So then, the problem with ignorance is that when you don’t know, you frequently don’t know what it is you don’t know.
A common trope among our leaders and pontificators is found in the phrase “the greatest national security threat we face is . . .” followed whatever it is they want us to be whipped up about now — climate change, immigration, the national debt, and so on. Some of these things are just made up crises, as in the weather, but some of them are real enough. But it would be far better for us to consider an underlying national security threat.
That threat is an uneducated public. By “uneducated” I do not mean “unpropagandized,” I mean uneducated. I am not talking about a public that has not yet seen the compelling new ads about the koala bears on ice floes, but rather the public that was never taught to think properly growing up.
This is because whenever we are faced with any threat, real or imagined, our leaders are going to start holding press conferences, and they are going to start talking nonsense to us. Our responsibility as a citizenry is to laugh at the nonsense and turn our attention to that lonely fellow on the end of the stage trying to make an argument. It is our duty to know how to follow an argument, to know how to distinguish fact from fiction, to know what history means, and to be able to resist the lies of the demagogues.
In short, this means the greatest national security threat to our country today is the government school system. The government oversees education with the same levels of competence you have come to expect from any given urban Department of Motor Vehicles.
In her seminal essay on education, The Lost Tools of Learning, Dorothy Sayers said this:
“Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?”
In examining what goes on in government schools, we have to distinguish that which is immoral from that which is simply stupid. For an example of an immoral doctrinal line, consider what is taught in the government school system about sodomy. But that is not my primary interest here. Stupid is also a threat. When you graduate students who simply do not know how to distinguish premises and conclusions, fallacies and valid arguments, or supported from unsupported statements, you will have graduated, within a very short period of time, millions of little worker bees, well-fitted for life in the Hive.
In the words of Pink Floyd, you will have, fresh out of the kilns, another brick for the wall.
Take, for the most recent egregiousness, and they come almost daily now, Obama’s executive action on gun control, followed by his tears. Distinguish the issue of gun control policy, which is one debate, from the outrageous and despotic methods which he uses whenever he wants to get his way. “Congress failed to act,” and so he must act. But the whole point of our system of government is to require all three branches of government to work together before something “is done.” One of the things we elect congressmen to do, one of their most important roles, is that of failing to act. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
But with a stroke of a pen, Obama writes off centuries of constitutional law, and he can do so with the serene confidence that the vast majority of government school alumni will not have the faintest idea what is happening. He can just sign things like that, blow a little sunshine, assure everyone that what he is doing is fully in accord with the 2nd amendment, and we stagger on to the next profanation.
There used to be a bumper sticker, at least in our town, that said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” To which the reply should be made, “We did try ignorance, and now it wants a raise.”
Amen
I’m sorry, but I received an excellent education in public schools from 1990-2002, in states both liberal and conservative (Michigan, Pennsylvania, California and Florida). Maybe I was lucky and maybe things have fallen precipitously since then, but many of my excellent teachers are still teaching (There were a few duds but I think that is hard to avoid anywhere.) We do ourselves no service by painting with a broad brush.
I suppose you learned about the exception fallacy.
Yes, that was covered in 9th grade philosophy, as well as the overwhelming exception which you are using.
I don’t think you got his point. You were committing the exception fallacy.
I got his point, but the counter to the exception fallacy is the overwhelming exception fallacy, where if you have to make too many exceptions, then your argument is weak. This is conjecture, but I think that the majority of critically thinking Christians in this country are the product of public education. I suppose if you make an exception for all of them, then the argument stands.
It may or may not be true that most critically thinking Christians were public educated (although I have my doubts), but that doesn’t automatically mean that their thinking skills developed because of their secular education. Correlation doesn’t always equate with causation. Some Christians (I won’t speculate how many) would certainly say that their critical thinking skills developed in spite of their public school “education,” not because of it.
Ask Doug Wilson. He was educated, to some degree, in public schools and the University of Idaho! He says so elsewhere.
Your school was certainly exceptional. I went through and have taught in the New York City public school system. Not one school that I know of (and that’s quite a number) offers a course in philosophy or logic. Pick 10,000 12th graders from New York City public schools and I will give you $10,000 if just 5 of them have even heard of the exception fallacy. That’s how confident I am you wont find ’em. God bless your schools however, creatures of the state that they are.
I think similarly to you. Also a 2002 grad of the public schools and I think I can think… Anyway, as I look for schools for my children, I think the schools have gotten a lot worse. I think I went to a small school system and my parents could guide me into classes of teachers who, by public opinion in our small town, were thought to be the better teachers. That helped me. I think bad schools are a problem but not the whole problem and that Doug is just high-lighting that part of the problem here. I think… Read more »
I have young children like yourself, and while none of them are school age yet, the time is quickly approaching. As part of preparing for deciding how they are to be schooled I’ve started attending the local school board meetings. Every time I go, there are only a few other people in attendance. This makes me question whether or not the Church has been active enough in trying to influence public schooling. It is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy when all the Christians pull out of the public schools and then point at them saying how ungodly they are.
A good point with some degree of truth to it, to be sure. We havent done a good job defending out schools from the principalities of this present darkness. But look at the goal of the system – to educate children (who are impressionable morally and spiritually, not just scholastically) in an amoral, a-religious manner… No one has every tried this before. I think its arguable that it cant work. I even think its arguable that we arent really doing what we set out to do. We are teaching morals and religion, just not on purpose. Biblical commands to educate… Read more »
If you’ve read any of Doug’s work on education you’ll see that he believes the very nature of centralized government education is problematic. So pulling out wasn’t the problem…pulling in was.
Why are you sorry?
