Whenever I hear someone's new idea on teaching kids, it's too bad we don't have universal for-profit, private K-12 schools. If we did, they could put their money where their mouth is.
I'll take a different tack on the idea that the American system has failed blacks. The idea that we can change their test scores, as if test scores matter all that much, does not make any sense because of their genetics. It is like complaining that a hybrid chicken breed that is reasonably good at producing eggs and meat in a hot, malarial climate is not specialized in egg production in a cold weather climate. The hybrid breed is not a bad chicken, but it is a bad chicken if you are trying to force it to be something that it isn't.
The way the US system is set up is to make life very unrewarding for people who are low socioeconomic status (SES). The attitude of our political system is that the low SES belong on welfare, in prison, earning money in illegal jobs, or all of the above, and that we should outlaw all low SES production so as to send it to overseas territories that the US has trade relationships with. The problem of populations that tend towards low SES is addressed rhetorically by the notion that the "gap must be closed" and practically by the welfare office, the abortionist, and the prison warden. This was highlighted for me recently when I drove through Navajo country, where Planned Parenthood has absolutely plastered the highway with abortion advertisements. The progressive approach to the Navajo is essentially to palliate the ones who are alive and to kill as many of them as they can while they are still in the womb. Indeed it reflects recent progressive despair on the possibility of "closing the gap," which is again, akin to trying to get the milk production of a Holstein cow from an Angus cow.
It's very challenging to solve these problems with the way that our system is set up. Welfare has to be less generous, and we need to legalize low SES jobs and/or to export the population that is low SES to countries or special economic zones where it is legal. The way that our political system is set up, a job making socks in Indonesia for export to the US is copacetic, but if you create that job in the US with American citizens, it is triple plus mega bad human rights abuse sccccrreeeeech.
"things like humor, emotion, stories, metaphors, extremes, gossip, idealism, general schemes, finding one’s place in the world, and the lure of certainty."
Sounds like CRT to me.
Joking aside, that approach is ripe with opportunities for both liberals and conservatives, capitalists and socialists, religious and secularists, to impose their worldview on kid to a far greater degree than today. I don't know how that wouldn't be the result.
re: climate change my instinct is that when you're not allowed to present an alternative explanation, something is probably being hidden. Some recent examples: The Iraq War, George Floyd/the official race-police narrative, COVID19 response, Ukraine. In all cases, those circling the wagons around the official narrative were/are largely wrong.
I'm not climate expert and haven't done a ton of looking into the science myself but I suspect there's a similar pattern at play and that the threat may be overblown by the mainstream narrative.
Is there an example of an issue where only one narrative was allowed any credibility and that narrative was correct?
I'm not saying IPCC has it right or wrong but when you compare what they say to the media's paraphrase and misquotes, it's not even close. And always wrong in a predictable direction.
"that have worked for hundreds (and thousands) of years — things like humor, emotion, stories, metaphors, extremes, gossip, idealism, general schemes, finding one’s place in the world, and the lure of certainty."
AKA the stuff kids engage in when playing hooky from school (or in school when the teacher isn't looking) :)
"Yascha Mounk talks with Peter Arcidiacono, who says: Our society has fundamentally failed African Americans, to the point where 1% of African Americans get above a 1390 on the SAT, while that figure is 8% among whites and 25% among Asian Americans."
Or perhaps there is a problem with the direction of causality here. Perhaps--I know it doesn't seem possible--African Americans are just not as smart as whites or Asian Americans on the kind of smarts that the SAT tests for. No, that would mean that nature is unfair.
The entire college discussion misses the forest for the trees. It's hard to know any causality or its strength as the K-12 system is so rotten for so many African American kids. Bakke was decided 45 years ago. And the inner city schools still aren't any better at preparing their kids for life. Nature may be unfair, but it's too easy a jump to a weak form of the naturalistic fallacy in accepting the status quo. (Note I'm not saying you are jumping to the fallacy.) BTW, the Arcidiacono discussion is much more interesting than the particular data point.
