Didn’t you know? Isn’t it a sticky in the ATMB?:
three years free SDMB membership
two graces from reprimands due to (of course inadvertent) violations of Board rules
and
one bag stuffed full of unmarked fifties.
As far as how much grovelling, suffice it to say: bring your kneepads. 
I’m just getting
Make of that what you will.
Oy! - How big would this hypothetical bag of fifties be? Smal ziploc baggie or industrial refuse sack? And would the fifties be US dollars or some other currency?
So have we killed this thread yet, or will we need pictures of fluffy kittens?
Ha haha haha, that lskinner, what a card.
Say, if he’s a “lying liar”, does that mean he’s a, er, “truth-teller”? But wait! What does that make a “lie from the lying liar”?
Oy! - I am a teacher who found IQ tests particularly useful on occasions and acted on them often.
I have been trying to resist joining in this discussion because it would take a book to address all the issues and I have other books to write. But I am weak! I concede.
Before I am asked for cites on everything I say I will declare where I am coming from up front. Firstly I am one of the teachers Ianzin has debated this topic with at length. I respect his opinions enormously, despite not agreeing with him on some aspects of this topic. As a personal acquaintance, I can think of many names I could call him, but ‘ignorant’ and ‘fool’ would never be in the mix. Secondly, I am considered an expert here in Australia on gifted kids, and work as a writer and consultant in the field. I am giving an opinion from personal experience and from a Masters degree specialising in gifted education. If you want to look up researchers who have strongly influenced my thinking, start with Francoys Gagne, Joseph Renzulli, Abraham Tannebaum and Camilla Benbow.
Until I left full time teaching to work as a writer and consultant, I was involved with the gifted and talented programs in large private schools. I specialise in developing curriculum and implementing programs. My goal is to make sure kids aren’t bored. Bored kids are unhappy kids. In this discussion you have struck the same problem which afflicts all discussions of this type – the terms are not defined. Educationalists (among others) have been debating what is ‘intelligence’ and what is ‘success’ for decades. People like me have to wish them well, and get on with dealing with the realities of the kids in our care right now, as best we can, without agreed definitions.
The schools I worked in routinely tested all students with a general ability (politically correct term for IQ) test. The results were only available to the special education department or counsellors. You are welcome to debate the ethics of this – I just used the results for over 20 years. I have come to the following conclusions:
IQ test are the best single predictor we have for academic achievement. (If that is your definition of intelligence, so be it.)
Anyone who uses a single predictor for academic achievement is an idiot. IQ might be the best, but that doesn’t make it great. Just useful at times.
Mass battery IQ tests give a broad indicator and no more. They claim to give no more. 130 is not significantly different to 120 when implementing programs for kids.
I used IQ results as an audit only. If a kid with an IQ over 120, say, wasn’t doing well at school, then I would want to know why. Check – is there something wrong? Is the kid unhappy? Is the kid bored out of his dear little brain? Just have a chat and check. If he was doing his best and happy then that is the end of the issue.
If a kid is doing well at school and is happy, who cares what their IQ is? It is meaningless, because so many other factors come into play.
Extension programs should be open door. I was constantly warned that every parent thinks their kid is gifted and the program would be swamped – that’s a myth. I have had kids with poor IQ test results absolutely blitz an extension program. In those cases, the IQ record was annotated as a poor indicator and henceforth ignored. I now implement open door extension programs in schools I work with.
If a kid is doing very badly at school, then a professionally administered IQ test may give a clue. A really high IQ can mean a totally bored or disaffected kid. The lack of a high IQ does NOT rule these out.
Recent research (which I cannot cite but was presented convincingly at a conference by Francoys Gagne so I dare say he’s written about it) indicates that personality traits such as perseverance, are far far better indicators of long term success (no I can’t define that either) than IQ.
So IQ is one of a myriad of useful tools when you are trying to deal with kids in schools who do not fit into the happy-doing-well brigade and you want to help. That’s a lot of them!
Oy! – I am sure most early year school teachers can tell us what we need to know for most kids, but they often aren’t available especially at secondary school level, some are not good judges, reports are often too vague to be of use and some kids have so many other issues, their abilities don’t show.
IQ should never be used to judge. But it can sometimes be a useful tool to help out when there is a problem. Intelligent kids are not better kids or nicer kids or more musical or more dedicated or more responsible or more moral or anything other than usually better at academic stuff. But they do have the right to learn in class just as all kids do. The work is set for the majority, so for a few it is just too easy, then they are not learning much, so their time is being wasted and their school days made dreary or worse.
lynne, thank you for that incredibly knowledgeable and well-written note. You’re quite right - there is a use for IQ tests among certain specialists, particularly as a reality check: poor grades and high IQ is indicative that something else is a problem. For you and other specialists, it is a useful tool within a group of tools.
As a matter of fact, although I certainly didn’t make it clear here, I’ve never really considered them completely useless - if nothing else, they’re fun for those of us who feel confident about the outcome! My earlier discussion of its uselessness was defending lanzin, who was being called an ignorant idiot because he chose not to research a study further when the topic was not of particular interest or use to him. I didn’t feel that this attack was warranted, and was trying to make it clear to lskinner (who, btw, isn’t particularly interested in it) why not pursuing a line a research doesn’t make someone an ignorant git.
That being said, I feel that lanzin’s position is a bit extreme; regardless of the value of it, the fact is there *are * correlations with IQ tests within a given culture, and to deny that doesn’t help his argument. To depend on an IQ test solely (or even primarily) for life-altering or policy decisions would be stupid, but to deny that they indicate trends or that they tend within a given culture to be a pretty good indicator of academic ability (at a given time, since knowledge can change signficcantly) is also foolish. You have described in excellent detail a situation in which you find that particular function to be quite useful, and I absolutely think that they are valuable for you and others in similar areas.