Also, wasn’t the point of the article aimed more at the fact that public education is going to be much more likely to produce citizens who are unable to critically (or, we might say, biblically) analyze the messages they receive from the government that educated them? Perhaps you might say that you had some great Christian teachers who taught a biblical worldview on the sly, or some genuine liberal teachers who taught critical thinking and deconstructed propaganda of all types, but then that wouldn’t necessarily say anything about any other classes, or schools, or school-systems, etc.
I wrote “I’m sorry” because I totally understand where Pastor Wilson is coming from, and am sympathetic to his views, but when my personal experience is so counter to the argument, I felt obligated to object.
Ah. Like when the doctor apologizes ahead of the shot…
Isn’t the opposite also true, though? That children that are raised in Christian schools will be less likely to analyze the messages they receive from the Christian authority that educated them? And what “messages” are you suggesting that the government is forcing on today’s students? And what evidence do you have that today’s students are not learning how to sift through propaganda? And while we’re on the topic of propaganda, Doug Wilson’s blog is full of it, and yet very few people on this blog seem able to detect it or think critically about it.
In order:
Yes.
Yes, but Christianity is True.
Perversion, license, passivity, religious falsehoods, diversity, globalism, anti-patriotism, government largesse, etc.
The culture of entitlement and consumerism.
That’s a statement without grounding.
I think that 15 years is a long time. There are also exceptions to the rule, could you be one, from a combination of the schools you attended at the time, and your family influence. Even large city Urban schools have success stories, but I don’t think that means they are good, or something to be emulated. Going back to Doug’s post, I think we can agree that stuff is happening that the American Public would never have let go so easily as they are now. Let’s look at the logic behind what is happening, much in response purported to… Read more »
Who posts as Bob Ewell??? (I’m chuckling in wonder)
I was raised in a Christian home and went to public school in a safe, conservative district nearly my whole life. What I realize now is the most insidious parts of my education were not the things that I could identify as bad (evolution, teen pregnancy, drunken orgies, etc.), but the things I didn’t. Unlearning a good portion of an unBiblical worldview is what I’ve been doing since I graduated high school. The brick doesn’t even know he’s a part of the wall until someone comes and knocks it down.
The exception fallacy is certainly at play here but I would say take a couple steps back. In my view, the argument for or against government schooling should be made on the basis of whether or not the idea is a good one in the first place, not whether the results are good or bad. The government schools say (paraphrasing Doug Wilson) “what we are doing here, in this classroom, is irrelevant to whether there is a God.” Biblically speaking, this is a non-starter and just one of many reasons Christians should refuse to participate. Can a Christian get some… Read more »
Given that the bricks in the wall were events that to Roger Waters’ inability to relate to people, I was expecting “Welcome my son to the machine” as your Floyd reference.
Although the scope the the executive order is more important than the number, it’s worth noting that Obama has enacted fewer executive orders per year than any President since Grover Cleveland.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/every-presidents-executive-actions-in-one-chart/
The scope is actually *far* more important than the number.
Order of magnitude is the proper denominator, compared to simple numbers.
For instance , “one atomic bomb could ruin your whole day”! ????
I hear from a lot of people that they want to send their kids to public school so they (the kids) can reach out to the other students who dont have Christian parents or influences in their lives.
I think this is terrible. When I was a young Christian growing up in school, there was a lot of evangelism going on, but it wasnt coming from me, and the good news wasnt that of Jesus.
Thoughts from anyone else?
Give it some time. The ‘missionary kids’ group will be here shortly. I’m sure they’ll have plenty of thoughts.
At what point do you think it is safe to let the young Christians out into the world? I’m not being facetious, I’m genuinely curious. I mean, at some point it has to happen: either it’s college, or their first job. I suppose if we as Christians completely close off ourselves to the rest of society like the Amish we could possibly avoid it, but that comes with its own issues I think.
I sent my kids to public school in the ninth grade. This would be a minority position here, BUT, I did not send them “to do evangelism.” I sent them because I thought they were sufficiently prepared after 14 years in our home to deal with it, and I thought it was the best educational situation for them. (There is not a decent Christian school within our reach.) They have, and do, evangelize their friends. But that is a product of their being there, not the reason for it. Sending young, unformed children into the secularized public school system to… Read more »
Interesting. It was my own experience that the elementary school years were the most innocent in regards to secularism. It was strictly phonics and arithmetic. It wasn’t until 8th or 9th grade that secularism began to creep into the classroom, to the extent that it actually did. Then again, as someone else has said on this board, a lot has changed over the past 10 to 15 years.
You mean they were openly advocating religion? Because if not, that’s secularism. And the point isn’t so much how “bad” the schools are at a given age, but how malleable your kid is at that age. I’d rather have a high schooler openly faced with open secularism, than a six year old dealing with never ever hearing about Jesus ever during the whole school day because He doesn’t matter at all to what we’re learning. The six year old being taught in a Jesus-free, nice respectable environment, is picking up a much stronger anti-Christian message than the high schooler who… Read more »
I agree that it is secular, but I don’t necessarily think one has to have their theology right to teach math. I got my theology from home and church. My faith survived hearing “2+2=4” not hearing “2+2=4 because of Jesus”, even though that is the case.
But you also heard everything else “not because of Jesus.” You heard practical ethics not because of Jesus. You heard how the world was made not because of Jesus, and history not because of Jesus. I could argue that there’s a proper way to teach math “because of Jesus,” but even leaving that aside, that’s pulling out the most obvious example of something concrete, and ignoring all the other assumptions and instruction that go into a school day, without Jesus.
My daughter attended a public but selective performing arts school from eighth through twelfth grades. I was intensely involved in her schooling and taught her subjects that her timetable couldn’t accommodate–geography, extra foreign languages, art history, and so on. I felt she had an excellent academic education. It always troubled me, however, that the district could pay for a school like my daughter’s only by skimming money away from less academically able students. She was getting small classes and script analysis and ballet while the overcrowded local high school, with a 3% white enrollment, was struggling to find enough text… Read more »
Jilly , the middle of the bell curve always have to make their own way. Schools commonly do right by the honors students and the special needs students. There is a good lesson in there for the average student!