"as the K-12 system is so rotten for so many African American kids"
That is, in some sense true by definition, the same way it is true that the American basketball development system is so rotten for so many white kids. They succeed so much less than their proportion of the population. But the question is why. Americans has a touching faith in the power of school done right. But perhaps there is no way to "do it right", to make it so no child is left behind or every student succeeds (the names of the last two national education laws). Perhaps it is as silly as expecting everyone to be good at sports, or to sing well, or to be able to create a sculpture that people will voluntarily keep around--well, anyone who isn't a parent.
I think it is jumping to the naturalistic fallacy that causes people to say that all groups must have the same, well pretty much the same everything. For years, religious people wondered about the question, "How could a good God create a world where there is evil?" How can a just God allow injustice?" But you don't have to be religious to want the world to be good, at the very least to want it not to be affirmatively bad. For most Americans (certainly most educated Americans) a world with inherent group differences IS affirmatively bad. One feels dirty to believe in it. So one doesn't.
Yascha Mounk and Peter Arcidiacono at Persuasion continue to avoid the elephant in the room. (maybe it's also in their brains?)
18 yr old Blacks have, on avg., lower IQs than Whites, Hispanics, and especially Asians (& Jews!).
Elite colleges need to be hard in order to challenge the smartest students - and the less smart students fail more often.
Black lifestyle choices are far more often terrible than other groups:
1) Too many Black sluts have sex before marriage, with male slut-jerks (slut-cads), resulting in 75% or so Black kids not living with married parents. (30% for Whites, 2% for Asian-Ams)
Being raised by married parents is optimal for almost all life outcomes, despite it not being perfect.
2) Too many Black boys commit crimes while young, and become criminals when older. (Which is also terrible for the communities where they live which tolerate such anti-social criminal behavior; often thinking it is cool.)
Bad behavior leads to bad outcomes, including bad 18 year old test results and college abilities.
Most Black leaders want to blame Black behavior problems on White racism or privilege, so as to avoid "preaching" better behavior. Better Black behavior is necessary for better outcomes.
Necessary.
Any discussion that fails to discuss the need for better Black behavior is a waste of time, or worse a dishonest attempt to transfer guilt from those who are acting badly to those who are innocent and not acting badly. Like is being done here by ... Yascha Mounk and Peter Arcidiacono.
While avoiding the two key issues, there are other good points about racist AA programs in the talk, and Arcidiacono does note the need for better pre-college education, especially pre-K. Better parents. The truthful note about elite college segregation matches my Stanford experience with the Black frat house and few Blacks in the toughest math courses. Strange their lack of knowing the name of Amy Wax, who honestly notes that most of the Blacks in her class are bottom performers. The truth is racist.
One of the purposes of AA is to show all non-Blacks at elite colleges that the best Blacks are still obviously inferior students - but this CAN NOT be talked about. Mass cognitive dissonance - practice, so as to be better hypocrites throughout their future lives.
Helping low IQ Blacks should be a subset of helping low IQ Americans. Higher gov't support for low paid workers is needed. (like gov't paying for SS contributions) More house construction would be good too, especially in low crime areas. Maybe more gov't tax breaks for companies hiring non-college grad workers. But they didn't even talk this much about possible policy.
Lower IQs is unfair to all humans who have them - life (& God?) is unfair. But there's no just way to fully compensate for this - tho a cultural focus on status thru behavior rather than IQ would be better.
The entire interview with Arcidiacono is worth reading, with lots of interesting points about incentives and results in the current system. Economists once again bring light to emotional issues, much like the pandemic. And they kind of get to it by the end, but the big issue for African Americans as a group is in K-12 and that is an issue that can only be influenced, but not determined, by government policies.
Isn't that an important lesson though. Your daughter is going to confront that situation in the real world and will have to navigate it. I can't just "take an F" at my job if my co-worker isn't giving me what I want.
Whenever I hear someone's new idea on teaching kids, it's too bad we don't have universal for-profit, private K-12 schools. If we did, they could put their money where their mouth is.
