What a tragic waste of your life that I wholeheartedly encourage.

We’re watching the world burn and no one seems to care about anything besides what sort of creamer they want in their coffee or whether their shoes go with their shirt. Because of people like you who refuse to address reality, people like me are giving up in droves and simply withdrawing into our own personal worlds and waiting for the implosion.

Actually I don’t know that there’s such an underclass. That’s why I’m asking you for some evidence that there is.

Quibbling over the specific point does not negate the clear reality one does exist.

Well if it is a “clear reality” you should have no trouble finding some evidence to support your assertion.

As for the rest of your points, you appear to be arguing that the only value of education is to prepare someone for a career, and thus there is no point in further educating people who are destined to be janitors and dishwashers. This implies remarkable confidence on the ability of schools to identify those students who are destined to be janitors and dishwashers, and also ignoring the value of education in life more generally, from working out the correct dose of medicine to take to arguing with the local equivalent of IRD to providing mental occupation in leisure hours.

My own opinion is that schools show considerable variation in how effective they are with students of a similar background level, depending on the effectiveness of the school. We do have systems that have been shown to be replicable for drastically improving the effectiveness of schools, even with kids of low-IQs. See http://www.projectpro.com/ICR/Research/DI/Summary.htm for an example. The first priority should be to roll those out, so every primary school student gets a state-of-the-art education. The next priority, seeing if those techniques can be adapted for high school systems. If some kids can never get to college, then perhaps they can at least cite Rudyard Kipling’s “If” poem to themselves when times get tough. And perhaps later on we will figure out how to teach vector calculus more effectively.

I do agree with you that we are using socially-valuable resources in a way that may well even harm the people we are trying to help. That’s why I energetically advocate for a proven education system like Direct Instruction rather than mindlessly chucking more money at education.

So, Asher, your response is “I can’t do it, therefore no one can ever do it”

Do what? I have no idea what “it” means in this context. Endlessly drill kids to memorize a mathematical formula for which they lack the capacity to apply in real world situations? Sure, I can do that. But it won’t affect their life outcomes one iota.

So a question for you. Is there any evidence that could lead you to change your mind that low-IQ kids can be better educated?

What in the world do you mean by “better educated”? Better educated … for what? I’m not sure that it’s methodologically possible to do a study on how many people actually use their education in their careers. I’ve seen estimates that only about 15 percent of college grads actually use their degrees in any field relating to their actual courses of study. It could be 25 percent, but I can’t image it’s anywhere close to 50 percent given that within a few years of graduation over half of all law school graduates are completely out of the legal field.

So what is the purpose of “education” today? Why, to sort people out by IQ and personality, given that it is functionally illegal to use aptitude and personality assessments in the hiring process. Yes, the vast bulk of “education” is simply used as one big, long, hideously expensive IQ and personality test.

Even people who actually use the degrees they earn in a field usually have to learn most of what’s useful while on the job; specific technical fields excepted. My girlfriend is a certified HR generalist with a BA specializing in human resources. She’ll tell you that 90 to 95 percent of the stuff she does after 5 years in the field has been learned in the working process. So, why did she even need the degree and certification? To demonstrate that she possessed the basic talent to enter the field.

Back to your specific question. What would lead me to change my mind about lower IQ people being able to access more education? Let’s take dishwasher. I will agree that it might be useful to teach dishwashers calculus if you can demonstrate that they could use anti-derivatives to calculate exactly how much dish soap it takes to coat 100 plates at .2 mm.

I’m sorry if that comes across as mocking, but what exactly am I supposed to say here? The world needs dishwashers and janitors. There are many people out there with no greater aptitude beyond that of becoming those things. If you really want to “educate for” something for people with IQs of 80 then teach them basic life skills and try to create communities where they can flourish rather than pretending that they could be rocket scientists with just a little more time.

I also asked you earlier for some support for your assertion that “society is far better off from investing in the children of the 70 percent in the middle over the 15 percent at the bottom.”

This is like asking someone to provide empirical evidence as to why $16,600 per taxpayer per year is spent by the federal government. That’s simply not how politics works. What we do know is that there is an underclass that is pretty much constitutionally incapable of contributing to society. Whether that is closer to 20 percent or closer to 5 percent is not explicable through one particular study. My concern is by refusing to admit this we are consigning those on the cusp to oblivion by not designing policies to meet their specific needs that will make them contributing members. Instead, we try to ram them through a system of policies that cater to the middle 70 percent and then walk away when they don’t turn out like everyone else.

