Lots of fun stuff here, such as a table on students by region in certain European countries. Some tendencies:
- For example, England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland all do about the same, but Wales lags, kind of like West Virginia in the U.S.
- Finnish-speaking Finns outscore Swedish-speaking Finns, although they both do well versus the world. A century ago, high achieving Finns like Sibelius and Mannerheim tended to come from the coastal Swedish-speaking population of Finland, but the Finnish lumberjacks have really come on in the world since then.
- Flemish-speaking Belgians outscore French-speaking Belgians who outscore German-speaking Belgians.
- Northern Italians outscore Sicilians.
- Madrid slightly outscores Catalonia in Spain.
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40 comments:
You can play with the data from PISA and other similar studies here.
I think you should try to have more Finland-oriented content for your many readers in Finland.
Finns are an intelligent and industrious people.
have more Finland-oriented content for your many readers in Finland
Write about alcoholism regularly then :-) Hey, has a very clear HBD angle, too!
But Finns lag a lot behind Scandinavians. It doesn't show up in these test scores but does so in areas of high achievement.
I'm surprised about Wales lagging.
For generations, Wales has produced many, many schoolteachers and scholars and exported them to England.Most English school children had a Welsh teacher or two.
Apparently there was a very great impetus to study due to a strong desire amongst the welsh for their children to escape life as coal-miners.
Jeff said...
I think you should try to have more Finland-oriented content for your many readers in Finland.
Finns are an intelligent and industrious people.
I agree -- both contemporarily and historically.
The brave Finns absolutely mauled the Soviet 'Red' Army during the Talvisota ('Winter War')!
If you export smart people long enough, you can start running out. I can think of 3 highly accomplished West Virginians off the top of my head: John Nash, Chuck Yeager, and Jerry West. Two live in California and one in Princeton.
West Virginia is like the Central Valley of California: it wouldn't lose so many of its top talents if it wasn't so close to fancier places to live.
"- Finnish-speaking Finns outscore Swedish-speaking Finns, although they both do well versus the world. A century ago, high achieving Finns like Sibelius and Mannerheim tended to come from the coastal Swedish-speaking population of Finland, but the Finnish lumberjacks have really come on in the world since then."
Yeah, this is really interesting. Traditionally the Swedish-speaking Finns have been an educated and wealthy minority. I really did expect them to score higher...
This not being the case, I wonder if maybe the 'pure' Finnish are somewhat smarter than Swedes, Norweigans and Danes. Genetically, that is.
Was the Swedish speaking-Finns tested in Finnish or Swedish?
Of the Nordic countries, Sweden and Denmark both got a big immigrant population - which Finland lacks. Just saying.
"- Flemish-speaking Belgians outscore French-speaking Belgians who outscore German-speaking Belgians."
Interesting. Anybody got a theory?
"- Northern Italians outscore Sicilians."
Well duh.
"- Madrid slightly outscores Catalonia in Spain."
Not suprised.
As a native of Eastern Kentucky, which is a lot like West Virginia, I was hoping we did a little better.
No such luck. The biggest name I could find who isn't a country music singer was Lee Majors.
Having the Six Million Dollar Man on our team is great and all, but he's no John Nash.
Steve, forgive me if this has been asked, or if it's obvious (I haven't looked at it yet), but do they rank countries by how they teach races? So in which country do blacks achieve the most? Which do Hispanics? and so on?
"West Virginia is like the Central Valley of California: it wouldn't lose so many of its top talents if it wasn't so close to fancier places to live."
Why doesn't it become a fancier place to live?
Jerry West's accomplishment had nothing to do with his intellect. Randy Moss is from WV also.
"Northern Italians outscore Sicilians."
Perhaps the least surprising thing I've read all day. (My father's parents were both from the Italian Alps.)
- JP98
In Swedish speaking schools of Finland there are relatively many children whose mother tongue is Finnish. They have lower average scores than children who are teached by their own language and thus lowers the score of Swedish schools. Swedish pupils succeed actually little better than Finnish in their high-school final exams due to their higher fluency in foreign languages. (Most are effectively bilingual and because of similarities in language Swedish-speakers learn English much easier than Finnish-speakers.)
Historically population of Finland consisted of Swedish and Finnish speaking peasants that have lived quite separately from each other. Then there was the upper-class all of who spoke Swedish, since it was the only official and respectable language in Sweden. Also in the mostly Finnish-speaking part of Sweden that is nowadays Finland.
