<p>WSJ cont.,
BY CHARLES MURRAY</p>
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</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009535[/url]”>http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009535</a></p>
<p>I’m not sure why the author seems to believe that 2 year colleges are producing competent craftsmen? Are the four year colleges really resposnible for “soft” degrees … or should we look at the abysmal performance of our secondary system? </p>
<p>Technical and vocational schools offer true alternatives but should be part of a comprehensive system of education, and not carry the negative stigmas they currently do.</p>
<p>Fountain Siren, I agree with the author’s opinions. It answers the question that I posed, and obersvations that I noted in the other thread that you started, “Half of All Children Are Below Average”.</p>
<p>Well, there probably are too many at Dartmouth, as is made clear by the binge and heavy drinking rates, and future rates of alcoholism.</p>
<p>Yesterday, I received the new results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2005.</p>
<p>In 2005, 19.5% of students (ages 18-22) enrolled in college full time were heavy (near daily) drinkers, compared with only 13.0% of those not enrolled full-time or not a all - in other words, 50% higher. Dartmouth is well above the national average - likely more than a quarter of the student body. Of those, roughly 60% will become alcoholics in the next 20 years, if they aren’t so now, or slightly more than 1 out every 6 students, more if they are white and/or male, compared with 1 out of 14 or so among adults not enrolled full-time or not going to college at all. They will suffer debilitating diseases like cirrhosis or liver cancer, and will be more susceptible to a host of disease conditions and “accidents”. </p>
<p>Apparently, their IQ isn’t able to save them. They would likely be better off if they didn’t attend.</p>
<p>Hmm… could it be that having a high IQ leads one to drink, or even worse substance abuse?</p>
<p>Gee, I thought that by being able to understand the world around us would free us to a higher plane, not condemn us to a lower one. After all, what is humanism for?! Foolish me…</p>
<p>I am not sure where they are getting those kids who are not full time college kids for that poll. It seems to me there is a lot of drinking and substance abuse happening with that crowd. In fact many of them get a ride to a institution of a different sort when they get caught. </p>
<p>I am not sure that community colleges necessarily prepare kids for a career either. Some that I have seen don’t prepare them for anything with the sub par treatment they give to academics which handicap kids who try to go onto a 4 year school with those courses as a foundation. Unless you study a specific track that leads to a specific career, you are not likely to come out of a community college with a craftsman’s skill much less becoming a master craftsman. I agree that for many kids, an apprenticeship or skill is an important thing if they are to find jobs that can support themselves, but often applies to 4 year college graduates as well. Many 18 year olds are not ready to buckle down and learn anything. You can’t just shove a kid who has not done well in school into a carpentry or tech school if has not shown the skills or interest for such fields and expect him to succeed.<br>
Often we want the kids to go to college or some other school so they can be with like kids, improve some skills for life, and grow up. It can be dangerous just letting them work a min wage job and finding his friends and entertainment among that crowd. You may not be that aware of it, but there is an intrinsic trust we have when we have kids in school, of the friends they bring home and are with. When they enter the “real” world without this umbrella, you don’t know who their "peers’ are, and the results can be scary and dangerous.<br>
There are colleges that have learning centers for kids who have trouble learning, and whatever they learn in study skills and organization can go a long way as they grow older even if they do not finish a degree program or get a degree in an area that is not going to help much in the way of jobs. Many schools have open enrollment and have kids there who are not proficient in highschool subjects. In a sense, college can be a place that is socially acceptable where a kid can grow up. Unless he is learning disabled to a degree that it is unreasonable to put him there, I see nothing wrong in such kids going to college. Many of our brightest kids are getting degrees in “useless” subjects, that they may not pursue in their careers. It’s really the life experience including the time to grow up a bit without having the stresses and pressures of adult life which they will get eventually for the rest of their lives, that college provides. And a kid who is not as smart, if you want to put it that way, can enjoy that time as well, if a good match is found in the level of difficulty in the school he attends. An 18 year old is not going to find many great employment opportunities out there, and a 22 year old is not going to much better off, unless trained in field where there is enough demand to pay those who work in it. I agree college is not always the best solution, but it is the most readily available. To research other programs such as volunteer work can take a lot of time and is often not on parents’ radar screens. I blame the highschools for this, in that they tend to ignore other avenues for kids to take that can give them the same shelter that college does.</p>
<p>“I am not sure where they are getting those kids who are not full time college kids for that poll. It seems to me there is a lot of drinking and substance abuse happening with that crowd. In fact many of them get a ride to a institution of a different sort when they get caught.”</p>
<p>67,500 face-to-face interviews, based on a scientific sample that has been revalidated over a 20-year period, with tests conducted for statistical significance, and for validity (i.e. to see whether folks might lie.)</p>
<p>Kids need to go away to college to learn how to live away from their parents, to enjoy the freedom to drink and party and stay up all night without the responsibility of cleaning up and preparing meals, but including the responsibility of making it to class on time. These are skills required of all, regardless of IQ.</p>
<p>Charles Murray is a racist who has been widely discredited for his poorly analyzed IQ studies. I would take his studies with a very hefty grain of salt.</p>
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<p>College is indeed a valuable transition to adulthood, but does anyone really need to learn to “drink and party and stay up all night”?</p>
<p>"College is indeed a valuable transition to adulthood, but does anyone really need to learn to “drink and party and stay up all night”?</p>
<p>Well, you can’t transition to alcoholic status without it. 