My kids attend an academic magnet school, and from all I can see, albeit somewhat surprisingly, the success of that school does not come at the expense (at least the financial expense) of other schools in the district. The advantages are more in terms of policy and standards, than in capital. Their school seems to be short enough on supplies and equipment to indicate that they’re not skimming it off anybody else. I think they do receive direct corporate and non-profit grants that some of the other schools don’t get, but IMO those grants wouldn’t be going anywhere in the… Read more »
I think its gradual and a different rate for different kids. We saw the good dinosaur recently and I thought the heavy-handed hindu based short film that preceded the feature was too much for my 3 year old and I regretted taking him (not to mention the scary images). The childrens’ crusade is rumored to have gone poorly. I think our goal should never be to seperate ourselves from society, but to transform it. Sending the children to be educated by that society that isnt yet transformed is not my idea of a good strategy. We didnt farm out the… Read more »
Entered government schools in 1975…was perpetually among the brightest students and left bored with the pacing aimed at nominal students. Left for a small Christian school in 6th grade…was able to work at my own “PACE” which meant that I became an expert in the “memorize-regurgitate-forget” method of study; that is, I actually learned very little. Began home schooling in 10th grade…a day late and a dollar short. Introduced in 1991 to Calvinism, Covenant Theology, Theonomy, Paedobaptism, and a host of other doctrines that were foreign to me at the time. Mind sufficiently blown. Entered college in 1992, where I… Read more »
President Cruz announced today, just one day after taking office, that he is issuing an executive order effective immediately that makes illegal partial-birth abortions for those he describes a ‘morally incompetent’ and makes illegal all abortions for those receiving government aid. He states that he was emboldened by former President Obama’s executive order almost a year ago banning the possession of firearms by those deemed ‘mentally incompetent’.
This is hilarious considering Doug’s history of failure to fact check himself before he speaks and the fact that his private school institutions are training their students to be worker bees in the hive of the CREC.
As Providence would have it, an unsupported statement shows up, to prove the point of the post!
Nice work AW!????
You did that with so much more finesse than I would have.
My hat is perpetually off to you. :)
James 1:17
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
Thanks, but plainly, I had some Help! ; – ) So did AW!
I can vouch for this. I went to public school, and I’m dumber than a box of rocks.
E’, I seem to recall that you recovered from any school induced ignorance, by watching “the Simpsons”.
Woo-Hooo!????
That’s correct. I should write a book, ‘Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Watching The Simpsons’ Its got a nice ring to it.
Please do write that book! Of course, do be careful about attribution!
Especially around here.
(credit me with inspiration for the title! ; – )
Meh, I’m not worried about it. It’ll be a pretty short book; actually only two words: “Mmmm, doughnuts…”
“Brevity is the soul of wit.” (As Evan, and Homer, once again demonstrate!)
Me too. I didn’t know how dumb I was till I started reading this Blog/comments a few years ago. Ignorance was bliss…it was much warmer in the wall.
Ditto. I also didn’t know how dumb I was until I started homeschooling my children. On the bright side though, I guess I get learn all over again what I should’ve learned in the first place! :)
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken
Hence, “tabloid weather”. ????
That sounds exactly like Doug’s bread and butter. An endless series of secular progressive hobgoblins, all of them (or most of them, anyway) imaginary. Where would practical politics be without an alarmed populace? And where would reactionary fundamentalist Christianity be without an alarmed constituency? Remove the imaginary threat and the house of cards crumbles. No need for practical politics, and no need for Doug’s blog.
Who then is qualified to distinguish the nonsense from the genuine arguments, the facts from fiction. Oh, Doug Wilson, that’s who.
“Who then is qualified to distinguish the nonsense from the genuine arguments, the facts from fiction?”
Probably someone like this:
“But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.” 1John 2:27
Or someone like this:
“I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.” Ps 119:99
Great self-refuting comment there.
He does have a point though. When it comes to questions such as evolution and climate change, my biologist friends have an entirely different understanding of critical thinking than what people writing here might mean. My secular friends would argue that there is no possibility of critical thinking if your findings are restricted by a need not to contradict divine revelation. I don’t see any possibility of harmonizing such divergent views.
That’s if you define “critical thinking” solely as a willingness to drop your paradigmatic system and worldview in and by which you interpret evidence for a different (theirs) paradigmatic system and worldview.
Jilly, today’s scientists are taught to find the dollars rather than to find truthful answers. Just look at the climate change studies: At first we were told they were absolutely correct and then we found out the the models and data were skewed to give the answers that big money wanted. Please also remember that the critical thinkers of earlier years declared that the world would run out of oil in the 1960s. They also declared that the US would turn to cannibalism and be largely devoid of humans by the end of the 80s. To say that critical thinking… Read more »
A thought experiment:
Suppose you were given the opportunity to completely eliminate government schools and return the money to the taxpayers, and in exchange, drugs and prostitution would be legalized across the board?
Would you take it?
Ooo, let me try!
Suppose you could eliminate the IRS and income taxation altogether, and in return Mexico became the 51st State.
Hey…that’s a lot of fun!!
and dueling was re-instituted as a lawful means of dispute resolution.
I could go on for days!!
My point was that we could get rid of government schools if we simply reduced government to the point of carrying out its sole Biblical function, which is to protect the lives and property of peaceful people. The problem is that this would also entail ending the war on drugs. The purpose of such a thought experiment is to reveal how unwilling so many conservatives are to actually reduce the power of the government if that includes taking away the government’s power to prohibit certain types of nonviolent behavior which conservatives find objectionable. It shows that they’re really not so… Read more »
It’s a reasonable thought experiment, though I might use a different example than drugs. If you had to choose between a smaller government doing less, and eliminating things you think it really ought to do or a bigger government doing more, including doing all the things you really believe government should do, which do you want? I know it’s a false choice, but it’s a thought experiment, remember.