I'll take a different tack on the idea that the American system has failed blacks. The idea that we can change their test scores, as if test scores matter all that much, does not make any sense because of their genetics. It is like complaining that a hybrid chicken breed that is reasonably good at producing eggs and meat in a hot, malarial climate is not specialized in egg production in a cold weather climate. The hybrid breed is not a bad chicken, but it is a bad chicken if you are trying to force it to be something that it isn't.
The way the US system is set up is to make life very unrewarding for people who are low socioeconomic status (SES). The attitude of our political system is that the low SES belong on welfare, in prison, earning money in illegal jobs, or all of the above, and that we should outlaw all low SES production so as to send it to overseas territories that the US has trade relationships with. The problem of populations that tend towards low SES is addressed rhetorically by the notion that the "gap must be closed" and practically by the welfare office, the abortionist, and the prison warden. This was highlighted for me recently when I drove through Navajo country, where Planned Parenthood has absolutely plastered the highway with abortion advertisements. The progressive approach to the Navajo is essentially to palliate the ones who are alive and to kill as many of them as they can while they are still in the womb. Indeed it reflects recent progressive despair on the possibility of "closing the gap," which is again, akin to trying to get the milk production of a Holstein cow from an Angus cow.
It's very challenging to solve these problems with the way that our system is set up. Welfare has to be less generous, and we need to legalize low SES jobs and/or to export the population that is low SES to countries or special economic zones where it is legal. The way that our political system is set up, a job making socks in Indonesia for export to the US is copacetic, but if you create that job in the US with American citizens, it is triple plus mega bad human rights abuse sccccrreeeeech.
"things like humor, emotion, stories, metaphors, extremes, gossip, idealism, general schemes, finding one’s place in the world, and the lure of certainty."
Sounds like CRT to me.
Joking aside, that approach is ripe with opportunities for both liberals and conservatives, capitalists and socialists, religious and secularists, to impose their worldview on kid to a far greater degree than today. I don't know how that wouldn't be the result.
re: climate change my instinct is that when you're not allowed to present an alternative explanation, something is probably being hidden. Some recent examples: The Iraq War, George Floyd/the official race-police narrative, COVID19 response, Ukraine. In all cases, those circling the wagons around the official narrative were/are largely wrong.
I'm not climate expert and haven't done a ton of looking into the science myself but I suspect there's a similar pattern at play and that the threat may be overblown by the mainstream narrative.
Is there an example of an issue where only one narrative was allowed any credibility and that narrative was correct?
My observation of reality is this- lies are far less likely to be censored than is the truth.
Sounds to me like you've got it figured out.
I'm not saying IPCC has it right or wrong but when you compare what they say to the media's paraphrase and misquotes, it's not even close. And always wrong in a predictable direction.
"that have worked for hundreds (and thousands) of years — things like humor, emotion, stories, metaphors, extremes, gossip, idealism, general schemes, finding one’s place in the world, and the lure of certainty."
AKA the stuff kids engage in when playing hooky from school (or in school when the teacher isn't looking) :)
"Yascha Mounk talks with Peter Arcidiacono, who says: Our society has fundamentally failed African Americans, to the point where 1% of African Americans get above a 1390 on the SAT, while that figure is 8% among whites and 25% among Asian Americans."
Or perhaps there is a problem with the direction of causality here. Perhaps--I know it doesn't seem possible--African Americans are just not as smart as whites or Asian Americans on the kind of smarts that the SAT tests for. No, that would mean that nature is unfair.
The entire college discussion misses the forest for the trees. It's hard to know any causality or its strength as the K-12 system is so rotten for so many African American kids. Bakke was decided 45 years ago. And the inner city schools still aren't any better at preparing their kids for life. Nature may be unfair, but it's too easy a jump to a weak form of the naturalistic fallacy in accepting the status quo. (Note I'm not saying you are jumping to the fallacy.) BTW, the Arcidiacono discussion is much more interesting than the particular data point.