(Note, though, my alcoholic roommate virtually never partied and very rarely stayed up all night. He just drank. And, to be fair, he went to Williams, not Dartmouth. I don’t know what his IQ was.)</p>
<p>interesting the choices of editorials to share…when you start looking at the authors, well, the American Enterprise Institute, that bastion of balance and fairness</p>
<p>and read some of this other writings…racism disguised as classism…his studies, as noted above, well, take with a grain of salt</p>
<p>hs comments about the underclass are nausiating and cruel…he sees things in a bubble, his comfortable libertarian bubble</p>
<p>but thanks FS for sharing the words of people I would usually avoid, eyeopening to say the least, if not pretty disagreeable</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-bellcurvescience.htm[/url]”>http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-bellcurvescience.htm</a></p>
<p>The core of the argument, that IQ is both genetic and unchanging, is demonstrably false, as has been well-proven by the Flynn Effect. The thing is - the authors knew it, which is why they refused to submit their work for peer review.</p>
<p>Mini, I don’t know why you think an alcoholic would be better off not having attended college. There are many educated people with college degrees and doctorates who became alcholics and still lead functioning lives in terms of their careers, as well as many have later become sober. I don’t think the answer to their problems would be not having attended college. Then they’d have two strikes against them…alcoholism and less education and potential job opportunities. Alcholism is a disease and people with diseases go to college. I don’t think college should just be for those who do not have issues with alcohol. There are many professionals with alcohol issues. Education is not their problem. If anything, education is one plus they have.</p>
<p>Mini,
Why are you picking on Darmouth? </p>
<p>Also in reply to this comment:
“Kids need to go away to college to learn how to live away from their parents, to enjoy the freedom to drink and party and stay up all night without the responsibility of cleaning up and preparing meals, but including the responsibility of making it to class on time. These are skills required of all, regardless of IQ.”
In most cultures (ouside the US and England), children don’t go away to college. They live at home. They don’t seem to have missed out on “required skills.”</p>
<p>“Mini, I don’t know why you think an alcoholic would be better off not having attended college.”</p>
<p>No, I am saying that the education that is being given to these students is not doing them a service. Dartmouth (and others) are providing an environment where their alcoholism is likely to flourish. I don’t for one second believe that the propensity for alcoholism is higher among white students who attend Dartmouth than among white adults ages 18-22 who don’t attend college full time or not at all. So there is something quite specific about what is happening at Dartmouth that is endangering their future health and safety, increasing their mortality rate, decreasing their productivity, making them less likely to live in happy families and vibrant communities.</p>
<p>I am NOT blaming those with a propensity toward alcoholism - it’s not their fault. I am very much indicting colleges that, already knowing of these propensities, feed them to the detriment of their very lives. The data are unequivocal that they would have been better off at a community college, or an urban state commuter school, or if they’d gone to work for a number of years after high school.</p>
<p>(Why Dartmouth - FS attends, and it, like my alma mater, is far above the national averages in campus binge and heavy drinking.)</p>
<p>I agree with post #17. </p>
<p>Question: How do we equip our children with the internal tools to avoid heavy drinking in college? Any good books or articles on the subject?</p>
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Mini, as you know, flattery will get you everywhere; and I must say, I am flattered: Though I should add that many more famous people have attended my small school than me, even on my best days. And, sadly, I cannot take the taste of alcohol. What’s a Dartmouth girl to do?</p>
<p>Mini, I disagree with your premise that alcoholics are created by being in an environment where drinking is more prevalent than other places. The alcoholics I know are simply alcoholics - whether they are currently drinking or not. Most started in high school; none show any evidence of it being a “lifestyle choice” as opposed to an inherent aspect of their physical/psychological makeup. I see nothing different about their formative environment than the environment of those who are not alcoholics. </p>
<p>I think blaming Dartmouth for providing en environment “where alcoholism is likely to flourish” is adopting a “Reefer Madness” mentality which isn’t borne out by reality. Those who are alcoholics when they arrive at college will remain so; those who aren’t won’t become alcoholics, and that will be true whether they drink heavily (or at all) in college or not.</p>