I would always err on the side of having the government do less than I think it should, considering its propensity toward corruption.
Thanks. Whether I agree with your conclusions or not I realize you have thought about it. We would like to provoke others to think about it as well. I’m inclined to think neglect of governmental responsibility would result in greater harm, than overreach will, and sooner. Which doesn’t mean I’m a fan of the overreach either.
That would be a lose-lose situation for the current state of American society.
Here’s a question for Doug: If Christopher Hitchens were still alive, and willing, would you let him teach a course on Rhetoric or Literature at NSA?
According to what I read in “Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning”, I would guess Wilson would say “no.”
Congress did not fail to act. They voted. They said, “No.”
This may or may not be off subject but it kind of reminded me of something I heard recently. Someone was quoting Viktor Frankl a holocaust survivor who stated… “The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment–or, as the Nazi liked to say, of ‘Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and… Read more »
I also went to school for Architecture. Perhaps that’s why I view my earlier public education as being relatively innocuous compared to agenda that is pushed by the left-leaning design community.
On reading this I am reminded of our current situation here in France, in which the govt. (aided and abetted by everyone in parliament except the communists) (!) explains why we absolutely need the current emergency measures passed after the events in Paris last November, which allow the state to search any private person’s house without a judge’s approval at a moment’s notice.
I am convinced (as a conservative minded Citizen) that this measure is nonsense, and does not make us more safe. But I am in the minority…
When the legitimacy of a government is based on its response to popular opinion, then political power resides with those who control popular opinion. (I say “legitimacy” and not “power” because obviously most of government action at this point is undertaken by unelected officials, although the façade still remains and isn’t totally impotent.)
Government schools (especially universities) are a keystone of the USA system. I would expect Congress to disappear before the schools do.
“Any blasphemy of the federal government will be forgiven you, but whoever blasphemes against the public school system will not be forgiven, in this administration or the administrations to come.”
Brilliant. :)
This is amazing. Kudos. This had me laughing for minutes.
Not that I’m in President Obama’s camp generally speaking, but this stroke of his pen does not write off centuries of constitutional law. It really changes nothing that was not already the law of the land by act of congress. If it truly is not in accord with the second amendment you’re barking up the wrong tree, and many decades too late.
The burden of proof here is on Doug to actually support his assertion that students coming from public schools are not capable of critical thinking, or that our schools are not teaching these skills. Where is the evidence to support this? Quoting from Dorothy Sayers is not proof of anything other than her own opinion. Here are two standards taken straight from the fascist, despotic government’s Common Core standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.2 Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) in order to make informed decisions and solve problems, evaluating the credibility and accuracy of… Read more »
I dunno Spike, you show evidence of this on a regular basis.
Ha. A lovely defense. I would welcome your catalogue of the things I’ve said on this site that do not show critical thinking skills.
“Critical thinking” is largely a red herring. The larger issue is that the teaching in government schools corresponds to what serves the interests of government power — and in our present environment, that involves denying reality to an ever-increasing extent. The ability to think can’t be taught. But to the extent one can think, schools should teach students to do it in a way that pursues that which is good and true. This is not and will not be done in government schools.
“The ability to think can’t be taught”
No, but it can certainly be untaught.
I believe that thinking can be taught, given a certain level of native intelligence. I think the process is slow and gradual, and happens best in the context of a close, ongoing relationship. Which is why I believe that parents, not teachers, are best suited to foster thinking skills. In my day, it used happen at the family dinner table. “Why do you think that? Is there evidence that could make you think differently? Does this remind you of other situations where you were right? Does anyone benefit from your holding this opinion?” And so on. There is no way… Read more »
“Government schools” is a clever use of word choice to make public education seem controlled by some evil higher power. Public schools are, by and large, run by members of the communities in which they are located, governed by school boards made up of members of the community, and filled with teachers that are also parts of the various communities represented. They are the only way that most American children will actually get an education. Does that mean they are not without fault? Of course not. But likewise, private “non government” schools are also not free from error. I would… Read more »
Can these schools teach that Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords?
Can these schools teach that sodomy is an abomination?
Can they teach the differences in mean IQ between races?
If not, why not?
They can’t, and the reasons they can’t are obvious and not worth the time to explain.
But this has little to do with the issue that Doug raises in his post. He is saying that students in public schools are not learning to think properly. That is a debatable claim and one that needs evidence to support it. Doug provides no evidence. You, however, are arguing that public schools can’t teach the “truths” that you want them to teach. There is no argument there. You are right. They can’t. And thank God they can’t.
Then you agree that government schools serve power, not truth.
If they’re not teaching the first, then by definition they’re not teaching kids to think properly, since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
All right. No point in discussing this, obviously. I’ll just say I’m thankful that American students can go to schools where they don’t have to convert to Christianity in order to learn. What a bunch of BS. Is that seriously what you think? Learning can only occur when the learner professes Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? Speaking of critical thinking, you might want to do some research to see if that assertion has any validity in the real world.
Dunsworth is writing shorthand for worldview, I believe. Doug W often talks about the importance of worldview. He talks about it in terms of a ‘center’ something that holds all of life together in a coherent manner. Doug W also points out there is no neutrality, as if all the competing worldviews hold the same moral and intellectual ground. Neither is there a naked public square. A worldview will dominate.
I think it is undeniable that a Christian world view is banned from the current educational environment.
What would be a legitimate pedagogic purpose for teaching IQ differences among races?
