American Kids Aren't Getting Dumber; They Were Just Never That Smart | Hacker News Reader

American Kids Aren't Getting Dumber; They Were Just Never That Smart

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72 pointswybo65 comments

"It's a myth that we've fallen from our glory days."

This one seems to pop up a lot. Not just in education, but in everything. Is it just a sort of cultural nostalgia, a collective-but-selective memory? I'd be interested in seeing studies on it.

I find that that statement personifies the difference between conservatism and liberalism at its core: contrasting the glory of better days through more idealist eyes to the glorified potential utopia of the future.

Although more about social values than education, the book "The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap" just came up in conversation recently, and it deals specifically with the way we view the past through rose colored glasses.

http://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Never-Were-Nostalgia/dp/0465090...

Thanks, I'll add it to my reading list.

...actually, do you have anything older to recommend? Books these days just don't seem to measure up.

...actually, do you have anything older to recommend? Books these days just don't seem to measure up.

I was about to argue with you, and then... touché. :)

Until you hear liberals saying the same things, of course. Listen to them talk about the salad days of FDR or Jack Kennedy. Watch them go on about how every undictated social change is a Problem to be Addressed - or slurp up material like Idiocracy.

There's no overall difference between the two groups when it comes to forward-looking or nostalgic, just how old or cynical the individuals are.

While liberals do often hark back to idealized good old days of big manufacturing, high taxes, unionization and everyone having health insurance, I think it's a little unfair to portray conservatives as idealists looking toward some future utopia. For the most part (libertarian fringe excluded), they seem to simply lack vision of any sort, forward or backward.

I think the angst is not so much because of a perceived temporal decline; rather because of an unstated expectation that the U.S. should be first.

This is possibly aggravated by the fact that nobody knows for sure why the test scores are low, but everyone can have a theory.

Unstated? Maybe you don't watch the news enough to see how much time politicians devote to proclaiming America the greatest nation on earth in every possible respect...

Unstated by the people saying it in this context.

I've read that studies suggest that the golden age is typically located 10 years before you were born.

I am pretty sure that the 1970s sucked.

I was going to post the same thing, but then I thought: what would it have been like to actually attend the Homebrew Computer Club and witness the birth of the PC industry?

It'd be cool, no doubt; but if I was born in Australia (as I was), it'd have sucked.

Other than the Moon landings?

I think most of the myth is about the 1950s Eisenhower era, when Germany, Japan, China, and S. America weren't competing at all with our own economy. It was significantly less competitive then and for a brief period of time we were a powerhouse, but over time that has faded.

This was a period when you could support a family and live a comfortable middle-class existence while working on an assembly line. It wasn't a question of the education, just much less global competition.

America was a genuinely high-growth 'emerging economy' until ~1950, and then by sheer coincidence experienced another few decades of economic dominance thanks to the destruction of WW2 and the rise of communism in eastern Europe and Asia. The 'glory days' were quite real, at least economically. As for other claims, it's easy to feel optimistic when a rising tide is floating all boats.

The USA was blessed with some great geography too. Two giant mountain ranges capture enormous amount of snowfall and the snowmelt drains into the interior of the country, rendering massive areas amenable to agriculture. In turn this created a large population suitable for industrialisation.

For those still unware, here is the politically incorrect truth about PISA and America's subpar performance on it: http://buchanan.org/blog/who-owns-the-future-4587

"True, East Asians - Chinese, Koreans, Japanese - are turning in the top scores in all three categories, followed by the Europeans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders.

"But, looking down the New York Times list of the top 30 nations, one finds not a single Latin American nation, not a single African nation, not a single Muslim nation, not a single South or Southeast Asian nation (save Singapore) [which is Han Chinese], not a single nation of the old Soviet Union except Latvia and Estonia."

...

"Steve Sailer of VDARE.com got the full list of 65 nations, broke down U.S. reading scores by race, then measured Americans with the countries and continents whence their families originated. What he found was surprising.

"Asian-Americans outperform all Asian students except for Shanghai-Chinese. White Americans outperform students from all 37 predominantly white nations except Finns, and U.S. Hispanics outperformed the students of all eight Latin American countries that participated in the tests.

