North vs South in education

Great Debates
1

Is there any sort of evidence that would support the theory that people from the NorthEast have a better educational system than those in the south? If a gap does exist, then does this mean that someone who has lived thier entire life in the south is at a major intellectual disadvantage? Is there a stigma of ignorance on people from the south?

From what I have read, the educational systems of southern states normally rank at the very bottom of the pile. From listening to media outlets (movies, television, and even radio) there does seem to be a feeling that southern people are not smart in general. I don’t know if I agree with them in general, but there does seem to be a disadvantage for those educated in the south. Maybe a couple of specific questions would help.

  1. If we took a random sampling of 50 people from the New England states and from the southern states do you think there would be a significant difference in the intellect of the two groups?

  2. Do you have any personal experiences which might relate to this topic?

  3. Is this just a misnomer that has risen out of certain prejudices held against the South, possibly dating back as far as the Civil War?

*I am not promoting these ideas, simply asking about them.

2

Depends on what you mean by “educational system”. K-12? University? Advanced degree? And since it’s the states that fund and manage their own systems, I don’t know if you could say that a given geographical region is definitively, quantitatively better than another.

3

I think educational system should refer to anything from kindergarten to college.

4

Hate to say it, but we got apples and oranges here. The question merits consideration, but too broad for a substantive discussion. Factors that influence quality of education range from school district tax base, rural vs. urban ratios, percentage of private vs. public institutions within a given geographic region, and that’s not even getting into demographics and testing standards.

I will say that having grown up in the South (Kentucky, private school), gone to college in the North (M.I.T.), and married a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from a public university, I have never seen any evidence of the disparity you mention. IMO, an obvious prejudicial stereotype.

Besides, anybody who has ever heard someone from the Bronx, South Boston, or backwoods Vermont can hardly generalize that Southerners have the monopoly on ignorance. :wink:

5

One other observation - the population of the South is becoming increasingly heterogeneous. I know from personal experience that half of the cities of Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham are composed of transplanted Northerners. The comparative rankings you believe reflect poorly upon education in Southern states would thus logically be more a reflection of the system rather than the population.

6

None that I can think of, other than the fact that the Eastern Seaboard was settled before the rest of the country, giving it more time to perfect its education system.

I was born in California, but moved to Virginia shortly thereafter. I’ve lived here ever since, and certainly don’t consider myself at an intellectual disadvantage. In (public) high school, I obtained a diploma from the International Baccalaurate Organization, an international educational system. Take that for what you will. I do well in college, which I can’t say for many of my Yankee compatriots. Ultimately, I think education boils down to your willingness. If you want the knowledge, you’ll make it happen.

Definitely! I’ve encountered that at college too, and it’s a stereotype we see often in TV and film. But as with all stereotypes, it’s not accurate: I knew a white girl from New Jersey who introduced herself to the only black girl on the hall by saying “I’ve never lived near African Americans before. I hope this turns out alright.”

So, to your questions:

1. What do you mean by intellect? Are you saying a Northerner’s I.Q. would be higher? Are you saying they’d have more education (a higher percentage of college degrees), or are you saying that the quality of their education would be better than a Southerner’s? You might find a difference in ‘intellect’, but I doubt it would be statistically significant.

2. Well, there’s the whole Jersey Girl incident I related above. And then there’s this: I knew two other girls (I go to an all-girl college) who both graduated high school in Virginia, albeit different cities. Girl A made a 4.0 with all advanced classes. Girl B made a 4.0 with all un-advanced classes. Both make the same grades (C average, from what I recall) now that they are in college.

3. I don’t really buy the whole Civil War thing. Back then, the vast majority of the American population (regardless of region) was composed of farmers. Those farmers typically had no formal education, whether Billy Yank or Johnny Reb.

On preview, all of this seems highly anecdotal and not very factual. Off I go to find studies that compare regional I.Q…

7

A small list of sites that discusses IQ’s variation with geography. I could find nothing that dealt with the regional variations of North and South specifically, but these articles do offer some thoughts.

http://iqmaps.soi.city.ac.uk/
A study of regional IQ in the UK, from the BBC. There’s definitely a difference here among regions.

http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/dreamweaver/quotes/qtscients2.html
Compendium of quotes discussing race and intelligence. Halfway down the page is an itty bitty quote that deals with regional variation.

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/city.htm
When you live in the inner city, your IQ is, on average, lower. :frowning:

For the record, most of the IQ studies I found on Google were concerned primarily with racial differences. Very little discussion of anything else.

8

What does the OP mean by the intellect?

I very much doubt that there are any real difference in the intelligence of people in different parts of the country. I do feel that there is a perception that southerners in particular (and people from states perceived as being predominantly rural in general) are less intelligent.

