Sputnik we have been aggressively pushing curriculum down to the high school level that previously had been taught at the college level precisely because it was thought to be too challenging for high schooler in general (the ones who previously were not preparing for college). I assert (without evidence unfortunately) that one of the reasons high schoolers have become disaffected with these subjects and are therefore not adequately prepared for (now days) college-level work is that our original intuitions on the that issue were correct. We're pushing too hard too soon. Yet it would not be surprising that some of that knowledge stuck and showed up as higher scores on standard IQ tests. Proves nothing about increasing intelligence over the generations.

We should stick with brain mechanisms that underlay general intelligence. And while I would not be surprised to learn of some epigentic influences (acquired influences that imprint to affect subsequent generations) on intelligence, I would rather look at genetic control networks and their impact on development. Evolutionary changes to some of these non-coding sections may explain a lot more than protein genes (which is why it is hard to find genetic markers for intelligence per se).

Georgi said:

I am by no means contradicting your positions that everyone should attend college, quite the opposite. But I think that there is a minimal level of knowledge and of critical thinking skills that everyone should possess for a society to be functioning properly, and that level seems to be higher than what is currently being taught in college.

I agree with this statement. Critical thinking skill is just that, a skill. And it is applicable at any level of intelligence. And it can be learned (or actually allowed to expand) by any individual. I would argue that our modern version of schooling actually beats it down and only the most persevering individuals ever escape school (including college) with any kind of critical thinking ability intact. My preferred education format is to teach systems science (qualitative and some quantitative) as the core curriculum to all ages. This would start with a permaculture (practical and theoretical) curriculum for children and up through high school (where management issues can be taught). I'd leave off the really intellectual stuff (e.g. high theory in systems science) for college.

George

Florifulgurator

I've for quite some time suspected that what makes hominids stupid is civilization...

Now Jonathan Dickau has mentioned here the recent book by Joseph Chilton Pearce, "The Biology of Transcendence". Seems this is essential reading...

2 snippets from Jonathan's comments:

The idea is that a natural environment provides a person with congruent information almost all of the time, and sometimes requires attention to subtle cues, where a city provides individuals with numerous disconnected streams of information at once, and much of it is extreme. As a result; many city people lack exposure to enough natural stimuli during critical developmental times, to have a congruent or holistic impression of life in general. Among other things (studies have shown), this has resulted in a situation where younger people - especially those brought up in cities - distinguish fewer levels of gray, or any other color, and the same with other senses, with perception centering on especially loud or bright stimuli.
...
What appears to be happening is that not only are people losing the ability to discern subtleties, they fail to pursue the chain of logical inference up or down the possibility tree, for all except the most extreme stimuli. A literal translation from the German states that now a 'brutal thrill' stimulus is required, for our brains to regsiter it - according to Pearce. Instead of 350 shades of a particular color, people see 130. Instead of distinguishing 300k sounds, now it's only 180k. But most disturbing are his quotations from Gert Gerken talking about 'the new indifference.'

Because most modern people have grown up with so many extreme contradictions, young people are learning to tolerate extremes of dissonance or discord. This results in "the mental ability to unite elements that are not logically related, and the failure to recognize severe logical fallacies." So this is the kind of cognitive erosion [...]


From an amazon.com review of said book,


After teaching 36 years at the college level, a persistent trend has become obvious to my colleagues and me: the ever-diminishing capacity of our students over the years to do assignments. While I have been very consistent with my core content, students are proving to be less and less capable on average. Much conversation and debate about this perceived problem in its many forms (I was recently told that over 30 percent of our students have a clinically diagnosed psychological or learning disorder) has consumed many hours of our academic lives. Until this book I had no clue as to "real" causes behind the student's diagnosed disorders.

Florifulgurator

P.S.: Some anecdotal confirmation: During my time at a Bavarian university math deptartment I was struck by the fact that most (with 2 exceptions) of the brightest students and young PhDs there were coming from rural Barvaria (sic!). Most of the very best never had a chance to get a professor position due to their Barvarian accent...

mikkel

" My preferred education format is to teach systems science (qualitative and some quantitative) as the core curriculum to all ages. This would start with a permaculture (practical and theoretical) curriculum for children and up through high school (where management issues can be taught)."

