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Comment by dogruck | Hacker News Reader

Most students have the combined genetic material of their parents. Genetics are a key influence on aptitude.

To be transparent, I personally benefited from public schools, and my parents were not wealthy (but they were graduates of public colleges).

I'm not arguing that only wealthy people should have access to quality education. I'm just saying that it's a weak argument to point out that success in school is linked with wealth.

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>I'm just saying that it's a weak argument to point out that success in school is linked with wealth.

Would you like to say that the Earth is flat, disease is caused by an imbalance of humors, and Adam and Eve tamed dinosaurs for use in ancient rodeos while you're at it?

Because those would have more chance of being correct than what you're saying. Socioeconomic security correlates more strongly to educational outcomes than ANY other variable, including IQ.

This seems like kind of a low effort comment. Are you disputing any of these claims:

    * IQ or other measures of aptitude contribute to success in school
    * IQ/aptitude are heritable
    * IQ/aptitude contribute to success in life

Because those all seem sort of reasonable to me, and would explain the top comment of "wealth is the largest predictor of educational attainment", without some sort of nefarious inequality good school / bad school thing going on. I think that's what GP was getting at.

I think you're arguing about magnitude of effect? That, while that's true, socioeconomic status effects educational attainment far more than natural aptitude? That also seems plausible to me, although not guaranteed to be correct. Do you have any sources on the relative effects of each contribution? I'd be curious to see.

SES and IQ are not orthogonal. In the limited studies we have, SES interventions generate durable IQ gains, gains substantially larger than the supposed gap between races. The grandparent comment is "not even wrong".

> interventions generate durable IQ gains

Oh, really? That's awesome. I was under the impression this wasn't possible. Do you have any resources on what the interventions were? I'm interested from a selfish parental perspective...

Start here and follow links:

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/18/15655638/charles-...

(This only looks like a Vox article; it's actually an open letter from authoritative researchers Vox happens to be publishing.)

I read the Vox piece, and I don't find it logical. Do you think a fair summary is "nature has a larger impact on IQ than nurture?"

Note the article does concede that genetics impact IQ.

Somewhat related: I find it amusing when parents talk at length about how similar their children are to themselves and to past relatives -- and then pivot to essentially argue that every individual has equal capabilities.

You read a piece by Eric Turkheimer and Richard Nisbett and "didn't find it logical"?

I see irony when people make these simultaneous claims:

  1. This test has deep bias and flaws because it shows a difference in groups

  2. I know this is true because of the results of this other test that shows equality.

Those aren't contradictory statements at all.

The comment is not "not even wrong". In fact you are not even really disagreeing.

People with high SES have children with high IQ, then those children's children also have high SES and IQ. Does it really matter if the high IQ was because of inherited genes vs inherited wealth? You both already believe that it is hereditary.

It matters very much, because the subtext of saying that school performance is effectively hereditary is that no intervention we can come up with will improve test scores, because the problem is intrinsic to the student. That's false.

School performance is in fact hereditary, possibly because rich people go to fancy schools and their parents can afford to help them with homework and so on. A good intervention might be to improve the schools that poor people go to.

But if poor students are just intrinsically more stupid for some biological reason, a good intervention might be to improve the schools that stupid people go to.

Since it turns out the bad students are poor students, the interventions end up looking mostly the same. For example, hire more teachers to reduce class size, provide more nutritious food, or remove lead from the paint and the pipes.

Just because something is "biological" doesn't mean it is immutable. In fact, as technology advances, we might end up wishing bad school performance was due to genetics so we can fix it with gene therapy instead of complicated finicky societal interventions.

If we agree about the needed intervention but for different reasons, our debate isn't going to be very productive. I agree that schools are doing a poor job of serving black and latino students.

Ah, the straw man technique. Well played.

In a perfect system, what correlation would you expect between wealth and success in school?

Forget about "perfect". In a merely better system, "success in school" would be the last thing anyone thought about. The purpose of school is not to determine how well children navigate various arbitrary obstacles to learning. The purpose is to teach them, in whatever individual fashion best helps them to learn. If that doesn't happen it is a failure of the school, not of the child.

In a "perfect" system, the idea that anything about school would correlate with wealth would be viewed with deep suspicion. We're very far from that situation.

I interpret your point as "in a perfect system, school will be a playground, with no connection to a career, and everyone will have equal wealth."

I do agree that schools are culpable when a child (and parents) fails. I do not agree that we should take away the student's agency.

Did school teach you to over-interpret? I don't mention playgrounds, nor the "agency" of 6yos. Do you trust your 6yo's agency next to a busy highway? No? Then why is she responsible for dealing with her teacher's poor attitude and teaching habits?

"Genetics are a key influence on aptitude."

Even though that may be true, I don't think for a moment that it's the driving factor.

I think that culture is it.

And the key one is the '5 major personality trait' - 'Conscientiousness'.

Parents who are thoughtful, considerate, value education (at least in a basic way), take care of their kids well, are stable providers - create children who are much the same in life.

I don't mean 'rocket science super parents'.

Just good, basic parenting.

This is strongly culturally ingrained.

It's at the level of family, community and ethnic group.

Good behaviours, consistently applied over a lifetime, over many people's lives, produce quality outcomes and a high degree of intelligent social organization among those people.

And of course more wealth helps.

Note: it seems that 'Private Schools' don't even provide for a better education when normalized for things like wealth [1]. So even that is not a thing.

[1] http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/private-school-students-...

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