I agree with that, Ryan. But does that mean we need more oversight or a new system? Or some combination of both?
I think it means we need perspective and context, which things like application essays, interviews, and extracurricular resumes help with. I can’t imagine a solution to the fact that grades are, ultimately, a subjective thing on the national level… i.e. there’s no way to ensure an “A” from Seattle Public High means the same thing as an “A” from Dallas Public High and an “A” from Snobby Ascot Prep.
As far as tests go, those are constantly being reformed. In fact your SAT scores if you tested before (don’t remember the date… 1998?) have now been adjusted due to test changes.
Yeah, I don’t know. I only know that my wife was one of the few “token” poor students accepted to her very expensive and fancy east coast private high school. The vast bulk of her classmates were basically there because they were rich and could pay the tuition.
When I was in college with her, I saw her alumni email list. I was amazed at how such a large collection of rich people also apparently had such amazing genetics that all of their kids were supersmart enough to get into both elite private high schools and Ivy League schools.
You would ordinarily think that rich people would not have disproportionately smart kids versus the rest of the population. But I now know that they do, because they place such a hugely disproportionate number of kids into those elite universities. The only other thing that could explain the top 1% of wealth placing a much higher percentage of kids into Ivy League schools would be the ability to buy educational training that is superior to what the rest of us can afford in order to get into those schools (or just being able to buy your way into those schools). And, well, that would just suggest that it really isn’t a meritocracy, which is nonsense.
Saying “The meritocracy is a sham!” is kinda missing the point. The problem isn’t that university admissions claim to be merit-based, but secretly aren’t. University admissions can’t be a straight meritocracy without being immensely unfair to less advantaged students. The children of the elite are raised by smart parents, and spend their lives going to excellent private schools and getting tutoring and test-preparation services. When the time comes for them to apply to college, they’ve had the benefits of eighteen years of the best education money can buy.
Exactly. Meaning that we are spending massive amounts of capital to ensure that the dumb and stupid get trained up to a level of slightly above average competency, as opposed to deploying those resources to their highest use.
Which is what? Who is spending that capital? The parents are doing so. So you would have them spend that money on other people’s children? I’m not sure what you are getting at. Yes, growing up in a nurturing home that stresses education and can send you to the best schools will likely make you a better student. Genetics isn’t everything.
If one accepts two quite reasonable premises:
(1) Other things being equal, a more intelligent person is more likely to make more money than a less intelligent counterpart.
(2) Intelligence is partially hereditable.
then it follows that rich people will be more likely to have smart kids, relative to the rest of the population. Both premises can easily be verified emirically: holding basic sociodemographic characteristics constant, a one standard deviation increase in intelligence is associated with about 10 to 15% higher earnings. Depending on exactly how one defines “hereditable,” somwhere between about a quarter and a half of the variation in intelligence is due to heredity.
So, even if universities were pure meritocracies, and even if higher wealth couldn’t in effect buy higher performance in high school, we would expect to see a the best schools disproportionately attended by students from wealthy families.
I do not believe that educational opportunities for children should be determined by purchasing power, at least at a fundamental level of which school you go to.
We’re living in theoretical world here, yes. But it is interesting how you switch to “nurturing home that stresses education,” instead of the more generally appropriate, “Rich household that has the money to buy better teachers than the poor people get.”
You lost me on the whole thing when you said this.
And we should believe intelligence is not hereditable because…? To be credible, you will also have to explain why quantitative geneticists have it all wrong.
Please explain why quantitative geneticists have it right. Or what they even say about it. I have never run across a seemingly plausible theory suggesting that any significant degree of intellectual ability is inherited, and I’m interested.
Robert Sharp isn’t being sneaky at all: educated parents tend to stress the values of education when raising their children. So even if you ignore private school educations, and even if you ignore the genetic component, rich children as a class will probably tend smarter than poorer children.
Look, I think it’s a good thing to try and reduce the gap between rich and poor in higher education. But I think blaming private schools sort of misses the point. The kids from Choate may all go to the Ivy Leagues, but they represent a very small group of students. The real problem to focus on isn’t the gap between public and private schools; it’s the gap between the best and worst public schools.
Besides, that problem has the added bonus of actually being fixable. Establishing effective national standards is a political walk in the park compared to the sheer impossibility of banning private and parochial schools and after-school tutoring programs.
The theory is that:
(1) at least some portion of the variation in human cognitive ability – or intelligence – is due to biological factors that arise from variation in DNA
(2) DNA is inherited equally from one’s mother and father
The evidence for the heritability of any trait, including intelligence, has traditionally been done by using twin studies. Basically, you compare the similarity of DZ (dizygotic) twins on the trait to the similarity of MZ (monozygotic) twins on the same trait. MZ twins share 100% of genetic material, while DZ twins only share 50%, the same as any sibling pair. If MZ twins have much more similarity on the trait, relative to DZ twins, this is evidence of heritable factors for the trait.
Here’s the findings of an American Psychological Association (APA) task force on intelligence that was prepared in the mid-90s after publication of the controversial book, The Bell Curve. Section III contains a summary of findings on the heritability of intelligence from twin studies. I’d go higher than skedastic’s estimate – most studies suggest from 40% to 80% of variation in intelligence is due to genetic, rather than environmental, factors.
