Cognitive Ablility

[Zzzptm]

I taught pretty much an across-the-board mix. I had recent immigrants, first generation born here, second generation, and third+ generation. I had students from Denmark, Germany, UK, Canada, Spain, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Tanzania, DR Congo, Liberia, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, China, South Korea, Russia, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. Either direct immigrants or descendents thereof.

I taught AP Economics and had students of all backrounds take the test. It was scored on a 5-point scale, with 1 as worst and 5 as best. I had kids of all backgrounds ace it and kids of all backgrounds pretty much blow their $35 registration fee. The distribution of scores did usually have a high correlation to the student's PSAT score, but diligent students with lower PSAT scores could still do well on the exam. English language fluency was another determinant of success, but again, diligent students could do well.

When I helped with special education classes for students with learning disabilities, those were spread evenly across racial groups. My high school was 90+% white when I was a student there in 1986, but when I taught there 2002-2013, it was roughly 20% Asian, 25% Hispanic, 25% Black, and 30% White. Almost an even split across the major groups, but then we have to consider that kids were not always assigned to classifications that were a good fit.

My favorite case was Omar M., who got classified as Hispanic in an adjoining school district. He was Palestinian. He objected at first and then figured, what the hell? Who cares? He left it that way, didn't bother with the paperwork, and had fun applying for Hispanic scholarships. He's a businessman in Dubai now.

When kids had mixed race heritage, they hated picking one or the other, usually. They wanted to just say "mixed" and be done with it. There were the first-generation and recent Africans that had little culturally in common with African-Americans whose families had been in the USA for over 200 years. Yet, they were all "African-Americans." I had both a white kid from Zimbabwe and a black kid from Zimbabwe and they had fun demonstrating that they were both equally African and, therefore, equally African-American since both were on a path to naturalization at age 18.

For my Egyptian students, they were bemused at a classification system that had no idea what to do with them. They weren't sub-Saharan Africans, so they didn't get classed as African-Americans. Other Arabs were from Asia, so they got to be Asian. So why not Arabs from non-sub-Saharan Africa? They wound up in the "other" group.

I had a student from Spain who refused to be classified as Hispanic. He insisted that he was white, and that his student information reflect that.

Back to the descendents of slaves and freed slaves in the USA, nearly all of them have European genetic markers and there are more than a few whites with African genetic markers they had no clue about. Skin color does not necessarily reveal genetic makeup, even if it does lead to prejudicial treatment.

When Italians first immigrated to the USA, they were frequently classified as "Negroes" or "Colored" populations and treated accordingly under laws that meted out different classes of treatment based upon racial distinction.

Basically, it's all a mess and I don't see the point in trying to draw lines, unless you want to start a fight. Most of the minority kids at my school spoke 2 or more languages fluently. Often, it would be English, birth language, and one or more lingua franca languages from their region. Gujaratis, for example, tended to speak English, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, and more than a smattering of Arabic. I had the student from Senegal who spoke English, French, Senegalese, and Brazilian Portuguese because her boyfriend was from Brazil. More than a few kids from Mexico spoke English, Spanish, and a variant of Nahuatl. I wound up learning Hindi and Urdu while I was there.

We had a country-western dance team. At first, it was all a bunch of redneck kids that started it, but they opened up auditions to anyone interested. Within a year, the club looked like our student body, but with cowboy hats and boots on. Visitors would do a double-take when they saw a Vietnamese dude do a do-si-do with a Mexican girl. The Latin dance club had all kinds, as well. As long as you wanted to dance the merengue, you were in. When I showed Bollywood in my classroom, we all were equal when we reached for the tissue. Our tears had no color, whether or not we needed subtitles.

And while kids would be proud of the nation or region of their family's heritage, I do remember a lot of them bristling at the way they got lumped together on the basis of continents. West and East Africa are very different places. Mexico and El Salvador are different, and even regions of Mexico show their unique nature. "Asian" was the most ridiculous: one student said it was like people just gave up on half the world's population. "You're all Asian! Now shut up and leave me alone!" To think that people from Syria, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka share the same overall genetic makeup is as ludicrous as thinking an Inuit from Alaska is genetically equivalent to a Mapuche from Chile. Or any other lumping together of people.

