Steven Pinker: What Colleges Should Teach

What should Colleges teach? Steven Pinker offers this approach:

I don't think it's that difficult to outline a positive vision for higher education, something that neither legacy universities nor UATX have been able to do. Here's my own attempt (from my New Republic essay "The Trouble with Harvard https://newrepublic.com/article/119321/harvard-ivy-league-should-judge-students-standardized-tests):

"It seems to me that educated people should know something about the 13-billion-year prehistory of our species and the basic laws governing the physical and living world, including our bodies and brains. They should grasp the timeline of human history from the dawn of agriculture to the present. They should be exposed to the diversity of human cultures, and the major systems of belief and value with which they have made sense of their lives. They should know about the formative events in human history, including the blunders we can hope not to repeat. They should understand the principles behind democratic governance and the rule of law. They should know how to appreciate works of fiction and art as sources of aesthetic pleasure and as impetuses to reflect on the human condition.

On top of this knowledge, a liberal education should make certain habits of rationality second nature. Educated people should be able to express complex ideas in clear writing and speech. They should appreciate that objective knowledge is a precious commodity, and know how to distinguish vetted fact from superstition, rumor, and unexamined conventional wisdom. They should know how to reason logically and statistically, avoiding the fallacies and biases to which the untutored human mind is vulnerable. They should think causally rather than magically, and know what it takes to distinguish causation from correlation and coincidence. They should be acutely aware of human fallibility, most notably their own, and appreciate that people who disagree with them are not stupid or evil. Accordingly, they should appreciate the value of trying to change minds by persuasion rather than intimidation or demagoguery."

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The Problem with Experts

Jordan Peterson explaining Hayek’s “knowledge problem” argument. Many experts lack humility and willingness to adapt based on new facts, especially when they are economically and bureaucratically entrenched. The crowd is often wise and many experts fail to keep tuned in:

The proposition that central planning will work is the proposition that you can substitute one expert mind for a million distributed expert minds.

That’s obviously not the case, because each person is going to have knowledge that pertains to their locality that isn’t accessible to everyone.

“So it’s much better to let everyone make the decisions and sum them.

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Ignorant Educators Disparaging IQ Facts

No, I don't like that some people are innately more intelligent than others. It doesn't seem fair. If I were the creator of the universe, I would have given everyone the same tools for learning and achieving. That said, I often read and hear people disparage IQ as a measurement. Without any basis, they claim that it is a poor measure of intelligence when IQ is actually one of the most valid and reliable measurements in all of psychology. Next time I hear that it is a poor measure, I'll ask the person: "Assume that you are about to start a new for-profit company in a competitive industry. You need to hire 100 employees. You can either hire 100 people with IQs of 90 or 100 people with IQs of 130. Now choose."

BTW, I don't know my own IQ. Therefore, I'm not writing this article from any sort of perch. And I guarantee that whatever my IQ might be, there are many people out there with significantly higher IQs than me.

I don't know what drives this belief among teachers, but it does seem to be another instance of social contagion, much like "phonics is bad" and "gender affirming care for children is good and necessary." Just because it's taught in school by well-meaning teachers doesn't mean that it's true.  There is also a vast literature disparaging IQ as an illegitimate measure. My first encounter with a strong attack on IQ was Stephen J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. 

What's the truth about IQ? Steve Stewart-Williams Recently commented on Education's Elephant in the Room, by Russell T. Warne (at Quillette), offering these excerpts:

The differences among students’ educational achievement start early and increase as children grow. By 5th grade, the average American classroom has children whose achievement in mathematics and reading ranges from the 2nd grade level to the 8th grade level or higher. It is simply impossible for a single teacher to prepare lessons in every subject that allow every student to learn new information. Some sort of ability grouping, in which students at similar levels of achievement are taught together, is necessary...

What causes these individual differences in intelligence and achievement that educators are so determined to deny, downplay, or ignore? …

This is where educators get really nervous, because the major cause of individual differences in intelligence seems to be genetics. The heritability of IQ varies, but in wealthy, industrialised countries, it approaches .80 in adults, which indicates that eighty percent of individual differences in IQ are associated with individual genetic differences. In young children, heritability of IQ is lower, but it hits .50 at about age ten and continues to increase into adulthood before levelling off…

In a British survey, only 29 percent of teachers thought that genes were one of the top three factors affecting student achievement. In other words, the scientific research shows that genes are usually more important than every environmental cause combined, and yet most teachers don’t even believe that genes rank in the top three causes of educational achievement…

I subscribe to the website of Steve Stewart-Williams, The Nature-Nurture Nietzsche Newsletter. He offers lots of rigorous research along with citations and his own insightful commentary. I highly recommend his work, including his article, "12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ: here's a lot of IQ misinformation out there." '' He comments:

But like many ideas in psychology, IQ is the subject of a lot of misunderstandings and misinformation. Some believe that IQ tests are basically meaningless - that they don’t measure intelligence in any real sense or tell us anything about IQ-test takers except how good they are at taking IQ tests. Others go further, arguing that IQ research is malign pseudoscience aimed only at justifying discrimination.

None of these claims is true! Psychologists studying IQ have learned a great deal about this form of intelligence over the last century, and have an excellent track record of replicating their results. They know how to measure IQ; they know how nature and nurture help shape IQ; and they know how IQ helps shape people’s lives.

In this post, I’ll outline twelve key findings from IQ research that everyone ought to know. Whether you’re a fan of IQ or a skeptic, I hope you’ll find something here to surprise and challenge you!

His first topic (of the 12) dovetails with Warne's article:

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). IQ is nearly as heritable as physical traits like height. And the only other psychological traits with similar heritability levels are psychiatric conditions like autism and schizophrenia.

