'An Appalling Report'

Started by Homo Aestheticus, October 20, 2008, 07:11:33 PM

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PSmith08

Well, plagiarism is definitely a philosophy, and it's nothing we haven't seen before.

As amusing as I find Eric's eternal return to quoting without citing, I find his argument that, because someone somewhere once felt bad about themselves after trying and failing, we shouldn't ever let anyone who could, perhaps, fail even try even more wonderfully humorous.

Plagiarized arguments are always hi-larious.

Catison

I had a thought on this subject this morning. But specifically about British school children.

Every year Britain's school-children provide gratifying evidence of their increasing smartness. More leave primary school having done well in tests of reading, writing and arithmetic; more get top grades in national exams at ages 16 and 18. Nay-sayers, though, think this progress overstated, even illusory. They attribute rising marks to dumbed-down curricula, downward-drifting grade boundaries and teaching to the test. But even the gloomiest assessment, it appears, may not go far enough. In important ways, the country's children appear to be becoming dumber.

Michael Shayer of King's College London has been testing children's thinking skills since 1976, when he and colleagues started studying the development of reasoning abilities in young people. In 2006 and 2007 he got 14-year-olds to take some of the same tests as 30 years earlier. The findings, to be published early next year, are sobering. More than a fifth of youngsters got high scores then, suggesting they were developing the ability to formulate and test hypotheses. Now only a tenth do.

The tests did not change, so the decline was not caused by different content or marking. And since they explored the ability to think deeply rather than to regurgitate information or whizz through tasks, the results matter deeply. In the purest test of reasoning, pupils were shown a pendulum and asked how to find out what affects the rate at which it swings. "Their answers indicated whether they had progressed from the descriptive thinking that gets us through most of our days, to the interpretative thinking needed to analyse complex information and formulate and test hypotheses," Professor Shayer explains.

In 1976 more boys than girls did well, a fact the researchers put down to boys roaming further out of doors and playing more with tools and mechanical toys. Both sexes now do worse than before, but boys' scores have fallen more, suggesting that a decline in outdoor and hands-on play has slowed cognitive development in both sexes. Britain's unusually early start to formal education may make things worse, as infants are diverted from useful activities such as making sand-castles and playing with water into unhelpful ones, such as holding a pen and forming letters.

British children's schooling may be hampered, too, by the tests that show standards rising. These mean teachers' careers depend on coaching the weakest, rather than on stretching all children, including the most able. This interpretation is supported by another, more positive, finding from the research: that fewer children do very badly now than did 30 years ago.

When asked to speculate further on why fewer British teenagers now display mature reasoning, Professor Shayer eschews local explanations and puts the blame squarely on television and computers. They take children away from the physical experiences on which later inferential skills are based, he thinks, and teach them to value speed over depth, and passive entertainment over active. That chimes with other researchers' findings of cognitive gains on tasks that require speed rather than close reasoning—useful, perhaps, as the pace of life accelerates, but hardly a substitute for original thought.

So what of children elsewhere? Britain's are not the only ones kept inside for fear of traffic or paedophiles, or slumped in front of a screen for much of the day. "There is no similar evidence from elsewhere," says Professor Shayer. "No one has looked for it." Perhaps they should.
-Brett

Josquin des Prez


karlhenning

Good to see you got the joke, "Josquin"!

Well played, Brett!

Florestan

Indeed!

Now, Eric, in the future please be so kind to address me if and only if what you write is either personally thought or properly sourced. You have crossed too far the border of intellectual dishonesty.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Homo Aestheticus

I shall do that, Florestan. And thanks for your thoughtful responses throughout.

Florestan

Quote from: The Ardent Pelleastre on November 05, 2008, 03:09:59 AM
I shall do that, Florestan. And thanks for your thoughtful responses throughout.

You're welcome.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

karlhenning

Quote from: Florestan on November 04, 2008, 10:56:50 PM
Indeed!

Now, Eric, in the future please be so kind to address me if and only if what you write is either personally thought or properly sourced. You have crossed too far the border of intellectual dishonesty.

Too far, and too often.

We still have hope for you, Eric . . . .

PSmith08

Quote from: karlhenning on November 05, 2008, 05:03:16 AM
Too far, and too often.

We still have hope for you, Eric . . . .

Zager and Evans gave us a time-frame for the fulfillment of the hope.

Homo Aestheticus

Karl,

I missed this the other day:

Quote from: karlhenning on October 29, 2008, 04:16:03 PMNot all the academically gifted are gifted in the same way.  I am not at all "academically gifted" in the sciences, for instance.

That does not matter. You have a quick mind and you write very well. You are a person of high linguistic ability and  that  is what is most important, not an aptitude for understanding scientific concepts.

Homo Aestheticus

Quote from: Florestan on October 30, 2008, 01:00:36 AMPlease:

(a) define intellectual ability

Florestan,

I cannot provide an exact definition of intellectual ability but it essentially involves an ability to grasp concepts and to reason.

Basically, there is a very intimate interconnection between intellectual ability and  reading comprehension,  yes ?


greg

Quote from: The Ardent Pelleastre on November 05, 2008, 11:47:09 AM


Basically, there is a very intimate interconnection between intellectual ability and  reading comprehension,  yes ?


Completely depends on what you're reading and if you're interested in it in the first place- or how much you already know about it. But still, I think you might be onto something.  8)

PSmith08

Quote from: The Ardent Pelleastre on November 05, 2008, 11:47:09 AM
Florestan,

I cannot provide an exact definition of intellectual ability but it essentially involves an ability to grasp concepts and to reason.

