Comments on: Brad DeLong discovers Cultural Capital

By: Kimmitt

Kimmitt — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 20:50:44 +0000

There really is a big difference between it being out there and it being lying around the house. After all, public libraries generally have excellent stores of fine highbrow fiction and nonfiction, and they are quite accessible. But if you don’t have it around on a day-to-day basis, it’s tough to come to like it.

By: theogon

theogon — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 03:05:12 +0000

I wonder what the effect of the internet is on all of this – after all, anyone with a connection theoretically has access to the highest of the highbrow. Not only that, but the most obscure reference or word can be accessed with equal ease. There’s still that “digital divide,” but I surmise the number of households with internet connections far surpasses those with print subscriptions to any of the above-mentioned rags.

By: brkily

brkily — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 22:05:51 +0000

trying to work through the above links I found this, the theoretical background is rich, “…while variations in educational qualifications may be closely related to variations in cultural competence, the relationship between educational qualifications and cultural practices cannot be explained solely by the operation of the educational system…” my 16 year-old just took a PSAT this morning, and i found this whole conversation to be a hoot! both intellectually fascinating and a huge relief from the whole nauseating politcal situation.

By: Scott Martens

Scott Martens — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 19:28:37 +0000

I didn't have the Times either as a kid - the magazines around our house were Road and Track, Hot Rod, Popular Mechanics, and Dad's smut collection, which he thought he had hidden but which I could find unerringly from about age 9 onwards. Playboy's pretty good for vocabulary knowledge if you actually read the articles. Penthouse less so. Hustler, no. However, some salesman did sucker Dad into shelling out for a Britannica when I was about 2, and it's the first thing I remember reading. I always figured that made a difference. That, and a private prep school. But yes, the point still holds - there is a remarkable overlap between the questions on the SAT, the literature read by the people who do the best on it, and the class most likely to send their kids to a prep school - far too remarkable to be a coincidence.

By: wood turtle

wood turtle — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 19:15:58 +0000

Around here, you have to be careful not to be a fish. Especially a hungry fish.

By: jake

jake — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 18:51:44 +0000

I recently was rejected from Harvard Law. I’ve taken several IQ tests and received very high scores. My LSAT and grades are good but not exceptional. The rejection is bullshit, IQ scores tell it all. Not only are they sufficient substitution for any conceivable measure of achievment, society should be reformed arounded IQ scores to obtain a more optimal distribution of the labor market.

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 17:42:18 +0000

The notion of cultural capital certainly sounds reasonable, but Brad’s suggestion that big words are the province of New Yorkers who read left-leaning publications is perhaps a bit too anecdotal to be useful. After all, each of those “high humanistic” words (except “straitened,” admittedly) also generates hits in the NY Post. Many were from the last month, a few were from the Sports section, and one was even from an article about XBox. Similar searches of other publications might find these words in use outside NYC as well.

By: atrain

atrain — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 17:11:16 +0000

Couldn’t get those links to work. Could you post the articles please?

By: Robin Green

Robin Green — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 17:11:07 +0000

That’s a very good point, jet. It’s probably because there are more teachers than parents, and therefore criticising teachers loses you less votes that criticising parenting. Cynical, I know. Of course, I’m not suggesting that the way to proceed is to rail against bad parents in the way that some politicians rail against bad teachers. Rather, parent education – and for that matter, relationship education in general – would seem to be a necessary first step. Why do (try to) we teach our children how to do algebra but not how to be a good parent?? Surely the latter is more important than the former, for most people!

By: wd

wd — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 15:39:50 +0000

LITMUS TEST!

By: jet

jet — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 15:37:38 +0000

dsquared, Wow, who would have thought. The key to human intelligence is hidden the depths the female reproductive system.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 15:23:22 +0000

Tsk, tsk, everyone knows that SAT tests measure “g”, a single uniform measure of human intelligence that is passed on genetically and determines who will go on to be a university professor and who will be a hewer of wood and drawer of water. Anyone who even implies otherwise is a sociologist, a “blank slate” anti-scientist, and probably believes in God. Unless, I suppose, it is at least possible that subscribing to the New York Review of Books alters your DNA, or that there is a gene-complex which codes for the Arts & Leisure section. In that case (and only in that case) would this view be acceptable.

By: jet

jet — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 15:21:52 +0000

My wife has one of her master’s in education and said that cultural capital wasn’t something focused on in her program. I’ve said this before here, but this seems like a good place to bring it up again. “Fixing” school systems seems more about parental education and involvement and less about if the student to computer ratio or teacher salary. Anyone know why parents aren’t the target of most of the eduation reforms? Are they the “third rail” of education?

By: Nicholas Weininger

Nicholas Weininger — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 14:50:40 +0000

One is reminded of the study Thomas Sowell quoted in several of his works, from 1969 (!), showing that the black-white income gap mostly disappeared if you controlled not only for education but also for parental subscription to newspapers and magazines and holding of library cards. If anybody cares to look it up, the source (according to my copy of The Vision of the Anointed) is Richard B. Freeman, Black Elite (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1976), Chapter 4.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 09:46:50 +0000

DeLong’s kids are very bright, by his account, and dinner table conversation in his household might be worth videotaping and selling to a select audience. I nearly aced my SAT’s without the benefit of the NYT, NYR or the New Yorker, but we had the Saturday Review, Life and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as two brilliant parents and a thousand some books on our shelves. The tests are used to predict which applicants will succeed in the bookish enterprise we call college. If we’re unhappy with the results we need to make changes to the process as well as the tests, though we’d probably do better by focussing on primary and secondary schooling, at least in the U.S. We really ought to make a second language mandatory in first grade or kindergarten.