These upper-class people did not came solely from the Swedish-speaking population. Most of them were Finns who learnt Swedish and adopted it as their language. Many of the upper-class switched back to Finnish during the language disputes in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Sibelius belonged to Swedish-speaking upper class but his family had a Finnish background, and Mannerheim was aristocrat whose family roots originated from Germany. Neither of them came from Swedish-speaking coastal areas.
People who live in Swedish-speaking coast are and have always been yokels just like the most of the rest of the population.
I take it North Korea didn't participate. I imagine because they were concerned how they would score in relation to South Korea. Smart people are such a neurotic mess. Too bad they're last on the only list that matters.
Yes, more Finland oriented content please! Anonymous: How does Finland lag a lot behind Scandinavians in areas of high achievement? The reason Finnish-speaking Finns outperform Swedish-speaking Finns is probably bilingualism (or semilingualism): 19 % of the pupils in the Swedish schools are not fluent in Swedish as their "main" language is actually Finnish - this affects their performance as the tests are in Swedish. On the other hand most of the immigrants are enrolled in the Finnish schools, but I guess the immigrant impact will show itself in the PISA results in a few years time. The reason high achieving Finns spoke Swedish in the past is purley historical as it was the language of the elite until the beginning of the 20th century. Language change was the only option for advancement in society. I also have to mention that this also applied to the "elite immigrants", like the ancestor of the very cosmopolitan Mannerheim (german).
(The region of) Madrid and Catalonia have populations that are similarly composed. The number of immigrants among school children must be about the same (somewhere between 20 and 30%).
The only difference lies in the origin of the immigrants: South Americans are heavily represented in Madrid, whereas Muslims and assorted Africans are more common in Catalonia (apparently, bringing in non-Spanish speaking immigrants was a scheme by Catalonian nationalists to keep Spanish from gaining importance at the expense of Catalonian).
Still: part of the gap might be explained politically. The Spanish "federal" states allows its regions to control education. Catalonia`s political caste is way more to the left and more seriously infected with the PC virus than Madrid´s (they are soooo cosmopolitan, you know?). In fact, Madrid has been controlled by the right-(economically)-liberal-trade-union-crushing-no-bullshit wing of the conservative Party for ages. Not so long ago the President of the region, a woman who goes by the name of Esperanza Aguirre, wanted a change in the law to hold parents responsible for offenses committed against teachers, and wanted to turn those acts into "offenses against the authority", as is the case with attacks on policemen. Criminal law is in the hands of the central, socialist governent, so nothing happens. You can see the difference in attitude, though.
Oh, by the way: the two worst performing terrotories in Spain were the autonomous cities of Ceuta y Melilla, where morrocans make up 50%+ of the population. The press here does not mention this, of course.
(The region of) Madrid and Catalonia have populations that are similarly composed. The number of immigrants among school children must be about the same (somewhere between 20 and 30%).
The only difference lies in the origin of the immigrants: South Americans are heavily represented in Madrid, whereas Muslims and assorted Africans are more common in Catalonia (apparently, bringing in non-Spanish speaking immigrants was a scheme by Catalonian nationalists to keep Spanish from gaining importance at the expense of Catalonia).
Still: part of the gap might be explained politically. The Spanish "federal" states allows its regions to control education. Catalonia`s political caste is way more to the left and more seriously infected with the PC virus than Madrid´s (they are soooo cosmopolitan, you know?). In fact, Madrid has been controlled by the right-(economically)-liberal-trade-union-crushing-no-bullshit wing of the conservative Party for ages. Not so long ago the President of the region, a woman who goes by the name of Esperanza Aguirre, wanted a change in the law to hold parents responsible for offenses committed against teachers, and wanted to turn those acts into "offenses against the authority", as is the case with policemen. Criminal law is in the hands of the central, socialist governent, so nothing happens.
Some people here may not know that Steve's blog is huge in Finland.
Yeah, But I'm Huge in Finland
As I see it, the many Finnish readers of this blog should demand--and certainly deserve--more Finland-oriented content.
Please send me ideas for Finland-oriented postings. I would like to have more.
Of course, mostly I'm looking for material where there's something funny and nobody else gets the joke. I'm not sure that life in Finland is quite as amusing in that regard as America.
