In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Rich Ulrich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On 26 Mar 2003 16:36:20 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Herman >Rubin) wrote:
>[snip, stuff from me and Art -- not a bit of which seems to >lead to this commentary, except we were mentioning >the 'old days'; unless Herman Snipped the wrong lines. ] >HR> >> Was that educationally sound? But also back then bright >> children skipped grades and many did not advance. The >> educationists were right that most of those not advancing >> were not getting any benefit from their attendance at >> school, but their solution greatly reduced the benefit >> for the others. >> It is core courses which got hit the most. These were >> the courses where one does not just do memorization and >> routine, but had to think. Now, most of them have become >> memorization and routine. The important part of learning >> is not being able to spout facts and plug into formulas, >> but knowing what it means. >Japan is famous for memorizing, and group recitation. Japan is quite aware of the major weaknesses in its college students. They are good at technical details, but not at new ideas. It shows. Japanese students prepare for college by spending more time on memorization and routine outside of school than in school. The results are what one would expect; concepts are lost. >The English are famous for insisting that students write. Writing what? The letters written by applicants are works of fiction. They almost have to be. >*I* think the U.S. falls in between, and Herman gives >no data or information that says otherwise. >RU > >> >Most people really don't grasp how lousy *most* schools >> >were in the U.S., for a *majority* of their pupils, in our history. >> >The public el-hi schools that I went to were considered >> >"pretty good" in their time and place, and, well, they were >> >good enough to produce me. - But I do see big flaws, >> >some of them quite "objective": for example, I saw several >> >young teachers in their first years of teaching; and most >> >courses did fail to finish their textbooks by the end of the year. >HR> >> You probably went to school after the decline was well >> under way. For those who do not know, it started in the >> elementary schools in the 30s, but WWII delayed it in the >> high schools until after the war. Those returning GIs >> who did not have the background for college kept it up >> for a while. >*I* think that the schools have been moderately bad >for 50 years, and probably for 65 or 75 years. When >bright women couldn't work at other jobs, there did >come a time when the schools had a number of >intelligent women as teachers -- who most often >(since they had prejudices, and had never been >taught to involve everyone) did a fine job teaching >the 10% of the class who they liked, and a poor job >with the 70% who would drop out before graduation. >For 45 years or so, teaching has become more >"professional", even while recruiting the least >qualified of students enrolling in college. >Before 75 years ago, schools were much worse. I disagree. The subject matter, while not doing a good job of teaching concepts, at least allowed the children to use them. Many did not get it, but it is by no means clear that eliminating the need to think about how to use something by TELLING in great detail how to do it helps real learning. Now this is almost completely gone until quite late. Instead of having separate history and geography, with the student being expected to apply the geography to history, now there is integrated "social studies", in which little of either geography or history is learned, but there are project on the life of a peasant in a society. It is not what the peasants decide which leads to progress. >RU> >> >I've been impressed for quite a while by that mysterious >> >increase of average IQ of populations around the civilized >> >world, which have gone up by a few points per decade since >> >WW II or earlier. Schools might be doing something right? >HR> >> It is hard to tell what this means, as IQ tests are being >> continually renormed by the educational psychologists. >> Most recent scales are produced by converting the scores >> on the reference group to normal with mean 100 and standard >> deviation 15. > - okay, now I am embarrassed for Herman, who >should surely know the basics about the Flynn effect, >which (earlier than my post) John Kulig cited by name. >When Herman says, "It is hard to tell ...", he has >admitted to that fundamental ignorance. >Yes, IQ scales are periodically re-normed. That is >the STRONG, world-wide evidence for the Flynn >effect -- the fact that researchers discovered that >everyone around the world has to make the tests >tougher, by a few points every decade, to keep the >averages for normals at 100. Are the tests tougher? Or has it become memorization and regurgitation, with the practice on taking multiple choice tests raising the levels? The test designers are very poor at thinking themselves, and thus have eliminated this part from the tests. Besides, it is very difficult to test thinking at all on multiple choice tests. >Isn't this one the most intriguing findings of >social sciences, in the last 50 years? Are the "social science" at all scientific? >- It has been an amusing confirmation for the folks >(liberals, mainly) who stood for a long time with a >claim whose support seemed (just) metaphysical, >that I.Q. has to have a strong social or social class >component. It does confirm that, whatever the >explanation someday proves to be. The ones who call themselves liberals now have never accepted that there could be a genetic factor in any form of mental ability. The twin studies done at Minnesota have shown that it is even greater than the strongest eugenicists thought it could be. -- This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University. Herman Rubin, Deptartment of Statistics, Purdue University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558 . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
