Chris Woodhead= Cnut

[droid]

oh, ffs

Give him a chance Matt, he's obviously poor so his brain is smaller. I hear he also has the brain pan of a stage coach tilter.

 

[matt b]

Well, because the mentally disabled, for instance, would be far more likely to be poor than rich. This in itself would drag the average down.

what are you talking about?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

All this talk of 'intelligence' is stupid in practice, because that is not what the school/education system are measuring/looking at most of the time.

Indeed, as we have discussed many times before, there is no meaningful way of measuring intelligence.

Intelligence is reflected in the quality of people's productive acts. Intelligence tests came into being because someone noticed that people who tend to do comparatively well in task A also tend to do well in task B. Those questions that gave most predicative information about a candidate's chance of doing well on other questions were selected for intelligence tests. The tests are a distillation of a wide range of tasks.

Reasoning scores correlate very highly with SATs and GCSE scores - there is plenty of research out there; I'll post it.

As for 'cultural capital', this has more plausibility if one thinks of students bullshitting their way through a humanities interview, less if the subject is maths or science. What kind of 'cultural capital' would a maths tutor want, other than an understanding of the subject?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

what are you talking about?

Well, drag down the average IQ of those people that are poor.

I see that Droid has resorted to ad hominem attack and vague connotation rather than any kind of reasoned argument.

 

[droid]

Well, drag down the average IQ of those people that are poor.

I see that Droid has resorted to ad hominem attack and vague connotation rather than any kind of reasoned argument.

Actually, I'm just taking the piss, because your comments seem so demented that further 'reasoned' discussion seems pointless. Sorry for any offense caused.

 

[matt b]

Intelligence is reflected in the quality of people's productive acts. Intelligence tests came into being because someone noticed that people who tend to do comparatively well in task A also tend to do well in task B. Those questions that gave most predicative information about a candidate's chance of doing well on other questions were selected for intelligence tests. The tests are a distillation of a wide range of tasks.

Reasoning scores correlate very highly with SATs and GCSE scores - there is plenty of research out there; I'll post it.

what are you defining as 'productive tasks'?
what 'intelligence tests' are you refering to?
how are you measuring 'reasoning'?
what do SATS/GCSEs measure?

As for 'cultural capital', this has more plausibility if one thinks of students bullshitting their way through a humanities interview, less if the subject is maths or science. What kind of 'cultural capital' would a maths tutor want, other than an understanding of the subject?

Things like how it is taught, examples used, language used, not forgetting what is put on the curriculum in the first place.

cultural capital has nothing to do with 'bullshitting...'

 

[droid]

Well, because the mentally disabled, for instance, would be far more likely to be poor than rich. This in itself would drag the average down.

BTW - there are far more 'poor' people than 'rich' people, so in all likelihood there would be far more mentally disabled 'poor' than 'rich', therefore the contention that an 'average poor' person would be less intelligent than an 'average rich' person due to this factor is just rubbish - statistically speaking of course. It's specious logic.

If you wanted to somehow prove your assertion you would of course exclude people with learning disabilities for this very reason.

 

[matt b]

Well, drag down the average IQ of those people that are poor.

So rich people either do not have offspring with learning disabilities, or else cast them out, so they are forced to go and live with those working class types?

 

[Slothrop]

Things like how it is taught, examples used, language used, not forgetting what is put on the curriculum in the first place.

But this is basically getting down to 'has been taught to be good at maths'. Which represents a problem further down the education system, rather than with the evil admissions tutors giving offers to pupils who actually do well at solving difficult maths problems.

 

[matt b]

But this is basically getting down to 'has been taught to be good at maths'. Which represents a problem further down the education system, rather than with the evil admissions tutors giving offers to pupils who actually do well at solving difficult maths problems.

my bad, i read it as teachers rather than tutors. Maths tutors want the same as humanities ones, so the point stands.

i haven't said tutors are evil btw.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

BTW - there are far more 'poor' people than 'rich' people, so in all likelihood there would be far more mentally disabled 'poor' than 'rich', therefore the contention that an 'average poor' person would be less intelligent than an 'average rich' person due to this factor is just rubbish - statistically speaking of course. It's specious logic.

'More' as in the proportion, as this would effect the average.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

So rich people either do not have offspring with learning disabilities, or else cast them out, so they are forced to go and live with those working class types?