It makes reason stare to think that skin color has something to do with intelligence. And it makes reason stare equally to try to make a transitive connection between skin color, genetics, and then intelligence without first doing a detailed workup of the DNA of the persons involved, determining genetic markers that influence intelligence, and then examining the prevalence of said markers in a population.

And even then, there are over 500 genes now known to be connected to intelligence. With those genes, however, there is ample study to show that environment plays a massive role in the development of intelligence, particularly prenatal and early childhood environments. A racial study of intelligence may in fact be an accidental study on the impact of poor prenatal/early childhood environments, typically the product of laws and practices that make second-class citizens out of a particular population.

Case in point was when we took in a number of refugees from Hurricane Katrina. The kids from New Orleans weren't necessarily dumber than students at my school. They had to deal with a terrible elementary and junior high school system that left them very unprepared in terms of mathematical, linguistic, and reasoning development. That stuff could still be taught, but there was a gap to overcome. Same for students that were refugees from war zones, where their schooling had been interrupted for years. Kids that had survived the Bosnian Civil War were just as scarred as those who came out of Liberia or Congo. Trauma in life produces mental damage. That note on trauma circles back to environment as a massive factor, one which I believes trumps genetics.

Why do I believe that? Because when I gave a classroom environment that didn't have the traumas of other classrooms, but instead supported and encouraged - "There is always hope in this room!" was my battle-cry - then kids that had gone through some true horrors were able to rest their minds, enjoy the class, and do very well in the subject taught. I had counselors sending kids to take AP Economics instead of regular Economics because they saw my class as therapeutic. I felt very honored and humbled because of that. And I was glad to be a shelter from the thoughts that haunted many of my students. I was glad to be part of their journey of healing. And I was glad to provide an environment that would nurture intelligence.

I had zero difference in my strategy or tactics based on racial or cultural differences. Any variation in my methods was to reach people who had different learning styles, and those were also evenly distributed across all my different groups.

[Typhon]

I had zero difference in my strategy or tactics based on racial or cultural differences.

Same can be said of these tests, plus, the number of students you have taught is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the number of subjects evaluated in this research over the years.

[Charger]

It makes reason stare to think that skin color has something to do with intelligence. And it makes reason stare equally to try to make a transitive connection between skin color, genetics, and then intelligence without first doing a detailed workup of the DNA of the persons involved, determining genetic markers that influence intelligence, and then examining the prevalence of said markers in a population.

That was quite the long post there buddy! Lots of good points indeed but in the end you are talking about something completely different than what this study was all about...as you did NOT teach children in Africa...

This raises an interesting point though. Is high intellect genetic or not? We all do know that children born from highly intelligent parents tend to have higher intelligence as well. And the same does occur with mental retardness. So some of it is genetics for sure. I am sure there are studies made from this topic as well...

Then another thing which I think matters more...education. Proper education (like the one you provided for your students) would nurture and grow intelligence I am sure. But children in Africa have very poor education on most parts which naturally leads to less intelligence in university students as was found in this study.

So again. I think it's more of a compilation of things that would lead to the lesser iq average. I doubt there is any one single underlying reason for it.

[Zzzptm]

I had zero difference in my strategy or tactics based on racial or cultural differences.

Same can be said of these tests, plus, the number of students you have taught is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the number of subjects evaluated in this research over the years.

No, it's not. His survey of sexual activity involved 50 students from three different racial groups, not done according to his institution's standards, and there were large numbers of variables that he didn't control for. The results just so happened to jive nicely with racist tropes about hypersexualized Blacks and hyposexual Asians. And if you want drops in the bucket, compare this guy's research to legitimate intelligence studies. His paper gets buried under the legitimate work being done.