What’s the legitimate pedagogic purpose for teaching any aspect of anthropology or the humanities? I merely pick that as an example because more than one academic has lost his job as a result of deviating from the approved beliefs on that topic. It’s not tremendously important by itself, but being disallowed from inquiring into the facts is tremendously important.
And look how it’s listed right along with Jesus’s lordship and the abomination of sodomy.
You don’t also see those kind of feelings come out when the flag gets posted…but it does come out surprisingly often.
The truth is the truth and we Christians must acknowledge it and be Christlike in our love.
Tailoring education by ability increases human happiness.
Knowledge is not advanced by ignoring facts.
There are a few.
“Tailoring education by ability increases human happiness”. There’s no way to get from an average IQ difference between groups to tailoring education by ability. Are you going to track all the Black kids into the “low ability” classes even though some of them are far smarter than your own kids? First-born children also have been shown to have higher IQs than second-born children, especially if the gap between them is two years or less. So why aren’t we teaching the truth of the first-born education gap and tailoring education by birth order? Actually, tracking in general has been proven to… Read more »
no one has ever shown that the measured IQ gap among Black students is due to genetic differences and not the myriad environmental differences. For my argument, I rely on data from JMan (Google him) and John Derbyshire and Charles Murray; they argue that it is. The study is called HBD “Human Biodiviersity”. I look forward to following you as you engage these men. I have no problem you showing them where they are wrong. All this discussion that IQ correlates very little with life success or just about anything meaningful other than abstract academic performance. Which is an argument… Read more »
Maybe I need to start by repeating myself, because you appear not to have addressed this aspect. “Studies have shown that being raised in an environment with less exposure to words (because your parents/adults talk to you less, have a limited vocabulary, or are always gone at work) leads to lower IQ. Missing a year of school leads to lower IQ (in one study in Virgina, Black children dropped 6 points in IQ for each year of school they missed). Growing up in poverty leads to lower IQ. Heck, the average IQ of the entire world has been going up… Read more »
not just poverty, but less generational access to education and other resources.
How did that judge mandated Kansas City school work out? The judge threw other peoples money at the problem. Nothing happened. (Source Derbyshire)
What’s your bottom line Jonathan?
Is it fair to say that I.Q. differences by race are a construct of wealth and poverty? That if those are equalized, that I.Q will equalize (i.e. distribute identically among different groups)
Kansas City helped show that facilities have little to do with education. School facilities should be kept clean, visually nice looking, and not decrepit – other than that, they’re pretty much meaningless. Everyone in educational theory knows this now (and most did then, too). Throwing a bunch of money into fancy facilities and high-image programs while keeping the same substandard teachers and incompetent administration won’t get you very far. The things which are most effective in promoting student achivement – quality feedback, formative evaluations, interventions that directly respond to student weaknesses, teacher quality and credibility, instruction that focuses on thinking… Read more »
I would add four more factors to your construct (with which I agree): teenaged motherhood, poor nutrition during pregnancy, use of alcohol/drugs/tobacco during pregnancy, and lack of access to prenatal medical care.
Everything you listed has an effect. I didn’t include those factors because they are fairly universal to populations in poverty. My mother worked in early childhood education in a rural White county, and she dealt with all those issuse a lot – teenage moms, fetal alcohol syndrome, delayed development, etc. Drug use rates, for instance, are pretty much identical for Black teenagers and White teenagers, and I would guess that teenage pregnancy is fairly similar once wealth/education factors are accounted for. Lack of access to medical care may be particularly bad in many Black neighborhoods, but it’s particularly bad in… Read more »
The only thing that it predicts very well is academic performance (20-50%), and so it is only in the realm of academic performance that I’m even concerned here. If the gap in academic performance can be reduced to insignificant numbers (which would mean a reduction by not necessarily elimination of the IQ gap), then there wouldn’t remain any meaningful issue. Ok, that is the crux of the disagreement. You are convinced (?) that IQ differences can be removed via corrective measures and/or removal of oppression. I have read that all such changes in I.Q are short-lived and reversion to the… Read more »
So you don’t believe in the Flynn effect, for example, that IQ’s across the board have been rising 3 points a decade for as long as they’ve been being measured? That’s a pretty long-term change. And yes, that’s half of our disagreement. The other half is the overall importance. Even if IQ is 50-80% hereditary, and academic performance is 20-50% explained by IQ, then that combination makes academic performance only 10-40% hereditary. And that’s hereditary in general for a specific individual’s background – when you only consider only race-based factors, that number is going to shrink. When you then say… Read more »
Ok, we disagree on one half. I am open to being shown wrong over time. I am not convinced and will have to depend on seeing you debate the pros on this. I repeat, I look forward to you publicly taking on JayMan and Derbyshire and debunking them. Now let’s define the second half. Where did I ever argue that we should not treat individuals as individuals? Answer: never. You have created a straw-man. Now, back to my original point. Education should be tailored to a person’s abilities. Some people are cut out for abstract thought–those same people tend to… Read more »
You entered into the discussion by answering the question “What would be a legitimate pedagogic purpose for teaching IQ differences among races?” with the answer: “Tailoring education by ability increases human happiness.” That certainly made it sound like to me that you wished to tailor education based on our knowledge of IQ differences by races. Otherwise, it doesn’t answer the question at all.* At what point should Ben Carson have had had his education tailored? He was a quite terrible 5th-grade student, a complete failure in math. Of course, having an illiterate single parent who was always at work didn’t… Read more »
That certainly made it sound like to me that you wished to tailor education based on our knowledge of IQ differences by races. You now know that I think that IQ differs among races. You have attempted to pursuade me that it does not, but I am not convinced of your abilities. I repeat, I look forward to you notifying me when you engage and debate John Derbyshire or JayMan in public. I can then, based on their responses gauge the validity of your arguments. The rest of your comment is a rehash of points you have made in your… Read more »
You still haven’t explained, anywhere in your comments, how you think this should effect educational policy. You claim that we should treat individuals as individuals. Yet you keep saying “I think IQ differs among races” and that we should be “tailoring education”. Is the race argument completely unrelated to your tailoring of education? And you brought up tailoring of education as a red herring that has nothing to do with race? Or are you looking to treat individuals NOT as individuals, but to stereotype them as members of a race, even though inherited IQ based on race-based factors explains a… Read more »