I think 15 percent is a good starting point, but someone else might think 10 percent is more suited to our social needs. Quibbling over the specific point does not negate the clear reality one does exist.

I also asked you to explain how I am harmed by the “under-class” becoming better educated.

I really already answered this, but I’ll reformulate. For starters, as I noted above, people aren’t merely “educated”, rather they are “educated for something”. And a large part of my position, which you seem to studiously ignore, is that stressing formal classroom learning socially devalues people who are in fields that do not utilize such formal learning. If “education” actually affects specific outcomes then I’m fine with that, provided we get a decent return on that investment. My problem is that we are using socially valuable resources in ways that not only do nothing but that actually hurts the people we’re intending to help.

I also asked you earlier for some support for your assertion that “society is far better off from investing in the children of the 70 percent in the middle over the 15 percent at the bottom.” I also asked you to explain how I am harmed by the “under-class” becoming better educated. Can you please answer those questions?

The question of educational outcomes relative to investment has been studied to death. We don’t need to grope and guess. The data is around the world that at developed countries’ spending levels there is no particular relationship between the two. Some sources:
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7761
http://www.bowgroup.org/harriercollectionitems/Ed%20Spend%20Final.pdf
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2007/wp07263.pdf
http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2008/07/todays-chart.html

Now I doubt this is a rule of nature. It is plausible that we could have an education system where funding was converted into outcomes at a reasonably reliable level. It’s just that we don’t have one now. First priority is to get an education system that works well with the funding it has now.

With current school systems, we pay now and we pay later.

Since God is Dead I really don’t think that option is available.

I’ll be damned.

Surely this depends on the quality of the formal education? As I understand it, an IQ of 80 is not the same as a limit on the ability to form new memories. It strikes me as plausible that a kid with an IQ of 80 who keeps getting exposed to new knowledge in an effective formal education system would keep benefitting from it, even if they were unable to ever draw the subtler insights that a smarter child can.

Not really. I spent 6 years as a part-time private tutor (well-paid) for kids from mostly a nearby prep school and one of the better high schools in the Seattle area. Alot of the kids were in the 1150-1400 SAT range, old test, so I had a good percentage who were AP Calc. But I did get some parents who wanted their Juniors to finish Algebra 1, so I had a very good panorama of the variation in ability.

Could I get almost everyone to laboriously memorize the Pythagorean Theorem (PT) and then apply it on a sterile sheet of paper? Sure, after lots of drilling. Did they remember it 2 weeks after they scraped by with their 2.1? Not a chance. It was gone. The ability to apply an abstract concept in many different scenarios like the PT is something that requires a fairly decent IQ. Now what is possible is that someone could apprentice as a framer and learn the PT over the course of a couple of years and eventually it would be an inextricable part of their routine as a framer.

But guess what? Take them out of that specific context and they wouldn’t have a clue in how to use the PT because they’re not able to recognize the general pattern.

Can I get alot of students to pass a non-AP Calc class? Sure, with lots of one-on-one. Intuitively, I’d say that maybe half, or even a little bit more. What percentage would actually be able to go beyond rote memorization and actually understand the concepts and follow the abstract patters? Maybe 20 percent, but I’d say it’s probably less than fifteen.

So if the “under-class” becomes better educated, I am harmed how, precisely?

But they won’t become better educated. They’re incapable of being “better educated” in the sense you mean. Now if you’re talking about basic life skills: how to plan a budget, how to avoid massive debt, how to accumulate the capital to start a family, etc., then that’s a different matter. FA Hayeks’ point that central government expenditures for one group will almost always be against others; governmentally spent dollars is always a zero-sum game.

Government expenditures spent in one area are expenditures not spent in another area.

HH

Because we have such poor data on educational outcomes relative to investment, we are all groping and guessing on this issue, but it is indisputable that writing kids off leads to explicit downstream social costs. The low-performing dropouts are going to inflict direct and indirect costs that likely exceed the “savings” achieved from shortchanging them in their schooling. Pay now, or pay (more) later.