Charger is dead on target in saying that there's a compilation of things. A compilation of a LOT of things, and if one is going to work in the education system anywhere in the world, dropping any race-based baggage at the door is a great way to start. Next step is to look at special needs populations and develop programs for them, including gifted programs as well as developmental ones. And "gifted" programs are not just extra homework or accelerated courses. There are developmental challenges in working with gifted students that are frequently overlooked because they're assumed to not need help.

Once the edges are dealt with, the programs that will succeed for that meaty middle are straightforward and do not require a racial difference, as the more impactful genetics are ones that determine learning styles. Just knowing the difference between visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning and adapting for those three broad areas will make a major difference for nearly all the students in that middle group. There will be exceptions - students with behavior patterns that don't work in a standard classroom need adjustments, for example - but by and large, that's the biggest battle to win, how one daily presents material.

There are also issues specific to testing. Test anxiety is a big one - I know of cases where a teacher shouted at students during a basic skills assessment and wound up with a large number of kids identified for developmental learning. When their parents objected and the students were retested in a calm environment, most were reclassified as normal and two were identified as gifted and talented. Eliminating test anxiety is not the only step towards better testing. We also have to teach students attack strategies on answering questions. Essentially, every test is a reading test, and the language is English with specialized terms. Showing students how to read and interpret those terms is part of successful testing, especially if they're in the instructions.

When I wrote test items for a TOEFL study guide, I recall that the style sheet specified that any use of words like not in instructions be bolded, italicized, and capitalized so as to call out attention to that often-overlooked word. "Which of the following is not a true statement" is unfair. "Which of the following is NOT a true statement" is fair. There were other considerations on wording, including syllables per sentence, sentences per question, length of answers, proper distractors in the responses, and so on.

Ultimately, Rushton's work is criticized and retracted not because of popular outrage, but because it is wrong. Faulty methods, misappropriation of data, lack of controls, and other criticisms have all been rightly leveled at his work. If you're a numbers guy, then look at the preponderance of the numbers of the studies and papers that either directly answer Rushton's faulty conclusions or which indirectly show them to be false because of the preponderance of the evidence.

Go far enough back in racist science literature, and you'll find other spurious race-based findings. There's the one that classified slaves wanting to escape as being mentally unwell, who could be cured of such desires through counseling. Never mind that all humans want to be free, the blacks had a problem in their thinking if they wanted to escape... Francois Bernier said that the Lapps were a horrible, degenerate race, separate and distinct of the proper European types... Henri de Boulainvilliers said that the French nobility were one race (Frankish) and the peasantry were another (Gallo-Roman) and that the Franks, being the superior of the two, had a right to rule over the other.

There was the polygenesis vs monogenesis argument... Linnaeus' four races, each "governed" by a different thing, with Europeans at the pinnacle of his chart and everyone else beneath them... the argument over whether or not climate would "whiten" a population... Meiners' work that "proved" the Celts were the best race and the Slavs one of the worst possible... Cuvier's equating racial superiority to the "beauty" of skulls...

I could go on, but this is mostly science-like activity to justify a Eurocentric attitude toward the world. Within that Eurocentrism, there would be further gradations to justify those in power over those not in power, be that power internal or in regards to economic success relative to another nation. All modern racist science emerges from this background.

The false conclusions also invariably lead to discussions of assimilation - make the supposedly inferior races better through breeding with supposedly superior populations - or eugenics - prevent the dilution of the supposedly superior population. Either way, it's justification for policies that hold one group of people to be superior through assumed inherited traits consistent with skin tone, skull shape, hair color and style, and so forth.

With everything we've learned in the last several decades when we really started to come to grips with the fallacies of race, we know that there is no justification for systems that hold one group to be superior to another.

[Zzzptm]

It makes reason stare to think that skin color has something to do with intelligence. And it makes reason stare equally to try to make a transitive connection between skin color, genetics, and then intelligence without first doing a detailed workup of the DNA of the persons involved, determining genetic markers that influence intelligence, and then examining the prevalence of said markers in a population.

