On Oct 29, 2007, at 7:31 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
> But that's exactly what I think is going on: changing modes of life
> and
> thought.
Did you read the Flynn interview?
> Q: So why are their IQs higher than those of their parents and
> grandparents?
>
> A: The people who invented IQ tests saw the world through scientific
> spectacles. They were interested in logical reasoning. But
> generations
> ago people were very utilitarian. If you asked a person in 1900
> what a
> dog and rabbit had in common, they would say you could use a
> dog to
> hunt rabbits. Today you would say they both are mammals. That is
> shorthand for a lot of insight. That may seem trivial, but
> classifying
> the world is prerequisite to understanding it scientifically.
>
[...]
> A: The people who designed the test thought they were measuring
> intelligence, but they were actually measuring a mix of
> intelligence
> and a way of looking at the world. They looked at the world
> through
> scientific spectacles, and it took a long t
What do you think IQ is measuring, anyway?
> Do not trust the anecdotes of
> teachers with long experience; they are prone to see past
> generations of
> students through rose-tinted glasses.
And are professional psychologists prone to see psychometric tests through rose-tinted glasses?
I've heard this complaint from people as varied as a Frankfurt Marxist professor of sociology at a NJ community college, a centrist professor biology at a small college in southwestern Virginia, and a high school teacher from a small town in Ohio. Why would all these people be motivated to see a decline?
> I have to say that I'm just flummoxed that this "kids are so stupid
> nowadays" argument is so popular when there is so little rigorous
> evidence to support the claim.
You know, it's not the kids' fault. If there are things about the direction of capitalist societies we don't like - more competition, more materialism, more atomization - won't that be reflected in the development of children?
Doug