zlacker

There are questions that are not allowed to be asked and addressed because they are (often rightly) deemed racist. There are also questions that need to be asked that despite the racism still need to be addressed. But because there is no one size fits all, it doesn't matter. The only answers that avoid the questions are those which cannot be answered for many, many generations, and which also require racist policies to be enacted in order to be considered legitimate questions.

>>jimmyg+(OP)
Sorry, I don't follow.

>>dls201+j
HN isn't a place for every conversation, and this is one that people can't go slow enough to digest properly.

>>HKH2+T4
Let me try. I believe that are questions that pertain to race, culture, and education that are not inherently racist. There are many people who strongly disagree with that statement.

So, while it’s possible to have a discussion through slow media like monthly magazine articles, it’s almost impossible to have a constructive discussion on fast social media, e.g. HN.

>>dls201+j
Okay, I'll say what apparently everyone else is terrified of mentioning, for some reason.

Black people score lowest on IQ tests than any other population group in the world. It's been repeated the world over, dozens of times, over a minimum of 30 years, and psychometricians are dying to somehow disprove it, but have so far been unable to do so. You'll see a lot of assholes who've done absolutely zero reading on this subject post after this saying, "OMG THAT'S NOT TRUE", but if you actually go digging around in Google Scholar and sampling the research, you arrive at the same inescapable conclusion: the highest IQ individuals are Ashkenazi Jews, followed by Asians, followed by Whites, followed by Hispanics, followed by Blacks.

When people read this, they're bothered by it - and rightfully so, because it's troubling - but they don't know what to do about it. No one seems to know. No one seems to know because so far the research is pretty clear on intelligence, IQ, g factor, whatever you want to call it so you can sleep at night... but here's what we know so far:

1. You're born with it or you aren't. Some people have a high g factor, some don't.

2. There's nothing you can really do to "get smarter". Whatever you've got is what you've got. Research consistently shows you can move the needle a few points, and that's about it.

3. There's far, far more variance in population groups than between them, so while Black people collectively seem to score lowest, within that population, there's no shortage of genius-level Black people. Same for every other population group.

Don't ask me what to do about this; I don't know. That problem is beyond not only my capability, but my interest. I just know we have a problem and we need to look into it.

>>cbozem+fG
Yes, I've also read The Bell Curve. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with designing an education system. Lots of kids aren't going to be professional athletes, but they still manage to have fun kicking a ball around. The same is not true in mathematics, for instance.

Of course there should be a small part of the education system capable of identifying and guiding the geniuses... but it should be in the context of helping every student identify their internal motivation... which is really the only way to instill the critical thinking skills everyone seems so keen on.

>>dls201+J21
The missing piece is media-driven culture. But video games don't cause violence, according to studies, which clearly leads to the belief that music doesn't cause drug trafficking or gang violence or hyper-machismo otherwise all other cultural music would do the same for their respective demographics. Surely media depictions of success aren't emulated. There's no way that success in sports as a way out of poverty could be hijacked not just from the top down but from the bottom up as well. There is definitely zero association between complexity of sound and complexity of thought. There is no causal link between any of this, it's simply systemic oppression over the course of decades, no, centuries. We should, in fact, celebrate this culture more.

>>dls201+J21
> Lots of kids aren't going to be professional athletes, but they still manage to have fun kicking a ball around. The same is not true in mathematics, for instance.

Kids in my classes who are probably not going to be engineers are still having a lot of fun tinkering with engineering problems. Kids in my classes who are probably not going to be computer scientists are having a lot of fun tinkering with ARM-Thumb machine language. Kids in my classes who are not going to be number theorists or statisticians are still going to have a lot of fun playing with elements of number theory and frequencies of elements in English text in my elementary cryptography class.

Some will be superstars and decide they want to do things close to this in the future. Others will decide they want to do something completely different, but understand more of these different paths. And everyone can come away knowing that maybe they won't be at the top but they can still do hard things.

The key is: A) not having a preconceived idea of who's going to be good at something, and B) creating many axes students can differentiate themselves in the classroom, so that someone who is not at the top still has areas to strive and can be a valued member of the classroom community.