But for people in general? They’re of marginal use, if any. As you have pointed out, even assuming a 100% reliability in IQ tests (which would be extreme and unwarranted), there are so many other factors that dictate a person’s performance in school and life, such as perseverance. This is why I was asking (without any response of course) why lskinner wanted to know (or believe) so badly. Unless he occupies or aspires to a position similar to your own (in which case yes, with plenty of caveats born in mind, he should being using them), what is he trying to establish?
For example, IQ tests will tell us that many disadvantaged or disenfranchised kids, or immigrant kids whose English is shaky, are probably less likely to do well in school than more mainstream kids. OK, like this took major testing to find out! If it takes IQ tests rather than poor academic performance to motivate society to provide special help for such students, then hey, I’m all for it! But, on the contrary, I suspect what many people want to use this data for is to rationalize writing such kids off entirely, as too stupid to learn. That would only work if the validity of IQ tests were not only very high, but tested raw intelligence down to the wire (so to speak) rather than measuring things like cultural exposure/knowledge as well. But that’s not the case.
Unfortunately, lskinner seems to have achieved a point where for him, if he gets an acknowledgement that IQ tests have some correlation, under any circumstances, to something else of value in the real world, they are fully vindicated for all situations. Hell, at this point he’d seem to settle for someone other than himself saying “Tomndebb lied.” as vindication of his initial point. Hence my belief that there is certainly more than the kind of use for these tests that you (quite validly) make at stake for him.
Cite? Or apology for putting words in my mouth?
Did you see the word “seems?” I don’t need a cite to state what appears to *me * when stated as such - in this case, my post is my cite.
I like Oy’s summary. It’s succinct and I don’t see anything you’ve said to contradict it.
Then again, I haven’t gone over your posting history with a microscope, nor do I plan to anytime soon.
Lol. So if I haven’t said anything to contradict it, it must be my viewpoint eh?
Nice way to set up a strawman, asshole.
lskinner, I believe you are under a misapprehension as to Bryan’s meaning. He didn’t mean that he hadn’t seen you go “Well, that’s just not true.” He meant that he didn’t see anything in your writing in this thread and wherever else he may have seen you that would militate against my assessment.
Again, let me make clear that it is my assessment - how it seems to me, not a fact, that I am stating. However, given how long and how vehemently you have been arguing in support of IQ tests on the SDMB, I don’t think it is unreasonable to get the impression that believing in their validity is of considerable importance to you. My question, which I have asked before without answer, is why is it of such importance to you? Or are you just being argumentative for the heck of it?
As I have already noted in Post #102
Have you seen anything in his subsequent posts that would modify that assessment? Even when I played his game on him, he could not break free from his rôle to recognize what was going on.
I’m not sure that serious attempts at interaction with lskinner will be very fruitful unless he significantly alters his behavior.
And your assessment of my viewpoint is conveniently ridiculous:
I have never advanced such an absurd viewpoint. You have set up a classic strawman.
Since I see you’re a moderator on this bulletin board, let me ask you something. In the Great Debates forum, suppose one poster accused George Bush of lying, and another poster responded as follows:
“As to lying? Not so much as your initial posts, so it seems to be something you can live with.”
Would that be appropriate for the Great Debates forum? Why not?
Yes, that is exactly correct. A more exact statement I haven’t heard lately. The very exactitude is of a tolerance that would shame a Swiss machinist.
In other words, you’re a hostile little prick who deserves all the mockery he can get.
lskinner, have you ever watched a really, really angry two-year-old try to “punish” a parent who was in a good mood?
You are welcome to stay, register, engage in discussions, have fun.
However, I have already taken your measure and your current posting style will bring you only grief. I am amused at your efforts and have no intention of actually engaging you on niggling points that have come up in a Pit thread, particularly when most of them arose while I was pointing out your particular inappropriate behavior.
I am not mad at you and you are welcome to participate for as long as you wish (subject ot a $14.95 fee at the end of thirty days) and for as long as you behave yourself.
Picking a fight with me will not do you a lot of good: you have not the weight, you have not the reach, and, frankly, you have not the skill. On re-reading this thread, it becomes pretty obvious that you can get very upset when people “debate” you in the manner that you choose to “debate” others. Pehaps it is time to try some honest participation. You may even come to like it.
In the meantime, you are simply wasting electrons (and your own time) repeating your little questions for me to ignore. I’d suggest cooling off, kicking back with a glass of pop, and trying harder to get along than to display your cutlass like wit.
Lskinner, if you don’t mind giving a thumbnail sketch, what is your position regarding IQ tests with respect to their cross cultural validity? Reasonable people may differ, but I think it is generally acknowledged by most people that although there are many variables to be considered in what defines “success”, IQ metrics are reasonably good indicators of the capacity for academic, and to lesser extent, professional success in a technically sophisticated society.
What is your view with respect to the efficacy of IQ tests as a useful metric of success with a target population that rarely deals with abstract, symbolic reasoning, such as you might find in large chunks of the less technologically advanced areas of the world. Do they have predictive power for these demographic cohorts?
Lol. I caught you in a dead cold lie. Didn’t take a lot of skill; just had to click on the link you posted.
i.e. you know perfectly well that you accused me of lying but can’t back up your statement.
lskinner, if you sign up for membership, I foresee a very brief future for you here. You’re not even entertaining, let alone informative.
This is getting old and boring. I’m out.
Oy! Thank you for your response and subsequent analysis. I think we are in almost total agreement.
Lynne