Re: Statistics / more compare & contrast

[Chris Horton <ChrisAHorton2@HOTMAIL.COM>]

I just finished reading "The Hidden Injuries of Class"  by Richard Sennett
and Jonathan Cobb, Vintage, 1972.  No technical discussion of IQ's and
Thinking Levels, but a very moving and well argued discussion of the way
class society, and schools as instruments of that society, cause a cohort of
young people to divide along lines of self image and perceived life
expectations and the ways in which this blocks learning and achievement
among the losers, who then come to blame themselves for their failure to
advance.  A kind of "spontaneous symmetry breaking".

My own life and career would have been different if I had been able to bring
myself to read this book when I first acquired it nearly 30 years ago, but
it was somehow too painful for me to read then and I've been starting it and
putting it aside ever since.

Chris

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Christopher A. Horton, Ph.D.
4158 RR#3 (Hwy. 204)
Amherst, NS B4H 3Y1
CANADA
ChrisAHorton2@hotmail.com
(902) 447-2109

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"Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us
will have been effaced.  Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has
in it something for every age to investigate ... Nature does not reveal her
mysteries once and for all."
- Seneca, "Natural Questions", first century, quoted by Carl Sagan in
"Cosmos", p.xi.

*    *    *    *    *    *     *    *    *    *    *


----- Original Message -----
From: Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 12:27 AM
Subject: Re: Statistics / more compare & contrast


> Not In Our Genes is another book from the same ideological perspective.
(The
> authors -- Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin are in the same collectives as
Gould --
> either Dialectics of Biology and/or the Campaign against Racism, I.Q., and
the
> Class society.
>
> bc
>
>
>
> "Daniel L. MacIsaac" wrote:
>
> > > It is not  PC to mention it,  but an important predictor of
> > > academic test results is that old faithful, the IQ measure.
> > > This measure is designed to be normally distributed.
> > >       A high school may expect to see student results in general that
are
> > > reasonably normal, even if test results are not 'marked on a curve'
> > > [i.e. transformed to a normal distribution] for this reason alone.
> >
> > Brian:
> >
> > Check out Gould's book "The Mismeasure of Man"  IQ is a very cooked
statistic
> > (as you say, "designed" for statistical reliability), but after reading
> > Gould's book I rather believe it measures very little about actual
> > intelligence (whatever that means).  If you really want an indicator for
> > predicting student success, try SES.  If you are looking to predict
success
> > in college physics, look for whether the HS physics teacher used no
text.
> > (after Sadler's recent _science education_ article)
> > Dan M
> >
> > Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ
Univ
> > danmac@nau.edu          http://purcell.phy.nau.edu         PHYS-L list
owner
>