Why would there be such a perception?

Going to the National Council for Educational Statistics’ 2003 report http:\NCES.ED.GOV/pubs2003/2003060b.pdf I picked six “northeastern” states and six “southern” states and compared performance as described in the above report. Six is just a number picked at random that isn’t so big that it makes things cumbersome. The six northeastern states were: New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. PA is on the border of Northeastern/Mid-Atlantic but I through it in just for fun. I omitted the other two New England States in the interest of laziness. :slight_smile: The southern states I picked were North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. I rejected Florida as I am not sure if it counts as being entirely “southern” or not. Likewise, Virginia was left off because Northern VA is at best dubiously southern - YMMV. Tennessee and Kentucky border on being midwestern, Texas is, well, Texas, and it Lousiana didn’t even occur to me 'til later. Plus I had six hardcore southern states.

Here are the reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress Test (the most recent in the report):

4th Grade Score	Std Error	8th Grade Score	Std Error

CT 232 1.9 272 1.1
NH 226 1.3 264
MA 225 1.4 269 1.6
RI 218 1.7 262 1
NC 217 1.3 264 1.1
NY 216 1.6 266 1.6
PA 215 1.6 266
US 215 0.8 261 0.8
AL 211 1.6 255 1.4
SC 210 1.3 255 1.3
GA 210 2.2 257 1.4
AR 209 1.8 256 1.3
MS 204 1.5 251 1.4

If you can sort through that mess you will see that all of the northeastern states and one of the southern states are above the national average for both 4th and 8th grade students.

Looking at Math scores on the same test, the numbers show all but one of the northeastern states having above national average scores, with Rhode Island scoring just below national average. North Carolina is again the only one of the southern states examined to place above national average.

4th Grade Score	Std Error	8th Grade Score	Std Error

MA 235 1.1 283 1.3
CT 234 1.2 282 1.4
NY 227 1.3 276 2.1
US 226 1 274 1.8
RI 225 1.2 273 1.1
NC 232 1 268 1.4
SC 220 1.4 266 1.4
GA 220 1.1 266 1.3
AL 218 1.4 262 1.8
AR 217 1.1 261 1.5
MS 211 1.1 254 1.3

(PA and NH scores were not available for the same year as the other scores, however, both were above national average for the year they were available - eighth grade only.)

The NAEP Science Test shows similar results (PA and NH again have no scores). All of the reporting northeastern states are above national average, all of the southern states are below.

8th	Std Error

MA 161 16
CT 154 1.4
RI 150 1.3
NY 149 2.4
US 149 0.7
NC 147 1.5
GA 144 1.5
AR 143 1.3
SC 142 1.3
AL 141 1.9
MS 134 1.2

Of course, it is possible that any difference wastes away by the end of High School (no 12th grade data was available in the (one) report I scanned) or is of long term use anyways. Do I have a point in all this? Maybe

I am not trying to argue that Yankees are smarter then Rebs, reconstructed or not. However, if one were to read or hear media reports comparing different states education systems, it is unlikely that a southern state will be portrayed in a positive light.

How is acknowledging this not bigotry comparable to cherry picking studies showing whites in the US having higher IQ’s then blacks, Northern Ireland Protestants higher than Northern Ireland Catholics, Japanese higher than ethnic Koreans in Japan? I think that the difference is that to a certain extent, a state represents a unit of choice - the population of the state can to a large extent control certain aspects of its own fate.

State Pupil/Teacher Ratio
MA 12.5
CT 13.9
RI 14.2
NY 14.3
AR 14.4
NH 14.7
SC 14.7
AL 15.2
NC 15.6
GA 15.7
PA 15.9
US 16.1
MS 16.3

Assuming that for any given area teacher salary is proportionate to local cost of living, that pupils per household is relatively constant between regions, and that support staff for the teachers is roughly equivalent (perhaps the only one of the three assumptions that is reasonable - the report showed no regional differences in the percentage of education employees who are teachers), then it is apparent that the northeastern states, in general are willing to pay more money to get more education.

I think that historically (say, over the last few decades) it would not be ridiculous to suggest that while in the northeast, education has received priority over low property taxes, the converse is true in the south - small, non-intrusive government at any cost. To be sure, over the last decade or so more northern districts have seen their share of tax revolt, especially with (at least seemingly) ever increasing school budgets and diminishing returns.

If I believe my junior high social studies teachers, the New England fanatacism with education goes back to the Puritans/Pilgrims, who wanted to make sure everyone could read the bible, lest they become as priest-ridden as high church Anglicans or (shudder) Romish Catholics.This also explains the plethora of institutions of higher learning in the northeastern states.
Do I have any personal experience with this question? Only that as far as I can determine, idiots are native to everywhere.