"African-American kids would have outscored the students of any sub-Saharan African country that took the test (none did) and did outperform the only black country to participate, Trinidad and Tobago, by 25 points."

Here is the chart: http://www.vdare.com/sailer/101219_pisa.htm

VDARE is a hate group, which often republishes white supremacists. With such a clear, ideological bias, I would hope that people here would know better than to accept their conclusions without some serious corroboration or fact-checking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDARE

So says the Southern Poverty Law Center. Surely there's no connection between being criticized and criticizing back. If that's all you've got on them then I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the label wagon. It sounds more like their research and findings are just a little controversial and the people on the business end of those findings aren't too happy about it. I agree with you on your argument about fact checking though.

Actually, it's right in the wikipedia page:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) called VDARE a hate group,[5] that was "once a relatively mainstream anti-immigration page," but by 2003 became "a meeting place for many on the radical right."[6] The group also criticized VDARE for publishing articles by white nationalists Jared Taylor and Sam Francis, along with other authors who deal with race and intelligence.

I can guarantee you that SPLC is not the only organization that considers VDARE a hate group. They may have been a more "legitimate" anti-immigration group in the past, but they've taken a hard right turn in the past decade or so.

I removed the part of my comment that mentioned citations from Wikipedia about the "white supremacists" (white nationalists in the article). Not because there actually are citations but because it wasn't core to the argument. It doesn't actually prove that just because it's in the Wikipedia article as it really isn't cited anywhere. I would have to do research outside of the WP article to confirm that.

As far as I can tell you seem to know more about them than Wikipedia.

To add to this: Does anyone know if white nationalist is even the same as a supremacist? That guy Jared's picture on WP is him shaking hands with Jesse Jackson. Also, the citations that were included in the quote you added from the article are from the group I mentioned above, which is why I wasn't personally convinced.

To edit further: I'm coming to the conclusion that white nationalist is a position whose mission is to do things "for white people." Not unlike whatever it is Jesse Jackson does with his time for black people. Although I don't see evidence that the guy is a racist, I'm not particularly a fan of any kind of single-race oriented groups. White or otherwise.

Does anyone know if white nationalist is even the same as a supremacist?

It's coded language. Even people on Stormfront call themselves white nationalists.

I'm not convinced of that and you're not doing much in the way of helping to that end. To me it sounds like you just already believe they're racist either way for their position. If they want to help white people only then they must be racists? Pretend I know nothing about these groups because I don't, but you do apparently, so please go into more detail beyond naming groups and calling them racist.

Just so we're clear though I'm not 'unconvincable' of this, but the barrier is a little high because you almost can't be pro-white without also being called racist. A unique issue for whites, who are not allowed to ever express anything related to pride for their race.

William Pierce, who wrote "The Turner Diaries", a fictional book about a race war which inspired Timothy McVeigh, was a white nationalist. Here's some wikipedia pages to start with, you could read "The Turner Diaries", but even despite it's awful politics, it's a terrible book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Luther_Pierce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Alliance_(United_State...

I have little doubt in my mind that William Pierce was a racist. He makes it pretty evident. I'm not even going to argue for his case, let's put it that way. He is named as the "principle ideologue for the white nationalist movement" but he was the leader of the white separatist National Alliance organization. The article doesn't mention that he himself was ever part of the white nationalist movement. To me that doesn't necessarily mean that all members of this "movement" identify themselves as racists, but after doing some reading it's clear that they at least have a history of racist groups claiming white nationalism for their misdeeds.

I think I've got an idea now of at least the bigger picture. Thanks for the links and the background information.

Pretend I know nothing about these groups because I don't, but you do apparently, so please go into more detail beyond naming groups and calling them racist.

I'll give you some reading suggestions. Start with the books mentioned as the best books in a wikipedia user page with bibliography on these subjects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol...

Begin with the books in the section "Best literature on 'race.'" That will expose you to history, biology, and sociology related to the subject of "race," and help you understand the context of race-advocacy groups. Then read the book The funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund by William Tucker (mentioned in a listing of better monographs on the subjects covered by the bibliography page). I learned a lot of interesting facts I had never known before when I read Tucker's book, including interesting facts about where some advocacy groups get their money, which was long a mystery to me.