I see little reason to start fruitless discussion. I’d rather talk to people who aren’t partisan mouthpieces of a particular position It is my opinion of your “arguments” as well. The deep math arguments (like the ones that Stephen Jay Gould got into with his Bell Curve arguments) are occurring at levels likely beyond what you or I will be at, and I will be there. I stopped studying math after differential equations. In the GRE there where only about 2 items I did not know and I knew they where easily rectified. The weaknesses from my education where inability… Read more »
I think you’re still engaged in an extended exercise in missing the point. Mathematics does play a role in the study. If you specifically work in the ins and outs of factor analysis or can understand some of the math details necessary in figuring out how some researchers’ cybernetic modeling works, then you’ll have a leg up in certain aspects of the field that sometimes bring controversy. But I’ll repeat again that mathematics is NOT the reason that many of your conclusions are WAY off base. These questions are fundamentally questions of biology, psychology, and sociology. And if your fundamental… Read more »
These questions are fundamentally questions of biology, psychology, and sociology. And if your fundamental biological, psychological, or sociological assumptions are provably wrong, it doesn’t matter what kind of math you apply in the analysis, it will still be wrong. Good, prove it. Your will need math to do so. Since Derbyshire and JayMan are fluent in it, then your proof–mathematically based, mind you–will convince them. They are honest scientists (Derbyshire certaintly is) and will follow the facts where they lead. The problem is that you cannot do it. You have admitted as much. You are asking me to change my… Read more »
Making replies like this once again convinces me that you haven’t even understood what I was saying. The race-specific psychological factors are simply missing from the studies that Murray and others try to cite. You don’t need the slightest bit of math to prove that. They’re NOT there. The negative psychological impacts specific to Black people of stereotype threat, of additional stressors due to being discriminated against, of living in a more stressful community – none of those are accounted for in the studies. You don’t need math to point out that something isn’t accounted for at all. Yet studies… Read more »
Making replies like this once again convinces me that you haven’t even understood what I was saying. Again. I have said two things: 1. Education should be tailored by I.q. for people’s benefit. Blacks have the lowest I.Q.’s on the planet. I believe the evidence that suggests I.Q. is strongly correlated with ‘success’. You blame environmental factors, yet you cannot prove it. I notice it is strongly correlated with race independent of which nation it happens. You will blame racism, colonialism, slavery (Hello Howard Zinn!) etc. You will never accept that it could be racial and genetic. You also limit… Read more »
a) IQ is not “strongly correlated” with success. Outside of academics it explains 5% of the variation at best. b) Tailoring education to someone’s IQ has absolutely nothing to do with the average IQ of Black people in comparison with people of other races. You’ve said this yourself earlier – that everyone should be treated as individuals. It appears there is one thing that you really want to focus on, and a completely different thing that you can justify focusing on. c) Obviously, the history of slavery and colonialism have had a dramatic impact on Black people. We could have… Read more »
Jonathan, you have already admitted you cannot do the math involved to make the case rigorously. You are asking that I trust your sources based on your opinion of the merits of their arguments. For the umpteenth time, this will not change my opinion. Either you are going to have to do as I asked and publicly engage a critic of your ideas and defeat them or you are going to have to wait a few years until I am fluent in the tools. If I am wrong, I am honest and will be forthright about it. Until then, I… Read more »
You believing that I said that shows once again that you haven’t even understood the arguments to this point. Once again, I ask you, get a third party you trust to look at what we’ve both said and explain the miscommunication to you. Math has nothing to do with my argument. Math is not necessary for the argument. No amount of math you do will help you to analyze my argument. That is obvious from what I told you already, so it seems like you’re not even trying to read what I said. I didn’t say that I couldn’t do… Read more »
You keep throwing out this JayMan/Derbyshire challenge, without being able to see yourself what a useless challenge it is. You’re asking me to: 1) Spend significant time debating with two people who have no particular credentials in the area and who do not share my Christian convictions. 2) When you’re already decided that they are more authoritative than me on the subject and when they hold the position that you’ve already decided is right. 3) When they are both partisan writers who have a large vested interest in maintaining their positions, and who obviously are no going to give in… Read more »
Hold on a second cowboy. Kettle black and all that. 1. Facts are facts and they don’t care about our Christian belief. We are Christians first, not sectarians. Working with and engaging secularists –heck, just being in the darn arena–is Christian ministry. How will they hear if we are not there? Christianity is a superset of the natural world; We have access to both. They do not have access to Him (yet). Your credentialism is ridiculous. At my side right now are two books by a man without credentials –Leonard Susskind–who, without credentials mind you–teaches math and physics at Standford.… Read more »
I’ve never told you to listen to or engage with any partisan hacks in order to believe something. When you held up Steven Goddard as an example, I did direct you to some partisan anti-AGW websites just to demonstrate to you how badly Goddard was viewed even within his own circles. If I linked any partisan pro-AGW bloggers at any point, it would only have been to show you a bit of publicly available data that they happen to have listed or displayed well. I’m not going to ask you to debate them, because debates like that always turn into… Read more »
Can you recall a time when a well-known secular opinionator admitted defeat in a public argument with an unknown on their defining position…ever? But you want me to waste time with that? Yes, the proprietor of Climate Depot was wrong about station data in his country Australia. He posted as much on his blog. Jonathan, you trust your sources, you don’t trust mine. You cannot do the math. Therefore, you are basing your decision on something other than science. Since you are not a scientist and you cannot do the math, then you are irrelevant to my decision and thought… Read more »
There’s a difference between saying, “I was wrong about station data” and “I’m wrong about global warming”. That’s not an equivilent example. What source of mine have I asked you to trust? And what source of yours have I failed to trust? This isn’t about sources. I’ve told you the exact things that the studies you rely on have failed to take into account. I’ve linked for you the studies and accounts that show those things are meaningful. You don’t have to “trust” any sources, you can look for yourself and see whether the factors I have been repeating for… Read more »
Jonathan, we will continue the conversation in several years after I have completed my math refresher and I am up to speed on the methods and techniques of the field.
