Slashdot Mirror
Spoiler Alert: Smart Kids Become Successful Adults
itwbennett writes "Researchers from the University of Edinburgh set out to test the long-held assumption that kids who performed well in school at a young age carried that early success through to adulthood. And prove it they did! Specifically, 'Math and reading ability at age 7 may be linked with socioeconomic status several decades later.' Early success even correlates 'over and above associations with intelligence, education, and socioeconomic status in childhood.'"
I've always felt that performing well in school is less a measure of intelligence and more a measure of one's ability to follow rules, complete assigned tasks, get along with teachers and classmates, and behave in socially acceptable ways. It even seems like highly intelligent people often perform worse-than-average in school because high intelligence often comes along with lower-than-average social skills (or a disinterest in adhering to social norms).
From TFA:
The long-term associations held even after the researchers took other common factors into account.
"These findings imply that basic childhood skills, independent of how smart you are, how long you stay in school, or the social class you started off in, will be important throughout your life," say Ritchie and Bates.
So, assuming they did their research right, nope. The results have little or nothing to do with the socioeconomic status of the parents.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
> Open articles. Ctrl-F "Controling" No results. Close tab. Nothing of value.
It does. It is abbreviated as "RGSC" on the article. Look at Figure 2 to see the model graphically and you see that RGSC is featured prominently on the top. Also, if you look at Table 2, the authors acknowledge the link between SES of origin AND math / reading abilities. But this paper shows that the math & reading abilities at 7 years old do predict mid-life SES above AND beyond the SES of origin.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Open articles. Ctrl-F "Controling" No results. Close tab.
Nothing of value.
(They did start another study for control for genetic factors, but those aren't the most important)
Article says
The long-term associations held even after the researchers took other common factors into account. "These findings imply that basic childhood skills, independent of how smart you are, how long you stay in school, or the social class you started off in, will be important throughout your life," say Ritchie and Bates.
Which implies that they controlled for socioeconomic status. However, the actual paper appears to be behind a paywall. Therefore I don't know what's in it, beyond what this article tells me.