Yes, this is true intelligence and if explained properly can be communicated without any dumbing down, in fact excessive education can be a hindrance. At one family reunion I described fractal patterning in physiologic signals as a sign of health and the nature of chaos and bifurcation points in complex systems and how it related to global warming. That group was 80% farmers and they not only understood what I was saying but asked leading questions and gave anecdotes that showed they comprehended. By contrast I can't get a lot of non-systems postcollege grads to understand the implications if their life depended on it (which of course we agree it does) because they have been pounded with reductionist "expertise" to the point that they are unable to think systemically.

In that vein, thanks George for writing what I find to be the most intelligent blog on the internet. It has helped me from going insane from the absurdity of the present times.

Georgi Marinov
However, my real point still stands. Regardless of the relative effects on intelligence from genetics or environment, the population is normally distributed. And the rate at which we have been increasing the numbers of people clustered around the mean of that distribution has lowered the overall average intelligence (and competencies) of those in our institutions of higher education.

Just one last clarification because you are indeed very correct that there is danger in these discussions in overheating them due to arguments over specifics that by no means entirely change the main point.

The intelligence distribution will always be approximately normal, there is no argument about that. What I claim/hope is that most of the distribution can be shifted (up to a point, there are limits, of course) to the right, and that it can be shifted sufficiently to the right that we can organize the kind of rational sustainable society that we dream for given the necessary societal investment and shift in attitudes. I can not be certain that this is possible, that's why I say "claim/hope" above, but based on what we know about intelligence, it seems like that's the case and it is definitely worth trying, which, of course, isn't ever going to happen.

Georgi Marinov
P.S.: Some anecdotal confirmation: During my time at a Bavarian university math deptartment I was struck by the fact that most (with 2 exceptions) of the brightest students and young PhDs there were coming from rural Barvaria (sic!). Most of the very best never had a chance to get a professor position due to their Barvarian accent...

My feeling is that there is indeed such a trend and the reason behind it is that people from rural areas have been less exposed to the kind of computerized lifestyle we live right now, with distractions coming from hundreds of sources all the time, therefore their ability to get deep into problems is less decimated than others.

I was born in the mid 80s and I have spent my first 15 years without a computer (mine seems to have been the last generation this was possible) and I have, to my great dissatisfaction, noticed that trend myself - in the last 10 years, and particularly after I started doing research, my ability to get deep into topics has diminished drastically. Entirely understandable, given the dozen projects going on in the same time, the hundreds of e-mails you get every day, the meetings, the conference calls, all the hypertext on your screen, etc, etc. When I was a kid, I would spend days pondering over a complicated math problem, for example, and when I finally solved it, it became firmly internalized and I could recall the concept and use it at any time later. Now I often find myself in a situation where I try to read something fairly complicated and I either can't focus enough on it to understand it, or I understand it easily, but then a few days later I don't remember anything of it. And a lot of other people are complaining of the same problem, again, not surprising given the amount of distraction and the way the technology has made sure it is in out face all the time.

Now, I at least happen to remember the time when I would spend days in a row studying a book in depth, but the kids that are entering college today have spent their entire life in the kind of environment that breeds short attention spans, superficial thinking and instant gratification-seeking, they don't even realize there is a problem because for them this is the normal way of things...

