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Was reading this article in the London Times, had some interesting points i think...
How to make your child more intelligent
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, wants to restore to nurture a significant role in the development of intelligence. This is science with a hugely political twist – because if he succeeds he shoves responsibility firmly onto policymakers to ensure that children are given the best environment in which to achieve their potential.
What, though, is his evi-dence? First, he has taken a much closer look at the separated-twin studies and concluded they were deeply flawed.
The researchers presumed that the families that adopted were unlike each other. In practice, families selected for adoption are highly motivated and equipped to give children a good start. “Adoptive families, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are all alike,” he said.
This is why adoption is one of the most powerful interventions you can make to increase a child’s intelligence.
“Raising someone in an upper-middle-class environment versus a lower-class environment is worth 12 to 18 points of IQ – a truly massive effect,” he said.
The children of middle-class parents are read to, spoken to and encouraged more than children of working-class parents – and these are all experiences that influence intellectual development.
Demolishing the findings of the twin studies is part of the argument against genes controlling intelligence.
Another, far more positive, comes from the work of James Flynn, who has collated IQ tests performed all over the world over most of the past century.
What he found astonished him at first: in each decade, the IQ of the latest generation of young adults seemed to have risen, on average, by three points above that of the preceding decade.
Over the past century, this implied, the IQs of westernised people had risen by about 30 points. On a scale where 100 represents the norm this “Flynn effect” is astonishing. Flynn, a professor in New Zealand, believes this knocks the “mainly genetics” argument on the head.
“How could this be possible? No one has been selectively breeding human beings for high IQ. Environmental factors must have enormous potency.”
His conclusion is that in recent decades we have all been taught to think in a different way from our forebears.
Some of this comes down to education: classes are smaller, teachers are more skilled and we spend 14 years in school rather than the seven or so of the past. This makes a particular difference for poor and minority children. </div></div>
<span style="font-weight: bold">Have any of you ever taken an IQ test?
Much as I disagree with the contents and the benckmarks used, in that it is limited to the context of that which we know...it IS the current benchmark, and therefore a derterminant of how well we cope in the currently carved environment...</span>
How to make your child more intelligent
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, wants to restore to nurture a significant role in the development of intelligence. This is science with a hugely political twist – because if he succeeds he shoves responsibility firmly onto policymakers to ensure that children are given the best environment in which to achieve their potential.
What, though, is his evi-dence? First, he has taken a much closer look at the separated-twin studies and concluded they were deeply flawed.
The researchers presumed that the families that adopted were unlike each other. In practice, families selected for adoption are highly motivated and equipped to give children a good start. “Adoptive families, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are all alike,” he said.
This is why adoption is one of the most powerful interventions you can make to increase a child’s intelligence.
“Raising someone in an upper-middle-class environment versus a lower-class environment is worth 12 to 18 points of IQ – a truly massive effect,” he said.
The children of middle-class parents are read to, spoken to and encouraged more than children of working-class parents – and these are all experiences that influence intellectual development.
Demolishing the findings of the twin studies is part of the argument against genes controlling intelligence.
Another, far more positive, comes from the work of James Flynn, who has collated IQ tests performed all over the world over most of the past century.
What he found astonished him at first: in each decade, the IQ of the latest generation of young adults seemed to have risen, on average, by three points above that of the preceding decade.
Over the past century, this implied, the IQs of westernised people had risen by about 30 points. On a scale where 100 represents the norm this “Flynn effect” is astonishing. Flynn, a professor in New Zealand, believes this knocks the “mainly genetics” argument on the head.
“How could this be possible? No one has been selectively breeding human beings for high IQ. Environmental factors must have enormous potency.”
His conclusion is that in recent decades we have all been taught to think in a different way from our forebears.
Some of this comes down to education: classes are smaller, teachers are more skilled and we spend 14 years in school rather than the seven or so of the past. This makes a particular difference for poor and minority children. </div></div>
<span style="font-weight: bold">Have any of you ever taken an IQ test?
Much as I disagree with the contents and the benckmarks used, in that it is limited to the context of that which we know...it IS the current benchmark, and therefore a derterminant of how well we cope in the currently carved environment...</span>
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