Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Speak of the devil

Speak of the devil

By DougJ, Head of Infidelity May 5th, 2010

The Times has an opinion piece on “school choice” by one of the authors of The Bell Curve.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 12:21 am and is filed under Good News For Conservatives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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94 Responses to “Speak of the devil”

1 General Egali Tarian Stuck Says:

Here’s an illustration. The day after the Milwaukee results were released, I learned that parents in the Maryland county where I live are trying to start a charter school that will offer a highly traditional curriculum long on history, science, foreign languages, classic literature, mathematics and English composition, taught with structure and discipline. This would give parents a choice radically different from the progressive curriculum used in the county’s other public schools.

Drat, and here I thought stuff like classic literature, history and foreign languages was a progressive curriculum. The right wing echo chamber must be responsible for this disconnect, that and watching too much Fox News./Planet Wingnut

edit – maybe the dude thinks public schools only teach round the clock Marxism.

May 5th, 2010 at 12:28 am

2 r€nato Says:

I guess Maryland county schools are teaching kids stuff like how to be gay, Marxism, and atheism???

May 5th, 2010 at 12:30 am

3 Dr. Psycho Says:

Sure enough, I hear the rustling of his wings even now….

May 5th, 2010 at 12:34 am

4 r€nato Says:

OT: 15 Unintentionally Perverted Toys For Children

May 5th, 2010 at 12:37 am

5 Mike Kay Says:

another display of NYT’s famed libural media bias.

May 5th, 2010 at 12:37 am

6 General Egali Tarian Stuck Says:

OH and btw DougJ, please don’t stop with threads on wingnuts going all eugenic on us. It is an important topic, though it brings some comments that are uncomfortable sometimes.

May 5th, 2010 at 12:38 am

7 LosGatosCA Says:

Chutzpah! It’s not just for liberal Jews anymore. He’s glad, glad I say, to move away from standardized tests that show their gimics don’t have any effect.

But what else could he do? Just surrender? Admit their program is basically just about sticking it to union teachers? Come on, get serious.

May 5th, 2010 at 12:43 am

8 soonergrunt Says:

OT: Senior South Korean government officials declare intent and need to retaliate against agency or power unknown (cough, NORTH KOREA, cough, cough) that sank a South Korean warship by torpedo a couple of weeks ago and killed 40+ South Korean sailors.

Lawyers, Guns, and Money and Information Dissemination are some of the best sources on the internet about this incident which may blow up into a full-blown war on the Korean peninsula if everybody’s not really, really careful.
There’s just one tiny problem—the other major party, the Democratic People’s Republic of Kim Jong Il Is A Total Fucking Shit-Smearing-On-Himself-Nutcase has never been known for being really, really careful.

We have approximately 20,000 US personnel in Korea.

May 5th, 2010 at 12:49 am

9 soonergrunt Says:

@soonergrunt:
You Do Not Have Permission To Edit This Comment.
FYWP!

May 5th, 2010 at 12:51 am

10 Yutsano Says:

@soonergrunt: Beautimous. Though knowing how South Korea has been itching for a final resolution to the Korean peninsula issue it wouldn’t shock me if this was a Maine incident. I don’t think they go far beyond sabre rattling if for no other reason that Nutso Kim would have zero compulsion nuking downtown Seoul if it meant he stayed in power.

May 5th, 2010 at 12:51 am

11 dslak Says:

Has no one else noticed the irony of Charles Murray complaining about the use of standardized test scores to assess the effectiveness of charter schools?

May 5th, 2010 at 12:52 am

12 JGabriel Says:

Well, if old racist IQ theories are making another comeback, you know what else can’t be far behind?

That’s right, Erich von Daniken has a new TV series: ANCIENT ALIENS! On the History Channel. No wonder people are so stupid – they keep seeing ridiculous conspiracy theories treated as legitimate on nominally “educational” sources like the History Channel and Discovery.

And, yeah, I’m drawing a non-existent connection between separate crackpot theories, but at least von Daniken’s crackpottery has a sweet optimistic fantasy element one can enjoy even when one knows it’s all crap.

.

May 5th, 2010 at 12:55 am

13 Adam Collyer Says:

DougJ, you haven’t touched on this subject nearly enough. Ignore your self-imposed moratorium on it and keep shooting holes in the ridiculousness of all of these arguments.

Glad you posted on a similar topic here since I missed the thread earlier. Sully posted a “dissent” today that makes sense to me:

I understand your intellectual sympathies with this particular law student’s argument and your desire to at least have the discussion about whether there are links between race, genetics and intelligence. However, the arguments that Volokh was advancing in her defense, were incredibly disingenuous.

First, he says that it’s possible to discuss the fact of genetic differences in intelligence between racial groups without encroaching on the “moral question about what we should do about those differences, if they exist.” This is, an incredibly naïve statement; scientific experiments may happen in a sterile lab environment, but the conclusions can take on a life of their own.