Mike Cagle

Your description of educational history is rather over-simplified. You point to a golden age when only the "elite" got into college, which was very much more rigorous than now. You also complain of rote memorization and blame it on current standardized curricula and tests. Yet, in the 19th century, much education was rote memorization. The "elite" which made it into college was not necessarily an intellectual elite. It was a social elite. Its members had to be of certain ethnicity, from the "right sort" of families (with wealth or prestige), and male. Many very intelligent people were barred from this "elite," while at the same time, legacy admissions allowed (as they still do) many not-so-bright students into top schools. Also, educational rigor wasn't always required for entry to highly elite professions. I just finished A History of American Law by L. Friedman, where I learned that in some states during parts of the 19th century, there were few or no educational prerequisites for entry to law school, or even for admission to the bar. So your golden age, where you had to be really smart to go to college, only really smart people went to college, and only really smart college graduates attained elite professional status, is suspect.
You also complain that curricula have been and are being dumbed down, but later you also complain that high school curricula, since Sputnik, have been too difficult and advanced. Which?
I don't know what part of intelligence is genetic, but clearly not all of it is. While it's obvious that not everybody can be above average, and not everybody is a genius, I think it's true that most everybody could probably learn and think more effectively than they are now. And different people learn best in different ways. Mathematics was very hard for me -- but I think I'm a visual thinker. I've heard that people like myself can learn math better through visual methods of teaching it.
Which brings me to another point. "General intelligence" is an outmoded concept. Some people are smart in some ways and not so smart in others. Some are good at math, some excellent at reading comprehension. Some people can draw, some can carry a tune, some can catch a baseball well. Some can motivate a group of people. These are all (largely) mental skills. You might be really good in one and really terrible at another. My contention, (as someone who can draw well, and who scores highly in reading comprehension, but can't carry a tune, do math or catch a ball), is that almost anyone can get measurably better (maybe not great, but better) at the things they are terrible at, with motivation, practice, and the right kind of teaching. The idea that everyone can be great at math -- clearly wrong. But the idea that most can get better than they are at math -- probably right, I think. (I also think most anyone can learn to draw -- pretty well, and better than they do -- but not necessarily like Michelangelo.) So, in a society where knowing stuff (and having math skills, for example) is a big help in life, it's understandable that a movement arose to try to get everybody (even people from non-elite groups) a chance to learn as much as they can, to give them the best chance possible. After all, there's a terrible conundrum here. Sure, college isn't for everybody. But the days when a factory worker or skilled craftsman could earn enough to provide a good living for his family are gone. And all those people who formerly wouldn't have even thought of going to college are now being told they have to become "knowledge workers." They may not want to, but the ubiquitous message is that this is the only way to stay afloat now. So what are they to do? And also, while it's true that not all people have equal intelligence, it's also a fact that people from non-elite groups, historically, were underestimated intelligence-wise, assumed to be mentally inferior, and not given many chances to display or develop their intelligence.
One final point: the university's purpose is to "help minds grow." An appealing idea, and I agree with it. However, state legislators will look for some more concrete benefits as well (including providing suitably trained graduates to the future economy as they envision it), if their support is to be forthcoming. That's just the way it is.

George Mobus

Flor,

I believe Georgi's point (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that there are many things about the environment that can diminish intelligence realization. And I don't think it is a stretch to argue that environments further, in form, from the one Homo sapiens sapiens evolved in, such as modern civilization, could conceivably contribute to the diminishment.

It seems to me we have arguments that suggest both a right shift (toward higher average real intelligence) of the IQ distribution (one interpretation of the Flynn effect) and arguments that suggest the shift is toward the left (the kind of response expected from this argument). We could also figure an argument that both are true producing a platykurtic shaped distribution!

None of these arguments change the basic fact that a relatively rapid shift of the window for higher education qualifications to the left is diluting the general competence of students and since we tend to teach to the center (of the distribution of the sub population of higher education students) the result is a dumbing down of the curriculum (if we want more people to get the piece of paper.)

BTW: has anyone seen the latest studies on brain mass shrinking over the ages? Another suggestion that we are, as a species, getting dumber???

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mikkel,

Will count my efforts as worthwhile then. Thanks.

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Georgi,

I suspect that it would be possible, in principle, to shift the whole distribution to the right, if only... It could be, however, that as Flor points out, some real shifting has gone toward the left.

Of course we should start to actually talk about the curves for multiple intelligences individually (a la Gardner) if there gets to be a consensus about what each kind of intelligence is. I suspect that some curves may indeed tend leftward while others tend rightward (hence my comment about platykurtic curves for the aggregate above).

