No I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m saying that most people ignore the fact that genetics create inequality too, but that’s less acceptable to acknowledge.
Well, yes, woohoo, go you brave maverick thinker you, good on you for pointing that out (and for pointing out how unafraid of societal standards of acceptability you are)! Now let’s move on.
Just because you don’t want something to be true doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Maybe one day you will be able to simply read the science and take it for what it is. I doubt it though.
That still won’t remove all inequality unless we also reduce parenthood to donating sperm/eggs to a government clinic, gestate children in artificial wombs, and then be raised in communal nurseries/boarding schools as has been done in so many scifi stories.
And just because you and Chen019 want something to be true that doesn’t make it true. And amazingly enough, it turns out that preindustrial slavers didn’t have a very good grasp of human genetics.
I don’t want anything to be true. I just have the ability to read the science and not flip out about it.
I have no idea what this means or how you could possibly think it’s relevant.
Folks, we have a pretty decent thread here about NCLB. Do we really have to shit it up with these stupid old discussions about whether black people are genetically inferior or whatever the not-so-subtext is? Can’t we keep that nonsense in its own thread?
Gifted kids don’t qualify (in Minnesota) as a special NCLB category. Nor can you get an IEP here for being gifted.
Because - as I’m sure you know - the whole idea that blacks are inferior or even a “race” in the first place is the result of preindustrial slavers trying to justify their atrocities.
This is my understanding as well. straight man, are you sure it was officially an IEP that you got?
And there are a couple of things that are pretty easy to get diagnoses for, I think, including being on the autism spectrum and being ADHD. I can easily imagine a prep school with a lackey doctor or two who are willing to diagnose these two conditions the way San Francisco doctors will diagnose nonspecific headaches and nausea.
I’m not talking about whether black people are “genetically inferior” or not. I don’t even know what that means. I’m talking about the studies showing a link between genetics and IQ.
And this topic is absolutely relevant to this thread. If those studies are correct, then it provides a very simple explanation for why some kids do worse in school than others and some schools do worse than others. But many people think “oh those studies just can’t possibly be true,” so they dismiss them, so they support education policies that end up being ineffective or have a detrimental effect.
If they would just accept that we should expect certain students and certain schools to do worse, then perhaps we could move on and not constantly try to re-jigger things to make the numbers work out how these people want them to.
The race/IQ studies don’t have anything to do with the idea that “blacks are inferior.” That’s how you choose to read them.
The problem with it is summed up here by Richard Rothstein, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Tamara Wilder:
http://www.epi.org/webfeatures/viewpoints/rothstein_20061114.pdf
Yes. I was not, however, educated in Minnesota. Anyway, it was explicitly called an IEP, and indeed, the form was (as best I remember) identical to those that special needs kids got. This had the slightly annoying result that I was yearly assessed on whether I showed any signs of behavioural disorders, but that’s another story.
I agree. The topic is Where do we go from here? and posting vague references to pie-in-the-sky claims for genetic engineering or throwing brickbats at each other over the concept of perceived race will not actually address the topic. (Even if we had the knowledge to actually engineer a person, genetically, we are decades away from doing so for large numbers of people with anything like reasonable accuracy or expectations.)
Take that hijack to its own thread.
[ /Moderating ]
What? I’d love to see a cite on this. Why would an elite prep school be involved in public standardized testing at all?
Fair point about EOGs, but their kids would take SAT/ACT/AP tests just like public school peons. Getting extra time on these tests would give those kids a leg up and higher scores and improve the schools’ reputations.
Plus there’s the added bonus of getting rid of some “educators” who were just “doing it for the children”.
Those bastards are out on their heels without pensions aren’t they…please tell me so.
Logically, yes, but a cite on the actual claim made by Silenus (that prep schools classify the vast majority of their students as disabled as to give them more time on ACT’s/SAT’s/ETC’s ( 
)) is needed.
I will say, as a personal anecdote, that a lot of people (including on this board) talk about educational excellence, but when faced with the standards and effort needed (from both parent and child) to actually achieve it, don’t want to be bothered.
In a thread about educating kids in summer, the following comments were made:
Enderw24 “You ever seen A Clockwork Orange? I’d do that, but with educational videos. If you’re looking for a good deal on straighjackets, maybe try Craigslist.”
NinetyWt “I figured they needed some ‘goof off’ time from learning.”
PsyXe “However, as a (straight-A) kid, I’d have been really upset with my parents if they’d tried to educate me during the summer holidays.”
Sateryn76 “I know you mean well, but kids need time to be kids…give her a break…” (Then the poster quoted George Carlin (of all people)) “I snipped the insulting stuff, since I’m sure you mean well, but come on…”
TBG " If they’d started pulling crap like that when I was in school, there would’ve been a revolt, even if I was the only revolting one. I was an A student, and I liked reading (provided I wasn’t being forced, and I could pick what I read) but if you try and make me do something, anything for school during summer… That was MY time. They already had most of the year. Summer was sacred."
It is well-documented (here’s a Time Magazine article, here’s one from Education Week, here’s a YouTube video, and there are plenty of other cites) that one of the bigger problems with the American school system is our scheduling, especially for our extended summer vacations. But… do something about it, and the (American) societal pressure telling you that you are “harming” your kids, that kids “need” 2-3 straight months of time-off from education (wish I had a job like that!), even being compared to A Clockwork Orange is damned near universal.
This week we’re in NYC… spent a whole day at the Met. Museum of Art, did a Pompeii exhibit, did the UN, did the Cloisters (today we’re leaving Manhattan and driving to Princeton, NJ, to walk around the campus (we want our daughter to experience an Ivy League University*)) yet, many will argue that our vacation was wasted because it was education-driven and not “fun”. :rolleyes:
*Yes, I know that Columbia is Ivy League and in NYC, but we want to show her a more “inviting” (for want of a better word) campus.
While I personally agree that the extended summer vacation is a historic artifact that impedes educational achievement, I, at the same time, read those comments not as “can’t be bothered”, but as honest disagreements as to whether or not year round school achieves that goal. Kids do benefit from unstructured time. Play is a critical part of optimizing child development, even if it is hard to capture that in the commonly used metrics. Note that your Education Week article still advocates for the same amount of vacation time, just spread into more but shorter blocks of 3 weeks at a time. Also note that the Time article you linked presents data more as an indictment against the lack of quality summer play experiences for low income inner city kids than against having the summer off per se.
My point remains: use the metrics cautiously. The available tests are poor at assessing critical thinking skills, creative problem solving, and even communication skills. An excessive emphasis on an incomplete data set will result in less attention on developing those skills that the metrics measure less well. And as noted, be aware of how the results can be gamed.