The latest Science: We modified the dictator game … and studied how inequality acceptance develops in adolescence. We found that as children enter adolescence, they increasingly view inequalities reflecting differences in individual achievements, but not luck, as fair, whereas efficiency considerations mainly play a role in late adolescence. …
You might be interested in a post that I have just put on my blog on education (anlagen):"School is a system: projects, tests, grades, within which what we are doing can be forgotten; you use your intelligence to survive: do what is necessary to survive the system and live your lives in the space around it, detached from the process."http://anlagen.wordpress.com/
perhaps constant testing implicitly reinforces the social hierarchy, but it could just be developmental. Also, as your reasoning abilities increase so does your ability for self-deception: i.e. "I'm better than other people, and better people deserve more." instead of the juvenile "I want more than he/she has."
testing is also for the teachers; it shows that they are doing something (the number 1 priority of a bureaucracy is to look busy.)Sometimes rationality is not the prime decision maker, it's ease of implementation, and it's very easy to generate paperwork.
Disclaimer: I am not an education professional or anything like that, although I grew up in a household full of pedagogy discussion.
I was homeschooled, and was given no formal (or informal) math instruction until 8th grade (In the US, so I was about 13 or 14.) From there, I took "advanced" math classes, ending with calculus in high school. I was never particularly good at the computational elements of math as taught in school, but I was always more than capable of understanding the concepts and operations, and I got good grades in math generally. I may be an anecdotal sample, but the question of "how much math do hunter-gatherers learn" is a strawman argument. Math is hard - in a society where math is unnecessary. In a society where we deal with money often, base our conceptions of self-worth on income, square feet and number of cars owned, (basic) math is easy.
To take this a little bit out of my own experience, I do remember long discussions of a study (conducted in a scandinavian country - sorry I don't remember more details) in which a group of students in public schools received no math instruction until early adolescence (around the same age of 13-15.) They were then given a rapid run-through of the math they would have learned during the intervening years. When tested a few years later, they received scores that were not substantially different from the norm (their peers, who had been given math instruction since entering school.)
Hunter-gatherers are not the only examples of people who aren't tested frequently. Similarly, not being tested frequently is not the only difference between them and us. Tests are a very specific (and judgmental) form of feedback, and I think that people are generally very capable of determining their own capacity. The need for tests is to allow outsiders to determine people's capacity, in order to rank them, set them on specific tracks, and generally control them. Small wonder that people who have been subject to this model of "education" are more likely to obey authority and accept inequality.
@Steve Sailer: Are you saying that knowing math and being able to quantify things one sees in the world helps one accept meritocracy
I'm saying that, as Barbie so acutely pointed out, math is hard.
Hunter-gatherers tend not to learn much math, so non-hunter-gatherer methods of learning math (such as being tested frequently, so you get feedback) may well be necessary.
BTW my problem with teachers testing and grading is that it creates a duel allegiance one to the students to help them learn and one to the overall society to grade the students. According to Deming duel roles are very difficult for people to balance such roles, they cannot do both well.
Professor Hanson,Testing at the classroom level (not state or national policy) to me seems to primarily serve two functions:(1) a paternalist function that helps the students, giving them a carrot/stick incentive to learn where the award is status, on the short term. I suspect many students learn better in a class with weekly quizes than just one final at the end.(2) payment in status and power to the teacher. I think many people become teachers to have a microsocial environment they dominate. This is different from some macrosocial end.
Professor Hanson,I think you're being sloppy by choosing a binary framing just because we tend to allow explainers to get away with them. Optimizing testing frequency to maximize student learning is a more interesting angle than the weird binary framework of frequent testing = bad for learning
@Steve Sailer: Are you saying that knowing math and being able to quantify things one sees in the world helps one accept meritocracy since it helps distinguish the concept from just a grab for power by the well to do?