An environment that would help promote the average intelligence, to allow everyone to obtain the full benefits of whatever their genetic endowment provided, would indeed have to be super 'rational', but not necessarily in the ordinary meaning of rational. In my studies of sapience what I find missing in our social milieu is the wisdom factor needed to sustain the healthy development of human minds.

It isn't a question of more or less intelligence per se, but of more general wisdom made possible by higher levels of native sapience. And that is where the real problem lies. I cannot yet demonstrate this with data, but I have reasons to strongly suggest that the distribution curve for sapience is highly skewed to the left, something like a Poisson distribution with a higher proportion of the population ending up at the low end of the scale and a thin tail out to the right. Such a distribution would help explain why there is so much cleverness and so little wisdom. That is the hypothesis that makes most sense to me.
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Hi Mike.

I'm not sure it is an effective communication strategy to accuse someone of over simplification and then proceed to over simplify what they said!

Your description of educational history is rather over-simplified. You point to a golden age when only the "elite" got into college, which was very much more rigorous than now.

You may have read into the blog that I was referring to a "golden age" but I wasn't particularly, nor did I use that metaphor. Nor was I claiming that only the intellectual elite ever got into colleges.

Your mistake was to generalize my characterizations. Re-read. I will say, however, that while everything you said about the privileged class finding it easier to get into good schools is true, it is also the case that most of those schools were wise enough to be as selective as they could be. Academics have known for a very long time that the high standards for academic achievement always were the best way for a school to become desirable to attend. The dumb legacy admits, like George W. Bush, are a tiny proportion of the student body.

As to the fact that back in the 1700-1800s only landed white males were candidates for college doesn't mean there weren't standards for entrance dealing with potential for achievement. There were, they were just administered differently than today's SATs.

As to the role of rote learning (and a lot depends on what you mean by rote - I mean as in memorizing math facts) in historical higher education I think you overplay how much of it there was. One cannot learn to argue the law by merely memorizing case dates and outcomes. You have to use critical thinking to link facts with situations. Liberal arts has an extremely long history going back to ancient Greece at least (now there might have been a golden age). Yes some of its aspects may have been temporarily lost during some phases of history, when church learning tended to take the place of intellectual development. But the core concept of teaching people to think has never gone away. We even still give lip service to it today even though we actually practice something more akin to church learning (job skill training).

RE: dumbing down/Sputnik effect - Which? Both. The harder curricula have been pushed down to high school while at the same time dumbing it down in hopes that the younger students will be able to absorb it. How? By reverting to focusing on facts and rote memorization. The latter is more amenable to being tested. The real issues of the harder curricula are how to think about the subjects and how the parts fit together, and why.

I have just witnessed two boys go through high school and have had occasion to look at some of the curricular material. My general impression: Remember the story about George Washington and the cherry tree, meant to convey the sentiment that GW was an honest man? My oldest boy took some AP classes which were generally better. But why? Because they started with the assumption that only the smartest kids would be in the class and they could handle the more meaningful material!

By general intelligence I suppose you mean one single thing called intelligence. As I have indicated in several comments, and have written about in previous blogs I am fully on board with multiple intelligences. The term general intelligence is now (and it is by no means outmoded when used properly) referring to the kinds of items I listed up-thread. There is a g factor that can and is measured separately from specific skill intelligences a la Howard Gardner.

All of the rest of your points are reasonable under the assumption that the world is going to go on the way it has in the past. That technology and the workplace will become increasingly complex requiring more intellectual skills of everybody who wants to work and make a decent wage. Only that assumption will not play out. The world of tomorrow is not going to be more of the same simply because we will not have the energy resources to keep it going. In the not too distant future the vast majority of people will be working in some form of agriculture, preferably in my mind in permaculture. We will be going back to an agrarian society, perhaps, and likely, painfully. So a time will come when the university will fulfill its original purpose with respect to providing a mind building experience for those whose minds can become much more than is needed to successfully practice permaculture.


