"Class divide hits learning by age of 3 " says a report

[mylittleimps]

very sorry if there is already a thread couldn't see one though

www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2100032,00.html

do you agree? i realy don't know if it's helpful to label children at this age (perhaps it's the labelling that decides the future result, if johnny is only expected to do x he will only achieve x type mentality i.e. you get what you expect out of people)

Grr, I'm not sure on IQ. I think we are about 50% our genes and 50% our environment and that two clever people tend to have a slightly less clever child is how the genetics usually works but not morally if you're both say 130 would the child be 90, more likely 120. So it tends to hover just below what you are.

And then we've had times when people have thought every child is a blank slate and take any child from a deprived home whatever its genes and place it in superlative conditions with an excellent diet etc and it will be as good as anyone. I don't think that's so. The human genome project is showing so very many things that go back to our genes that we never even suspected.

Xenia - actually, from a global, economic perspective we need our population to be as developed as it is genetically able to be.

Xenia - I don't know where you get your theory on two very bright parents have slightly less bright children from. That is not what I have read... or observed .

I thought it has been shown that IQ is carried on the female chromosome so that the best indicator of future intelligence would be to have a mother with a high IQ?

I didn't find what I was looking for Anna but I thought that was so that there was kind of a drag down effect on IQ which is why you can't really superbreed despite my sister's good choice from a US sperm bank.

I found this which is interesting...

"One of the few fixed stars in the creed of orthodox psychologists is a belief that people are born with a certain degree of intelligence and are doomed to go through life with the same I. Q. Strange and heretical to these orthodox ones are reports that have come during the past six years from a little group of psychologists at Iowa's State University in Iowa City. Last week, before a conference of distinguished educators in Manhattan, Iowa's Psychologist George Dinsmore Stoddard laid astounding proofs supporting Iowa's heresy: that an individual's I. Q. can be changed.

Iowa made this discovery accidentally. In 1917 a Mrs. Cora Bussey Hillis, whose own children had died and who argued that the State should pay as much attention to the welfare of children as of hogs, got the State Legislature to establish a Child Welfare Research Station at the university.

Supported by State appropriations and $1,000,000 from the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Fund, this station followed the development of Iowa City children from birth. In its nursery school, the station found that children's I. Q.s rose as much as 20 points. This was unexpected, as it had always been supposed that an individual's I. Q., which measures not knowledge or acquired skills but ability to learn, represented his native intelligence and remained constant.

Five years ago the station's staff began to pay particularly close attention to illegitimate infants whom it placed in foster homes. Average I. Q. of these 275 children's mothers was 87, and their fathers were mostly unskilled laborers with little education. The parents were rated "poor stock" by every standard.

Their children were placed in better than average homes. After one and one-half to six years, the children were tested and their average I. Q. was 116, equal to the average for children of university professors. More remarkable still, 30 children in the group, who had feeble-minded mothers, also had an average I. Q. of 116.

That a bad environment works the other way was proved in a study of 988 orphan age children, whose life was educationally and socially impoverished. Their I. Q.s fell. Crowning study was one conducted in an orphanage where some children were given nursery-school training several hours a day. The school children gained in intelligence while their comrades who did not go to school lost and some became feeble minded. The station's researches show that young children's gains in intelligence tend to be permanent.

Moonfaced, enthusiastic Dr. Stoddard, 41-year-old father of four, is director of Iowa's history-making Child Welfare Research Station and its 60 psychologists. At the conference last week, conducted by famed Ben D. Wood's Educational Records Bureau and several other groups, Dr. Stoddard reported not only his facts but his conclusions about how intelligence is created:

1. Dull parents are as likely to produce potentially bright children as are clever parents.

2. The ancient controversy over nature v. nurture is beside the mark, for intelligence depends upon nature & nurture.

3. Changes in intelligence occur mostly in young children.

4. The way to improve a child's intelligence is to give him security, encourage him in habits of experiencing, inquiring, relating, symbolizing."
   www.time.com/time/magazine/articl e/0,9171,788896,00.html

Xenia - I can go along with the theory of no superbreeding - there was a report a year or so ago in the Economist about how autism and Asperger's were becoming worryingly common in Silicon Valley where "Excel" type brains were breeding with each other. They produced extreme "Excel" brains ie Asperger's - so not superhumans.

Ah but Peachy, the Beckhams are in that niche class known as the "Nouveau Riche" (lower class but with pots of money) I firmly believe that wealth does not dictate class.

Xenia, it's this whole "children are a blank slate, we just need to be in control of the slate at an earlier age" way of thinking that seems naive, I think there are limits to what can be achieved and the limit in a lot of cases is genetically imposed at conception.

That's not to say that each youngster shouldn't have access to sufficient resources to achieve to the best of their capabilities.

Surely every child is born with an unknown genetic potential (nature) and, in an ideal world, would be offered every possible opportunity to develop that potential (nurture)?

And some children, from homes with reasonable resources and conscientious parents, get a great start in life and don't need government intervention in the form of state nurseries for the under-threes (in fact, that would be deleterious to their development versus what they would get at home) and some children ought to be whipped straight from the maternity ward to a nursery and have only controlled interaction with their negligent and under-resourced parents... and then there are a multitude (majority) of cases in between where we don't yet know where the dividing line is between the benefits of nurture at home and nurture in an institutional setting?

Grr that was simply a person chosen to demonstrate variances in type of IQ. Plus I am using class here as in the RG class system which reflects, if its not controled by, income.

Xenia I think I know what you are referring to, its the tendency of gentics tro average towards a mean isn't it? A sort of normalising effect. Cant remember where I rqd that, but did do Psych at Uni last eyar so maybe heard it there.

Anan thats an intersting point, there's huge panic in the ASD world at,m as some research ahs shown that ASd's are up to (or even exceeding in some estimates ) 1% of the population. Nobody knows why- my theory is that if ts true that women want partners who are a long term security bet, then those most equipped to cope in the current IT climate are therefore better bets despite being nerds than they were at any time rpeviosuly in history- social skills not counting for as much these days (MN is an example of thsi I gues, alternative social spheres). There is evidence to suggest a genetic link in ASD's, sot hat woudl follow

Peachy - yes, your theory is similar to the one I read about - "Excel" type brains are particularly valuable (and hence attractive) in this day and age, and inbreeding between "Excel" type brains produces more ASD. Very worrying. But then, as we know, nice, kind people who make the world a more harmonious place and manage families selflessly (SAHMs) are worthless parasites according to many...

LOL- wonder where that quote is fom

ASD 9at teh higher end of the spectrum obv) ar really just an environmental adaptation. They are The Future!

Peachy, yes that's the research I saw.

Children aren't blank slates by any means which is why adopted children and natural children are often academdically very different from each other in the same family, never mind how different my non identical twins are.