That was quite the long post there buddy! Lots of good points indeed but in the end you are talking about something completely different than what this study was all about...as you did NOT teach children in Africa...

No, I did not. But I did teach children that were recently from Africa, including those that were refugees from civil wars in Liberia, Sudan, and DR Congo.

That does make me reflect on the mental damage done to them by the armed conflict. Some were forced to be soldiers or to work in soldiers' camps. Many had been raped and beaten. Many had lost close family members. I never asked about it to the students directly, but I knew their English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) teachers, and they were very familiar with their students' histories. They would not tell me names, but they would tell me each year which classes I had war survivors in and to be ready for odd or extreme behaviors.

If I saw a student become very angry or upset, I'd have the student go to a counselor to take a break from things. They were putting pieces back together and needed peace for that sort of thing.

There were also odd dynamics because of my being a man... that could lead to some extreme reactions from abused children, either strongly seeking attention and approval, strongly seeking attention and disapproval, or strongly seeking distancing. They could have the total opposite situation or no situation with a female teacher. Likewise, there were kids that had those reactions with female teachers but not with male teachers. We were constantly juggling those emotions, trying to keep them all in the air and not let anyone come crashing down. Often, I could handle attention-seeking situations with humor, allowing the student a face-saving way out and the development of an appropriate, friendly, but arm's-length relationship with that student. I knew that I had to model a "good" adult male and show that in a world with good rules and standards, there is peace. I didn't want to be a father-figure, ever. But an uncle-figure suited me quite well.

So, no, I didn't teach children in Africa. But I did teach the refugees and did all I could to help them leave the war behind them.

[Typhon]

I had zero difference in my strategy or tactics based on racial or cultural differences.

Same can be said of these tests, plus, the number of students you have taught is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the number of subjects evaluated in this research over the years.

No, it's not. His survey of sexual activity involved 50 students from three different racial groups, not done according to his institution's standards, and there were large numbers of variables that he didn't control for. The results just so happened to jive nicely with racist tropes about hypersexualized Blacks and hyposexual Asians. And if you want drops in the bucket, compare this guy's research to legitimate intelligence studies. His paper gets buried under the legitimate work being done.

It seemed pretty clear when I said "research over the years" that I meant research by everyone, not just one man.  This encompassed hundreds of thousands of subjects tested.  So the personal experiences of 1 teaching career is irrelevant and virtually meaningless.

Furthermore, the subject of sexual activity was never mentioned in the video and has nothing to do with this thread.  Yet, when I simply tried to clarify a statement elsewhere, I was accused of having an agenda, derailing a thread, and had the book thrown at me.  Should I use the phrase the pot called the kettle black?

[Zzzptm]

Rushton's research includes connections between intelligence, race, and sexuality. His findings repeat tropes on those topics, tropes which have been proven wrong from much larger numbers of people doing legitimate research in those fields. His and his fellows' hundreds of thousands are met by their critics' tens of millions.

My personal experience - I brought that up to show that it's not just guys in an ivory tower that don't find differences along racial lines. My first hand experience supports those findings and does not support race-based findings. I also brought it up to illustrate that there are volumes of environmental factors that we can wrongly associate with race if we assume that those factors are themselves exclusive to a race and not able to present themselves in other groups.

And I truly and honestly hope that you understand that the researchers you cite - Rushton by the video in the OP, others not specifically - are a small group of voices compared to those who dispute and disprove their findings. To me it's cut and dried: there is no statistically significant determinant of intelligence inherent in a generally-defined construct of "race". There are those who argue that there is a statistically significant factor based on race, but they are overwhelmingly disproven by those who have demonstrated that no, there is no statistically significant factor in determining intelligence based on race.

I've closed the book on that as surely as I've closed the book on whether or not the earth is a solid sphere, with us on the exterior of the planet's surface. The answer is as plain as the nose on my face. Rushton and other persons that have argued for a racial component in determining intelligence have done so with bad science. They're wrong. They're just as wrong as the people arguing that the earth is flat, hollow, or bowl-shaped.