George

George Mobus

All,

I am working on a post that will apply very similar reasoning to the state of our polity. Ms. Palin will play an important role in developing this theme. But I will not be looking at this from a partisan point of view, I have a few Democrats in mind as well.

Stay tuned.

George

George Mobus

This just in! Since I wrote the above blog there have been a number of interesting developments. Education researchers Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa have written a book, "Academically Adrift" that conveys information from a long study; 45% of college sophomores (at end of year) show no improvement in critical thinking or communications skills. The number of graduating seniors is somewhat less, about 36% if I recall. But that could simply be because of attrition of the less able.

Also see this article in AOLNews: http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/26/opinion-do-we-really-need-more-college-graduates/

This is becoming clear to many now.

George

Manor Mouse

Just back from an evening of socialising with a bunch of elite-educated graduates, post-graduates and PhDs ranging in age from 30s to 50s. UK and US nationalities from Ivy League-standard universities. Absolutely the cream of the educated class. And do you know what? Not a single idea was discussed. Wine tasting, yes. Gastronomy, yes. Puzzles and quizzes, travel, TV and trivia. They have razor sharp intelligence and a great capacity for learning - but in only what others provide for them to learn. They don't have a burning passion to exercise their minds beyond what is necessary to maximise their salary and/or material lifestyle.

I am *desperate* to talk about ideas, the economy, energy, the future, but in my experience broaching any such subjects is met with blank stares...

George Mobus

Manor,

Your experience helps prove my point. The crowd you describe are the product of an educational system that has already decayed to the point that that is what we get these days. A true intellectual elite would include the attribute of intellectual curiosity and a burning desire to explore ideas. Just because the people you described came from so-called elite schools means nothing today. But what if we only allowed those with real passion for learning (say systems science - my favorite) into universities? Then do you think you would have problems finding sympaticos?

George

Molly

Sorry it took me a while to get to this....company, etc. First of all I TOTALLY agree with you about the notion of grade inflation. Before I retired I taught high school in an upper middle class school district. I taught in three different high schools there. When I went to the second high school, I, of course, brought along the same grading standards that I'd used at the first school, which were, generally, the notion that the most outstanding work got A's, the pretty damned good work got B's, average work got C's, not so good, but not exactly failing work, got D's and wretched shit got F's. Usually that produced a few A's, a larger number of B's, etc. etc. etc. WELL, those standards ended up having students boycott my class - backed up by the school's administration(!) - and in checking around in the dept. where I taught, I learned that A's were handed out like candy, so OF COURSE that was what the kids AND THEIR PARENTS expected! I transferred to another high school where I took the same grading standards. No problemo there.....got voted by the kids to speak at their graduation, was chair-person of the faculty senate, and sailed on happily until I retired, but did notice that grade inflation was seeping into the school.....

As to whether intelligence is hard-wired or environmental, I vote for a LARGE measure of hard-wiring, based on my own personal experience. I graduated from college with honors and several professors suggested I go on for a Ph. D.. However at the time I graduated, there were lots of unemployed Ph D's in my field, so I opted for a Masters and went on to teach high school. BUT, while I was an undergraduate, I had this thought that I'd major in math. My father LOVED math, was an engineer, and encouraged me (a woman) to excel in math - which I'd never really done in high school, but I sorta liked the subject. So, anyhow, I took "Math Anal" in college, got an A, and signed up for calculus. Well, I worked HOURS every day in that class, NEVER succeeded, and got a D, only, I think, because the prof knew that I'd worked my butt off trying to succeeded in the class....and probably also because I was also one of the few women in the class, in those days. It just did not matter HOW hard I tried, I COULD NOT "GET" most of calculus! I came from a family that had TOTALLY supported the notion that I could do well in math, had gone to a high school where the math and science teachers TOTALLY supported the notion of women in those fields, so my "environment" supported me, but I just couldn't DO calculus. I've since developed some ideas about why I failed at it - ALL having to do with the way my brain is "wired" - but despite the fact that I think they're pretty damned good ideas, will spare you all THAT. But at least for me, certain "forms of intelligence" ARE hard-wired.

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