9

Here are some other interesting statistics to go along with MMI’s cite regarding national rankings of those 12 states.

Percentage of the population that are African American

NH 0.6
RI 3.9
MA 5.0
CT 8.3
PA 9.2
AR 15.9
NY 15.9
NC 22.0
AL 25.3
GA 27.0
SC 29.8
MS 35.6

As you can see the south is by far the more racially diverse of the two groups and as such must contend to a far greater degree with the legacy of poverty and racism inherent in those statistics. This cannot but negatively impact test scores.

Percentage of population below the poverty line

NH 5.5
CT 7.5
PA 9.1
MA 9.4
RI 9.9
GA 12.5
NC 12.5
SC 13.1
NY 14.0
AL 14.6
AR 17.1
MS 17.1

As you can see, with the exception of NY all souther states rank significantly higher in the amount of poverty they have. This impacts not only student performance but also tax revenue for schools.

It should be no surprise at all that northern schools fare better than their southern counterparts, they have an easier job and more resources with which to do it.

10

I agree with you that the northern states have a more homegenous population and a wealthier population. I am pretty certain that they also spend a higher proportion of their wealth on education (granted, higher income usually means higher disposable income).

Might there not be a chicken and egg issue here - don’t you think prosperity and education reinforce each other?

What do you think is the prescription to fix the problem? Would greater investment (okay, taxes/spending) in education increase economic growth and prosperity or merely lead to a brain drain to places already well developed?

11

** Do you have any personal experiences which might relate to this topic?**
This is a easy question…

Racial and poverty factors aside, by-in-large southern people are much more intelligent than folks up east. This is an aspect of climate. During the sultry dog days of summer, when it is sleepy time down south, one, by nature, moves about in a slow manner in response to the heat. This slow movement is conducive to slow deep reflective thinking - a very southern trait.

I’ve yet to meet a real bright yankee, most folks from the north think rote thoughts that spend precious little time in their brains, the kind of thoughts that mindlessly score well on northernly contrived intelligence tests.

Down south, even today, being a separate person within a territorial sense of time and place, means a lot more that it seems to up north.

Maybe you good people up north won’t understand.

12

Do you have any personal experiences which might relate to this topic?
Well, I went to one of the better schools in the South (Go 'Dores!) but am from Chicago originally. I would say that, in general, there are some different values at work. Northerners tended to be more business/carear driven. Southerners teneded to be more family/religion oriented. Now, obviously this is a broad sweeping generalization, but it may contribute in some way to perceived differences, and to relative economic success which in turn may effect spending on education etc.

13

Do you have any personal experiences which might relate to this topic?

I taught in the Midwest and also in Georgia (for 2 years).

My experience is that the upper end students in Georgia were just as good as the Midwest. The average student was somewhat worse. Finally, there exists a lower end student in Georgia that is truely abysmal. I had met very few what I would consider truely hopeless cases in the Midwest but more than a few in Georgia.

However, I believe that if you adust for poverty the students would be pretty equivalent. In other words, if you took a northern class of equivalent SES, it would appear much the same.

As for African-Americans - my experience…

I grew up and taught in a norethern, almost pure white area. When I spent 2 years teaching college (1 and 2nd year students) math in Georgia, about 40% of the students were Black. The community and area were tilted toward poverty.

I can say from my experience that the stereotype that Blacks don’t value education is bunk. The higher end and average black student capabilites were equivalent to whites. I did seem to notice that when black students didn’t care, they really didn’t care and put in absolutely no effort while many lower end white students put in a small but token effort.

I was surprised at my experience with black students. When I taught, I liked to have a ‘dialogue’ with the class - much ‘back and forth-ness’. Teaching in northern, primarily white communities this could be like pulling teeth since students just liked to sit there and talked to. Black students seemed to really like this style and were not bashful in participating. In addition, their presence would tend to bring out the bashful ones into also participating. Many of these classes were a joy to teach.

However, to be fair, there may be a ‘selection bias’. The community I taught in had a ‘black college’. (the south is voluntarily segregated in many ways). The black college was 100% Black. The college I taught was around 35% black (the community was about a 50/50 split). The Black college had a reputation of being extremely light on education and granting degrees to everyone. Their officials actually publically acknowledged this several times by stating that this was to help the black community get started in valuing education.

The black students at the college I taught were students that knew they had an easier ride at the other college but rejected it. If I ever heard the subject brought up, the comments I would hear is “I want my degree to mean something” or “I don’t want anything just given to me, I want to work for my degree”. The students I taught were of this calibre.

Enough. I hope my rambling is of some use :slight_smile: