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from the being-smart-and-hard-working-is-only-part-of-being-successful dept.
Britain's got talent—but we're still wasting it. That's the main finding of a new report by researchers from Oxford University published today.
Children of similar cognitive ability have very different chances of educational success; it still depends on their parents' economic, socio-cultural and educational resources. This contradicts a commonly held view that these days that our education system has developed enough to give everyone a fighting chance.
The researchers, led by Dr. Erzsébet Bukodi from Oxford's Department of Social Policy and Intervention, looked at data from cohorts of children born in three decades: 1950s, 1970s and 1990s. They found significant evidence of a wastage of talent. Individuals with high levels of cognitive ability but who are disadvantaged in their social origins are persistently unable to translate their ability into educational attainment to the same extent as their more advantaged counterparts.
[...] "If we compare the educational attainment of children born in the 1990s to those in the late 1950s and early 1970s, we see that parent's economic resources have become a less important factor, but their socio-cultural and educational resources have grown in significance," says Dr. Bukodi. "That means that your parents' place in society and their own level of education still play a big part in how well you may do."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @04:07AM
Kids with parents who have the time, experience, patience, and support tend to do better. Genetics is only part of the story, and there is no simple formula for "good human being." That is where tales of morality come in, society agreeing on what is "good" behavior. What principles do we uphold, and how much effort are we willing to personally put into helping the world around us.
The current economic system should facilitate not dictate human behavior. Thankfully human nature is prevailing in some good areas, like renewable energy. Though if we grow it too large it will have a more globally significant effect that we'll need to plan for. Weather is complicated, but poisoning the atmosphere is simple.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @04:10AM (2 children)
Not sure if you can get this outside Oz, but this podcast from 2014 discusses these issues: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/conversations/david-gillespie/5231366 [abc.net.au].
BTW, check out David Gillespie's other podcasts on the site especially the one re kids and screen addiction.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:58AM
I can get it in France. Thanks for the link.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31 2019, @12:42AM
Wow, just finished that podcast. That interviewer is excellent, and the talk is extremely informative.
Quick summary: The guy being interviewed wrote a book about the Australia school system and collected all sorts of evidence and studies from around world on what techniques work and what doesn't. He then gives a bunch of things to look for in a school.
In short, the take aways are:
1) Class size doesn't matter (within reason) - and actually having smaller classes is detrimental as a whole since more teachers are required (which costs more), and therefore some classes end up with 'bad' teachers as the bottom of the barrel starts to be scraped to find staff. On top of that, the extra teachers cos
2) Public school vs private school doesn't matter (in Australia anyway)
3) A good school focuses on the teachers and makes sure they have a mentoring approach where teachers are always learning and improving
4) The quality of the school principle is a huge indicator of how well the students do - as they are effectively setting up how the teachers work together
5) A 'flip school' (where the students listen to 10 min 'broadcast' lectures in their own time as many times as they want, and the class is all about making sure the kids understand that content. (Currently teachers do the 'broadcast' in class and then have little time to help kids - and the kid is expected to somehow work problems alone as homework). Some US schools are trialling this very successfully.
6) There are academic no advantages to same sex schooling (for either girls or boys).
7) Quantity of homework doesn't impact academic outcome. And in fact may impede it if the teach assigns so much homework that they waste their own time marking and checking it at the expense of other more productive uses of that time.
8) Teacher Unions have reduced teacher quality by not recognising that some teachers are actually better than others, with pay related to seniority rather than performance.
Anyway, his research is from around the world, but he is clearly applying to the idiosyncrasies of the Australia schooling system.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @05:02AM (2 children)
If you are dumb but your parents have money, you end up going to college somehow and put out garbage papers like this.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 30 2019, @05:27PM
Here is your daily reminder that Soylent News HATES science.
(Score: 1) by oakgrove on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:19PM
If the curriculum weren't dumbed down so much this would be much less of a problem as the idiot children would just flunk out anyway. The future parents of future idiot kids would eventually get the message and stop wasting their money.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jrbrtsn on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:33AM (2 children)
Learning does not end when you leave the school building, and children with educated parents have the benefit of said parents to teach and influence them when they are at home. Good luck trying to erase this advantage. In addition to having classic literature read to them for fun, my own children encountered physics, chemistry, higher math and computer science long before the public schools addressed these subjects.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:51AM
Hmm, that's not one's definition of consumer.
What are you, a terrorist maybe?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday May 30 2019, @08:50PM
What about between the building and home? You know, getting your white-collar learning from the streets [theonion.com]?
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Thursday May 30 2019, @02:32PM (4 children)
If your parents have 6 children, you're more likely to have a dismal future and have 6 children yourself. Stop pretending there isn't a causal link between these two things.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday May 30 2019, @05:37PM (1 child)
My Mom has 4 siblings, 2 are doctors, 2 are nurses, and she is a teacher who teaches nursing after having been a nurse for a number of years. Her father was a math teacher and her mom was essentially a home maker. # of kids != future socioeconomic status.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Friday May 31 2019, @01:01AM
Did they cover statistics in any of those college educations? "likely" "less likely" are influences...sometimes quite strongly so. They are not hard and fast rules. Wasn't the tallest guy in the NBA a Japanese male for a while? Japanese males are not normally very tall, but that one was. It's unlikely for a Japanese male to be tall, but not impossible.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:16PM (1 child)
Hmm... JFK had 8 siblings. George Washington had 9 siblings, as did Thomas Jefferson. Shakespeare had 7. Ben Franklin had 16 siblings.
J.S. Bach had 7 siblings, and he had 20 children, 4 of whom also grew up to be famous composers in their day (2 of whom were definitely more famous than their father had been in his life). Note that only 10 of Bach's 20 kids survived to adulthood (typical in those days), making a 40% famous composer rate pretty amazing. Not to mention Bach's uncles and great uncles and cousins... There were generations and dozens of famous Bachs in music, most of them with large families.
So, not sure where you get your stats for large families lead to poor success. It depends on the parents and the situation. Large families often mean younger siblings learn more efficiently and effectively from their older siblings. Very large families often end up with kids able to share babysitting and parental duties to help their parents and siblings.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Friday May 31 2019, @12:25AM
Every rule has exceptions. The "many children" I was referring to would more aptly been phrased as "more children than you can afford to give a good life to." Wasn't that obvious? I'm sure Bill Gates can have any number of children he wants to and still give them a good life, but he didn't do so when he was 16 years old. If he did then he probably wouldn't be famous right now.
If you weigh yourself down, you (probably) can't take risks. If you can't take risks then your chances of success will be far lower.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by linkdude64 on Thursday May 30 2019, @04:03PM
The college degree standard of success is destroying lives. I come from a slightly disadvantaged background, was going to receive $0.00 in financial support if I wanted to go to university, so instead, I worked full time at night while going to community college/trade school full time during the day, and now I'm making 6 figures with a 2 year degree instead of 5 figures with a 4 year degree, which, itself, would have cost six figures to get.
(Score: 1) by Coward, Anonymous on Thursday May 30 2019, @08:49PM
So if you're a successful parent who puts a lot into raising kids, you get them dinged for "advantage" and "privilege". I foresee academics shifting politically to the right, once their kids get college rejections due to a secret SAT "adversity score".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @11:26PM
"This contradicts a commonly held view that these days that our education system has developed enough to give everyone a fighting chance."
The person who wrote that obviously came from a disadvantaged household. Christallmighty!