Racism? It's Not How Good; It's Skin Color

Nope, not even close. Hispanic and as dark brown as the bottom of your boots.

 

1) I'm only referring to the non-autistic. And even then, autism has yet to be demonstrated to be genetic.

2) Saying "I don't care a flip about anyone else" is the lies people tell themselves for the purposes of comfort, or is just another way of telling the listener to get knotted. It's simply bad behaviour, nothing more. Calling it a genetic disorder is a bit of a reach.

3) The neuro differences observed in impulsiveness do not explain a thing. All we know is that there is a difference - there is nil science demonstrating the CAUSE of that difference. Having said that, we do know that stress causes neuro changes .. so the likilihood that those differences are caused by environment are very high. Much higher than that they are genetic.

 

The problem is multi-faceted and has been accelerating for a few decades. Studies conducted in the 1970’s revealed young children exposed on a regular basis to watching television degraded their attention span so severely teachers were often trained to insert little breaks (adverts) in their lessons every five minutes. Now we have a generation saturated with distractions from mobiles to multiple forms of instant gratification. To make things worse there’s an idea abroad in education faculties that learning ‘should always be fun’. So glad I’m not a teacher today, especially in the US where many students are constantly apprehensive some psycho legally armed to the hilt is going shoot them.

 

Well, it's tricky. You don't want any child who makes an effort, to always be at the bottom despite everything they do. There are ways to address this, of course, and one of them is 'collectivity' -- being part of a winning team, even if only a small part. It's the feeling that every -- well, most -- Marines have, and other elite and semi-elite forces. Even if they're not terribly good Marines, to the outside world, they're still Marines.

I do think the education system with which I'm familiar -- the British one -- is over-oriented towards conventional middle class children, and, except for sports, doesn't have many avenues for high achievement for kids who are 'not academic', to use the polite phrase. You want goals which can be achieved through effort and will, even without much native talent.

If I were in charge, we wouldn't have a single big-bang exam for maths and science, but a series of increasingly-challenging exams, which you either pass or fail -- rather like the different grades in Music. If someone tells me they're a Grade 3 in Piano, I don't have to automatically assume they're pretty mediocre ... maybe they'll be sitting Grade 4 next week, and will continue to ascend the ladder of achievement. This is how it should be in maths and science -- some kids will never get beyond Grade 3, calculating how much Mrs Smith paid for her coat if it initially cost £145 but she got a 15% discount -- others will carry on until they're solving second-order partial differential equations. No one is falsely elevated, but no one has to automatically feel like a failure.

 

I think we're going to learn a lot about the biological influences, and not just correlates, of behavior, in the next few decades. My guess is that we'll see some fruitful convergence between the neurologists who are actually studying the chemistry of the brain, and the AI people who are studying complex networks.

In the meantime, best to be agnostic -- and in any case, it's all above my pay grade. I'm still weighing the evidence for the related, and easier to study, field of genetics and IQ, where it's obvious that there is a strong genetic contribution, but where other factors are also important.

Have a look at this abstract: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.4

 

Effort is what should be rewarded, not 'talent'. But there's a world of difference between completing a compulsory task, and actual effort.

 

One of my pet peeves is the phrase 'Maths is Fun!' -- positively Orwellian. If it were fun, you wouldn't have to insist on it. Rather, success in maths is satisfying, the way walking the Pacific Crest Trail, or completing a marathon is. Calling it 'Fun' is trivializing it.

I think modern technology both undermines and enhances learning. I love the way I can instantly show how a function's behavior changes when I alter a parameter, using graphing software. On the other hand, yes, they're always on their phones. And on the third hand, they can, with a bit of direction/encouragement from their teacher or tutor, do things like instantly look up what the densest element is, or find that wonderful video of Neil Armstrong dropping a hammer and a feather on the Moon, showing that heavy things don't fall faster than lighter things, absent air resistance. So it takes away and it gives at the same time. Not much we can do about it so we have to follow Chairman Mao's dictim and 'turn a bad thing into a good thing'.

 

I agree. I think we are going to learn a lot about biological influences in the next few decades (at least, I hope so!). I think the Western World will eventually catch up to the East in this regard, despite being so wedded to the idea of genetics that we had to learn it the slow way, battling fierce resistance all the way. Blame Western eugenicists, aristocratic thinking, and other wealth/safety driven confounders.

 

Any (non-brain impaired) kid can learn advanced maths.

 

Hispanic AND black? I'm not following.

 

Wrong. Your evidence-free assertion is thusly refuted:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...untries/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2f2fbff16ff9
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ds-racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html

 

It's not, actually. Asian kids are exposed to the same amount of technology/screen time .. and in many cases actually more of it, since being outdoors and doing sports etc is less of a thing during school years for most Asian kids. Yet they excel and excel.

The change isn't technology, it's parenting. That's why Asian kids are not negatively impacted by technology, because the parenting they receive has not deteriorated. Western parenting OTOH, has deteriorated dramatically.

 

Daily Mail - in the 1930s it endorsed Hitler

Washington Post - assured everyone it had definite proof of WMD in Iraq



Guatemala - murdered 200,000 Ixil Indians in a modern day holocaust.

no credibility whatsoever in your post

 

brown skinned Latino due to some Native American blood

 

I've lived in both groups, and so has my husband. There is NO contest. The intolerant nations are absolutely and unequivocally not white.

 

Raff will call you white. Aren't you on the same team as he?

 

Raff does not need me to speak for him.

 

Do you agree with him that Hispanics and Mongols (native Americans) are white? He absolutely insists upon it!

 

I gave actual sources, you gave nothing. And both sources were just reporting on a study from a third party. People who try to dismiss evidence with Ad Hominems have no credibility.

 

Surely this is what GCSE and Standard Grade in Scotland is all about. The kids get to take the test which is nearest their achievement level. I know in Scotland they got to take two so that they had a chance of making it at their best but also the back up of the other if that did not work.

 

That is just ridiculous and tells me you have never studied the subject.

 

Didn’t say it was.

 

Well then I must be a brain impaired adult.

 

You’re not alone mate.

 

Do English kids still learn the “times tables” by rote?