I admit, it took me a process of inquisition when Rushton published his research, right around the time The Bell Curve got published. I had to figure out if that was right or wrong, and after a lot of reading, both sides of the debate, it was clear that Rushton and The Bell Curve were not accurate in their controls, and that impacted the soundness of their findings. I was never satisfied with Rushton/Bell Curve's response to their critics.

That was 25 years ago and since then, I've been unpacking a lot of stuff that people made me think over the years. There's a lot of garbage information going around between kids, adults, everybody. And while it's easy to say "I'm not a racist" because nobody ever wants to *be* a racist, saying that doesn't require any action or self-inspection. But saying instead, "I'm an anti-racist" means having to take action and engage in personal reflection. Being an anti-racist means identifying where one has racist ideas, admitting it, and then consciously making an effort to replace them with truth. Being an anti-racist means coming to terms with the process of cleaning out the mind, accepting that it will be a life-long process, and that there can be hard surprises along the way. I admit that I need to change and I accept that the change will come.

I've heard too many people say, "I'm not a racist, but..." and then proceed to spout off some racist ideas that they hold to be true. True, there's a spectrum of ideas. I'd much rather engage with someone still grappling with the idea of blacks as head coaches than with someone advocating starting a civil war to kill off all the blacks in the country. I put little stock in that phrase. But saying "I'm an anti-racist" doesn't allow for any "but" or "however" to permit justification of a racist idea. It means confronting one's ideas and being open to the possibility one needs to change one's thinking in order to be in harmony with truth.

[Jack the Stripper]

What’s the purpose behind this thread and why was it posted?

[Vyn]

Not going to answer for Typhon, but here's a cool video from back in the day:

[Charger]

I've heard too many people say, "I'm not a racist, but..."

Nowadays though sadly too often REALISM is confused with RACISM....and that's not cool. But that's another issue altogether.


I gotta say reading about your teaching life makes me think you were one heck of a nice teacher. Which ofcourse is no surprise.

[Zzzptm]

I've heard too many people say, "I'm not a racist, but..."

Nowadays though sadly too often REALISM is confused with RACISM....and that's not cool. But that's another issue altogether.


I gotta say reading about your teaching life makes me think you were one heck of a nice teacher. Which ofcourse is no surprise.

[Typhon]

What’s the purpose behind this thread and why was it posted?

In another thread I made a comment in an effort to clarify a point that the average intelligence among races is not equal and got ripped for it by Zzz.  I started this thread in order to show some of the data that proves my comment was true.  Naysayers have always attempted to find fault with this research, and continue to do so.  They make foolish statements like "skin color does not determine intelligence" which is NOT what the data shows and NOT what I was saying.  The data simply proves that the average IQ among races is not equal.  Just like we know the average height among races in not equal and the average life expectancy among races is not equal.  That's all.

[Zzzptm]

Sorry, no. A tall white person likely has more DNA in common with a tall Asian person than with a short white person. Life expectancy is highly dependent on environment.

You keep saying "the data simply proves" when it absolutely does not. This stuff you keep falling back on for support isn't science, it's pseudoscience. The data you show cannot prove your comment true if the data itself is false. Naysayers haven't just attempted to find fault with the research, they have continued to do so. There are so many of them that they're not naysayers, they're the actual scientific community that plays by the rules and which doesn't cut corners like the guy Rushton does.

Skin color is the most frequently-cited determinant of race, it's a shorthand. There's no connection between the other classical determinants of race like hair straightness, skull size and shape, eye shape, eye color, or any of that other stuff. Are there genetic determinants for human capabilities? Yes. Is there a group of people with a higher prevalence of *all* the genes needed for a trait, or at least enough of such to make a statistically significant difference and another group of people with a lack of such? Not as far as we can tell. Are there genetic markers in populations? Yes. But not to the point where they provide a distinctive bonus or penalty, relative to other groups, apart from body types particular to specific and extreme climates. As far as real science goes, we haven't seen any of these environmental specializations impact intelligence, life span, or other factors of the human experience. Again, it's the post-birth environment that has significant impact on development. Give everyone the same environment and we'll all look different, but we'll all have equal distribution of traits independent of factors used typically to define race.