For example, it has long been known that Jews do better in school and on IQ tests than non-Jews. However, no one takes this fact and decides to conclude that non-Jews are genetically inferior to Jews. There are no books, or roundtables dedicated to the “Gentile Crisis.” Conversely, why is there no research investigating the genetic reasons for this “superiority”? Moreover, in the early part of the century, Jews did so poorly on IQ tests that scientists testified as to their ‘genetic inferiority’ before the US Congress. Using this as a rationale, Congress passed restrictive legislation in the 1920s that reduced the immigration of Jews. Not only does this little anecdote demonstrate how difficult it is to separate out statements of fact from statements of judgment, but it also begs the question as to how you measure intelligence. Since it’s unlikely that Jews as a group got massively smarter in the last 90 years, this suggests that changes as to how IQ tests are constructed and administered are the source for this change.

Second, Volokh says that we cannot trust the scientific consensus because scientists are not “free to espouse all rival views.” This is absolute bunk. This 3L law student is neither a biologist nor a scientist, nor for that matter is Volokh. This is pseudoscience. A brief look at the literature would show that there is no credible scientific evidence for any sort of biological basis for race (see for example, Chapter 5 of Racism: A Short History); as a result, it would seem difficult to ascribe differences between racial groups to genetics, given that there is more genetic variation WITHIN racial groups than BETWEEN racial groups.

Richard Lewontin, a geneticist, has revealed that 85% of genetic variation among humans is between individuals in the same population; another 9% of the variation is between populations that have been regarded as part of the same race. Moreover, in the US in particular the amount of racial mixing (as Henry Louis Gates has shown, most white people have at least some African American ancestry) makes it even more difficult to rely on skin color as a taxonomic category for anything.

Finally, the reason there has been so much outrage directed at this 3L student is because someone who has made it to Harvard Law School, and will in all likelihood hold an important position in the legal system some day, should be aware not only of how these ideas supported the oppressive legal regime of Jim Crow but also of things like, for example, the persistent racial disparities in how sentences are handed down (e.g. mandatory minimums). Mostly, we believed that pseudoscientific speculations about the ‘probable biological inferiority of African Americans’ by graduates of Princeton and Harvard ended along with the nineteenth-century.

May 5th, 2010 at 12:55 am

14 Walker Says:

@JGabriel:

My wife loves that series. It is freaking hilarious. The leaps of logic are unspoofable.

“Ancient Egyptians did not have wheels and pulleys, so they must have had antigravity technology”

May 5th, 2010 at 12:58 am

15 Alex Says:

There seems to be a large cadre of right-libertarian types for whom the phrase “people should have more choice” is always silently followed with “So I can get further away from the filthy people.”

May 5th, 2010 at 12:59 am

16 LanceThruster Says:

Frontline just did a piece on for profit education. They have 10% of the student loans but use up over a quarter of the available loan money. Their sales practies are hard sell and they are currently lobbying to avoid further scrutiny and regulation. The loan amount is greater than that of credit card debt and there is no possibility of default.

When they said these for profits have become “too big to fail”, I got chills. There’s yet another bubble waiting to burst.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:01 am

17 Yutsano Says:

@Alex: One would think that, rather than dissociate from the rabble and hoi polloi, the rich, who usually get reamed in property taxes, would get off their duffs and support the public schools that they largely pay for.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:01 am

18 JGabriel Says:

@Walker:

“Ancient Egyptians did not have wheels and pulleys, so they must have had antigravity technology”

That’s hilarious! I have to see this show. Bittorrent, here I come.

.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:03 am

19 WereBear (itouch) Says:

@dslak: Now that you mention it, that is awesomely obtuse and ironic.

A winger special.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:04 am

20 Bnut Says:

@Yutsano:

Why? This way they have their serfs. You think an educated, motivated and full of self worth person is going to scrub their toilets and bring them mai tais?

May 5th, 2010 at 1:14 am

21 Quiddity Says:

What Murray wrote:

Why not instead finally acknowledge that standardized test scores are a terrible way to decide whether one school is better than another?

What Murray will never write:

Why not instead finally acknowledge that standardized test scores are a terrible way to decide whether one race is better than another?

May 5th, 2010 at 1:14 am

22 tim Says:

It’s telling how some of you here come unglued at the mention of The Bell Curve…absolutely unglued.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:17 am

23 Yutsano Says:

@Bnut: I thought that was the whole purpose of illegal immigration. R I doing it wrong?

@tim: Amazing how we disparage junk science. Is that just another layer of being an Obot I wasn’t aware of?

May 5th, 2010 at 1:18 am

24 marcopolo Says:

@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Either Murray is out of touch with the typical school curriculum in the U.S. or he is equating “teaching to the test” as progressive. It is emphatically not since at its extremes in a lot of school districts it means eliminating most non-vocational elective courses such as art/music, athletics, philosophy, etc… Due to the prevalence of standardized testing nowadays as a benchmarking tool to judge school performance, pretty much the only place you can get away from “teaching to the test” is non-public schools. Thank you “No Child Left Behind.”

