Control
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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That's exactly the point. Only the smart kids would have ever gotten that test in 1900. Now anyone that can breathe is shoved into college.
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Student Loans and the SAVE plan
- Thread starter Sanrith Descartes
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Sorry, I thought you were making a different point. My bad.
Edit: I guess I find the average performance of students less important than the average performance of the total age cohort.
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Sanrith Descartes
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We need to make sure we are not mixing words. Smart and educated are two entirely different subjects. I view smart as the ability to learn and process information and to make intuitive leaps in logic. Educated is tied to levels of schooling (formal/informal). Also, 100 years ago the sample pool of kids being tested were predominately white in this country. This is not the case today in the US.
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Cad
scientia potentia est
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I think they think because only the top like 2% of students went to college before and now it's the top 20-25% that somehow people are stupider. They are dramatically smarter on average, but hey they got to make their points.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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The last hundred years of productivity improvements, improvements in literacy, improvements in education, reductions in crime, etc etc.
I'm sure test scores have gone up similarly but I'm sure you'll dismiss any and all test scores. /shrug.
What evidence would you like to see?
Control
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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All definitely driven solely by the increasingly impressive individual ability of the average American over the last 100 years?
If you believe that, you must also think that the entire average American has turned literally retarded in the past 10. No argument against that one though.
Either way, the goalposts have shifted so far from the original question that it's a completely different fucking sport now.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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Completely agree a lot of people have turned retarded on particular issues in the last 10 years.
What other questions did you have?
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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First off, what do you consider 'smart'?
I don't consider memorization any indication of intelligence, but this is often conflated as being 'smart'. There are many doctors and software engineers who are monkeys with a good memory. By Instagram metrics, they are 'smart' because they have paper and high paying jobs, yet not only stand on the shoulders of giants, literally cannot comprehend the work they had done in some cases centuries before. I also think that the person who crafted the Antikythera mechanism was probably a genius despite not knowing what electricity was or Beyonce's birthday.
If we consider 'smart' people to be a confluence of raw intelligence and education, and remove the memorization aspects that stem from a civilizational body of work as some sort of lame "I win because Wikipedia exists and therefore everyone in 2023 is a genius" forum trick, I do not agree that average people are 'smarter' today at all, because education specifically has suffered immeasurably. Not just for the average, but also the highly intelligent. Every football player or affirmative action entrant is a more intelligent person not being developed. That's not even taking into consideration general genetics due to demographic changes in these areas.
While people today may 'know more stuff', this is principally done through rote memorization and not detailed study of a field. This is demonstrated to me every day anecdotally, and is supported by countless peripheral studies and the show 'smarter than a 5th grader'. Admittedly, since education is a multi billion dollar industry, of course there will be no highly publicized critical look at the adapted Prussian education system's efficacy as it has been adapted over time to the civil rights regime and service economy in a post-industrial nation.
The test I posted isn't so much about the 'facts' it's about the process and capacity which requires both education and intelligence to pass. Just a simple thing like not having multiple choice is a non starter in 2023 outside of edge cases like a few certain degrees or a few remaining private schools.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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I'd expect someone who considers themselves smart to realize "smart" is the intersection between raw intelligence and the knowledge and context to use that. Having so many more people be educated and have tremendous knowledge is the first step to people utilizing their raw intelligence to do things only educated people could do.
You guys are so bent around the axle about "college" that you have turned on education as some kind of bad thing. Try to use some of that "smart" you claim to have and realize that current higher education can absolutely be run by a bunch of communist morons who are ruining it but it is still the best thing humans have ever done.
Cad
scientia potentia est
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Higher education in general, but doesn't surprise me you'd intentionally misinterpret to try to get some dig in.
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Cad
scientia potentia est
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What is passing? What did the students in 1900 answer on that test? How was it graded?
Yes I think they trivially could depending on the answers above.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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I'm not trying to get a dig in, you made that statement. I don't know what you mean by 'current' but I don't consider 17th century institutions that created modern industry and sciences to be 'current' just because they kept the name. Certainly no one educated in the last 40 years obtains a full classical education in the same way.
I also tend to find it odd the most successful people tend to either drop out of college early, or do nothing at all related to their field of study. Historically, non-college institutions like the US Navy or private companies used to train the best engineers in the world. In fact, if you go look at the reasons for NDEA 1958 which ultimately lead to the current modern college loan scheme, Eisenhower tried to 'catch up' colleges to the USSR of all places.
Sanrith Descartes
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I believe that standardized testing and its multiple choice questions is dumbing us down. Essay questions force the use of the brain beyond raw memorization ability. But of course essay questions are "racist".
Cad
scientia potentia est
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This is not true at all, you're looking at outliers and drawing conclusions. You're ignoring all the people who drop out of college early or do nothing at all related to their field of study who are earning jack shit.
There's a very strong correlation between level of income and education, period.
Edit: Should go ahead and say this all only applies to STEM, they could cut the rest of the college programs and it would improve the overall quality of everyone's education.