A report from the World Bank entitled "Education Quality and Economic Growth" begins:
"Schooling has not delivered fully on its promise as the driver of economic success. Expanding school attainment, at the center of most development strategies, has not guaranteed better economic conditions. What’s been missing is attention to the quality of education—ensuring that students actually learn. There is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population, rather than mere school enrollment, are powerfully related to individual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. And the magnitude of the challenge is clear—international comparisons reveal even larger deficits in cognitive skills than in school enrollment and attainment in developing countries."
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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10 comments:
Two statements worth noting:
Figure 4 Test scores, as opposed to years of schooling, have a powerful impact on growth (pg. 7)
and
Expenditure per student does not drive student performance differences across countries (pg 15)
Primary and secondary education are modern cargo cults. There is some strange belief that if we obey the forms -- put strange uniforms on children, put them in a room with an adult watching them, give them sheets of paper occasionally that they then mark and return -- something called "education" happens.
At the end of this process we give them a magic piece of paper and deem them "educated".
And having performed the rituals according the the grownups' rules, they sit on the ghetto street corners waiting for money to fall into their pockets, presumably after being shoveled through the bomb bay doors of airplanes passing overhead.
And because that paper entitles them to a job in the New Knowledge Economy we send their parents' old jobs to China and India.
Anonymous wrote “... Primary and secondary education are modern cargo cults. ...” Regarding the UK, I disagree. UK education aspires to being a Cargo Cult. In the UK, the educational Cargo Cult Wannabes do not even lay out a landing strip as it would contradict Cultural Marxism dogma; education, employment and productivity are deemed to be achieved by fulfilment of quota.
The horrendous prose and retarded format is preventing me from looking so I will ask someone hardier than I: does the report discuss the cause of cognitive disparities, and if it does, does it favor nutrition or genes?
does the report discuss the cause of cognitive disparities, and if it does, does it favor nutrition or genes?
I don't know either, but it is clear that nutrition plays a part, as do genes.
OTOH, I really like the Cargo Cult explanation.
Interesting reference Steve. They better watch out though, education-solves-everything is the dominant meme, and as we have seen from Watson and others recently, you don't mess the the establishment (who won't even admit to being the establishment.)
Steve, Anonymous is talking to himself again!!
Please notice also the article by Dr Wong in MankindQuaterly 1/2007.
The world bank report says that the problem with low cognitive abilities can partly be solved by increasing the quality of the education. But the report admits there are other reasons for low cognitive abilities besides the low quality education.
However the report does not talk about IQ at all - instead it talks about PISA-test scores. But as we know PISA test scores are higly g-loaded too.
In other words the report is based on the idea that a) PISA-scores measure the cognitive abilities quite well and b) through high quality school system you can increase the test scores.
Which probably is true because there is some environemental factor besides g behind PISA.
The report also say that the impact of an increase of average national PISA test scores by one SD has an affect on the annual rate of increase of GBP by 2 percent units which is quite much.
Also the report says 40 % of sambian and ghana school girls who have attendeed the school for 6 years and completed primary school cannot read a sentence of their own language.
Anonymous 11/25/2007 8:11 AM wrote "... cargo cult ..." I am of the opinion that this viewpoint has mileage. Please elaborate.
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