But for me, the most insidious part of his piece was the sentence:

This is true whether the reform in question is vouchers, charter schools, increased school accountability, smaller class sizes, better pay for all teachers, bonuses for good teachers, firing of bad teachers — measured by changes in test scores, each has failed to live up to its hype

Here he uses a laundry list to equate the effectiveness of all of these measures—or rather says they are all ineffective. That is just not true. while charter school studies (which are just beginning to acquire the necessary longitudinal chops to be taken seriously) are indicating the typical charter school does no better (and in a lot of cases does worse) in educating students than a typical public school, decades of peer reviewed academic research has shown time and again that smaller class sizes have a noticeable positive effect on student learning. Unfortunately charter schools are the sexy that all the billionaires and cool kids have fallen for while shrinking class sizes is boring and just costs lots of money.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:21 am

25 General Egali Tarian Stuck Says:

OT

for anyone interested, the Civil War series on netflix instant is now fixed for sound.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:21 am

26 Warren Terra Says:

Isn’t the other author, the one with relevant credentials, the one who’s supposed to not be an asshat, dead? Well, at least it made the comissioning editor’s choice easier.

P.S. @Adam Collyer: TL;DR.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:23 am

27 trollhattan Says:

O/T but Jayzus, as much as 60,000 barrels a day?!?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05.....ll.html?hp

Just how bad is the leak going to get?

May 5th, 2010 at 1:23 am

28 soonergrunt Says:

@Yutsano: I don’t know from South Korean politics, so I’ll deferr to you on that. I’ll note Dr. Farley’s concern, and mine as well, that the South Koreans may paint themselves into a corner whereby retaliation becomes a requirement.
If that happens, then stability and security in that part of the world will be dependent upon the psychological condition of Kim Jong Il. This could be bad.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:27 am

29 Bnut Says:

@Yutsano:

I thought that was the whole purpose of illegal immigration. R I doing it wrong?

Half right. Poor, brown, black, gay. It’s all the same. It’s not ME.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:27 am

30 MikeJ Says:

@soonergrunt: It’s my hope that the reason he’s in China now is that they summoned him and told him to chill the fuck out. I don’t think the Chinese want a shooting war that close to their border.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:29 am

31 General Egali Tarian Stuck Says:

@trollhattan: If the dome they are getting ready to sit over the leaks doesn’t work, it will get very bad. Already bad enough,

May 5th, 2010 at 1:32 am

32 Bill E Pilgrim Says:

Good god, the Washington Post has just added Greg Sargent as a columnist.

I didn’t know he was an ex-Bush speechwriter!

Seriously though, credit where it’s due, must reward sanity where it happens.

Update: Blogger, I guess would be more accurate,

May 5th, 2010 at 1:33 am

33 JGabriel Says:

@tim:

It’s telling how some of you here come unglued at the mention of The Bell Curve…absolutely unglued.

Yes, it’s telling: it says, “we are people who hate evil books.”

And, yes, The Bell Curve is evil. It uses pseudoscience to prop up an argument that an entire race of people is inferior to others. It’s Lothrop Stoddard all over again.

.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:33 am

34 Yutsano Says:

@soonergrunt: I’d check the current ruling party’s poll numbers as well. If they’ve been slipping lately (I confess I’m out of touch with very recent Korean events) then this could be cheerleading to shore up the base. There is a center-right coalition in charge right now, so that could explain the hackle raising. That and the incident is an act of sabotage. If China somehow is shown to be responsible, however, watch the South Koreans backpedal fast.

@Bnut: Sigh. sometimes I’m happy to be an other. Straight white males can be so boring. No offense if that applies to you.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:34 am

35 gwangung Says:

@tim: Sorta like how Chinese Americans in the 1950s and Hispanics now act around INS?

Sigh.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:37 am

36 soonergrunt Says:

@MikeJ:
I don’t know how much power the Chinese have over the DPRK. That whole Juche thing the norks got going on is all about not allowing anybody any kind of influence over DPRK actions and policies, but I do hope it was at least mentioned.

@Yutsano: I don’t see the Chinese being involved like that. There’s nothing there to gain. If they have a cause to slap the South Koreans like that, they’d do it in public in the full knowledge that nobody would do anything. Hell, nobody would even talk about doing anything. I don’t know if the DPRK did this, but I wouldn’t be remotely surprised. I studied them for a year for Poly Sci at OU. There’s not a lot of concrete stuff out there on them, but what I did come away with was the impression that they do stuff that the rest of the world thinks is batshit crazy but that is entirely consistent within their own calculus, and that calculus does include going to war if they think it’s the only way to ensure survival of the regime. Kim Jong Il is relatively old and not in the best of health. His successor is some kid with no bona fides. That kid’s gonna float down the Yalu face down about 20 minutes after Kim bites it. This could be the beginning of the end. The more I studied them, the more convinced I became that as long as Kim was healthy, everything would be copacetic, but that the moment he felt too sick to carry on, he’d try to take everybody out in one last spasm of violence and hope to be the last guy standing, at least until his last breath.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:42 am

37 Bnut Says:

@Yutsano:

Straight white males can be so boring.

