4 ms·

An extremely basic knowledge of statistics would show you that for a set of overlapping bell curves with a reasonably sized standard deviation, a difference of

by yimmer 13y ago

An extremely basic knowledge of statistics would show you that for a set of overlapping bell curves with a reasonably sized standard deviation, a difference of a few percent in the median is far too little to make a statement like "Group X > Group Y" on with a straight face. Most people you'd pick at random from any group will be fairly average, and geniuses are uncommon, but exist, in all the groups. Even differences of a standard deviation are fairly trivial compared to the differences that exist within each group; it's not like intelligence medians vary by 5 standard deviations between ethnic groups within one country... Needless to say, a black Nobel laureate such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Arthur_Lewis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Arthur_Lewis is vastly more intelligent than the median member of any ethnic group... Underprivileged students from minority backgrounds can do quite well at calculus - some teachers, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante , dedicated years to trying, with quite impressive results. This has been demonstrated again and again at schools with poor track records. Simply having a competent teacher and an environment that isn't entirely hostile to learning can do far more than many people tend to realize.

Daniel_Newby 13y ago
The original question was whether one-size-fits-all classrooms can work. Most people you'd pick at random from any group will be fairly average, and geniuses are uncommon, but exist, in all the groups. Our civilization has come this far by cultivating genius. A billion average people sweeping floors will never discover penicillin or invent the transistor. And geniuses are radically less common in some groups. An extremely basic knowledge of statistics would show you that for a set of overlapping bell curves with a reasonably sized standard deviation, a difference of a few percent in the median is far too little to make a statement like "Group X > Group Y" on with a straight face. Genius lies at the upper end of the spectrum, where the normal curve drops off steeply. A small difference between group averages becomes a huge difference at the top end, thanks to the steepness. It is basic statistics that the elites are dominated by whatever groups have a small advantage at the average. (This is why airlines are so paranoid about quality control. If a company lets its average slip a little, it will kill most of the people who die in air travel, which turns out to really hurt bookings even if their average is a zillion times safer than cars.) So if you design classrooms to "leave no Group Y child behind"—as the U.S. has done—you will necessarily leave behind all Group X elites. Thus answering the original question of whether uniform education works. Yes, there are African geniuses. The problem is that they are really, really rare. So rare that a typical school has zero of them.
- yimmer 13y ago
  Obviously, one size fits all classrooms don't work - but this must not be used as an excuse to further existing inequalities. I hear a lot more horror stories about people being discouraged from sufficiently challenging material than being pushed into it - http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1lrvit/what_memory_from_school_still_makes_you_rage/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1lrvit/what_memor... has a lot of examples, to pick one random internet thread from this week. One thing that we can fully agree on is that NCLB is horrible policy. Uniform education, with no catering to the genuine interests and capacities, is stupid; only a few alternatives, like not educating the majority of people, or basing education on statistical arguments about amorphous groups rather than individual merit, are stupider. Our civilizations, for the most part, don't cultivate genius, unfortunately. And geniuses aren't radically less common in some groups, unless you mean groups like "people who suffered severe childhood malnutrition". Normal schools aren't really set up to deal with people with IQs more than a standard deviation, or perhaps two standard deviations, from the norm. If you define genius to be an IQ of 160+, and model it as a Gaussian with a standard deviation of 15, most schools have no geniuses of any race. If you take a more-reasonable fat-tailed distribution, many schools still don't. My personal, anecdotal bias: the best school I went to was quite small, and had several geniuses - including a black one. There weren't many black kids, but the ones who were there were exceptional; I wouldn't be surprised if they had the highest average IQ of any ethnic group at the school (and yes, there were plenty of Asian and Jewish students, from several countries).

by yimmer 13y ago

Daniel_Newby 13y ago

The original question was whether one-size-fits-all classrooms can work. Most people you'd pick at random from any group will be fairly average, and geniuses are uncommon, but exist, in all the groups. Our civilization has come this far by cultivating genius. A billion average people sweeping floors will never discover penicillin or invent the transistor. And geniuses are radically less common in some groups. An extremely basic knowledge of statistics would show you that for a set of overlapping bell curves with a reasonably sized standard deviation, a difference of a few percent in the median is far too little to make a statement like "Group X > Group Y" on with a straight face. Genius lies at the upper end of the spectrum, where the normal curve drops off steeply. A small difference between group averages becomes a huge difference at the top end, thanks to the steepness. It is basic statistics that the elites are dominated by whatever groups have a small advantage at the average. (This is why airlines are so paranoid about quality control. If a company lets its average slip a little, it will kill most of the people who die in air travel, which turns out to really hurt bookings even if their average is a zillion times safer than cars.) So if you design classrooms to "leave no Group Y child behind"—as the U.S. has done—you will necessarily leave behind all Group X elites. Thus answering the original question of whether uniform education works. Yes, there are African geniuses. The problem is that they are really, really rare. So rare that a typical school has zero of them.

yimmer 13y ago
Obviously, one size fits all classrooms don't work - but this must not be used as an excuse to further existing inequalities. I hear a lot more horror stories about people being discouraged from sufficiently challenging material than being pushed into it - http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1lrvit/what_memory_from_school_still_makes_you_rage/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1lrvit/what_memor... has a lot of examples, to pick one random internet thread from this week. One thing that we can fully agree on is that NCLB is horrible policy. Uniform education, with no catering to the genuine interests and capacities, is stupid; only a few alternatives, like not educating the majority of people, or basing education on statistical arguments about amorphous groups rather than individual merit, are stupider. Our civilizations, for the most part, don't cultivate genius, unfortunately. And geniuses aren't radically less common in some groups, unless you mean groups like "people who suffered severe childhood malnutrition". Normal schools aren't really set up to deal with people with IQs more than a standard deviation, or perhaps two standard deviations, from the norm. If you define genius to be an IQ of 160+, and model it as a Gaussian with a standard deviation of 15, most schools have no geniuses of any race. If you take a more-reasonable fat-tailed distribution, many schools still don't. My personal, anecdotal bias: the best school I went to was quite small, and had several geniuses - including a black one. There weren't many black kids, but the ones who were there were exceptional; I wouldn't be surprised if they had the highest average IQ of any ethnic group at the school (and yes, there were plenty of Asian and Jewish students, from several countries).