So many targets, so little time … first, what the hell is up with this mindless “writing kids off” I keep hearing about from so many otherwise intelligent people? What in the world does that mean? If it does mean anything it means placing a kid capable of only rudimentary reasoning and expecting them to sit through 12 years of classroom education when they only have the cognitive capacity to access 5. It means making professional careers such an ideal that you demean contractors, self-employed and entrepreneurs.

I have a high-end yacht detailing service for which I charge 42/hr plus materials. I also have a dual Finance/Econ degree from the U of Wash. What reaction do you think I get from girls when I tell them I “detail boats”? Trust me, it’s often somewhere between bemused empathy and utter scorn, despite the fact that I make better money than most of those “professionals” and have an absolutely dynamite work environment, stay tan and fit, and have my choice of customers.

The problem is that all of this obsession with “education”, please note the scare quotes because a lot of it is just masturbation, you end up demeaning all the jobs that don’t require a formal education.

Finally, I’m not sure what sort of “pay now” you’d like to see. Early childhood programs like Head Start are complete failures. They do nothing, and some evidence seems to suggest that they instill a negative emotional prejudice against classroom time versus similar students not in these programs. But if there is something that can be done it is certainly not by throwing more money at kids for whom we are completely already wasting valuable social resources. Teach life skills (see above).

Since I like to stick things in people’s eyes, and I’m very very good at it, I will leave you with one disturbing thought: societal control of breeding will become a political issue. I cannot tell you the numbers of people who in private want “licenses” in order for people to have kids. And I live in Seattle, where 4 in 5 of my contacts are Democrats.

What’s been called “eugenics”, a misnomer btw, will be on your radar screen sooner than you think. A government (at all levels) that can take 60 percent of each dollar earned, which for me happens at around 1700 hours, can be used to prevent people with IQs of, say, less than 85 from breeding.

Have a good night.

No, more like common street observation [which perhaps Milt drew upon as well, but to which I draw no line]. Omnivores are somewhat experimental and opportunistic. An unlocked Lexus LX with the keys in it provides a different opportunity in a “bad” neighborhood than it would in the “good” elite gated one, as does say a community political event in those same two places. One wants to attain, the other already has so desires to preserve and protect.

You sound like you’re channelling Milton Friedman here.

Asher: Someone with an IQ of 80 is probably capable of absorbing no more than 5 or 6 years of real, productive formal education.

Surely this depends on the quality of the formal education? As I understand it, an IQ of 80 is not the same as a limit on the ability to form new memories. It strikes me as plausible that a kid with an IQ of 80 who keeps getting exposed to new knowledge in an effective formal education system would keep benefitting from it, even if they were unable to ever draw the subtler insights that a smarter child can.

The Direct Instruction curriculum that I keep rabbiting on about is designed to work with kids with low IQ, by making the teaching very unambiguous. The rubric I linked before (http://www.zigsite.com/PDFs/rubric.pdf ) shows this. It’s all about leaving no room for misinterpretation. Apparently high-IQ kids tend to be better at figuring out the right interpretation than low-IQ kids. This may be because of the effect of “g” directly (g being whatever lies behind IQ scores), or it may be because high-IQ kids on average come from backgrounds where they are more likely to be exposed to various concepts that help them make sense of schoolwork. Or both, of course.

What is good for the middle-class, today, is almost by definition bad for the under-class and vice versa.

So if the “under-class” becomes better educated, I am harmed how, precisely? What are these dreadful bads I must face? Better doctors – as the initial pool of potential trainees is wider? Helpdesk operators who know the difference between 7 cents and 0.7 cents? Improved online poetry?

But my point is that society is far better off from investing in the children of the 70 percent in the middle over the 15 percent at the bottom. That is in the general interest of society.

Support for this assertion being?

You assume that an extra dollar will have an impact on the future welfare of society. There is no evidence that, at developed-country funding levels, an extra dollar has any impact on educational outcomes. I therefore find it doubtful that an extra dollar will have an effect on the future welfare of society.

The OK kids will be OK with modest expenditures. The prodigies and handicapped will show a big swing in results per dollar.

This assertion is wrong. If prodigies and the handicapped showed a big swing in results per dollar, we should see the countries and schools that spend more per student having better results than the ones that spend less (even if the OK kid doesn’t respond at all, the improvement in the prodigies and handicapped should bring up average test scores). We don’t see this.

The argument about dollars is a waste of time until we have an educational system that converts more dollars to better outcomes. We don’t.