Agreed. That’s why I date women.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:43 am

38 Bnut Says:

@soonergrunt:

From my limited knowledge, that’s how I see it. The Chinese leadership know how good they have it. They get away with so much publicly there is no reason to backdoor screw Seoul.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:47 am

39 Jrod, Slayer of Phoenix Says:

@tim: It’s amazing how some of you come unglued when I call your fathers stupid fucking ni-... absolutely unglued.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:48 am

40 Comrade Luke Says:

@LanceThruster: I came here to comment on this Frontline thing. I just saw it, and now I want to stick my head in the oven.

And I know this is going to rub people the wrong way, but: I detest Jack Welch. What an overrated egomaniac. The two things he excels at are marketing himself and being ruthless to people who aren’t as fortunate as he has been. The fact that he gets held up as some paragon of virtue in business circles makes me want to fucking puke.

ETA: Here’s the link to the show. Everyone should watch this if they have a chance. I’m telling you, education is the next bubble to burst. “For-profit” schools are charging people 2-4x what public schools cost, and they’re giving out useless degrees. I mean, there were some women on the show who got pediatrics degrees whose only expose “in the field” was going to a day care FFS.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/.....e=bigimage

May 5th, 2010 at 1:50 am

41 soonergrunt Says:

@Comrade Luke: Not rubbed the wrong way here. Jack Welch is a raging jackass who exemplifies everything wrong with the CEO class in this country.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:53 am

42 Mnemosyne Says:

@tim:

It’s telling how some of you here come unglued at the mention of ~~The Bell Curve~~ The Protocols of the Elders of Zion…absolutely unglued.

Fix’d.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:54 am

43 soonergrunt Says:

@tim: We get that way over the 14 words, too, come to that.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:03 am

44 JGabriel Says:

@Mnemosyne: Actually, Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race (1916) and Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920) are probably better analogs than The Protocols, for the way they use pseudoscience to give their racism a sheen of pseudo-intellectual legitimacy.

.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:07 am

45 Faisal Says:

Charles Murray who wrote a book claiming [through the sorts of mental gymnastics that would have gotten you laughed out my required freshman stats for non-math-people, and possibly then kicked by whoever was in the hall after you’d made your exit] that the results of a standardized test [that tests, precisely speaking, nothing] proves black people are genetically dumber than white people. Now he’s claiming that the test results which show no benefit to charter schools are a good thing because standardized tests are useless?

The cognitive dissonance was so great, I was able to use the steam coming out my ears to boil tea, which I’m now enjoying.

The coup de grace, then:

The day after the Milwaukee results were released, I learned that parents in the Maryland county where I live are trying to start a charter school that will offer a highly traditional curriculum long on history, science, foreign languages, classic literature, mathematics and English composition, taught with structure and discipline.

That sounds like a good idea. Why—that sounds exactly what’s taught in all the public schools in the area. You know, like in neighboring Fairfax and Montgomery Counties, whose public schools regularly show up in the lists of the best high schools in the country, and where sending your kid to private schools results in “I wonder what’s wrong with their kid” gossip.

Some days I really wonder.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:08 am

46 Yutsano Says:

@Bnut: Heh. I don’t chase straight boys anymore. Got over that phase in college, especially after the Internet showed me just how many guys there are who play for my team.

@soonergrunt: The Chinese are involved insofar as they are the only major military backers of the North Koreans. (I guess they could call on the Burmese military to shore them up, yeah that’d go over well.) So if the mine was found to be of Chinese origin then it’s suddenly a regional incident. BTW I have no insider knowledge that it was a mine or a missile, but if it has Chinese characters instead of hrangul things just got real interesting real fast, and none of it is good.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:09 am

47 JMY Says:

OT, but I just saw on Anderson Cooper 360 with a headline that asked if Obama wanted the oil spill to happen. WTF?

May 5th, 2010 at 2:09 am

48 Mnemosyne Says:

@JGabriel:

Oh, probably. But someone ignorant enough to think that The Bell Curve represents any kind of actual science has probably never heard of either of those. In fact, tim probably has no idea that science has a long history of trying to “prove” bizarre things like the claim that the color of your skin determines your intelligence, so he’s puzzled about why people would look at Murray’s book with a yawn and a “been there, done that” when it so clearly has brand new information!

May 5th, 2010 at 2:11 am

49 JGabriel Says:

@JMY:

I just saw on Anderson Cooper 360 with a headline that asked if Obama wanted the oil spill to happen. WTF?

New meme from Fox / Brownie. Robert Gibbs politely ripped the Fox correspondent a new one at today’s presser over it.

Odd to hear that Anderson Cooper is repeating it though.

.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:16 am

50 maus Says:

DIAF, NYT. I can’t wait for the old media to choke to death on iPads.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:18 am

51 Chemist Says:

@marcopolo:

While I agree with your overall sentiment, it is actually not true that peer reviewed research has made a compelling case for class size reduction in all situations as you seem to imply.

