Here's the front page headline in the NYT for the Hart-Risley study redux article I mentioned earlier:
Skill Gap Among 1-Year-Olds Adds to Push for Pre-K
By MOTOKO RICH 4:18 PM ET
A study found that at 18 months children from wealthier homes could identify images of simple words they knew much faster than children from low-income families.
By the way, wouldn't "Motoko Rich" be a great name for the Bad Girl in a James Bond movie?
1-year olds have "skills"?
ReplyDeleteHow about the insemination gap?
ReplyDeleteI volunteer to help solve this one.
ot - from pew:
ReplyDeleteThree-Fourths of Hispanics Say Their Community Needs a Leader
Most Latinos Cannot Name One
Three-quarters of Latinos living in the U.S. say that their community needs a national leader, but about the same share either cannot name one or don’t believe one exists, according to a new national survey of 5,103 Latino adults conducted by the Pew Research Center from May 24 to July 28, 2013.
When asked in an open-ended question to name the person they consider “the most important Hispanic leader in the country today,” 62% say they don’t know and an additional 9% say “no one....”
Overall, four-in-ten (39%) respondents say that U.S. Latinos of different origins share “a lot” of values, while another 39% say U.S. Latinos share “some” values and an additional 19% say that they share few or no values....
In another finding that reflects diversity within the Latino community on matters of values and identity, just one-in-five (20%) survey respondents say they most often describe themselves by the pan-ethnic labels “Hispanic” or “Latino.”2
A majority (54%) say they usually use their family’s Hispanic origin term (such as Mexican, Cuban, Salvadoran) to identify themselves....
That Darn Gap! That Darn Gap!
ReplyDeleteCan a year-old child's intelligence even be measured? And wouldn't Africans do better than Chinese at that age, since they mature faster?
ReplyDeleteWhen Jean Piaget gave talks spelling out the development stages of children's intelligence, he dreaded what he called "the American question": "How do we speed this process up?"
Black parents don't speak to their children enough.
ReplyDeleteI actually think they do. They say the same two words to their children quite a lot. One of those two words is "mother."
Man, reading the comments on that article makes you want to jump off a bridge screaming "it's hopeless!"
ReplyDeleteNot counting your comments Steve! I can't believe you snuck them past the censors.
Steve, thanks for starting your snarky though factual comment with "uh". All the snarky queers on the Internet write "umm" before theirs and it bothers me.
ReplyDeleteDan in DC
I've always been a fan of the ancient maxim "success breeds success".
ReplyDeleteNote the verb there. Breeds.
Before long someone will earnestly suggest a child-rearing social policy in line with that portrayed in The Giver. After all, the only way to ensure that children are raised properly is to redistribute them to parental units who can handle the job.
ReplyDeleteThe reason why so many people are economically stressed today isn't because they are being robbed blind.* No, the reason is that they aren't 21st Century enough - it's their own damn fault: they are damnably backward in their skillz. (They also persist in a worrying tendency to want to be paid for their work.)
ReplyDeleteListen up, you nonbillionaires - your toddler is a slacker just like mom and pop. The "skills gap" now officially includes 1-year-olds! This means that if junior doesn't understand trigonometry by age 3, well, it's more proof that America requires gazillions more $9/hour East Indian immigrants (and Jews from the seven crannies of the world).
The toddler thing is the reductio ad absurdum of the Chamber of Commerce / Thomas Friedman meme that "common Americans lack basic skills therefore America must open its doors to 85-IQ 3rd world peasants who will labor for less." Somebody tell Tom and his ilk they jumped the shark.
Going forward, if one still swallows the line that everyone who lacks 20+ years experience operating a laser-guided industrial lathe that is only 10 years old doesn't really deserve to eat, while Juanell down the street, whose only visible skill is producing bastards, does deserve to (on his dime), then one simply worships business sharks and the other elites as if they were God On High.
(* I did consider the source, but this article is informative as far as it goes.)
"NYT: "Skill Gap Among 1-Year-Olds Adds to Push for Pre-K""
ReplyDeleteSkill gap or skull gap?