There is a big difference. You're a "supremacist" if you think one group is better. You're a "nationalist" if you think these groups should be separate. Many white nationalists will freely admit that Japan is much more law-abiding than the US or Europe. But they might still want the US to be a whiter country (the way Japan is very Japanese, with <1% of the population having non-Japanese ancestry).

Perhaps you should call the VDare people "White Nationalists and Japanese Supremacists," to clarify your position.

If you read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, you'll see that he's a "white supremacist" and a "Jewish supremacist" in some respects, but still a "black nationalist" in terms of how he wants to live.

People whose political agenda is shaped by "want[ing] the US to be whiter country" are no more likely to give an impartial analysis of the relevance of differences between races than those who openly proclaim their own race's superiority.

The point is moot; in reality the overlap between people holding a belief in white supremacism[1] and white nationalism is almost total and Steve Sailer claims to be opposed to both philosophies despite his willingness to articulate their arguments.

It doesn't really matter what motivates the author's obsession with proving innate racial differences though. The problem is, it's exactly the sort of clumsy analysis you'd expect to be produced by a racist think tank; it's a series of grotesque simplifications leading to a non-sequitur

It happilyy to take into account the possibility that very white European Austria's relatively poor test performance might be down to lack of teacher and student motivation before failing to extend the same consideration to the [almost certainly much worse] institutional failings and test aversion of the average school filled with underperforming US ethnic minorities and Latin Americans. Instead, we're left with the daft non-sequitur conclusion that the way to fix test scores of black kids whose lineage dates back further than your average Asian American is not to fix their underfunded, gang-ridden schools or their broken homes or the pervasive myth that their race will hold them back even if they are able to overcome those obstacles, but to impose a ban on immigration and hope they go away.

[1]Acknowledging the superiority of Asian tests scores is entirely compatible with white supremacist beliefs so long as one is prepared to make arguments that white people have a better balance of characteristics due to being superior in many other ways; usually by trotting out the dubious stereotype of Asian societies being uninventive. You won't find many "Japanese supremacists" on VDARE.

It is odd that you're demonizing Malcolm X and Steve Sailer, while refusing to address their arguments. Apparently they are "clumsy," "racist," and "grotesque," producing "simplifications" and a "non-sequitur." But in the time it took you to tell me all about the hypothetical explanations for the data you refuse to believe but even more ardently refuse to check ("My dog didn't bite you, it's not my dog, and what do you have against bulldogs, mister?"), you could have, well, fact-checked Sailer's claims.

It is striking that you've mustered so much rhetoric about conclusions in order to avoid looking at the facts behind those conclusions. It is a little like preachers talking up hellfire when someone questions the 6,000-year-old-earth thing.

He didn't demonize Malcolm X, he simply ignored your random introduction of him into the discussion, and he didn't demonize Steve Sailer, just accused him of having an agenda and as evidence made an observation that Sailer had different explanations for the lower performance of Europeans in Austria as opposed to ethnic minorities in the US.

You, however, accused him of being intentionally obtuse then compared him to a young earth creationist.

Its just veiled racism. They're very related. Nationalism always has been a violent ideology so its fairly understandable to translate physical violence into ideological to become "civil."

>Nationalism always has been a violent ideology so its fairly understandable to translate physical violence into ideological to become "civil."

Violent ideology that promotes physical violence is turned into an ideology to become a civil ideology? That argument doesn't really follow. I ask you the same question I ask your sibling commenter: Can you show anything more for this standpoint other than "that's how it is?" I'm holding these "facts" up to the same standards as I would a Wikipedia article. Citation needed. (Preferably a citation that doesn't also originate from a group with obvious stake in their claims.)

Rather than resorting to ad hominem attacks, which is all you've done thus far, can you please explain why the analysis is wrong? Note that Buchanan is only arguing that the school system is not as terrible as is commonly thought and that it can produce good educational outcomes, but that it tends to do so unequally across ethnic lines:

"What American schools are failing at, despite the trillions poured into schools since the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is closing the racial divide."

And even if Buchanan were to argue for racial differences in intelligence, what is so wrong with that? The wiki page you quoted implied that such discussion is prima facie evidence of racism, but why? Other kinds of racial differences beyond the obvious exist, particularly in the realm of health and nutrition. The CDC and NIH put out "racist" guidelines all the time, like the recent recommendation concerning African-Americans and salt intake.

