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Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

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Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#401

Post by jimbokun »

genthree wrote: post #75
Avicebron wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring doesn't necessarily make their score higher, and there's also diminishing returns. Someone poor who do not afford private tutoring can also receive good score due to their natural talent and/or hard work in self-teaching/practicing. If these are outliers it isn't really meritocratic. If there 100 desired spots that are allocated by the exam, and 1000 students,…

That it tends to become a caste system with extra steps (which steps provide a defense of the system as “fair”) is one of the chief criticisms of meritocracy (and criticism of the idea is where we got the term itself)

So as a society do we want to have people performing tasks based on demonstrated aptitude to perform those tasks, or to have people performing tasks based on achieving certain social and political outcomes?

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#402

Post by jimbokun »

Geezus_42 wrote: post #96
chii wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

merit doesn't mean equal wealth spending to obtain a result. And it's not black and white. Someone rich spending a lot of money to obtain tutoring doesn't necessarily make their score higher, and there's also diminishing returns. Someone poor who do not afford private tutoring can also receive good score due to their natural talent and/or hard work in self-teaching/practicing. > universal SAT tutoring available to ev…

I think the point is that some start with an advantage when it comes to earning merit because by luck of birth they were born to parents with a lot of wealth. I don't think you can have a truly meritocratic system unless everyone starts on a level playing field with the same access to resources. That is not a system that exists anywhere on this planet.

To achieve that you need to implement some kind of Harrison Bergeron system.

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#403

Post by triceratops »

jimbokun wrote: post #393
triceratops wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wealthy parents tend to be wealthy because they are more intelligent Not "more intelligent", just "unusual in some way". People can be wealthier than average for all sorts of reasons unrelated to intelligence (as defined by IQ). Here's a sampling of them: Being social and good at sales. Most successful real estate agents I've met don't strike me as particularly brilliant. Working a boring job, living modestly, and…

A lot of those correlate with intelligence and “grit.” Being good at selling to people absolutely requires intelligence. So do many entertainment fields, and athletic achievement more than you might expect. Investing consistently in an index fund over 20 years requires a bit of intelligence and a lot of grit.

I defined intelligence up-front as IQ points. IQ isn't perfect but it's the best single measure of raw cognitive ability we have.

Grit is basically conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is not correlated to intelligence. [1] This is why the stereotype of the dim but methodical plodder exists.

Sales ability is obviously a thing, since there are successful and unsuccessful people. But being able to connect with people (EQ) is crucial to be good at sales. Likeable people make more sales than unlikeable people. Being likeable is orthogonal to IQ.

I'm not denigrating successful entertainers' and athletes' cognitive abilities. They are brilliant in their fields. That's not the necessarily same thing as IQ. I'd expect the IQ distribution among that population be the same as the general population. That means some of them are high-IQ individuals in addition to being world-class singers or swimmers or actors, but most are average IQ.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10416...

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#404

Post by jimbokun »

simonask wrote: post #391
WarmWash wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, behavioral genetics is the climate science of the left. If there are PhDs and university departments studying it, I'm not gonna be someone who sticks there head in the sand for the sake of their flavor of political identity.

[flagged]

What studies support your critiques?

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#405

Post by jimbokun »

mgfist wrote: post #62
keiferski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t wealthier families hire tutors to prepare their children? That’s what happens in the US with the SAT/ACT. I think you’d need free, universal SAT tutoring available to everyone in order to be more meritocratic.

Well nothing is truly meritocratic - even with free tutoring, kids will still have different genetics, different home environments, different upbringings etc.. Colleges in the US that removed standardized testing from their applications, in the pursuit of trying to be more meritocratic, found that fewer students from underrepresented backgrounds got in, not more. In hindsight (and to some in foresight) this makes sen…

You are confusing meritocracy with egalitarianism.

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#406

Post by jimbokun »

mikkupikku wrote: post #128
keiferski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t wealthier families hire tutors to prepare their children? That’s what happens in the US with the SAT/ACT. I think you’d need free, universal SAT tutoring available to everyone in order to be more meritocratic.

Tutors barely move exam scores, particularly if they're only hired for test prep. You can crush tests without cramming, tutors or any of that if you just pay attention in class and do all optional homework.

Yeah grades are mostly about grit.

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#407

Post by triceratops »

WarmWash wrote: post #216
triceratops wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wealthy parents tend to be wealthy because they are more intelligent Not "more intelligent", just "unusual in some way". People can be wealthier than average for all sorts of reasons unrelated to intelligence (as defined by IQ). Here's a sampling of them: Being social and good at sales. Most successful real estate agents I've met don't strike me as particularly brilliant. Working a boring job, living modestly, and…

Intelligence correlates highly with not having anti-social behaviors. So a lot of the time, it's not "being smart" that carries you to wealth, its avoiding the "disastrously stupid things" that stops you from being poor.

> Intelligence correlates highly with not having anti-social behaviors.

If we're talking about IQ, then there isn't strong evidence for this.

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#408

Post by jimbokun »

pxc wrote: post #63
aurareturn wrote: post #5

One thing I like about China's education system is the Gaokao entrance exams for universities. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, ugly, or beautiful. All it matters is how you score. It's as meritocratic as education can be.

Chinese education is also extremely constrained by the practice of "teaching to the test" to the point that the Gaokao indirectly stands in the way of innovation and reform in education. Schools doing interesting things to improve the quality of education are historically not very competitive on the Gaokao anyway (e.g., some unusual rural schools where students historically have bad prospects anyway and parents are o…

So what are aspects of being well educated not reflected in the Gaokao? How could those aspects be assessed as objectively and unbiased as possible?

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#409

Post by jimbokun »

steve1977 wrote: post #15
aurareturn wrote: post #5

One thing I like about China's education system is the Gaokao entrance exams for universities. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, ugly, or beautiful. All it matters is how you score. It's as meritocratic as education can be.

I don't know this specific exam, but most of these can be gamed in the sense of learning to the test. So depending on what training resources someone has available (e.g. rich parents who can afford tutors), I'd consider them only partially meritocratic.

Can you learn to the test without actually learning the material?

Re: Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching

#410

Post by jimbokun »

pxc wrote: post #70
xyzzyz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the case, then why doesn’t everyone get the top a score? The answer is, of course, that it’s not so simple, and you can’t just learn to the test. That’s just like with sports: anyone can learn how to train himself, and anyone can improve with training, but in the end, some people will end up faster, and some people will end up slower.

The question is what you're measuring. You can have a test that gives you whatever distribution of scores you like. But is the thing it measures competency in the subjects it tests, general intellectual ability, familiarity with the test format, etc.? The worst negative outcome is usually subordination of learning itself to preparing for the exam, which can happen even when the gatekeeping function of an exam still w…

Then what’s a better, unbiased method of assessing students?
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