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posted by n1 on Monday June 05 2017, @11:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the multiple-guess-tests dept.

At last weekend’s annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) in Boston, Cornell University psychologist Robert Sternberg sounded an alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society. Sternberg, who has studied intelligence and intelligence testing for decades, is well known for his “triarchic theory of intelligence,” which identifies three kinds of smarts: the analytic type reflected in IQ scores; practical intelligence, which is more relevant for real-life problem solving; and creativity. Sternberg offered his views in a lecture associated with receiving a William James Fellow Award from the APS for his lifetime contributions to psychology. He explained his concerns to Scientific American.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

What I argue is that intelligence that’s not modulated and moderated by creativity, common sense and wisdom is not such a positive thing to have. What it leads to is people who are very good at advancing themselves, often at other people’s expense. We may not just be selecting the wrong people, we may be developing an incomplete set of skills—and we need to look at things that will make the world a better place.

-- submitted from IRC

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 05 2017, @01:07PM (2 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday June 05 2017, @01:07PM (#520704) Journal

    So the interviewee, Sternberg, says "We have a guy [representative-elect Greg Gianforte of Montana] who allegedly assaulted a reporter and just got elected to the U.S. House of Representatives—and that’s after a 30-point average increase in IQ. We had violence in campaign rallies. Not only do we not encourage creativity, common sense and wisdom, I think a lot of us don’t even value them anymore."

    That seems like a window into what this really is, which is a thinly veiled bombastic insult against people who are rebelling against the status quo by not voting the way they've been told to by their betters. It's because they're stupid, you see, but not conventionally stupid; they're stupid in a new way that we can correct if we can just educate them better about exactly how they're wrong and stupid. So we don't need to do anything about the rigged game that has become the global capitalist system, but rather re-educate everyone who's recalcitrant that that global system of exploitation and corruption is actually a good thing and that they're stupid if they don't realize that.

    It's nonsense.

    Here's a better idea, Sternberg. Cast down the cronies and bureaucrats, the leaches and lobbyists and politicians who don't know how to do a single useful thing and whose entire skill set consists of bombast and backstabbing. Uproot the shiftless and lazy who can't accomplish any task to save their lives and then whine endlessly about how they couldn't do it because people were mean to them.

    Reforge a system where merit matters again, and you'll quickly note how traditional education starts to "work" again.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 05 2017, @01:54PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 05 2017, @01:54PM (#520736) Journal

    That seems like a window into what this really is, which is a thinly veiled bombastic insult ...
    ...
    ...but rather re-educate everyone who's recalcitrant that that global system of exploitation and corruption is actually a good thing and that they're stupid if they don't realize that.

    Easy with the interpretation, mate. The risk of building a strawman (just for the pleasure of dismantling it) seems high.

    See, you start with seems and inflate that seems to quite ridiculous proportion: a little more and I feel next you are going to accuse him of opening forced work/extermination camps with incinerators burning non-stop.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 05 2017, @02:57PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 05 2017, @02:57PM (#520767)

    Reforge a system where merit matters again

    Yeah, that wasn't really a major part of the plot line in 1984 or Brave New World, which is what this type sees as an instruction manual.