"as the K-12 system is so rotten for so many African American kids"
That is, in some sense true by definition, the same way it is true that the American basketball development system is so rotten for so many white kids. They succeed so much less than their proportion of the population. But the question is why. Americans has a touching faith in the power of school done right. But perhaps there is no way to "do it right", to make it so no child is left behind or every student succeeds (the names of the last two national education laws). Perhaps it is as silly as expecting everyone to be good at sports, or to sing well, or to be able to create a sculpture that people will voluntarily keep around--well, anyone who isn't a parent.
I think it is jumping to the naturalistic fallacy that causes people to say that all groups must have the same, well pretty much the same everything. For years, religious people wondered about the question, "How could a good God create a world where there is evil?" How can a just God allow injustice?" But you don't have to be religious to want the world to be good, at the very least to want it not to be affirmatively bad. For most Americans (certainly most educated Americans) a world with inherent group differences IS affirmatively bad. One feels dirty to believe in it. So one doesn't.
Yascha Mounk and Peter Arcidiacono at Persuasion continue to avoid the elephant in the room. (maybe it's also in their brains?)
18 yr old Blacks have, on avg., lower IQs than Whites, Hispanics, and especially Asians (& Jews!).
Elite colleges need to be hard in order to challenge the smartest students - and the less smart students fail more often.
Black lifestyle choices are far more often terrible than other groups:
1) Too many Black sluts have sex before marriage, with male slut-jerks (slut-cads), resulting in 75% or so Black kids not living with married parents. (30% for Whites, 2% for Asian-Ams)
Being raised by married parents is optimal for almost all life outcomes, despite it not being perfect.
2) Too many Black boys commit crimes while young, and become criminals when older. (Which is also terrible for the communities where they live which tolerate such anti-social criminal behavior; often thinking it is cool.)
Bad behavior leads to bad outcomes, including bad 18 year old test results and college abilities.
Most Black leaders want to blame Black behavior problems on White racism or privilege, so as to avoid "preaching" better behavior. Better Black behavior is necessary for better outcomes.
Necessary.
Any discussion that fails to discuss the need for better Black behavior is a waste of time, or worse a dishonest attempt to transfer guilt from those who are acting badly to those who are innocent and not acting badly. Like is being done here by ... Yascha Mounk and Peter Arcidiacono.
While avoiding the two key issues, there are other good points about racist AA programs in the talk, and Arcidiacono does note the need for better pre-college education, especially pre-K. Better parents. The truthful note about elite college segregation matches my Stanford experience with the Black frat house and few Blacks in the toughest math courses. Strange their lack of knowing the name of Amy Wax, who honestly notes that most of the Blacks in her class are bottom performers. The truth is racist.
One of the purposes of AA is to show all non-Blacks at elite colleges that the best Blacks are still obviously inferior students - but this CAN NOT be talked about. Mass cognitive dissonance - practice, so as to be better hypocrites throughout their future lives.
Helping low IQ Blacks should be a subset of helping low IQ Americans. Higher gov't support for low paid workers is needed. (like gov't paying for SS contributions) More house construction would be good too, especially in low crime areas. Maybe more gov't tax breaks for companies hiring non-college grad workers. But they didn't even talk this much about possible policy.
Lower IQs is unfair to all humans who have them - life (& God?) is unfair. But there's no just way to fully compensate for this - tho a cultural focus on status thru behavior rather than IQ would be better.
I feel like 1350 being 25% of Asian Americans... Wow... Maybe it's just me but I'm impressed
The entire interview with Arcidiacono is worth reading, with lots of interesting points about incentives and results in the current system. Economists once again bring light to emotional issues, much like the pandemic. And they kind of get to it by the end, but the big issue for African Americans as a group is in K-12 and that is an issue that can only be influenced, but not determined, by government policies.
Isn't that an important lesson though. Your daughter is going to confront that situation in the real world and will have to navigate it. I can't just "take an F" at my job if my co-worker isn't giving me what I want.
It is an important lesson, and her future response should probably be, "I will tackle the project alone."