The Tennessee STAR experiment demonstrated that significantly smaller classes benefited students in elementary school. However, so far it seems that high school students do not benefit from smaller classes in any meaningful way (though to be fair, to my knowledge no study like T-STAR has been performed at the HS level).

May 5th, 2010 at 2:19 am

52 JGabriel Says:

@Mnemosyne:

But someone ignorant enough to think that The Bell Curve represents any kind of actual science has probably never heard of either of those [books].

True enough. I only knew of them because I remembered Scott Fitzgerald alluded to the Stoddard book in The Great Gatsby, using it to illustrate Tom Buchanan’s “patheticness”.

.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:19 am

53 gwangung Says:

@Mnemosyne: Actually, the tightest parallel, come to think about it, is biologists and Philip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial. Same pseudo-logical arguements, totally unencumbered by any knowledge of science, statistics or experience in the field.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:28 am

54 Martin Says:

There are some bad public schools out there, but overwhelmingly the best students applying to the top public universities come from public high schools. There are good privates, but most of them are pretty mediocre. What much of the public fails to realize is that most of those kids that get kicked out of public schools wind up in private non-profit and for-profit schools. That’s part of why they suck up a lot of the public funding, and it’s why many private schools underperform their public peers.

Sure, if you are going to send your kid to Choate, all you need to do is worry about is your kid commingling with the Goldman Sachs riff-raff, but rank-and-file privates are as much filled with kids with behavioral problems and drug histories (often trivial ones, mind you) as with the sort of ideal aryan Romneyite 16 year-olds that mom and dad are usually envisioning.

The exceptions are in key super-upscale urban markets like NY, DC, etc. You know, the places where the Villagers send their kids. They’re far from representative of the norm. I mean ‘Maryland county where I live’. How many Senator’s kids are they looking to pick up, I wonder?

May 5th, 2010 at 2:38 am

55 de stijl Says:

@soonergrunt:

I don’t know South Korean politics from shinola, but does the South really want to “resolve” the issue with the North? Wouldn’t the cost of integration be fairly staggering for decades?

@Walker:

If ancient Egyptians didn’t have wheels, does that mean their chariots were anti-gravity too? Cool!

May 5th, 2010 at 2:40 am

56 MikeJ Says:

That is one hell of a stache on Stoddard. Of course every time I see his first name my brain edits it to Slothrop. Different sort of curve.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:43 am

57 mclaren Says:

@Comrade Luke:

And I know this is going to rub people the wrong way, but: I detest Jack Welch.

Seconded.

Most people don’t know what Jack Welch’s great “accomplishment” at GE really is. Ready for it? Okay, here it comes…

Jack Welch’s great achievement at GE was to get GE into the predatory loan business. Yes, that’s right, GE capital, Jack Welch’s predatory loan division that operate storefronts specializing in 300% title loans to dirt poor black people in inner city ghettos, now accounts for 70% of the profit of the General Electric corporation.

Well, no fucking surprise, buckaroos. At 300% goddamn interest, no wonder GE Capital is raking in the bucks.

If there were any justice in this world, Jack Welch would be stripped naked, tattooed with the words USURER on his forehead, and run through the streets of the blighted urban communities whose populations he pillaged while the victims of his GE Capital predatory loan scams hurled rotten tomatoes and putrescent lettuce at him.

If you want the low-down dirty story of Jack Welch’s rapine and vampiric bloodsucking of America’s inner city poor, take a look here. Or just google “GE Capital predatory loans.” You’ll projectile-vomit.

May 5th, 2010 at 5:47 am

58 Phyllis Says:

@Comrade Luke:

“For-profit” schools are charging people 2-4x what public schools cost, and they’re giving out useless degrees. I mean, there were some women on the show who got pediatrics degrees whose only expose “in the field” was going to a day care FFS.

Real-world example: The sister of a gal that works in my office ‘graduated’ from an on-line, for profit program that provided her a ‘certification’ as a teacher’s aide. She paid $600 for a worthless piece of paper, when all she really had to do was take the Praxis test at $60 to meet SC requirements.

May 5th, 2010 at 6:13 am

59 Bb Says:

@JGabriel He wasn’t repeating it, but CNN has a habit of using very annoying question mark headlines. It was an interview with Brown, who did not come off well.

May 5th, 2010 at 7:01 am

60 flukebucket Says:

@Walker:

“Ancient Egyptians did not have wheels and pulleys, so they must have had antigravity technology”

Damn it man. You are ruining it for the rest of us!

May 5th, 2010 at 8:33 am

61 matoko_chan Says:

tim is right.
Balloonjuicers are just as freaked out by IQ as the wingnuts are by global warming.
You don’t like the results on between group differences in blacks and whites so you go wilin’ out on the scientists and science, never considering that that Murrays book deals with other between and within group differences that you COMPLETELY ignore.

On education, Murray is absolutely correct.
We have know since the 50’s that parental involvement is the major discriminate in student performance.
You and the wingnuts are isomorphic on this…..they blather about vouchers, you blather about “social justice leveling”.
You are equally retarded.
The reason charter schools work is that they select for and sometimes force parental involvement.