To disallow such discussion because you dislike the conclusion that may result from it is close-minded, irrational and demonstrates a mindset not so different from that of the typical young-earth creationist.

No, it isn't, and if you wish to assert that it is, then the burden is on you to provide proof other than the assertion to that effect by a notoriously biased organization like the SPLC.

Instead of engaging in drive-by ad-hominem, it would be more useful if you did the analysis yourself and told us the results.

An opinion on those conclusions from someone who is not Steve Sailer:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh122410.shtml#MINION

If you would like to verify his data, the source is here:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004.pdf

The linked article seems to have a predetermined conclusion to which it is trying to fit the data. Some examples:

Scare quotes are used to implicitly treat "reform" and "reformers" as somehow less than the words imply, without justification for this disdain.

Loaded terms are used to color perceptions of various elements in the plot ("beautiful" kids, "brutal" history, "tragedy", "painful" scores).

Why don’t American kids score at the top on international tests? Our brutal history is part of the answer, as is the immigration policy we maintain so people like Matthews can pay low wages to the people who care for their homes.

No evidence is provided for the claim that history or immigration policy are the cause for the discrepancies in scores.

Basically, the piece seems to invoke "think of the children," quote some opponents with unsubstantiated outrage, and call QED.

The fact that's totally ignored in this article, and which I find most interesting, is that American students of a given race outperform their peers in their native countries. The next question to ask is whether this correlation is meaningful, and if so, how to use it to improve education in the future.

Has anyone disputed them? This seems like a great example of an ad hominem attack--you haven't had to question their data, or their logic, just the fact that they've found an argument supporting their conclusions.

That's a good way to talk past people. If you're legitimately concerned with their views, this is a great opportunity to identify what flaws there are with this argument, instead of the ways you already disagreed with the conclusion.

I mean, think about this in terms of who is contributing to the argument. Vdare: "Here is some analysis of the data, revealing what may be surprising results!" You: "Like most people, I disagree with VDare's conclusions. I'm not going to address their arguments, and I'd like to warn others against doing so, too." Who is contributing, here?

If the source started as disreputable then it is wise to weigh its conclusions lighter than more reputable sources. It's not an ad hominem attack, it's inductive reasoning.

It's still ad hominem, even if it's also inductive reasoning.

I'm still hoping for a follow-up addressing the claims, rather than the person making those claims.

If the disreputable source is the sole source for those claims, then, yes, one should hold the claims in less than high regard. But if that disreputable source points to a third party, then that party should be the one under condsideration.

Not an ad hominem. An ad hominem argument attacks the character of the speaker independent of the argument and is a specific subset of non sequitur.

Whether an organisation is racist or not is highly relevant to whether we should trust their findings on matters of race, in the same way that someone being a salesman is relevant to whether we should trust their opinion on products they are selling.

If the accusation was that they were homophobic or sexist or a bunch of drunkards, that would be ad hominem. As it is, pointing out that they are racist is a very relevant and useful contribution. Although we cannot assess the objective validity of their findings based on that fact, our assessment of the probabilities change greatly.

By definition, the position that there are significant differences between different races is racism. Likewise, Sailer appears to be a racist and VDARE appears to be a racist web site. I don't know where either Sailer or VDARE has ever expressed actual outright hatred, per se, but "hate group" seems to be one of those non-literal political buzzwords nowadays. I think it would be better if everyone were to speak plainly and literally rather than using ill-fitting political cliches. (See: Orwell, "Politics and the English Language": http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)

I hope all people everywhere know better than to accept anyone's conclusions without serious corroboration or fact-checking. Yes, Sailer's conclusions are racist--but the question is whether they're true or not. And if you're willing to stop short at identifying them as racist without even asking that question, perhaps Sailer isn't the only one with a clear, ideological bias.

Ideological biases usually manifest themselves as flawed arguments that some conclusion or other is true. This is the type of bias you accuse Sailer of; I think your accusation is perfectly reasonable. Sometimes, though, ideological biases manifest themselves as social taboos. When that happens, everyone comfortably forgets about the question of truth or falsity and dismisses ideas out of hand simply for broaching the taboo. (See: pg, "What You Can't Say": http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

I'm not arguing for or against anyone's conclusions here, just suggesting some reasonable ground rules for rational conversation.

