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I have no expertise on this topic but it seems some people are smarter than others. It's a sign of the times that a person with two decades of experience as an

• BobbyJo 4y ago
  I welcome people being more aware of their own cultural, geographic, economic, and preferential biases. If only everyone saw their unrecorded and unreviewed experiences for the anecdotes they are... what a world that would be.
• causi 4y ago
  It's also a sign of the times that schools have realized it's much easier (and cheaper) to create student outcome equity by preventing exceptional success than by preventing failure.
  • nerdponx 4y ago
    Which universities engage in preventing exceptional success? Even with grade inflation, it's usually pretty easy to tell when someone is exceptionally capable/intelligent/successful compared to their peers at the same institution. And the problem of grade inflation is more about universities competing for prestige (and keeping wealthy donor/legacy families happy) than about creating outcome equity.
    • nlavezzo 4y ago
      I think it's probably earlier (elementary, middle) schools that just don't provide opportunity for kids that are very advanced to pursue materials that are actually challenging or interesting to them.
    • molsongolden 4y ago
      I assumed the parent meant K-12 schools (in the USA) cutting gifted and talented programs. The subject of ending tracking in schools and defunding programs for high performing students has been popping up on HN every 6mo or so.
    • pirate787 4y ago
      It's not just grade inflation, it is watering down the curriculum and creating fake degrees in unserious academic areas.
      • kentm 4y ago
        Which degrees are fake and/or in unserious academic areas?
        • nerdponx 4y ago
          My own undergraduate degree program was well known among students as a relatively easy major for people who wanted good grades and didn't want to work too hard. There was an honors track for the people who wanted to work harder. I'm not sure if that was the intention, but that's certainly how it worked out.
          • kentm 4y ago
            Which degree was that? I'd say that one degree program being less difficult than another doesn't make it fake or unserious though. It's just natural that some topics are harder than others. There's a qualitative difference between "unserious" and "easier" I would say.
        • Aunche 4y ago
          Princeton, which had been previously known for grade deflation, removed the requirement to study a classical language (Latin and Ancient Greek) as part of their classics major in able to make the field more accessible to people of color. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/12/1005833496/critics-concerned-about-princetons-removal-of-latin-greek-requirement-in-classic https://www.npr.org/2021/06/12/1005833496/critics-concerned-...
          • kentm 4y ago
            Sorry, I was specifically asking about fake or unserious degrees, so its not really in line with what I was discussing. However, I would question whether removing Latin or Ancient Greek as a requirement meaningfully lowers the quality of education. I'm not privy to all criteria considered when making that decision, but it seems reasonable on the face of it to me -- removing unneeded requirements that may be a barrier to learning.
    • narrator 4y ago
      From what I've seen, the only higher ed experience where people care a lot about grades, class rank, etc. and it's highly competitive is law school. Everywhere else in academia there is grade inflation. The reason law school has avoided this trap is because top law firms that pay very well only want the top 5% based on class rank, especially outside of maybe the top 14 law schools. The U.S news law school rankings hold a lot of weight. They include statistics for how many of their students place at top law firms. If they grade inflate and lose credibility with these top law firms as to the grades being indicative of the quality of their students, top law firms will stop hiring from those schools, and their rankings will collapse. Of course, if you got a C in law school, that's a bad grade. In fact, you can flunk out if your grades go below a B-. Also, classes are graded on a strict curve. The teacher can only give out a certain number of A+s.
    • dahfizz 4y ago
      Many schools are removing their "gifted" programs because the idea of unequal outcomes is uncomfortable. https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickhess/2021/12/06/gifted-education-is-under-attack/?sh=b485a5550ee4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickhess/2021/12/06/gifted...
  • Akronymus 4y ago
    Despite what many think, gifted kids are actually special needs as well. Not being challenged enough directly leads to a lack of learning to learn. And that in turn leads to hitting a brick wall at some point. I have now attempted a few times to finish my higher education, always bounced HARD as I lack the mental facilities needed to deal with the frustration/commitment of actually having to learn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjYy4Ksy1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjYy4Ksy1E
    • yamtaddle 4y ago
      Yep, this is a big deal in gifted ed. "Twice exceptional" (gifted + very ADHD, to pick a common one) as they put it, is frequently encountered. Huge break-downs, depression, and disengagement when, eventually, the student has to actually start trying (which they may never have had to do before, at all, for potentially a decade or more of formal education) are common. Total failure to develop any kind of study habits is common, because, up to a point, they were never needed. Social problems due to having a brain, mental skills, language abilities, and knowledge, that are about half 7-year-old and half 25-year-old, are common (if not due to outright autism—see again, "twice exceptional").
      • aaroninsf 4y ago
        It is kind of a shock to read such things are recognize exactly my own experience, thirty years too late...
