At some point, you gotta realize a very simple thing:



That answers pretty much all the questions ever asked. Is it any wonder at all that donkeys can't figure out a basically logical thing such as this?

Compounded onto 'CJ's law', I remember a simple study or poll where of all people asked whether they were of below average, average of above average intelligence.

83% said they were of above average intelligence.

Molina

Taking a bird's eye view, people are becoming more intelligent, though. Until 100 years or so ago, long division was considered too advanced for school kids and wasn't taught until university.


ROFL - you are joking?

At my prep school (7-12yrs) I started Latin and Greek at seven, had French pluperfect subjunctives off by 10, was doing quadratic equations and using log tables (calculators were banned) at 11. I seem to remember that long division was taught in my local primary school (5-7).

Virtually every teacher in hard science or languages I talk to agrees that exams and the education received is far poorer now than in the 1930's...I was speaking to the Head of Manchester Grammar school a couple of years back (MGS is one of the top 50 schools in the country easily) and he tells me that in Maths the 11+ papers from the 1950's (for entrance to secondary school) were too hard for today's A level (uni entrance) students..

IQ scores (whatever the heck they mean) might be creeping up a few points due to better nutrition - but overall the 18 year olds of today are coming out of school with poorer grammar, maths, science and language skills than at any time in the past 100 years...yes they may have better 'soft' skills in empathy and know more about media studies, but they are less likely to be able to work out what a compound interest rate is..

My dad was a lecturer in Further Education (16-19 yr olds) and was talking to a maths lecturer who was a chief examiner for maths for a specific awarding body (something like that). Anyway, he showed my dad a copy of an O Level exam question from the 1950s which was identical to an A Level maths question of that year. Bear in mind that this was about 10 years ago.

I've probably acquired my cynicism towards education from my dad, but I'd say the education system has been systematically fcked.

Regarding a more definite concept of intelligence, if I remember correctly, intelligence is generally graphed over a normal distribution curve. Whether the curve is moved over time to fit results I don't think it could be an indicator of increasing intelligence because the language sections would probably become outdated.

And if there's one thing which completely screws the idea that intelligence is measurable across large numbers of people its the cultural bias within the test. Most psychologists are American or British and base their IQ tests on Westerners. The fact that people of non-western cultures would fare worse is obviously not because they are all thick, just that intelligence is a bitch to define in a manner that covers the entire human race.

Molina

i'm licking my chops on this one, but i'll try to be restrained:

- mass education has gone far off-course. teaching the fundamentals of reading, writing, math, and some civics content (the needs of most people in a democracy) have been replaced by weak "college prep" courses and even weak university degrees. all of this seems to be driven by the "business" of education. most people would be much better served with fundamental education to about 8th grade or so, some techincal/internship type of program after than, and then (this is key) the right/ability to re-enter the formal education system at a later date should they want to (e.g., to pursue properly rigorous high school, university, and graduate degrees) with some kind of conditional financial support. this would wreak havoc on the education "ecology", so it will never happen in the US or UK, but it's still a dream.

- "getting smarter" is a very tricky concept when using IQ as a measure. first, IQ was designed to be a relative measure, not a static one. 100 is supposed to be the average. even if you standardize it to measures at one point in time, there are still two potential issues. first, as excession suggested, you can improve "brain power" via an improved environment. i would suggest that this includes better nutrition, better overall health, and even being raised in more intellectually-stimulating environments. the second relates to error in IQ tests, and i'm going to give that it's own bullet point.

- IQ tests have a great deal of type II error. what this means is that it is very difficult to score substantially higher than your theoretical full potential, but it's VERY easy to score quite a bit lower. bad night's sleep? no breakfast? argument with parents/siblings/gf? illness? stress? simple ambivalence towards the test (common in young children)? all of these things can lower one's IQ test score SUBSTANTIALLY. one might say that most of these factors have been relevant in the past as well as in the present, but i would suggest that home conditions and testing conditions have improved in modern developed societies.

- cultural bias does have a fairly substantial influence on results, but you can get around this by designing tests for relatively homogenous groups. i realize that this is not really possible given the extent of modern-day diversity, but it is theoretically possible. the non-politically correct stance these days is that the test is aimed at being biased towards the majority (usually middle class) and that minorities will need to learn to adapt to this way of thinking if they want to succeed anyway. this could start an interesting discussion of oppression, etc. that i have no interest in getting into. i'm merely reporting what i see to be the de facto stance of those in power.


this was supposed to be short....