That is the end of this conversation.
Of course, I haven’t mentioned the need for “improved facilities” at all, so why are you bringing up Kansas City? You said “resources” and a facility is …wait for it…a resource. You wrote (parenthetical statements mine): I would not say, “IQ differences by race are a construct of wealth and poverty”. For you to say that suggests that you haven’t read what I’ve already written. I would say that tested IQ differences by race are a construct of: Lower parental access to education (wealthy have good access) More stressful environment (wealthy experience much less stress) Lower quality of social connections… Read more »
Awful bunch of logical fallacies in there. I said that they were lacking in educational resources. That does not mean that any resource you mention automatically fixes the problem. Facilities are a mostly irrelevant resource to learning. Improving facilities, while keeping bad teachers, bad administration, and bad teaching practices, does NOT mean that someone is no longer lacking in environmental resources. Why did you list everything as “wealthy people…..”? The vast majority of people are not wealthy, but poor or middle class. And even if they are wealthy… * Wealthy people cannot retroactively give their parents and grandparents access to… Read more »
The opening story of the article I linked is so enlightening that I want to quote it here: “Clyde Ross was born in 1923, the seventh of 13 children, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the blues. Ross’s parents owned and farmed a 40-acre tract of land, flush with cows, hogs, and mules. Ross’s mother would drive to Clarksdale to do her shopping in a horse and buggy, in which she invested all the pride one might place in a Cadillac. The family owned another horse, with a red coat, which they gave to Clyde. The Ross family wanted for… Read more »
And what, exactly, is being taught in public schools that “serves the interests of the government” as you say? Some examples?
Spike, the proof is in the pudding. If you are just around town, ask some high school age individual some simple questions. They are unable to answer in a clear manner. They are unable to form complete sentences with clear meaning. One of my friends owns two McDs outside Denver and hires teenagers from Colorado’s best high school. They are unable to count change from a standard transaction. If they power to the cash registers goes out, they can not manually total a transaction, so the sales are discounted to even amounts less than the actual cost of the meal.… Read more »
Pointless anecdotal evidence. That some graduates do not demonstrate the kind of reasoning skills we might like to see in everyone does not mean our schools are not teaching those skills.
This is BS anecdotal evidence, Dave. I hope you understand this. There will always be students that are not successful that barely graduate or drop out of our nation’s public high schools. “Take a look around” is not evidence. If you want to compare the success of private schools that may subject their students to rulers on knuckles to the success of public schools, you are pitting students with resources and parental support against many students that lack these. But compare the top students from public schools with the top students from private schools and you’ll find them evenly matched.… Read more »
I hope you understand that a written standard is not the same thing as an outcome.
And thus the wide gulf between aspiration and achievement. I used to have to write both standards and outcomes for inspection by my principal. Standard: Students will learn to appreciate the glories of English literature. Remotely likely outcome: seventy-five percent of students will demonstrate the correct use of the Oxford comma.
Of course. Your point?
You present a set of standards (Common Core critical thinking standards) as though it is evidence of an outcome (kids are actually being taught to think critically.) So naturally, I wondered if you understood the difference, since pointing out that A exists is usually not strong evidence that B exists.
Of COURSE it isn’t evidence of an outcome. I never said it was. However, it IS evidence that educators are attempting to teach students the very things that Doug says our schools are not teaching them. Doug is making an assertion that he does not back up with ANY evidence. I at least showed that the Common Core standards are designed to ensure that students are growing as critical thinkers. Do all schools implement strategies that are effective in this regard? Are all students that graduate from high schools equally proficient at critical thinking? Of course not. Such is the… Read more »
“The truth is that you have no idea what you are talking about.”
You were addressing this to Mrs. Dunsworth I assume? What is it that she brought up that would make you think that?
I think you need to take a breath buddy.
I admit, all my evidence is anecdotal. But it’s not just “this kid” or “that person” or “that Youtube.” It’s quite literally 90% of everything I hear from almost everybody, when it comes to any degree of complicated thought process or ability to evaluate evidence. I said nothing about making change, or Walmart, or Arby’s. When you respond to me, please respond to what I’ve said; you are not arguing with the Borg. And again, “classes that teach” critical thinking cannot be adduced as evidence for “people who know how to think critically.” You keep saying you know the difference,… Read more »
Do youtube comments count as evidence?
As much as the comments on this blog count as evidence.
Why should I not apply this assertion: “A common trope among our leaders and pontificators is found in the phrase “the greatest national security threat we face is . . .” followed [by] whatever it is they want us to be whipped up about now —” To this one: “In short, this means the greatest national security threat to our country today is the government school system”? Fortunately, those “worker bees” will still be exposed to the invisible attributes of God as seen in creation and the basics of the law of God written on their hearts. They will still… Read more »
“Godly Christians will always be more influential than smart ones”? How do you explain the fate of Harvard, Princeton, and the PCUSA then?