        • yamtaddle 4y ago
          Heh, yeah, when I found out this stuff is basically Gifted Education 101 these days because it's so common, I was like "wow, you mean it wasn't just me?!" The field seems to have gotten a lot better at trying to fill in gaps and get ahead of traps and pitfalls, rather than just providing fun supplemental material, which was pretty much all they did back when I was in gifted programs.
  • chaxor 4y ago
    Importantly, you have to simultaneously pull out of submitting information for ranking or metrics on your university. Make up some reason that sounds nice for the politics of today such that you don't have to confront the truth that your university's performance has dropped substantially due to new policies you have adopted. Most of the ivy league schools are now doing this simply because they are dropping the most, and hoping that other universities will follow them in dropping out (they typically do).
• z3rgl1ng 4y ago
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• bee_rider 4y ago
  It seems correctly caveated; it is really hard to measure intelligence. People could have different skill sets and talents, some of which test better or work better in an academic setting. It isn’t obvious how much teaching experience could tell out about some hypothetical intelligence-horsepower or something like that.
  • peterfirefly 4y ago
    It is surprisingly easy (and cheap), actually. That's why the military does it all over the world. People who score too low are a liability for the military (and not only are they less useful, they tend to be more dangerous than enemy). People who score well are shepherded towards signaling, engineering, that sort of thing. Average people get to be "normal" soldiers.
    • bee_rider 4y ago
      That “the military” (which one? Or is it Earth Defense Force?) claims to test something doesn’t mean they actually accurately test it. If they actually claim that. I suspect they are more interested in testing aptitude and skills for particular types of tasks.
  • barking_biscuit 4y ago
    Ravens progressive matrices
    • bee_rider 4y ago
      Eagles liberal tensors
• syzarian 4y ago
  Indeed. It is surprising how often I've been chastised for saying that some people are smarter than others. Relatedly I believe that some people are just incapable of learning, for example, college algebra. As an extreme example can a mentally disabled person learn college algebra?
  • nerdponx 4y ago
    It's worth chastisting a little bit, because "smart" is at best an oversimplification. I wrote at length about this in another post, but the tldr is that, in expectation, most people are good at some things and bad at others. If I'm good at university-level mathematics but terrible at woodworking, am I smarter than someone who is good at woodworking but has a hard time wrapping their head around group theory? Case in point: I struggled in my algebra class and developed no useful intuition for groups until years later, but by most conventional standards I am a moderately intelligent person.
    • syzarian 4y ago
      Of course smart is a vague term and it's not one that can be precisely defined or measured. However, let's consider the question, Can a mentally disabled person learn college algebra? The answer is yes or no, or some can but others can't. Within the context of college algebra and considering no other areas is it safe to say that some people are smarter than others? I think clearly the answer is yes. Of course a person not smart in college algebra might have genius level talent in programming, writing, art, or some other area. I'm smarter than the vast majority of people in the world when it comes to mathematics but am completely useless when it comes to engineering, art, writing, physics, and other areas. Saying one is bad at college algebra is not a denigration, it is an assertion of fact and not in any way a determinant on one's worthiness. I teach mathematics at a university. A large majority of my colleagues think that everyone is equally capable of learning college algebra. I think they are wrong. I think it is obvious they are wrong. They think any assertion that some people college algebra must be rooted in racism or other terrible biases that one has. Academicians ought not dogmatically cling to notions that are easily disprovable. Namely, it is clear that some people - mentally disabled for instance - can't learn college algebra. We should not shy away from confronting uncomfortable truths.
• nerdponx 4y ago
  What does "smart" even mean? My personal experience has taught me that the superficial appearance of a low-high intelligence spectrum belies a very complicated system. My non-professional experience is that most people are capable of learning most things with enough time and dedication, up to a certain level of sophistication. There's a huge range of variation in how quickly different people can learn different topics, how capable they are from learning by reading versus listening, how much they struggle with various emotion management problems that might inhibit their otherwise-highly-capable cognitive abilities, et multa alia. Moreover, very very very few students are ever taught how to study and how to learn. Even fewer still are taught how to understand their own minds, and how to find the balance between training their minds to learn in certain ways and finding learning styles and subject areas that work well with their minds. Some students instinctively realize that writing, drills, and practice form the seeds of intuition, which is the basis for understanding, while others never really figure this out on their own. Some students understand how to take notes that work for them, while others have bad handwriting and find it difficult to take notes at all. I think that what we tend to perceive as "intelligence" is some combination of "ability to learn a limited set of desirable subjects relatively quickly from conventional instruction techniques and resources" and "well-spoken". If that is true, then if we want more equitable learning outcomes, we should be focusing on helping students to explore how their own minds work, to learn self-awareness and emotion management skills, to improve communication skills, and to learn their own innate mental strengths and weaknesses, so they can more easily self-select into and self-direct within their own learning environments. And society in general should offer and hold high esteem for a greater variety of learning environments and types of intelligence. Of course, some people will indeed struggle with emotion management, or communication, just like some people will struggle with learning mathematical proofs or understanding complicated historical events. But I think that's better than our current status quo of just hoping that students figure all this stuff out for themselves. I would even hypothesize that parental involvement in these areas specifically might be causal for some % of differences in student education outcomes. Edit: All of the above is of course possibly contradicted by the article under discussion here. I'll have to read it in more detail, and maybe I'll update my beliefs as a result.