> By definition, the position that there are significant differences between different races is racism.

Actually, the definition is believing that the differences are large enough to render some races superior to others. It's a political belief, not a biological statement.

The concept is occasionally, regrettably, extended to include any mention that there may be performance differences between races at all, regardless of whether that comes from genetics, culture, or oppression. "Culturism," it seems, is often mistaken for racism.

It's not a technical term in the slightest, so there is no exact definition; we have to go by common usage. Most people would class the statement "blacks, as a population, have lower scientifically measurable intelligence than whites" as a racist statement, despite that statement being purely biological in and of itself. Hence, racism is not merely a political belief.

I fact checked some of it. His source for the 2009 reading numbers is this report (which he linked to): http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004_1.pdf

I checked 5 of the numbers on his first chart against table R1 in the official report. They all agreed. I checked the 2009 numbers in his second chart against table R3. They also agreed.

I'm curious - Sailer links to his source. It took me 3 minutes to find the relevant data. Why didn't you do this yourself? Why insinuate bias on his part, rather than simply attempting to determine for yourself if he is lying?

I get the rhetorical point of asking these questions, but we both know the answer to them. Racism isn't a socially acceptable intellectual position, so people who express racist ideas only deserve outright dismissal. Actual corroboration and fact checking are only done when you take an argument in good faith.

Likewise, the characterization of scientific racism as "white supremacism" or of VDARE as a "hate group" means belief in statistical differences between different races is the moral equivalent of being a neo-Nazi. Even if your very own arguments better suggest Chinese supremacism than white supremacism.

There's no such thing as "scientific racism" since race is a social construct.

First, race isn't purely a social construct. Obviously race is determined, at least partially, by ancestry and physical appearance, both of which are things science is fully capable of empirically measuring. The common conception of race is probably too flawed and inconsistent to use for scientific purposes, and most contemporary mainstream scientists who study human genetics don't use the word "race", but it's not a completely arbitrary and unfounded concept. If it was, public health offices wouldn't use it to narrow down which groups of people are at greater risk for genetic conditions like sickle cell disease.

Second, even if there is no scientific validity to the concept of race (and there very well may not be), I think everyone knows what the term "scientific racism" means. So I don't see the constructive point in your comment. My point is that there's a distinction between arguing about IQ statistics and burning crosses in people's front yards; I think you're using rhetorical tricks to undermine that point rather than arguing against it directly.

For everyone dismissing you on the basis of an ad hominem attack, here is the first paragraph from Wikipedia. In particular, notice the second sentence:

An ad hominem (Latin: "to the man"), also known as argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.[1] The ad hominem is a classic logical fallacy,[2] but it is not always fallacious; in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue.

Ad hominem is not fallacious when a person is attempting to argue by authority. The wikipedia article gives this example:

Conflict of Interest: Where a source seeks to convince by a claim of authority or by personal observation, identification of conflicts of interest are not ad hominem...

Steve Sailer is not arguing from a authority, so in this case the ad hominem is a logical fallacy.

It's often useful to read more than the first paragraph of a wikipedia article.

You've pulled one sentence out of a subsection and attempted to use it as a definition of the only way for an ad hominem to not be fallacious.

You've quoted from "Conflict of Interest" under the "Circumstantial" fallacy section. Under said section, it is clearly stated, "The circumstantial fallacy only applies where the source taking a position is only making a logical argument from premises that are generally accepted."

Regardless, I rescind my earlier comment because michaelchisari's statement was simply not an ad hominem attack. He wrote:

With such a clear, ideological bias, I would hope that people here would know better than to accept their conclusions without some serious corroboration or fact-checking.

At no point does he argue that what was said is false, only that readers should be skeptical due to evidence of bias and check their facts.

> It's often useful to read more than the first paragraph of a wikipedia article.

It's never useful to be persnickety.

Can you name another circumstance under which ad hominem is not fallacious?

As far as I'm aware, disputing an argument from authority is the only non-fallacious use of ad hominem. That's because an argument from authority is dependent on the character of the speaker, and attacking the speaker therefore can debunk the authority.