May 5th, 2010 at 8:41 am

62 Third Eye Open Says:

@Comrade Luke: I loved the slimy lobbyist who tried to spin the fact that these “colleges” spend double what they do on faculty, on marketing, by trying to equate education with perfume. Oh, and don’t forget their idea of turning a rehabilitation clinic into a for-profit college. I mean, when a former-prostitute realizes that her degree is useless and she is now $30-60K in school debt, what do you think she is going to do to get by? Fucking vultures…

May 5th, 2010 at 8:42 am

63 matoko_chan Says:

Both sides want to force education into their model…the right wants schools subject to free market capitialism with vouchers, you want to force social justice SES leveling…...that is why you hate the idea of IQ soooooooo much.
Because you can’t fuckin’ level the genes.
Both sides practice educational romanticism and America’s children get screwed.

The apotheosis of educational romanticism occurred on January 8, 2002, when a Republican president of the United States, surrounded by approving legislators from both parties, signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, which had this as the Statement of Purpose for its key title:
The purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments.
I added the italics. All means exactly that: everybody, right down to the bottom level of ability. The language of the 2002 law made no provision for any exclusions. The Act requires that this goal be met “not later than 12 years after the end of the 2001-2002 school year.”
We are not talking about a political speech or a campaign promise. The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average. I do not exaggerate. When No Child Left Behind began in 2002, the nation already possessed operational definitions of proficient in the math and reading tests administered under the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, pronounced “nape”). NAEP is seen as the gold standard in educational testing. Only about 30 percent of American students were proficient in either reading or math by NAEP’s definitions when No Child Left Behind began. In other words, by NAEP’s standard, all students are not just to be brought to the average that existed when No Child Left Behind was enacted. All of them are to reach the level of students at the seventieth percentile.
Many laws are too optimistic, but the No Child Left Behind Act transcended optimism. It set a goal that was devoid of any contact with reality.

And now…..i hear a LOT of people saying we need teacher merit pay, and need better teachers.
YOU FUCKIN’ RETARDS!
That is exactly the same thing….not content with forcing all american kids to be “above average” we are going to force all american teachers to be “above average”.

I hate you all so much.

May 5th, 2010 at 8:54 am

64 soonergrunt Says:

@Yutsano:
There’s no way this ends well if the South Koreans retaliate against the North. It’s entirely possible that China did this and the South knows that and will hit DPRK anyway. I doubt it, but it is a possibility.
Smart money is on some Nork general pulled this on his own to distract Kim Jong Il from something else that will result in a dead successor to KJI, and if it sparks a war, so much the better.
God knows if the ballon goes up, the blood will be knee-deep.

@de stijl: There’s no doubt in my mind that the South have been closely studying the German reunification and the following decade-long recession in that country, and comparing likely outcomes with their own situation…and shuddering.
Of course, if you’re what passes for a government minister in DPRK and you know the end is nigh, do you want to be under the tutelege of China or your fellow Koreans?

May 5th, 2010 at 9:02 am

65 Barry Says:

@tim: “It’s telling how some of you here come unglued at the mention of The Bell Curve…absolutely unglued. ”

And it’s far more telling how some of you are still supporting a debunked lie.

May 5th, 2010 at 9:26 am

66 Barry Says:

@matoko_chan: And it’s whatever the f*ck you are, matoko_chan. What did you claim to be – a math person? Well, we now know for sure that was a lie.

May 5th, 2010 at 9:33 am

67 Barry Says:

@matoko_chan: “That is exactly the same thing….not content with forcing all american kids to be “above average” we are going to force all american teachers to be “above average”.

I hate you all so much. ”

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, pooooor little racist.
It must really, really hurt to see a black man on TV as the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and other blacks and women running around doing things just like they had a right to.

May 5th, 2010 at 9:38 am

68 Barry Says:

@soonergrunt: “Of course, if you’re what passes for a government minister in DPRK and you know the end is nigh, do you want to be under the tutelege of China or your fellow Koreans? ”

And if you’re what passes for a government minister in DPRK, and you’ve been raised and obtained (some degree of) power in an insane system, and you’re anticipating major changes in this insane system, where ‘major changes’ involve lots and lots of executions….......

There must be a 100% rate of ulcers and reactive psychopathy in the upper echelons.

May 5th, 2010 at 9:40 am

69 micah616 Says:

@matoko_chan: A link to AEI? Are you fucking serious? Seriously?

And I’ll ask you again: How do you decide who is what in regards to race?

May 5th, 2010 at 9:43 am

70 Quackosaur Says:

@matoko_chan:

Um, okay. Couple of things.

First, unlike IQ, we can measure SES quite easily (assuming we have the appropriate data). Everyone who uses it knows what it means. It does not depend on a test. It is not controversial.