Of course, twin studies have some problems. Here’s a recent APA summary of some of the controversies. Anecdotally, most psychologists I’ve spoken with don’t completely discount twin studies because of these potential flaws, since every methodology has flaws. I’ve never met a psychologist who doesn’t believe some portion of intelligence is inherited, although we differ on how much twin studies may overstate heritabilities.
More recently, advances in technology have allowed us to do different tests on twins to assess biological factors. For example, here’s a summary of a study that found more similarity in structures of MZ brain regions than corresponding regions of DZ twins.
I’m not sure why this is so controversial. Whether you believe intelligence is due to nature or nurture (or both, which is where I stand), rich people have more advantages to give their kids, relative to poor people. They are more likely to pass on genetic factors that indirectly led to success, and they have the economic resources to provide enriched environments to foster the best potential of their kids. I’m sure that nepotism and sensitivity to alumni donations plays some role (perhaps too much) in Ivy League admissions, but there’s a lot of practical reasons to believe that, all other things being equal, the offspring of rich kids are better prepared than the offspring of middle class or poor folks.
And in case some folks wonder, I’ve gone to public and state schools for all of my education – first grade though grad school. It might have been nice to be a trust fund baby…
The problem with the Financial Meritocracy is that you’ll never know how many doors were closed to you because you never got the right pedigree.
Of course there is always the roughneck cowboy who never graduated high school but with spit and vinegar is now a multi-millionaire. But the avenues of power in the intellectual and political world run squarely through the Ivy Leagues. For an average person having that head-start in the world is decisive.
Yes, it is. But it’s not pure finances, per se. The finances lead to that head-start, granted. But if they really ARE better trained, then they will be better students. It sounds like some of you are just against inequality altogether. That’s not only unrealistic but frankly undesirable. All a state can do is try to give equality of opportunity, but that ends somewhere. Colleges are already letting in too many students that really don’t belong there.
I’m sorry come people think life was unfair to them. Maybe it WAS unfair. But knocking down the people who have the best chance to succeed in life is not the answer. Our schools are already heading toward a lowest common denominator approach to education, and it’s not going to be good for our nation.
We can help poorer people by recognizing and developing their potential, but it won’t counter years of advantages that wealthier kids have. You can’t just punish those wealthier kids though. If you find that they aren’t really good students but just have credentials bought by their parents, then you take that into account. I’ve taught at a private university, so I know what you are talking about. And I’ve taught at a public university. The best students are the same in both. The worst students are often quite different, however. I’m not exactly sure what you plan to do about that.
edit: Sorry, that was a bit rambling…trying to say too many things at once.
I don’t know that it is controversial. It is interesting. I have my doubts regarding the amount of “intelligence” (if you can even define that) that is hereditary, but I have not studied it in particular, and will look at the links and info provided when I get time. Thanks for it.
That being said, I’m not against preparing and nuturing people to the best advantage. I’m against having average intellect rich kids having tons of resources spent to train them to surpass more intelligent ordinary or poor kids who do not get the resources to maximize their potential. It is not a meritocracy then, it becomes a plutocracy.
And lest you all wonder, I’ve been in both public and private schools. From those experiences, I agree with TheSelfishGene. With respect to Robert Sharp, I’m not against inequality. I’m against providing only a subset of people with the training and education needed to compete for the Ivy’s, and then finding, amazingly enough, that only the educated and trained rich kids really have what it takes to succeed there. It’s not fair to ask a smart, poor kid to catch up for 18 years of neglect and lower resources, and then say, “Hey, you’re on even ground here, go compete.”
It’s not a matter of rich kids not being smart or being well trained. To use an analogy (incredibly crude, I admit), it’s like starting with a poor kid who is a “7” and a rich kid who is a “5.” Train and educate the 5 to a much higher degree, poor resources into him, and maybe he becomes an “8.” Meanwhile, the 7 stagnates. And 18 years later, well, that rich kid really is an 8, and the poor kid really is a 7. He can’t compete on the same footing; he has 18 years of catching up to do. Who knows what he would have been had he an even chance.
Yes, it’s the way of the world. No, it isn’t going to change. But I don’t have to like it, and I don’t have to believe that the system isn’t rigged.
I’m not against inequality, intelligencia, or whatever. I’m against George Bush style getting-ahead-because-of-daddy, or the doors that open in the financial and intellectual world because of X pedigree.
I personally know a sweet, but utterly ding-bat stupid girl, who is a trust brat, “invested” in a almost-fake 40k a year that left her hating her husband and friends because they were suddenly “inferior” and not motivated enough to be a player (even having an affair with one of her teachers), and now, by the sheer luck of a capricious world that rewards wealth rather than ability, lands herself an 80k a year job with a major investment firm. And not, quite literally, having anything giong for her except recommendations that are all but paid for.
There are literally thousands of similarly sweet but utterly ding-bat girls out there, but she makes it because she has money, and the rest get to be dentist’s assistants or vet techs or whatever sluff job is left to them.
I agree, but thousands is not that many in the grand scheme of things. I think percentage-wise, the number of people able to take advantage of the system this way is pretty small, certainly too small to require us to change the whole system just to account for them.
Some of you seem to wish it was 2081.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
I guess that’s the real perception difference; the actual percentage of how many of those with positions of power got ahead because of their skill or drive, vs. their pedigree and wealth.
While it’s just a guess, i think (imo) you would be suprised to see just how many of those you think got ahead by skill were disproportionally aided by their families’ wealth.