Robin - what sources are these? If the proponents don't name them then the theory is effectively non-falsifiable, as whatever evidence I dig up along the lines I just did, the proponents can just claim "no, no. no, I wasn't referring to those sources of hierarchy and dominance, but to some others." If they're talking about work forces, were workforces more hierarchical and dominance-based than before the event of modern schooling? From books like Lady Barker's "Station Life in New Zealand", 1870, where she comments on how non-hierarchical NZ workers were compared with those from Britain, I'd say that workplaces have become less hierarchical and dominance-based.
I teach middle school in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, and I abolished grading from my classroom 5 years ago. It was the best thing I could have ever done for my students' learning. I blog about education everyday at www.joebower.org
Here is a page of blog posts where I document the anecdotal evidence and observations I made during this 5 year: http://www.joebower.org/p/a...
Tracy, the claim is not that schools create an absolute acceptance of all possible dominance, but that ex-students accept more dominance from certain sources.
Steve, as you know hunter-gatherers learn a lot.
Contempla, why would students be tested daily year after year in order to reveal a stable one-dimensional feature? Surely you could then just wait until a later age, test them once, and be done with it.
How does this square with the astonishingly close correlation between test scores and IQ? Is grading then simply a dampening function that operates on the variable IQ or, rather, its expression in learning?
The evidence strongly suggests that students learn better when they are not graded and certainly not when they are graded on a curve. (more)
Prof. Hanson cites the book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense. I looked in that book and saw that the only relevant citation they gave was an Alfie Kohn book. I haven't read that book but based on what I know of Alfie Kohn, I'm certainly not ready to take that on faith.
What would "strong evidence" that students learn better when they are not graded look like? Perhaps a number of schools that switched and subsequently had better performance on standardized tests? I doubt there are any examples of that. I'm willing to consider other forms of evidence, any suggestions?
I have more experience in education research than most people, and I am skeptical that eliminating grades from school would improve learning. As for Hanson's claim that one of the purposes of grades is to socialize students, I'm not ready to endorse it, but I'm not hostile to it either.
You might be interested in a post that I have just put on my blog on education (anlagen):"School is a system: projects, tests, grades, within which what we are doing can be forgotten; you use your intelligence to survive: do what is necessary to survive the system and live your lives in the space around it, detached from the process."http://anlagen.wordpress.com/
A super-cynical view:
perhaps constant testing implicitly reinforces the social hierarchy, but it could just be developmental. Also, as your reasoning abilities increase so does your ability for self-deception: i.e. "I'm better than other people, and better people deserve more." instead of the juvenile "I want more than he/she has."
testing is also for the teachers; it shows that they are doing something (the number 1 priority of a bureaucracy is to look busy.)Sometimes rationality is not the prime decision maker, it's ease of implementation, and it's very easy to generate paperwork.
Disclaimer: I am not an education professional or anything like that, although I grew up in a household full of pedagogy discussion.
I was homeschooled, and was given no formal (or informal) math instruction until 8th grade (In the US, so I was about 13 or 14.) From there, I took "advanced" math classes, ending with calculus in high school. I was never particularly good at the computational elements of math as taught in school, but I was always more than capable of understanding the concepts and operations, and I got good grades in math generally. I may be an anecdotal sample, but the question of "how much math do hunter-gatherers learn" is a strawman argument. Math is hard - in a society where math is unnecessary. In a society where we deal with money often, base our conceptions of self-worth on income, square feet and number of cars owned, (basic) math is easy.
To take this a little bit out of my own experience, I do remember long discussions of a study (conducted in a scandinavian country - sorry I don't remember more details) in which a group of students in public schools received no math instruction until early adolescence (around the same age of 13-15.) They were then given a rapid run-through of the math they would have learned during the intervening years. When tested a few years later, they received scores that were not substantially different from the norm (their peers, who had been given math instruction since entering school.)