Yes, more Finland related posts please. Comparing Finns and their neighbours is very interesting. All are intelligent, hardworking, concentious etc. people but Finns appear quite different. Instead of rehashing NAM socio-political dysfunction, it would be great if some posts could be on a successful group of people - the NAM posts become very depressing when it is time to fill in your tax return.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/33/8/46624007.pdf
"There is also significant performance variability within the United Kingdom and in general, the differences in performance within the United Kingdom are slightly larger than in other countries. For example the difference in the reading score of the top and bottom 10 percent of students is 246 score points in the United Kingdom, while for OECD countries on average it is 241. More strikingly, 77% of the between schools differences in student performance in the United Kingdom is explained by differences in socio-economic background. Among OECD countries, only Luxembourg has a higher figure (OECD average 55%)."
and
"Students who did not surpass the most basic performance level on PISA were not a random group and the results show that, as in many other countries, socio-economic disadvantage has a strong impact on student performance in the United Kingdom: 14% of the variation in student performance is explained by students’ socio-economic background (OECD average 14%). This contrasts with just 9% in Canada or Japan."
As a Brit I find this quite interesting. I've tended towards skepticism when people talk about the "class system" in Britain relative to the world, given the apparent openness of our institutions (at least to my perception), but this makes me worry that the differences in class culture in the UK maybe really are greater in size than the world average.
The report also gives more evidence that to me that the common British obsession with class sizes is pointless. I'll bet this obsession is driven by stupid sentiment that personal time with teacher and teachers having an individual relationship with students whereby they can tailor content to the student matters more than other factors that could be spent on. Probably envy over the idea that teachers will spend differential time with the more talented and/or interesting/interested students as well. Oh, and a money making racket for poor quality teachers.
Also generally interesting to all:
"However, the share of students with an immigrant background explains just 3% of the performance variation between countries. Among OECD countries that have at least 5% of students with an immigrant background, most show a larger performance gap in favour of native students than is the case in the United Kingdom. Only Australia, Canada and New Zealand show a lower performance gap between native and immigrant students than the United Kingdom (Figure II.4.3 in the PISA 2009 report)."
Which would seem to put negatively indicate towards both the idea of New Zealand and Canada and to a lesser extent Australia being elevated because of smart, Asian immigrants and other industrial nations being disadvantaged by the immigrants they have.
"I'm surprised about Wales lagging."
Something to do with the welsh-speaking areas maybe?
New Zealand broken down by ethnicity:
The order is science, reading, maths.
White: 555, 541, 537
Asian: 530, 522, 529
Maori: 487, 478, 476
Pasifika: 448, 448, 446
White scores are similar to Finland, both countries also had large gender gaps.
Topics for Finn uniqueness are: their socialism, Nokia and why there are not more companies like that in Finland, the Finnish comparatively high suicide/murder rate, why they kick ass against Russians, Finnish traditional courtship rituals (a girl in a barn), their saunas, black people and Finns, and why they are so far away from the global norm (truthful and less corrupt).
If you think of them as snow covered Smurf/Hobbit type people bearing high-powered rifles and living in their own world playing heavy metal music who do happen to make an impact globally then they do seem quite interesting.
Incidentally, New Zealand Pacific Islander’s scores are similar to Israel’s.
"As I see it, the many Finnish readers of this blog should demand--and certainly deserve--more Finland-oriented content."
My guess is that we Finns generally read much more blogs, newspapers etc written in English than do for example Spanish, French or German. There´s just not that much supply of high quality web pages in Finnish, Finnish being such a small language, and many people here understand English quite well. Steve´s blog is probably not the only American blog that is popular here.
In addition many Finnish nationalist/anti-immigration bloggers recommends Steve´s blogs to their readers.
But I think Finnish readers come here to read about what´s going on in America, not to read about Finland. There´s of course nothing wrong to write about Finland if there´s anything of interest, but it should be rather directed to American readers.
If you export smart people long enough, you can start running out.
I know this was said in a bit of tongue and cheek, but I wonder if this ever happened in history?
What were the biggest historical brain drains and how did they affect the countries in question? Define a "brain drain" by either smart people either leaving (of their own will or not) or being wiped out.