Second, why are you so up in arms about making all the children “above average”? Sure, you could claim that isn’t possible, but you’d be missing the point. Granted, I have no love for NCLB and its one-size-fits-all approach to education, but to act as if these benchmarks are the “average” level of ability that a student should possess doesn’t make sense. They are minimums that the government has determined students should meet. By exceeding the standards, the students do not suddenly became “above-average,” simply minimally capable. In fact, unless the test is defined as attempting to distribute student scores as a normal curve (a la the SAT), what you’re trying to argue makes no sense.

These tests are what students should know, not what students know relative to each other.

May 5th, 2010 at 9:45 am

71 Mnemosyne Says:

@matoko_chan:

We have know since the 50’s that parental involvement is the major discriminate in student performance.

I didn’t realize that parental involvement in education is both genetically determined and linked to skin color.

I learn something new from you every day, matoko_chan.

May 5th, 2010 at 10:07 am

72 matoko_chan Says:

@Barry: i absolutely love Obama.
i worked on his campaign and did phone banks and campus GOTV. i sent money to his campaign.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.—niccolo

@Quackosaur: “proficient” on the standardized test is defined as “above average”. the language of NCLB SAYS “at a MINIMUM, proficiency”.
can’t you fuckin’ read????

May 5th, 2010 at 10:08 am

73 matoko_chan Says:

Cole I think you should ban me.
Your commentariart is composed of illiterate retards and IQ denailists that argue from emotion and magical thinking….exactly like wingnuts.

May 5th, 2010 at 10:10 am

74 Mnemosyne Says:

@Quackosaur:

Don’t forget, our “expert” here had never heard of the Flynn effect and had no idea that IQ scores have been rising for years—yes, even for those genetically stupid black people. So because she’s never heard of it, it’s not happening and we’re all totally retarded for trying to inform her about actual facts and research.

May 5th, 2010 at 10:12 am

75 JGabriel Says:

matoko_chan:

illiterate … denailists

Oh, the irony!

.

May 5th, 2010 at 10:29 am

76 General Egali Tarian Stuck Says:

@Mnemosyne: I just think Matako is young, impetuous, and currently full to the brim with book learnin’. I once had a running argument with a college classmate that a clump of Fescue might have something akin to a soul. I didn’t win that argument, neither did my friend. We did amuse our intellectually captured selves however.

May 5th, 2010 at 10:34 am

77 Quackosaur Says:

@matoko_chan:

Oh, I can read (at least that’s what the standardized tests I took years ago told me). And “proficient” for the standardized tests doesn’t mean “above-average” because its definition can vary from state to state; that is, the states define what they consider “proficient,” which is what counts for NCLB. See What’s Proficient. Though it is from AFT, so it might be biased.

According to your reading of NCLB, “proficiency” is the minimum standard. Whether or not it reflects the average is beside the point because they’re not measuring averages but mastery of material.

P.S. – If you think we’re “illiterate retards and IQ denailists that argue from emotion and magical thinking,” why do you need Cole to ban you? Do you lack the self-control to just not visit this website and comment?

May 5th, 2010 at 10:38 am

78 Ohio Mom Says:

Just to connect a few thoughts floating around this thread:

The for-profit diploma mills that rake in the big bucks (ever check their stock returns?) are a model for the neo-liberal dream of privatizing public schools (and this was dreamed up by Milton Friedman).

From their perspective, what’s not to like? Private, for-profit elementary-high schools will be a big, new source of profits. They’ll break up the unions in one of the last big unionized sectors and in doing so, weaken a core Democratic constituency. They’re dumb-downing a large portion of the next generation, because the curriculum is turning into teach-to-the-test and not much else—believe me, I have a kid in a very high-rated suburban district and it’s happening here.

What’s more, privatizing shools removes/erases an entire level of democatic government, because that’s what a school system is, a local government, overseen by elected representatives, aka the school board, the management of which is transparent, (e.g. open records). When you replace representative government with private corporations, what’s that called again? Right on the tip of my tongue, starts with an F…

NCLB feeds into it all. First, it’s a big new profit center for the private companies that make the tests and all the test prep materials. Second, it provides “evidence” that public schools are “failing.” There’s no test everyone is going to pass, especially when it’s rigged.

Kids who are still learning English as a second language have to take science tests in English, and think about all all those unfamiliar words (Meiosis, Mitosis, etc). Kids with cognitive disabilities have to take the tests (in my state, less than 2% can be excused). Kids who are sick, kids who have a loose tooth that day and are obsessed with pushing it back and forth and have no attention for anything else…

That’s why they are called “high-stakes” tests. One bad roll, one bad score and you’re out.

May 5th, 2010 at 10:44 am

79 gwangung Says:

@matoko_chan: This is rich, coming from someone who dismisses the expertise of people who’ve studied measurement theory and construction of testing instruments that are so widely used in “IQ debates” and ignores the insights of people who’ve actually conducted research in the area that she so blithely assumes expertise in.

May 5th, 2010 at 10:54 am

80 JGabriel Says:

Already reposted.

.

May 5th, 2010 at 11:41 am

81 S. cerevisiae Says:

@matoko_chan: How cute! Someone who actually thinks IQ tests measure intelligence.

