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Genes Don't Just Predict Intelligence, But Also How Well You Do In School
sciencehabit writes: If you sailed through school with high grades and perfect test scores, you probably did it with traits beyond sheer smarts. A new study of more than 6000 pairs of twins finds that academic achievement is influenced by genes affecting motivation, personality, confidence, and dozens of other traits, in addition to those that shape intelligence (abstract). The results may lead to new ways to improve childhood education.
...Did they factor in the socio-economic background of the parents, as in children of rich-folk get better education than children of poor-parents, and therefore do better, and are expected to do better, in exams.
Yes they did.
Did you bother to read the article, or did you expect someone to read it for you?
It's reassuring to see a study that so closely reflects what any parent knows. Given the same home and school environments, some kids do much better than others, or excel at different tasks. My own kids appear to have broadly similar abilities in IQ-style tests, but they are very different in their responses to failure, willingness to perform repetitive tasks, level of curiosity or preference for strategic vs detailed thinking. Each child has an area of academic strength that matches his character rather than his intelligence.
Seriously. If the genes predict how well we'll do in school, why are we wasting the time of the people with the wrong genes? Couldn't they do something more pleasant and productive with their time? That's a depressing thought.
I don't think this is entirely unexpected; there has long been controversy over what intelligence is or indeed whether it is a meaningful concept at all. It has certainly proved difficult to construct a practical test that doesn't depend on things like cultural context etc.
No matter whether we try to legislate against that. When you're a parent, and you have a means within reach to avoid your kids doing bad in life, you will use it. It would be immoral not to. (I've also read an article this morning that said that tall people and blondes do better career-wise, so there's even more room for genetic improvement there.)
Why not? Society should have the means to allocate ever scarcer resources to the individuals who have an actual chance to succeed and, therefore, to contribute. Most societies already find acceptable to screen for defects and terminate pregnancies which would result in burdening the collective with a deficient individual. It's only reasonable.
Please keep in mind something from a couple of days ago...
"'Smart genes' prove elusive - Study of more than 100,000 people finds three genetic variants for IQ — but their effects are maddeningly small." http://www.nature.com/news/sma...
This twins study shows that general intelligence and academic achievement are affected by many different "aptitudes", not just "smart." Taken together with the Nature commentary, suggests that intelligence is just a part, maybe even a small part, of achievement.
If only this could seep into the general consciousness of the masses, then we might not have so many students think they cannot do something because they are not "smart enough."
Hey, I went to a private school (cause public schools in Tennessee are horrible) and it was $8500 a year to go there. I saw plenty of rich, priviledge kids from very good socio-economic backgrounds who were dumb as sh1t.
This one kid literally had been in the same private school from Pre-K all the way to the end of high school and the first time he took the ACT, he got a 11. He took it 2 more times and got a 16 and a 17, respectively. Some people are just stupid. You can throw them in nice schools and blame poverty, but there are plenty of people who have it all and still drop the ball, so you can't blame everything on socio-economic background. That's a cop out.
Coincidentally, I now work at a very large organization and have a very "good" job (by 4 year degree standards) and I've yet to meet a single person in my 100 person department who went to private schools. I'm the only one. Everyone else had a crappy public school education but were prosperous because they were inherently intelligent and sought to learn on their own. We're talking white trash, lower Alabama trailer park kids who should by all rights be working as laborers or in construction, but they're smart as sh1t and working in computer science.