My candidates for study would include:
post-1804 Haitian Revolution
post-1915 Armenian genocide
post-1932 Ukrainian Holodomer
post-1940 Polish Katyn Massacre
post-1942 Nazi Germany Holocaust
post-1971 Uganda under Ida Admin
post-1980 Rhodesia/Zimbabwe
post-1989 USSR Collapse
post-1989 Eastern Europe
post-1994 South Africa
Please send me ideas for Finland-oriented postings. I would like to have more.
How do Fins in communities outside Finland do compared to those in Finland (US, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Russia)?
And whatsup with the Finnish-Japanese affinity?
Brain drains:
Mark Twain's 1897 article "Concerning the Jews" makes clear that Scots were considered entrepreneurial supermen at the time. Twain talks about how Jews have succeeded in business everywhere but Scotland.
Duvalier-era Haiti, with its black power ideology, saw a brain drain of the educated.
Guyana loses a huge fraction of its people to immigration to the U.S.
Brain Drain: In the 1960 post-Sputnik federal Project Talent, which tested 400,000 American high schoolers over two days, West Virginia did better than North Carolina, which isn't true on the NAEP these days.
Finnish traditional emigrants, especially from the culturally isolated north and east, historically did not do so well except possibly in Sweden - and even there, it was often only the kids that were acclimatized.
There are no noticeable differences between the respective national intelligence averages of the European states; neither are there any between the averages of various regions within a state. There could be some between one village and another!
Sweden does so badly here because of three things: (1) Teachers have low status and low salaries, so the best minds go elsewhere, (2) the pace in school is slow because "no pupil should be left behind", and (3) the schools are not well co-ordinated on the national level.
I would love more Finnish content too, as I'm of Finnish ancestry. Keep up the great work!
"Brain Drain: In the 1960 post-Sputnik federal Project Talent, which tested 400,000 American high schoolers over two days, West Virginia did better than North Carolina, which isn't true on the NAEP these days."
There has been strong migration out of West Virginia for decades. Ohio has been the number one destination with Columbus and Akron being the most popular urban areas. Here in Columbus, where I live, the heart of Buckeye country, it is common to see West Virginia University logos on cars. I would estimate that roughly a third of Columbus has rather recent (post 1945) West Virginia roots. Furthermore, I remember reading an article a year or two ago that stated that DC, Virginia, and North Carolina have also been popular destinations for Mountaineer migrants.
@Red Fox: And maybe if enough of those "Mountaineers" move across the mountains, we can finally reunify Virginia...
Sic Semper, the northern half of West Virginia appears drawn to Pittsburgh not Richmond. Lots of Steelers fans in those parts. Perhaps a state of Allegheny encompassing western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, and a sliver of eastern Ohio makes sense.
@steve - "- Northern Italians outscore Sicilians."
got those number for ya right here:
http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/north-vs-south/
hbdchick (^_^)
I wonder what PISA would make of this:
http://www.american.com/archive/2010/december/adding-up-the-differences-between-boys-and-girls
>>> "Northern Italians outscore Sicilians."
"Working with data from the PISA study (OECD, 2007), Lynn (2010) has argued that individuals from South Italy average an IQ approximately 10 points lower than individuals from North Italy, and has gone on to put forward a series of conclusions on the relationship between average IQ, latitude, average stature, income, etc. The present paper criticizes these conclusions and the robustness of the data from which Lynn (2010) derived the IQ scores. In particular, on the basis of recent Italian studies and our databank, we observe that : 1) school measures should be used for deriving IQ indices only in cases where contextual variables are not crucial: there is evidence that partialling out the role of contextual variables may lead to reduction or even elimination of PISA differences; in particular, schooling effects are shown through different sets of data obtained for younger grades; 2) in the case of South Italy, the PISA data may have exaggerated the differences, since data obtained with tasks similar to the PISA tasks (MT-advanced) show smaller differences; 3) national official data, obtained by INVALSI (2009a) on large numbers of primary school children, support these conclusions, suggesting that schooling may have a critical role; 4) purer measures of IQ obtained during the standardisation of Raven's Progressive Coloured Matrices also show no significant differences in IQ between children from South and North Italy."
http://italianthro.blogspot.com/2010/10/richard-lynn-further-refuted.html
What is your real name? Maybe I can reply you on your Facebook page.
"but Wales lags, kind of like West Virginia in the U.S"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretinism
"Earth deficient in iodine is most common inland and in mountainous areas"
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