A better analysis is PISA's own analysis, which refers to specific instructional practices in different countries and other differences in country conditions that make a difference in educational outcomes.

http://www.oecd.org/document/2/0,3343,en_32252351_32236191_3...

After edit: It probably is worth pointing out, in this context, that I speak and read Chinese and have lived in various parts of the Chinese-speaking world. I have Chinese-language textbooks of mathematics at home from more than one country, and I am confident that young people of any "race" can learn math well if they are taught with materials like those, because I am a math teacher by occupation and my classes include a very ethnically diverse group of students, who thrive in the classes and far exceed the meager expectations of United States classrooms.

Another good response to what is wrong with mathematics teaching in United States classrooms comes from Patricia Clark Kenschaft in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society volume 52, number 2 (February 2005).

http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf

Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann point out in their paper "U. S. Math Performance in Global Perspective: How well does each state do at producing high-achieving students?"

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19_Hanushe...

that the real problem in United States mathematics education is leaving behind too many of the high-ability students, of whatever ethnicity, compared to many other countries.

I feel that these results only transform into "politically incorrect truth" when observed through a racist lens. African-Americans also seem to have an aptitude for terrible cancer outcomes, living in food deserts, low school district funding, and higher mortgage interest rates. The Latin American countries that Hispanic-Americans were compared to, and the Sub-Saharan African countries that African-Americans were imagined to have been compared to each seem to have national aptitudes for harsh Western colonialism followed up by dictators installed and supported by Western powers, with all of their wealth filtered through tiny elites and directed back to the West.

I don't have anything against the idea of different concentrations of intelligence distributing amongst different groups of people just like heights or colorations do. The experiment just hasn't been done, and may not be possible. The idea that you could compare the test results of African-Americans and European-Americans and come up with a complete enough set of controls to discover some sort of distribution of intrinsic aptitude is absurd; you have to settle for parental income and educational attainment and ignore the fact that the two groups are facing a radically different environment filled with pervasive beliefs about their potential which are often based on race, and are easily visually distinguishable. For example, you also find correlations between attractiveness or height and intelligence - and similarly, IMO, misguided theorists postulating some sort of Eloi superiority while ignoring any possible effect of the discrimination that unattractive or short people face, even with multiple studies verifying the Pygmalion Effect (the effect that instructor expectations have on student performance) such as:

Pygmalion in the Classroom (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968) http://www.springerlink.com/content/9u01hn7865v7387r/

Pygmalion goes to boot camp: Expectancy, leadership, and trainee performance (Eden and Shani, 1982) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WY3-4NNF8B3-D...

Said simply, the cultural environment is simply too messy to jump to conclusions about intrinsic ability distributions about disadvantaged groups, and the temptation has always been irresistible for some to use unsurprising statistics to confirm previously held biases.

"We should stop talking about some golden age of schooling that never existed, and instead look for ways to create one."

As I posted on another thread, everyone should watch this video if they have the time: http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_m...

I could care less about test scores and baseline performance in measured tests. What I care about is drive, inspiration, motivation, and innovation.

Sure, the US doesn't have a monopoly on any of that, but I'm not ashamed of what our best and brightest are doing.

It's "couldn't care less". When you say "could care less" you are endorsing the claim of American Kids Getting Dumber. If you still don't get it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

Eh, you get the point, but thanks for the catch. Fixed...or not. Can't edit because of the reply. Darn.

Exactly. And at any one point there are only a handful of high performers. The rest of us get by just fine with basic math and skills borderline literacy. This is true in all fields, even the hard sciences, if there even is such a thing. The vast majority of research organisations are desparately copying what a few standouts discover.

The few truly innovative and driven students will self-select as long as they are given a chance. I'm not endorsing the dumbing-down of education but it doesn't really scare me either as long as a reasonable baseline is maintained. Looking at my 10 yr. old daughter's public school curriculum for math and sciences I have to say that it's not so different from mine, which was German public schools of the 70s and 80s.

By the way, "could care less" is ok in common usage now - heard it on NPR so it must be true.

i've often thought that many Americans were not necessarily more talented or innately intelligent than folks in worse off areas of the world. they were just lucky to be born in a nation and time when they had a silver spoon in their mouth, in relative terms. With increasing globalization of the economy, that is coming to end, which sucks, but probably inevitable.

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