Hunter-gatherers are not the only examples of people who aren't tested frequently. Similarly, not being tested frequently is not the only difference between them and us. Tests are a very specific (and judgmental) form of feedback, and I think that people are generally very capable of determining their own capacity. The need for tests is to allow outsiders to determine people's capacity, in order to rank them, set them on specific tracks, and generally control them. Small wonder that people who have been subject to this model of "education" are more likely to obey authority and accept inequality.
@Steve Sailer: Are you saying that knowing math and being able to quantify things one sees in the world helps one accept meritocracy
I'm saying that, as Barbie so acutely pointed out, math is hard.
Hunter-gatherers tend not to learn much math, so non-hunter-gatherer methods of learning math (such as being tested frequently, so you get feedback) may well be necessary.
BTW my problem with teachers testing and grading is that it creates a duel allegiance one to the students to help them learn and one to the overall society to grade the students. According to Deming duel roles are very difficult for people to balance such roles, they cannot do both well.
Professor Hanson,Testing at the classroom level (not state or national policy) to me seems to primarily serve two functions:(1) a paternalist function that helps the students, giving them a carrot/stick incentive to learn where the award is status, on the short term. I suspect many students learn better in a class with weekly quizes than just one final at the end.(2) payment in status and power to the teacher. I think many people become teachers to have a microsocial environment they dominate. This is different from some macrosocial end.
Talent privilege may blind you to (1).
Professor Hanson,I think you're being sloppy by choosing a binary framing just because we tend to allow explainers to get away with them. Optimizing testing frequency to maximize student learning is a more interesting angle than the weird binary framework of frequent testing = bad for learning
@Steve Sailer: Are you saying that knowing math and being able to quantify things one sees in the world helps one accept meritocracy since it helps distinguish the concept from just a grab for power by the well to do?
Steve, as you know hunter-gatherers learn a lot.
Math?
There are tribes where nobody can count past three.
Robin - what sources are these? If the proponents don't name them then the theory is effectively non-falsifiable, as whatever evidence I dig up along the lines I just did, the proponents can just claim "no, no. no, I wasn't referring to those sources of hierarchy and dominance, but to some others." If they're talking about work forces, were workforces more hierarchical and dominance-based than before the event of modern schooling? From books like Lady Barker's "Station Life in New Zealand", 1870, where she comments on how non-hierarchical NZ workers were compared with those from Britain, I'd say that workplaces have become less hierarchical and dominance-based.
I teach middle school in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, and I abolished grading from my classroom 5 years ago. It was the best thing I could have ever done for my students' learning. I blog about education everyday at www.joebower.org
Here is a page of blog posts where I document the anecdotal evidence and observations I made during this 5 year: http://www.joebower.org/p/a...
Tracy, the claim is not that schools create an absolute acceptance of all possible dominance, but that ex-students accept more dominance from certain sources.
Steve, as you know hunter-gatherers learn a lot.
Contempla, why would students be tested daily year after year in order to reveal a stable one-dimensional feature? Surely you could then just wait until a later age, test them once, and be done with it.
Robin
How does this square with the astonishingly close correlation between test scores and IQ? Is grading then simply a dampening function that operates on the variable IQ or, rather, its expression in learning?
The evidence strongly suggests that students learn better when they are not graded and certainly not when they are graded on a curve. (more)
Prof. Hanson cites the book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense. I looked in that book and saw that the only relevant citation they gave was an Alfie Kohn book. I haven't read that book but based on what I know of Alfie Kohn, I'm certainly not ready to take that on faith.
What would "strong evidence" that students learn better when they are not graded look like? Perhaps a number of schools that switched and subsequently had better performance on standardized tests? I doubt there are any examples of that. I'm willing to consider other forms of evidence, any suggestions?
I have more experience in education research than most people, and I am skeptical that eliminating grades from school would improve learning. As for Hanson's claim that one of the purposes of grades is to socialize students, I'm not ready to endorse it, but I'm not hostile to it either.
How much math do hunter-gatherers learn?
link goes through GMU's proxy server which breaks it for most of us.