  • manv1 4y ago
• bell-cot 4y ago
  Admitting that I'm older, and haven't kept up with ideology on the subject of human differences - which of the following statements would be "best kept to yourself", these days? - Some people are taller than others, Basketball Coach - Some people can run faster than others, Track Coach - Some people have more musical talent than others, Piano Instructor - Some people are sicker than others, Emergency Room Nurse
  • VLM 4y ago
    An abstraction of the old "follow the money" argument is to figure out who politically benefits from dogma, then decide if you want to align with them, then determine if you'll be permitted not to obey. Tends to be a lot of "convert at the point of a sword" from the authoritarians, as usual for them.
    • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > figure out who politically benefits from dogma “Some people are taller than others” is dogma?
      • GloriousKoji 4y ago
        Height discrimination is a thing.
        • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
          > Height discrimination is a thing Sure. That doesn’t make the underlying variation non-empirical, i.e. dogmatic.
          • pineaux 4y ago
            It is one thing to say that there is height variation, which is clear to anyone and easily empirically tested. However, saying that the quality of someone's height is attributable to genetics, diet, diet of the mother during pregnancy, social standing etc, is a bit harder to ascertain. The same with this research. Saying there are smart people or stupid people is not what the article concludes. They are already testing within a selected nonrandom group (college kids). The claim they are making is that prior knowledge is a very big differentiator in "speed of learning". Now, to claim this means that the kids with more prior knowledge are not "smarter" is a very weird claim. Smartness is not some metric that exists without a society. We all know the stories of the feral kids. Smartness is mostly cultivated, this article underpins this further by identifying prior knowledge as an important factor. So important, that other differences seem trivial. How the kids gained the prior knowledge is not part of this study and could be the focus of a future study.
• randomdata 4y ago
  An educator would have good reason to have an interest in this subject particularly because it is directly related to their job. Professional teachers usually require university-level training in research to be considered qualified for the job are normally given a couple of months away from the classroom each year to engage in this type of research, so it wouldn't have been unexpected if he had said he was an expert. Indeed, it is just as likely that he focuses on other areas of research, but I don't think it is obvious where his work lies like you claim.
• uoaei 4y ago
  That specific stance, I don't believe, is framed to represent accurately the worries many have surrounding educational outcomes. I have trouble believing anyone would disagree that in the present, without a notion of time or continuity, that is indeed an obvious fact. But your straw man does not stand up under his own power. The concern is and always will be what differentiates peoples' abilities, and which abilities in which people are incentivized / selected for in our society. These are of course still matters of intense debate. We are reasonably sure by now that it is both nurture and nature -- indeed, a synthesis of the two perspectives -- that is vital to understand all the forces at play. On the "nature" side, genetic damage resulting from multi-generational trauma has been identified as a reasonable explanation over that of some notion of "inherent" genetic differences by race. So, while the contributing aspects of "nurture" happened in the past, it is the "nature" of the specific individual, born already with those disadvantages, that largely determines the outcomes of their lives. There is of course still the "nurture" of that individual, whose environment can influence the balance of advantage or disadvantage for that person after they are born as regards positive outcomes. This is not limited to family life but extends to all forces incident on that individual. Then it seems inevitable that, as a result of any focused campaign of coercion or discrimination, persistent statistical patterns will arise within oppressed sub-populations which impact outcomes for future generations. In other words, we are all still living among the echoes of the past.
  • syzarian 4y ago
    If one asserts that anyone can learn any topic, and there are many in higher ed who do assert this, then demonstrating this isn’t true by pointing out that mentally disabled people can’t learn college algebra is enough to demonstrate the absurdity of this assertion. What those in higher ed are afraid to confront is the idea that there are people who aren’t college material. There is a continuum of intellectual talent ranging from severely mentally disabled to genius. For each topic/subject there is a line in terms of the required talent (and effort) to learn a topic. Proponents of everyone can go to college and be successful ought to be precise in their statements. What they really mean is that more people are capable of succeeding in college than our currently attending college. If they would argue thusly and say it as such then a real discussion can be had. Instead we have people saying everyone can go to college. This shuts down any notion that perhaps too many people are going to college. No reasonable discussion can be had when one starts with the clearly false statement that anyone can go to college. Why some people aren’t capable of succeeding in college and the causes of such is a different discussion.
• dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  It's also an untold tragedy in someways.