I think there’s a good point hidden in this discussion somewhere. Intelligence does not necessarily denote morality. The most intelligent and highly educated Christians are going to mean absolutely nothing without love. “If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
Scripture really doesn’t speak to us about education or intelligence, but it does in fact warn us about how “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
Well Memi, there is this part of Scripture, and you demonstrate it often! ; – ) Proverbs 4:6-8 6 Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. 7 The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. 8 Cherish her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you. Doug Sayers, above, missed the first premise of the post: “So then, the problem with ignorance is that when you don’t know, you frequently don’t know what it is you don’t know.”… Read more »
I’d go a step further and say that “critical thinking” is a rather poor substitute for wisdom. Scripture has a lot to say about intelligence: Eccl. 9:11 answers the famous question “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
“Godly Christians will always be more influential than smart ones.”
Simply means that God is always more infulential than smart people.
well, God has let smart heretics capture seminaries, churches, and quite a lot more over the past couple centuries in the USA. Should we draw any conclusions from this fact?
It depends on what you are drawing conclusions about. You should certanly consider this fact when drawing concludions.
Who has had more influence at Harvard (a seminary founded by Puritans) or Princeton (another seminary founded by Presbyterians when Harvard got too liberal)? Godly men, or smart heretics?
I would say those institutions are infulenced by educated secularists.
One could make an argument that this goes in FAVOR of the original quote. These institutions were focused on appointing and producing SMART Christians, and went liberal very quickly, causing Christians to lose their influence in those institutions and therefor in the culture almost entirely. By contrast, something like, say, the Methodist movement put its focus on holiness rather than intellectual vigor. It took MUCH longer for its main body to go liberal, and even today conservative evangelicalism echoes the influence of a century of Methodist revivalism. If all we looked at were these kind of historical examples, the case… Read more »
And which has more influence in America today — Harvard, or Methodist revivalism?
Unless you are suggesting that today’s Harvard consists of smart CHRISTIANS, it is irrelevant to the quote. Which, rather, has greater influence in America today? The teachings of Harvard from back when it was Christian, or the teachings of the Methodists from back when they were conservative evangelicals? You have to compare Christians to Christians, not to secularists or heretics, otherwise you are not addressing the quote.
I would rework the statement a little. I believe that genuine goodness is always more attractive than cleverness. If an average person is sincerely seeking God, he is more likely to be influenced by a holy Christian as opposed to a merely clever one.
I really like this post. It’s not just that people are lacking education or being indoctrinated in public schools, it’s that people are being discouraged from thinking for themselves, dumbed down. Education has become all about learning how to not think outside the box and what the penalties for doing so are going to be.
I love to spark some critical thinking, even in people I’m going to disagree with, but that little tiny ember that is left in many people, takes a huge effort to fan into flames. It wasn’t always this bad, our whole cultural focus has shifted.
Fireworks factory fire. Great metaphor or what?
https://youtu.be/yuN4xirvhHY
“But with a stroke of a pen, Obama writes off centuries of constitutional law, and he can do so with the serene confidence that the vast majority of government school alumni will not have the faintest idea what is happening. He can just sign things like that, blow a little sunshine, assure everyone that what he is doing is fully in accord with the 2nd amendment, and we stagger on to the next profanation.” Pastor Wilson, it’s disappointing to see you use the techniques of propaganda in the same message where you decry it. I haven’t read Obama’s proposals or… Read more »
The point is not the content of the decrees, but the implication that the Obamissima can decree whatever he likes under the justification that “Congress failed to act”.
And by “point” here, i am referring to a point in the argument being made. For which you have added additional evidence.
I don’t think so – the point in that particular stage of the argument was that public schools had made the population so ignorant that they wouldn’t realize Obama had overturned centuries of constitutional law. The NRA quote I included suggested that that wasn’t likely to be the case. If the degree was against the constitution, then it wouldn’t really matter whether Congress did it or Obama did it, it would still be unconstitutional. And it won’t really matter what the public school graduates think, because consitutionality is determined by a select few lawyers and judges, not by public opinion.… Read more »
Actually, it does matter what our unschooled government schooled graduates think. Just look at the news stories from the past 10 years and see how the chumps are used to promote agendas that violate our Constitution and our current laws. Chump Change: Illegal immigration; Illegals being authorized to vote; Illegals not requiring driver license or proof of insurance; Supreme Court ruling against state homosexual mirage equating to immediate ability to be married rather than returning the issue to the state as the law requires; government ability to enter your house without warrant (this is supposed to be for anti-terrorism but… Read more »
“Writing off centuries of constitutional law” is an American tradition. FDR did it, Lincoln did it, the revolutionaries did it, heck, the Puritans did it in the English Civil War. This Obama situation is picayune stuff and it’s rather pitiful to complain that the leftward-accelerating train didn’t stop at the station you wanted.
Barnabas, Pastor Wilson et. all. Off topic (Slightly) this feminist http://quillette.com/2016/01/07/original-sin-the-sexual-motivation-of-religious-extremists/ uses some broad brushes in evo-psych to explain ‘religion’. The “Christianity is Islam” claim will be heading your way soon and this will be a tool used to outlaw it.
Now given the behavior of the gelded pagans of Europe in the face of the muslim hordes attacks on their civilization, I doubt we Christians need fear the pagans on this matter (except the ennui is dispiriting)
I don’t have the bandwith to parse this so I am passing it along.
blessings,
t
Tim. Wow! That article was an entire “red herring” fishery all by its’ self!
I couldn’t decide whether to “fish” with a fly rod, a net or an A-bomb, so I didn’t “fish” at all! ; – )
Less than adolescent “fish” are better left to grow.
For those saying that they got what they thought was a decent education in public schools–and I have counted myself among that number–probably a good “gut check” on how good it was is to ask how often you shake your head at the asinine logic used in public discourse, and how often you shake your head at politicians who shake their fist at the restrictions of the Constitution and such. If you don’t, you’ve got to seriously do a gut check on how well you’ve learned your logic and rhetoric, as well as the limitations and formation of the Constitutional… Read more »