I post this with trepidation – knowing that it will spark yet another round of comments about racism at the Tree.  I say, “The Truth Will Set You Free”, and ask the question, as does the author of this Politico piece, Why Can’t We Talk About IQ?

The author, Jason Richwine, is a public policy analyst in Washington DC, and wrote his Harvard Ph.D. dissertation about IQ test results of various ethnic/racial groups. As he explains it, In brief, my dissertation shows that recent immigrants score lower than U.S.-born whites on a variety of cognitive tests. Using statistical analysis, it suggests that the test-score differential is due primarily to a real cognitive deficit rather than to culture or language bias. It analyzes how that deficit could affect socioeconomic assimilation, and concludes by exploring how IQ selection might be incorporated, as one factor among many, into immigration policy.
Remember Larry Summers?   He was the president of Harvard University, who said in 2005 that women might not be as naturally gifted in math and science as men.  As a result of this remark, an uproar occurred, eventually leading to him being ousted from the university.
Mr. Richwine continues –

Because a large number of recent immigrants are from Latin America, I reviewed the literature showing that Hispanic IQ scores fall between white and black scores in the United States. This fact isn’t controversial among experts, but citing it seems to have fueled much of the media backlash.
And what a backlash it was. It started back in May when I coauthored an unrelated study that estimates the fiscal cost of granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. Opponents seeking to discredit that study pointed to my dissertation, and the firestorm was lit. Reporters pulled the dissertation quotes they found “shocking” and featured them in news stories about anti-immigration extremism. Well-established scientific findings were treated as self-evidently wrong — and likely the product of bigotry.

The media reporting is useless, as they know nothing about the science, don’t want to know, have their fingers in their ears and hands over their eyes, don’t bother to check the science, and use the reporting of studies such as this one as a platform for editorializing about racism and to throw ad hominem attacks at the scientists who do the studies and have the temerity to report them. 
He continues,

But it’s difficult to have a mature policy conversation when other journalists are doing little more than name-calling. It’s like convening a scientific conference on the causes of autism, only to have the participants drowned out by anti-vaccine protesters.
For too many people confronted with IQ issues, emotion trumps reason. Some are even angry that I never apologized for my work. I find that sentiment baffling. Apologize for stating empirical facts relevant to public policy? I could never be so craven. And apologize to whom — people who don’t like those facts? The demands for an apology illustrate the emotionalism that often governs our political discourse.

Why tell the truth about IQ difference between ethnic/racial groups?  As the author says, Cognitive differences can inform our understanding of a number of policy issues — everything from education, to military recruitment, to employment discrimination to, yes, immigration. Start treating the science of mental ability seriously, and both political discourse and public policy will be better for it.  Continue Reading Jason Richwine at Politico


Something else I read yesterday (HT to Philip N. at Facebook).  The myth of “they weren’t ever taught….”
The question here is, are teachers not doing a good job of teaching math concepts, or are the kids not intellectually able to understand and retain what has been taught?

The author, a math teacher, explains:

They see progress in the areas they review—until they realize that the kids now have lost knowledge in the areas that weren’t being taught for the first time or in review, much as if the new activity caused them to overwrite the original files with the new information.
At some point, all teachers realize they are playing Whack-a-Mole in reverse, that the moles are never all up. Any new learning seems to overwrite or at best confuse the old learning, like an insufficient hard drive.
That’s when they get it: the kids were taught. They just forgot it all, just as they’re going to forget what they were taught this year.
All over America, teachers reach this moment of epiphany. Think of a double mirror shot, an look of shocked comprehension on an infinity of teachers who come to the awful truth.

End Stage One and the algebra specificity.
Stage Two: At this point, some teachers quit. But for the rest, their reaction to Stage One takes one of two paths.

The two paths taken?  The first is to blame the students.  The second is acceptance.  The author has taken the second path.  He continues:

Here, I do not refer to teachers who show movies all day, but teachers who realize that Whack-a-Mole is what it’s going to be. They adjust. Many, but not all, accept that cognitive ability is the root cause of this learning and forgetting (some blame poverty, still others can’t figure it out and don’t try). They try to find a path from the kids’ current knowledge to the demands of the course at hand, and the best ones try to find a way to craft the teaching so that the kids remember a few core ideas.
On the other hand, these teachers are clearly “lowering expectations” for their students.

And concludes, as follows:

Teachers know something that educational policy folk of all stripes seem incapable of recognizing: it’s the students, not the teachers. They have been taught. And why they don’t remember is an issue we really should start to treat as a key piece of the puzzle.

Two weeks A year later (last month), the author continues with this piece, Two Math Teachers Talk.
The problem, as outlined in his original piece, is going to be “solved” by Common Core (yes, the author finds this idea as abhorrent and amusing as we do):

“Jesus, Ed, I’ve wondered why we’re pulling this Common Core crap, but not in my deepest, most cynical moments did I think it because they thought we teachers just might not know what to teach the kids.”
“That’s not the most depressing, cynical thought. Really cynical is that everyone knows it won’t work but the feds need to push the can—the acknowledgement that achievement gaps are largely cognitive—down the road a few more years, and everyone else sees this as a way to scam government dollars.”
“New texbooks! New PD. A pretense that technology can help!”

For more on this subject, read about The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

a 1994 book by American psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein (who died before the book was released) and American political scientist Charles Murray. Its central argument is that human intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors and is a better predictor of many personal dynamics, including financial income, job performance, chance of unwanted pregnancy, and involvement in crime than are an individual’s parental socioeconomic status, or education level. The book also argues that those with high intelligence, the “cognitive elite”, are becoming separated from those of average and below-average intelligence, and that this is a dangerous social trend with the United States moving toward a more divided society similar to that in Latin America.