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from the maybe-they-only-surveyed-the-nimnobs dept.
Why can we talk about PISA results, comparing the performance of students in school, but we are not allowed to talk about differences in IQ? Bring this subject up, and you are immediately accused of racism. And yet. And yet, if there are substantial differences in intellectual capability, might this not explain some of the world's problems?
An update of a massive "study of studies" is underway; this article summarizes the work to date, and provides links to the work in progress. A quick summary of the answers to the questions no one dares ask:
- Eastern Asia (Japan, China): IQ around 105
- Europe/North America: IQ around 98
- Middle East: IQ around 85
- Africa: IQ around 70
In the first instance, it doesn't even matter why there are differences. They may be genetic, or disease related, or nutrition related, or something else. If these differences are real (and the evidence is pretty strong that they are), then we need to deal with them. Imagine if the low IQs in Africa turn out to be fixable - what would the impact be, if we could raise the IQ of an entire continent by 30 points?!
Sticking our collective heads in the sand, because the topic is not PC, is not going to solve any problems.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Lester on Friday November 03 2017, @03:14PM
Of course, just what I said :
You could compare college students from USA with college students from Angola; or high school students from USA and school students from Angola. Even in such cases it is difficult because education systems are not always comparable, so except for genius and dumps, differences will be non-significative.
Pretending to get the average IQ of a country messing people of different education levels makes no sense. Let alone in countries with a lot of illiterate people. Comparing two different nations, you get mostly education level differences.