Again, if guys like Rushton were on the level, they wouldn't have to take the majority of their funding from neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.

I went ahead and looked up another guy funded by the same group that backed Rushton, one Richard Lynn. Lynn actually does come out and say there's a correlation between skin color and intelligence, erroneously presuming skin lightness to be solely due to European genetics and failing to account for or control natural variation or genetic sources other than Europeans for lighter skin colorations. Lynn also failed to control for childhood environmental factors. Lynn also authored a study that concluded that IQs in Northern Italy were higher than in Southern Italy, but did not measure anyone for IQ or use any test data for such in his paper. When Lynn was measuring IQ for Equatorial Guinea, which he found to be lowest in the world, he was measuring exclusively children that were developmentally disabled. None of that is real science, but it's typical of the Pioneer Fund-funded academics.

The Pioneer Fund also backed Roger Pearson. His work has been widely rejected as being completely unsupported by modern anthropology. He's even been kicked from the Heritage Foundation for being too pro-Nazi. He's virulently antisemitic, pro-Nazi, pro-Fascist, and even pro-apartheid.

The Pioneer Fund backed Michael Levin, who is best known for his anti-homosexual "research"; R. Travis Osborne, opponent of school integration; Audrey M. Shuey, who found a 15-point difference between black and white IQ when she consulted segregation-era studies that had some deep methodological flaws, to say the least; pro-eugenics William Shockley... that's six, so far. It's like as soon as a researcher does bad science that can be used to justify white supremacist or other far-right views, Pioneer Fund is there, ready to pay for that bad science. I would think that being offered funds by Pioneer Fund is a flashing red warning sign that one's research work has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

And if these guys all quote and source each other, they're just in an echo chamber, not doing actual bona-fide scientific work.

[Jack the Stripper]

What’s the purpose behind this thread and why was it posted?

In another thread I made a comment in an effort to clarify a point that the average intelligence among races is not equal and got ripped for it by Zzz.  I started this thread in order to show some of the data that proves my comment was true.  Naysayers have always attempted to find fault with this research, and continue to do so.  They make foolish statements like "skin color does not determine intelligence" which is NOT what the data shows and NOT what I was saying.  The data simply proves that the average IQ among races is not equal.  Just like we know the average height among races in not equal and the average life expectancy among races is not equal.  That's all.

Ok thanks for answering that. So basically you’re trying to prove a point that one particular race is superior to another when it comes to intelligence?

[Typhon]

What’s the purpose behind this thread and why was it posted?

In another thread I made a comment in an effort to clarify a point that the average intelligence among races is not equal and got ripped for it by Zzz.  I started this thread in order to show some of the data that proves my comment was true.  Naysayers have always attempted to find fault with this research, and continue to do so.  They make foolish statements like "skin color does not determine intelligence" which is NOT what the data shows and NOT what I was saying.  The data simply proves that the average IQ among races is not equal.  Just like we know the average height among races in not equal and the average life expectancy among races is not equal.  That's all.

Ok thanks for answering that. So basically you’re trying to prove a point that one particular race is superior to another when it comes to intelligence?

No, for that to be true, you would have to have everyone in one race have a higher IQ than everyone in another race.  This in not the case.  All races contain a full range of IQs, from dummies to geniuses and everything in between.  My original statement was referring to the average IQ not being equal.  An example of a group being superior to another when it comes to intelligence would be if you were to compare humans to mice.  Every human would be smarter than every mouse.

Here is an informative clip of Professor Jordan Peterson speaking on the subject.  Even he is very careful with his words when asked about the IQ differences with respect to race.  Yet, he does not deny the validity of the research, and instead, elaborates on its meaning.