Yes, of course they may have offspring with learning difficulties BUT these offspring are less likely to be able to hold on to their money or make more of it than those with higher IQs.

 

[matt b]

But this is basically getting down to 'has been taught to be good at maths'. Which represents a problem further down the education system, rather than with the evil admissions tutors giving offers to pupils who actually do well at solving difficult maths problems.

...and indeed, it is a problem throughout the education system- able working class kids are less likely to be encouraged to apply to (top) universities, more likley to be put on vocational courses etc etc. As I said upthread, it is a multi causal problem, but class is the single most important factor. 'Intelligence' is a huge red herring.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

what are you defining as 'productive tasks'?
what 'intelligence tests' are you refering to?
how are you measuring 'reasoning'?
what do SATS/GCSEs measure?

'Productive tasks' = anything that is produced: utterances, spoken or written; artefacts etc etc

'Intelligence tests' = IQ tests, NVR or VR tests, CAT tests - the latter three all commonly used in British schools.

SATs/GCSEs measure competence in a subject but reflect intelligence as much as anything else - SATs Maths scores, for instance, correlate highly with scores on the ostensibly unrelated material in Non-Verbal Reasoning scores (no arithmetic required, for instance).

 

[Tentative Andy]

This thread is starting to make me a little angry. Thanks to matt, droid and d_q for talking sense. Will try and help out, such as I can, in a lil minute.

 

[matt b]

Yes, of course they may have offspring with learning difficulties BUT these offspring are less likely to be able to hold on to their money or make more of it than those with higher IQs.

compared to who? Non-disabled people from the same social class? what has that got to do with what we're discussing?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

...and indeed, it is a problem throughout the education system- able working class kids are less likely to be encouraged to apply to (top) universities, more likley to be put on vocational courses etc etc. As I said upthread, it is a multi causal problem, but class is the single most important factor. 'Intelligence' is a huge red herring.

What you may not know is that reasoning tests, more often than not, serve those without cultural capital, not those with it. A disruptive but bright pupil can turn up at an entrance exam, ace a one-off test involving picking out patterns in symbols and end up with a scholarship.

There were a small bunch of very able, but often very naughty, children at the sink comp I taught in who had Cognitive Ability Test scores that would have made them shoe-ins for local private schools.

The problem was that their parents didn't even know what a private school really was.

 

[Slothrop]

my bad, i read it as teachers rather than tutors. Maths tutors want the same as humanities ones, so the point stands.

Assesing someone's potential as a humanities student seems to rely a lot more on intangible impressions, though, which makes the process more susceptible to favouring people who know how to talk the talk. Whereas afaik Cambridge still base a lot of their maths interview process on 'give them some hard elementary problems, see how they get on with them / give them an exam full of hard elementary problems, see how they get on with that.'

 

[matt b]

'Productive tasks' = anything that is produced: utterances, spoken or written; artefacts etc etc

'Intelligence tests' = IQ tests, NVR or VR tests, CAT tests - the latter three all commonly used in British schools.

SATs/GCSEs measure competence in a subject but reflect intelligence as much as anything else - SATs Maths scores, for instance, correlate highly with scores on the ostensibly unrelated material in Non-Verbal Reasoning scores (no arithmetic required, for instance).

So you believe that intelligence can be objectively measured?

Even though there is huge amounts of data to suggest that IQ tests measure only the ability to take IQ tests

You believe that vocabulary is a measure of intelligence?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Well, here there's a problem. There really isn't any such thing as the average pupil. If you start measuring aptitude (or whatever it is you think you're measuring) through standardised testing, you get a curve of normal distribution which gives you a sort of image of a large rump of people who are fairly alike with small numbers of outliers at either extreme; but this should be regarded as a fact about statistics rather than a fact about people. (For instance, if you set a multiple choice exam and everyone just guesses the answers, you'll still get a curve of normal distribution, because there are many, many more ways of getting about half the answers right than there are of getting three quarters of them right, and only one way to get them all right)

This argument would be plausible if, on retesting, people's rank within the tested sample changed randomly.

However, reasoning scores are pretty consistent over time and over retesting (this consistency is what test-makers aim for):

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/c...strand_2004_bjep_consistency_in_reasoning.pdf