Basically, there is a very intimate interconnection between intellectual ability and  reading comprehension,  yes ?

Reading comprehension of what? There is, I can assure you, rather a difference between some general-consumption article on, say, education theory (as we have seen) and the Restatement (Second) of Contracts or a text on Galois Theory. So, what you'd be doing to measure intellectual ability (assuming that I accept the half-cocked idea that reading comprehension provides some sort of "very intimate" measure, which I don't) would be, for fairness' sake, be measuring everyone to the standard of a twelfth-grade student. But which twelfth grade? A public school? A private school? What about schools that are very good at math and science, but lacking on the English and foreign-language fronts? You'll say, let's go by state curricula. Which state? Which curriculum per state? For example, Indiana offers two "academic" high-school diplomas, the Core 40 diploma (basic) and the Indiana Academic Honors Diploma (self-explanatory). While the curricula are different, they're not so different as to make one the clear choice, though I wouldn't know why you'd measure off of the "special," advanced degree. In other words, there's no way to get a reliable, accurate measurement of this one variable.

It's a nice, comforting idea to be able to quantify intellectual ability, but it's crap science. Indeed, it bears such little resemblance to science that it might as well be called "a piquant blend of phrenology, numerology, and soothsaying."


Florestan

Eric,

First you write this:

Quote from: The Ardent Pelleastre on November 05, 2008, 11:46:29 AM
That does not matter. You have a quick mind and you write very well. You are a person of high linguistic ability and  that  is what is most important, not an aptitude for understanding scientific concepts.
(emphasis mine)

then this:

Quote from: The Ardent Pelleastre on November 05, 2008, 11:47:09 AM
I cannot provide an exact definition of intellectual ability but it essentially involves an ability to grasp concepts and to reason.
(emphasis mine)

And to add obscurity to confusion, you eventually write this:

Quote from: The Ardent Pelleastre on November 05, 2008, 11:47:09 AMBasically, there is a very intimate interconnection between intellectual ability and  reading comprehension,  yes ?

Rather contradictory, don't you think so?

High linguistic ability does not necessarily imply concept-grasping ability and viceversa; reading comprehension is quite different from reasoning; reasoning is one thing and expressing the thoughts in a linguistically proper manner is another thing.

Now, if you imply, in an oblique way, that intellectual ability means:

(a) high linguistic ability

and

(b) an ability to grasp concepts and to reason

and

(c) reading comprehension

and that a person is "intellectually able' if s/he fufils all these requirements at all time and in all circumstances, I'm afraid that nobody --- and I really mean nobody of all people who have lived, who live and who will ever live on Earth --- fit the bill.

As an excellent Romanian gentleman of the old school very aptly put it, the difference between an intelligent person and a stupid person is that the intelligent person is stupid in fewer cases.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Homo Aestheticus

Patrick,

Quote from: PSmith08 on November 05, 2008, 06:53:00 PMIt's a nice, comforting idea to be able to quantify intellectual ability, but it's crap science.

But why is it that when I read Charles Murray´ Real Education  or even some sections of the The Bell Curve it rings so true of my own academic experiences ?  It makes a heck of a lot of sense to me.   (However, RE is a better book)

I definitely consider myself below average in intellectual/academic ability. In retrospect, I feel very angry that my teachers in elementary, middle and high school never really spoke up about my total inability to ever keep pace and instead gave me passing grades probably because I was very quiet/polite. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have benefitted greatly from the kind of early and rigorous testing of ability that Murray advocates.

Thanks anyway for your input on this topic. 

Homo Aestheticus

Florestan,

Quote from: Florestan on November 05, 2008, 11:01:17 PMReading comprehension is quite different from reasoning; reasoning is one thing and expressing the thoughts in a linguistically proper manner is another thing.

I guess that´s correct.

A friend of mine defines ´reason´ in two ways:

1. The ability to organize experiences into a context that can be understood or interpreted.

or more precisely:

2. A rarified form of cognition which allows one to evaluate the validity of assertions and statements.

Quote from: Florestan on November 05, 2008, 11:01:17 PMHigh linguistic ability does not necessarily imply concept-grasping ability

Why not ?   

I thought that `concept´ was a synonym for ´word´.  Aren´t they basically interchangeable ?


Florestan

Quote from: The Ardent Pelleastre on November 06, 2008, 04:00:21 AM
A friend of mine defines ´reason´ in two ways:

1. The ability to organize experiences into a context that can be understood or interpreted.

or more precisely:

2. A rarified form of cognition which allows one to evaluate the validity of assertions and statements.

A friend of yours who goes by which name?

And why "rarified"?

Quote from: The Ardent Pelleastre on November 06, 2008, 04:00:21 AMI thought that `concept´ was a synonym for ´word´.  Aren´t they basically interchangeable ?

"Tree", "red" and "anxiety" are words. Which one is also a concept?
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

karlhenning

Quote from: Florestan on November 06, 2008, 04:15:51 AM
A friend of yours who goes by which name?

Oh, it's sounding like . . . BUSTED!  $:)

Homo Aestheticus

Quote from: Florestan on November 06, 2008, 04:15:51 AMA friend of yours who goes by which name?

He was an online friend from the Richard Dawkins website a couple year back. When I offered to define ´reason´ as the ability to organize experiences into a context that can be understood and interpreted, he said it was an inadequate definition and then gave the above.

Quote"Tree", "red" and "anxiety" are words. Which one is also a concept?

Tree ?

Florestan

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini