<p>Darwin Speaks:</p>
<p>From, The Descent of Man
</p>
<p>How about that Hanna?</p>
<p>mini, the eugenics movement was pure evil. How insulting to imply Charles Murray is an offspring. You could not have read The Bell Curve and come to that conclusion. Nor would you, after reading Taboo, find the authors’ curiosity & careful scholarship to be sinister. </p>
<p>Margaret Sanger…now that’s one racist lady with sinister intentions.</p>
<p>I repeat, that’s artificial selection, not natural selection. Darwin is making a political argument for eugenics, not a scientific one. It is a bastardization to claim that “natural selection” is what ought to weed out the undesirables, yet that’s what countless 19th-century eugenicists did.</p>
<p>I repeat:
Eugenics et al = “When science becomes the gold standard of human liberty.”</p>
<p>And I thought we ought to include, as you say, more of “Darwin’s whole argument.”</p>
<p>“mini, the eugenics movement was pure evil. How insulting to imply Charles Murray is an offspring. You could not have read The Bell Curve and come to that conclusion.”</p>
<p>I have read Murray (as I have read a very well-meaning Goddard of 1920, and a large number of the writers that followed, including Charles Eliot, Harvard Prez at the time) and I can’t see how you can fail to come to that conclusion. (You’d be quite surprised how close in reasoning they are - in fact, I bet I could quote passages to you from each, and you couldn’t determine which is which.)</p>
<p>“How about that, mini?”</p>
<p>You’ve got no complaints from me. I’m no great fan of “scientism”.</p>
<p>“The powers that be are turning public schools into factories slowly day by day.”</p>
<p>Doing things that are just plain dumb because you are ordered to “builds character” and “prepares you for life.”</p>
<p>“The powers that be are turning public schools into factories slowly day by day.”</p>
<p>Part of the reason might be that there are too many Ph. Ds with education degrees in colleges. They have no class room experience, but they put out too many crazy-assed theories about learning - like whole language, how to do divisions and fractions… My wife subs in lower grades and she says she can’t do the fractions the way they are teaching.</p>
<p>“like whole language”</p>
<p>Whole language is from the 1950s - the Dick and Jane basal reading series were based upon it. It is likely you learned to read basically without real reference to any of the “theories” (no one reads well without being able to draw sound/sense analogies (i.e. phonics) or without being able to draw these analogies with things in the real world (i.e. whole language).</p>
<p>What they teach and what you learn are often very different things.</p>
<p>I taught in the early 80’s, when whole language was still very “in”. The return to phonetics has been gradual and more recent.</p>
<p>Go to an elementary grade classroom and see how many kids are learning basic mathematical algorithms. It is rather shocking, and like NEW new math. There are scores of kids who really do not know any basic facts, which really complicated learning higher level math later on.</p>
<p>Sometimes, there actually IS a call for basics, not the “dumb” things Mini describes.</p>
<p>Allmusic, once again I agree with you – not everyone is born with the same gifts. </p>
<p>We live in a knowledge-based economy, which rewards higher intelligence. There IS a bell curve in the distribution of intelligence in the population. The question, to me, is how does a society ensure that there are opportunities for those along the whole spectrum. When financial rewards are so closely correlated to SAT scores, what about those on the left side of the curve? In a truly just culture, there would be rewarding work available for people of all kinds of abilities. </p>
<p>But in our society, we do seem to bury our heads in the sand regarding kids with lower IQs. I think that schools should certainly educate them to reach their highest potential, but that won’t be the same as those kids on the far right of the curve. I think it’s very unfair to have the exact same expectations – I’m sure there are many kids who can’t figure out why they can’t succeed at the AP classes their friends take. I don’t have an answer, I just feel sorry for the kids who are channelled into a college prep curriculum when they’d probably be happier in a vocational program.</p>
<p>A few factors not mentioned so far that lead to lower intelligence: </p>
<p>(1) Nutrition gap (both pre- and post-natal) & lack of breastfeeding in poorer populations. Prenatal maternal diet affects brain development. Think of fetal alcohol syndrome. Breastmilk is rich in DHA, for optimal brain/retina development. Brain = human survival organ.</p>
<p>(2) Stimulation gap: wealthier and better educated parents speak much more frequently (more than 3 times as many daily words) to their babies than do poorer or less well educated parents. </p>
<p>Obviously substandard schools are also an issue, demonstrated whenever certain charter schools achieve excellent results with heretofore “doomed” kids.</p>
<p>The “Flynn” effect, demonstrated internationally and over decades, pretty much cements the case for environmental causation.</p>
<p>But, as also indicated by the studies of Adey and Shayer, it would be appear that school is now the single most common cause of cognitive retardation.</p>
<p>Lol school causes cognitive retardation…I can confirm that :)</p>
<p>I think it’s a lack of motivation that causes people to under-perform, not a lack of intelligence. And who cares if half of all kids are below-average. If below-average is still good then that’s all that matters. Just about all kids can pass a standardized test (I’m not talking rank/percentiles…I’m talking straight raw scores, eg, 50% correct or something) if they’re taught well enough. I really truly believe that.</p>
<p>Agree, MCookie. Let’s keep this in perspective. Its not like the US is a third-world country education-wise. Here we are on a discussion board where most posters are screaming because there are too many qualified candidates for spots in the Ivy League freshman class.</p>
<p>CC isn’t the real world, Bay.</p>
<p>Don’t quite understand your point…?</p>
<p>True, the vast majority of students here won’t go to an elite college…but that’s irrelevant…All students can be motivated to learn and be successful in their own way…not every student is destined to be Harvard material but that doesn’t mean that the “dumber” students are flat-out, objectively dumb.</p>
<p>MCookie,</p>
<p>Many of the posts on this thread seem to take a “doom and gloom” perspective on American education. I think overall, our country has made education a priority and its goals are sound (tho’ its execution is still a work in progress).</p>
<p>I’m merely agreeing with you that I think its okay that everyone is not Harvard material - the contributions of that bottom 50% can be just as valuable to our society, (whether due to IQ, motivation, or just personal choice). </p>
<p>Given the amazing success of many of the offspring of posters on this board, I don’t think we should be so quick to judge our system a failure. IMHO.</p>
<p>“Lol school causes cognitive retardation…I can confirm that.”</p>
<p>Only thing is, the researchers aren’t kidding…and neither was I.</p>
<p>Given the amazing success of many of the offspring of posters on this board, I don’t think we should be so quick to judge our system a failure. IMHO.</p>
<p>How many were private/homeschooled/family could afford to move to"better" school district?</p>
<p>* raising hand*</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Our system is not a failure. Certain parts of it–some families, some communities, some schools–are failures. The consequences of those failings, though, fall largely upon the children, the next generation, not on the failing parties. </p>
<p>IMO, it is up to us to do all we can to help those children, to correct the manifest injustices–rather than complacently and condescendingly announcing that those in the bottom half are of “low intelligence” and that that explains their “social and economic problems”.</p>