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.'"

Comments

Correlations

[T.E.D.]

Also correlated:

Math and reading ability at age 7 and socioeconomic status of the parents.

Socioeconomic status and socioeconomic status of the parents.

So has this study really shown anything other than the transitive property?

Re:Correlations

[Baloroth]

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.

Re:Correlations

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you are expecting to find a word that you didn't even spell right you might as well just skip the first four steps and go straight to "nothing of value"...

Re:Correlations

[jon3k]

The best part is his username. Really makes the whole thing that much more hilarious.

Re:Correlations

[AliasMarlowe]

Although the third-party blurb suggests some interesting conjectures, the article itself is hidden behind a paywall. It's hardly worth speculating on its content or statistical robustness or experimental rigor - other than noting that the social sciences tend to be less robust in their methods and mathematics than the physical sciences and engineering.

Re:Correlations

[robbyjo]

> 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.

Re:Correlations

[Ioldanach]

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.

On the other hand...

[jones_supa]

...does being smart lead to a more stressful life? Realizing how much you still don't understand, grasping the bad state of some things in world, feeling the general existential pain and philosophizing things, and so on.

Re:On the other hand...

[ShanghaiBill]

In my hometown the percentage of kids on meal assistance at their schools is so high ...

Sorry, but "being on meal assistance" does not in any way whatsoever imply "does not get enough to eat."

In fact the opposite is true: obesity rates are negatively correlated with income, and kids at the very bottom of the poverty scale are the fattest.

America has a serious nutrition problem, but we certainly do not have a systematic hunger problem, and claiming or implying that we do is just diverting attention from the actual problem.

Re:On the other hand...

[TuringTest]

The purpose of life is generating more life - it's the only way it has arrived here, by replicating itself. *Your* purpose may be not suffering, but that's uncorrelated with the adaptation of life to existence.

Re:On the other hand...

[CrimsonAvenger]

About a sixth of all residents [feedingamerica.org] don't get enough food.

Umm, no.

Article you link doesn't say that. It says a sixth of all residents are struggling with "hunger". If you've ever bothered to check, you'll know that "hunger" (aka "food insecurity") is defined as âoedo not always know where they will find their next meal.â

Note that that definition means that missing a meal a year would put you on the "hunger" list.

For that matter, you don't actually have to miss a meal, since "do not always know" doesn't actually imply missing a meal, just fear of same.

Performing well in school...

[poor_boi]

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).

Need for good teachers

[Murdoch5]

And this is why we need good teachers in the school system when the kids are at a young age. This is how I would re-organize the Canadian school system in Ontario:

1) Religion in schools need to be cut. Replace Religion with math and science, math and science promote logic, God promotes making up stories because we want to.

2) Teach math and science harder, really push them as corner stones of education, if students aren't getting the concepts increase class length. I would say by grade 5 you should be comfortable with variables.

3) Every day should have a gym component where kids are FORCED to participate,

4) Science class should contain hands on experiments and labs. If you can't test it, don't teach it.

5) Find a way to make homework interactive, not just copy question out of a book.

6) Computer Programming should become a mandatory class starting in grade 4, get kids playing with visual languages, they massively help you learn and work out logical problems that be applied in other areas.

7) Music class, make kids learn instruments or at least get involved with Music, this will allow there creative abilities to expand.


8) Don't let the kids sit more then 1 hour at a time, make sure they're moving around and getting involved in the class.

Those would be the initial adjustments I would make, I'm sure it's not perfect but it's a FAR better system then one currently in place.

Re:No shit sherlock.

[Dunbal]

Dumb people tend not to stay rich for very long.

Bad headline, as usual

[Khashishi]

Headline: ...Smart Kids Become Successful Adults.
Article: Math and reading skills correlate with success even more strongly than intelligence.

Correction to Title

[MobyDisk]

Actually, the article says the exact opposite of the title. The title should say

Spoiler Alert: *SUCCESSFUL* Kids Become Successful Adults

because the article says:

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.

That is not the problem

[SuperKendall]

However, there still is a big problem with kids in lower socioeconomic status obtaining higher grades

Not at all. There is a problem with how society teaches kids, and it's just the case that some richer parents can overcome this handicap for their children.

I was homeschooled at an early age. As part of that I did a number of things with groups of other homeschooled kids. Many of the parents were poor (my own included). But because schooling at home is so much more productive and meaningful most of the children did really well, and all of the ones I kept in contact with have done well later in life also.

There is no problem being poor and being able to learn. Kids can learn in so many ways, many of them costing nothing or being free. You simply have to get out of the way and enable the spirit of exploration which is natural, instead of trying to crush it via conformity.