The problem with admitting the top 10% of students to the university

[Toni]

Studies have shown that when teachers are told that the students in their class are especially bright, the students indeed perform better, regardless of their achievement and apparent potential up to that point.

Yeah, but how large is effect? Studies have shown it's 25%. The rest is genetic.
I am all for telling students they are great, but don't expect miracles.

Academic achievement is highly heritable. But the blank slate is the fiction many would prefer to believe.

My parents barely finished high school. My siblings and I all graduated at the top of our classes. Everyone went to college and at least some of us graduated with honors. Some of us have advanced degrees. No one is adopted.

 

[barbos]

Barbos, a 25% impact, originating from some event, doesn't imply a thing about events which generate other effects.

The fact that a single teacher can shift performance this dramatically (And 25% is dramatic!) Does not imply all other shifts are genetic. It just means that, in the course of a single school year, a belief that one is capable has a large (25%!) impact on grades. That is already a miracle.

By your own numbers.

25% is not dramatic and teachers can't even have that. 25% of variation is environmental which includes more parenting than teachering.
And 75% is genetic. Parenting/teachering is really overrated.

25% of standard deviation is what separates good teachers/parents/environment from bad teachers/parents/environment.

At this point with politesse, I want to see what studies you base this on specifically. Because I remember very similar things "being studied before" back in 2000, and the source material for that education was from the 80's, and psychology goes bad after 10 years or so.

We need to check the use-before date.

We have had the same conversation few times already. The fact that you can't remember these studies is just weird.

 

[barbos]

Academic achievement is highly heritable. But the blank slate is the fiction many would prefer to believe.

My parents barely finished high school. My siblings and I all graduated at the top of our classes. Everyone went to college and at least some of us graduated with honors. Some of us have advanced degrees. No one is adopted.

Everyone goes to college nowadays.

 

[Trausti]

Academic achievement is highly heritable. But the blank slate is the fiction many would prefer to believe.

My parents barely finished high school. My siblings and I all graduated at the top of our classes. Everyone went to college and at least some of us graduated with honors. Some of us have advanced degrees. No one is adopted.

If a child performs at a low level, you look at the biological parents. If the biological parents are also low achieving, there ya go. All traits are heritable.

How much is academic achievement shaped by genes?

Researchers have found that a child’s genes significantly influence their long-term performance in school – beyond even intelligence. How can this information be used to help students?

 

[Politesse]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "piety".

 

[Trausti]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "holiness".

Okay: Doing well at school. Does that satisfy your hand waving?

 

[Politesse]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "holiness".

Okay: Doing well at school. Does that satisfy your hand waving?

No. I'm an educator, and am well acquainted with the subjective factors that determine success in school, it's not a biological trait. Believe it or not, I've never once consulted a geneticist before assigning a grade to one of my students.

 

[barbos]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "piety".

Actually this was also measured and found to be highly heritable.

 

[Trausti]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "holiness".

Okay: Doing well at school. Does that satisfy your hand waving?

No. I'm an educator, and am well acquainted with the subjective factors that determine success in school, it's not a biological trait. Believe it or not, I've never once consulted a geneticist before assigning a grade to one of my students.

But presumably you look at the students’ performance on tests, right? Whether the student is disruptive in class or violent/disrespectful to the teacher and other students? Whether the student did the assignment? All proxies.

 

[Trausti]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "piety".

Actually this was also measured and found to be highly heritable.

The blank slate is just too beautiful to let go.

 

[Politesse]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "piety".

Actually this was also measured and found to be highly heritable.

Being "heritable" does not mean that something is a biological trait. If I inherit from my parents a propensity to go cross-eyed when at rest, I will do poorly in business settings as people will routinely be put off by my appearance whenever we are in a meeting. The crossed eyes are a biological trait. The resulting easily measurable difference between cross-eyed and non-cross-eyed salesmen is absolutely heritable. But "success in business" is not therefore a biological trait. It's a social response to biological traits, sure. But that doesn't oblige society to continue making the same decision about how to relate to people who go cross-eyed. The pandemic might actually erase the heritability of that trait by driving more business online and into Zoom meetings where a barely noticeable crossing of eyes is no longer obvious to a manager. That's partially why genetic studies attach a probability factor rather than making a vague categorical generalization, but that still only gives you an estimate of how much variability within an observed trait can be directly attributed to genetic variation, not the degree to which that trait is truly deterministic as you have proposed by implication of saying we should accept that certain students cannot excel. The only thing you could really show scientifically is whether or not students are likely to excel within an educational environment identical to those in the test conditions. Twin studies are interesting, but frequently deceptive in what they seem to show. The media loves them because they are evocative, but their results can't be interpreted as though they appeared in a contextual vaccuum, and certainly education policy-makers should not be making critical allocation decisions based on data that weren't even generated within their own system.