Below I am setting out the other eleven topics, but I recommend the article in its entirety:

2. The heritability of IQ increases from childhood to adulthood.

3. IQ scores have been increasing steadily for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect.

4. IQ predicts many important real-world outcomes

5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes

6. Higher IQ is associated with lower rates of most forms of mental illness.

7. More generally, IQ tests are among the most reliable, predictive measures in psychology – one of the field’s crowning achievements.

8. Despite its excellent psychometric properties, many people are allergic to the concept of IQ. Ironically, this includes many intellectuals.

9. Perhaps as a result of the academic allergy to IQ, there’s some evidence that researchers are less likely to publish studies showing a link between IQ and students’ grades: the reverse of the usual publication bias for positive findings.

10. The antipathy to IQ is unfortunate.

11. IQ tests have other potential benefits.

12. Last but not least, here’s a list of ten common myths about IQ, from Stuart Ritchie’s book Intelligence: All That Matters.

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Michael Strong: The Problem with Compliance in Education

Fantastic conversation. I transcribed it:

Interviewer:

"I was looking at these John Taylor Gatto quotes, and I've got another one. It's a little long, but I'm going to read it because I want to get your reaction to it.

'I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my 30 years of teaching, schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me, because 1000s of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers, aids and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.'

So how can that be how can individuals be good and the system be rotten?"

Michael Strong:

"So good question.First of all, John Taylor Gatto, essential reading, his "Seven Lesson School Teacher." Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year. Absolutely essential reading for anyone in education, as that quotation is one of my lodestars, absolutely. Going back into how the system can be when you think about it, you've got, first of all, we all know we don't want to work for two bosses or three bosses. Everybody in a school system is working for the school district governed by the school board. They also have State Department of Education rules. They also have federal Department of Education rules, and these rules are not always consistent.

So to start with, we have three different bureaucracies all imposing compliance going back to the school district level. Once I knew a wonderful superintendent, and he said the worst part of the job is he had to hang out with other superintendents, and part of it is there are politicians in charge of bureaucracies. How do you maintain tenure as a superintendent of a school district? You avoid as many controversies as possible, and you basically keep these school board members happy while not making any waves. And so you become an expert in being a politician, enforcing compliance and not doing anything too different. There are superintendents that try to do little innovations, but it's so risky. They're by nature, necessarily risk averse, and you can go down the ranks. So which principles win? Well, compliance is number one. Doing well by kids is number 3, 4, 5, 6,

You know. And again, even teachers. There's a joke that the teachers of the year are the ones that break all the rules. If your job is to teach this curriculum in this manner, in this timeline, it's all about compliance, and everything great in the human history is by creative and entrepreneurial people who have broken rules, who've decided to do what they believe is right or interesting, often with little evidence, often with social pressure against them. That's the whole story of innovation. And so you can look at school as an anti innovation machine. And yet, going back to Gatto's point, everything valuable is created by innovators. And so it filters out anybody who would want to do something differently."

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The Parallel Stories of Lucy Calkins (the Disparagement of Phonics) and Anthony Fauci (COVID)

I've been listening to outstanding podcast titled "Sold a Story,” an eight-part investigative series hosted by journalist Emily Hanford. Launched in October 2022, “Sold a Story.” This podcast examines the widespread use of an ineffective (and often counter-productive) reading instruction method used in many U.S. schools. This method, heavily promoted by Lucy Calkins, author of the “Units of Study”, was one of the most widely used reading curricula in U.S. elementary schools after its introduction in 1987. This method, which intentionally discourages the use of phonics, has been so firmly embedded in grade school curricula that it continues to be used in many schools despite decades of cognitive science showing that kids learn far better when they are taught significant amounts of phonics. “Sold a Story” exposes how millions of children struggle to read (even now as adults) because schools relied on Calkins' thoroughly debunked theories, often referred to as "balanced literacy" and "whole language."

The focus of the “Sold a Story” is this: Why do so many American schools continue to use reading curricula rooted in such a flawed idea that children can learn to read primarily by guessing words using context clues or pictures, rather than systematically decoding words through phonics? Calkins' approach, influenced by figures like Marie Clay and perpetuated by popular authors and publishers somehow ignored the "science of reading," research showing that explicit phonics instruction is a critical component for most children to become proficient readers. The series also highlights the horrific consequences of excluding phonics—65% of current U.S. fourth graders are not proficient readers.

[Note and Spoiler Alert: Lucy Calkins began incorporating phonics into the Units of Study for Teaching Reading curriculum with the release of her newest method, called the Units of Study in Phonics in 2021. This was in response to growing criticism, including the criticism levied by the "Sold a Story" podcast. Calkins' updated method includes phonics primarily in K-2 classrooms to supplement the core reading curriculum, aiming to address foundational skills like decoding. In her current method, phonics is still deemphasized for grades 3 and beyond.]

Lucy Calkins agreed to be interviewed by Emily Hansford in 2021 after previously rebuffing Hansford. For me, this interview was gripping--I've transcribed it below. What would Calkins say after causing such widespread damage to millions of children? Well, this interview revealed Calkins' lack of integrity and an unwillingness to fall squarely on her sword. She just couldn't bear to admit that she refused to look at the science of reading while creating and promulgating her flawed method. This willful ignorance occurred while Calkins was the nation's de facto rock star of reading education. For years, the science of reading demonstrated that her method was harming children by teaching them to pretend to read. Many kids are wired such that they learned to read despite the fundamental flaws of Calkins' original method but, as indicated above, many other students were left behind, some of them for life. The following is from Episode 6:

Continue ReadingThe Parallel Stories of Lucy Calkins (the Disparagement of Phonics) and Anthony Fauci (COVID)