May 5th, 2010 at 11:42 am

82 JGabriel Says:

I wonder when Matoko Chan will discuss and deal with the obvious thematic parallels between Murray’s & Hernstein’s work and that of early 20th c. racial eugenicists like Grant and Stoddard.

.

May 5th, 2010 at 11:44 am

83 slippy Says:

@tim: That’s because it’s a pile of fetid racist garbage masquerading as scientific theory.

May 5th, 2010 at 11:49 am

84 les Says:

@matoko_chan:

Well, since you’re obviously (by your own evaluation) brighter, better read and generally superior to the rest of us, you should be able to ban yourself. I don’t think many will mind.

May 5th, 2010 at 12:24 pm

85 Svensker Says:

@matoko_chan:

I hate you all so much.

That’s so bad for your blood pressure. My suggestion is that you stop coming around since it is bad for your health. Just thinking of you, dear.

May 5th, 2010 at 1:27 pm

86 Svensker Says:

But seriously, how DO you fix crappy schools? We live in NJ and have experience with school districts in 3 counties.

Hudson Co. was/is a Mob/machine stronghold and the public schools there were staffed by family members of mobsters whose only positive attribute was that they were breathing. The school district we were in had about the highest per capita spending in the state and 3rd from the bottom test results—all the teachers and the mobsters sent their kids to Catholic schools. The rest of us, who could afford it, sent our kids to private schools. There has been a growing attempt to wrest the schools away from the ruling cretins, but because of the union it has been hard to get those people out.

In Bergen Co, a rich suburb of NYC where all the banksters live, the public schools are excellent.

In Passaic Co. we have friends who are teachers in some of the poorest neighborhoods in northern NJ. The schools have a fair amount of money, but again, a lot of the teachers and administration are family connected and hard to oust due to the union and the power of those families. Needless to say, the teachers’ kids don’t go to those public schools either. The schools are pathetic. Our senator, Frank Lautenberg, grew up in those schools (before they were so desperately poor) and has a college scholarship he awards every year, but a teacher friend tells me that those usually go to a connected family member, not one of the kids who really needs it. The problem in these schools, again, is not money—the budgets are not low—it is that the money is not going to educate the kids but to enrich interested parties.

So if you have the money in northern NJ you can get an excellent education. If you don’t, you’re screwed. Money is not the problem—it’s who’s getting the money that’s the problem. How do you fix that?

May 5th, 2010 at 1:42 pm

87 jake the snake Says:

@Ohio Mom

This is exactly what I fear about vouchers. The wealthy elite gets a 2fer. They get a government subsidy to send their kids to the elite prep schools, and control the education of their future serfs.
Inner city schools will likely operate as a subsidiary of the prison-industrial complex.

Am I too cynical/paranoid?

May 5th, 2010 at 1:50 pm

88 Da Bomb Says:

@Quiddity: BINGO!!

May 5th, 2010 at 2:42 pm

89 Da Bomb Says:

@soonergrunt: And those words from Mein Kampf will be an absolute abject failure by 2050.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:51 pm

90 asiangrrlMN Says:

Charter schools are not the answer. My best friend is the director of an alternative high school, and she has all the stats on it. In MN, at least, charter schools are giving a lot of money to start up, are not tracked, do not have to follow the public school guidelines, and many fold when the money dries up.

In MN, charter school students tested worse than students from comparable public high schools, and racial and economic segregation in schools has intensified since the explosion of charter schools.

From the state government website, here is my citation. It includes many links.

May 5th, 2010 at 2:59 pm

91 Sour Kraut Says:

And I know this is going to rub people the wrong way, but: I detest Jack Welch.

Thirded (or fourthed or fifthed).

Don’t forget his other accomplishments, like throwing half of GE’s employees out of work, and financial practices that got the company convicted of multiple felonies during his tenure as CEO.

If corporations really were people, GE would be serving time.

May 5th, 2010 at 3:18 pm

92 soonergrunt Says:

@matoko_chan: Don’t go away mad, just DIAF. Really.

May 5th, 2010 at 3:25 pm

93 Sour Kraut Says:

This is exactly what I fear about vouchers. The wealthy elite gets a 2fer. They get a government subsidy to send their kids to the elite prep schools, and control the education of their future serfs.
Inner city schools will likely operate as a subsidiary of the prison-industrial complex.

Am I too cynical/paranoid?

Nope—this is the main appeal in some areas of the country. Although as the late Steve Gilliard pointed out, many private schools have stated publicly that they will not accept vouchers. Can’t have the riffraff thinking they can attend Whitington Academy just because they can afford tuition. If enough people take their vouchers and opt out of the public schools, the system will collapse. But there’ll be plenty of gov’t money freed up to go to private segregationist academies in the South.

May 5th, 2010 at 3:36 pm

94 Josh Says:

“You are equally retarded.” Whoa, MC, good way to demonstrate your interest in education and your expertise in the academic study of intelligence. Would you say we are morons, idiots, or imbeciles?

May 5th, 2010 at 5:36 pm

Speak of the devil

94 Responses to “Speak of the devil”

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