 

[Politesse]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "piety".

Actually this was also measured and found to be highly heritable.

The blank slate is just too beautiful to let go.

I am not advocating for a "blank slate" approach. We know for a fact that certain students are advantaged or disadvantaged by hundreds of social factors for years before they even see the inside of a public classroom. A person's family background and yes, even perceived phenotype, play an enormous role in their likelihood of success within educational institutions. But pre-scientific biases about biological determinism do nothing to address those issue, and indeed are more likely to depress than improve outcomes for all but a small class of socially privileged students.

 

[barbos]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "piety".

Actually this was also measured and found to be highly heritable.

Being "heritable" does not mean that something is a biological trait.
...

What does that even mean? They conducted studies and data have shown that character/personality traits are highly heritable.
No amount of your hand waving can change that.

 

[Trausti]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "piety".

Actually this was also measured and found to be highly heritable.

Being "heritable" does not mean that something is a biological trait. If I inherit from my parents a propensity to go cross-eyed when at rest, I will do poorly in business settings as people will routinely be put off by my appearance whenever we are in a meeting. The crossed eyes are a biological trait. The resulting easily measurable difference between cross-eyed and non-cross-eyed salesmen is absolutely heritable. But "success in business" is not therefore a biological trait. It's a social response to biological traits, sure. But that doesn't oblige society to continue making the same decision about how to relate to people who go cross-eyed. The pandemic might actually erase the heritability of that trait by driving more business online and into Zoom meetings where a barely noticeable crossing of eyes is no longer obvious to a manager. That's partially why genetic studies attach a probability factor rather than making a vague categorical generalization, but that still only gives you an estimate of how much variability within an observed trait can be directly attributed to genetic variation, not the degree to which that trait is truly deterministic as you have proposed by implication of saying we should accept that certain students cannot excel. The only thing you could really show scientifically is whether or not students are likely to excel within an educational environment identical to those in the test conditions. Twin studies are interesting, but frequently deceptive in what they seem to show. The media loves them because they are evocative, but their results can't be interpreted as though they appeared in a contextual vaccuum, and certainly education policy-makers should not be making critical allocation decisions based on data that weren't even generated within their own system.

Yes, twin studies are interesting but adoption studies more so. You want to blame social factors - I get that, you’re a leftist - but adoption studies show that adopted children take after their biological parents and not their adopted ones. Environment/social factors have a limited role here.

 

[Politesse]

Being "heritable" does not mean that something is a biological trait.
...

What does that even mean? They conducted studies and data have shown that character/personality traits are highly heritable.
No amount of your hand waving can change that.

I agree, if you only read the first line of a post it can be very confusing.

 

[barbos]

The blank slate is just too beautiful to let go.

I am not advocating for a "blank slate" approach. We know for a fact that certain students are advantaged or disadvantaged by hundreds of social factors for years before they even see the inside of a public classroom. A person's family background and yes, even perceived phenotype, play an enormous role in their likelihood of success within educational institutions. But pre-scientific biases about biological determinism do nothing to address those issue, and indeed are more likely to depress than improve outcomes for all but a small class of socially privileged students.

25%

 

[Trausti]

The blank slate is just too beautiful to let go.

I am not advocating for a "blank slate" approach. We know for a fact that certain students are advantaged or disadvantaged by hundreds of social factors for years before they even see the inside of a public classroom. A person's family background and yes, even perceived phenotype, play an enormous role in their likelihood of success within educational institutions. But pre-scientific biases about biological determinism do nothing to address those issue, and indeed are more likely to depress than improve outcomes for all but a small class of socially privileged students.

The BBC article I cited suggested that

We could use DNA tests at birth to identify children at genetic risk for developing reading problems and give them early intervention

 

[Toni]

Academic achievement is highly heritable. But the blank slate is the fiction many would prefer to believe.

My parents barely finished high school. My siblings and I all graduated at the top of our classes. Everyone went to college and at least some of us graduated with honors. Some of us have advanced degrees. No one is adopted.

Everyone goes to college nowadays.

Not hardly.

Besides, we're all boomers. College, grad school, and professional school was all a long time ago.

 

[Toni]

"Achievement" is a subjective judgment, not a "trait" in the sense that a biologist means that term. You might as well try to inherit "goodness" or "charm" or "piety".

Actually this was also measured and found to be highly heritable.

And yet.....somehow, we have more people going to college, becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers, biochemists, etc. than we did 100 years ago.

We have families where some kids are top students, high achieving professionals...and their full blooded siblings are drop outs.

 

[Trausti]

Everyone goes to college nowadays.

Not hardly.

Besides, we're all boomers. College, grad school, and professional school was all a long time ago.

Nah, he’s right. There’s just too much money to be made. Anyone can go to college.