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Posted: **Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:47 am**

Long, but intereseting.

Very good article, but I'll just call out this bit for discussion:

It’s hard to imagine what set of circumstances would reverse recent trends and bring large numbers of jobs for unskilled laborers back to the U.S. Our efforts might be more fruitfully focused on getting Maddie the education she needs for a better shot at a decent living in the years to come. Subsidized job-training programs tend to be fairly popular among Democrats and Republicans, and certainly benefit some people. But these programs suffer from all the ills in our education system; opportunities go, disproportionately, to those who already have initiative, intelligence, and—not least—family support.
...To solve all the problems that keep people from acquiring skills would require tackling the toughest issues our country faces: a broken educational system, teen pregnancy, drug use, racial discrimination, a fractured political culture.

Emphasis mine. Here's the thing: EDUCATION DOES NOT MAKE YOU SMART. Now amount of education, even of the best quality, can make a stupid person into, say, a computer programmer. It's just not possible.

Also, does anybody who's not black REALLY believe that there is still racial discrimination in this country?

Posted: **Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:54 am**

Recent studies (which I failed to google for, somehow), have shown that IQ is much more elastic than previously believed. They showed that 50th percentile individuals with lots of extra attention in education could perform 2 std devs higher than they had before. Another study I read basically showed that people can be trained to think differently, especially with regards to problem solving, to boost their IQ/smarts.

So... it appears that education can make you smarter. Not in the broad sense of "getting a degree," but in the sense that better education can produce smarter people. The challenge then, is how do you improve education to get better results?

Posted: **Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:53 am**

I'm still skeptical. Get back to me when this result has held up over a half-century.

Also, how long did this 2stdv performance gain last, and was it a gain in "g" or what?

Posted: **Tue Jan 24, 2012 12:27 pm**

I can believe that, I have lots of anecdotal experience that tells me that you can teach people to think in different ways that will make them better at solving problems in a manner that would measure as a higher IQ on a standard test. I'm sure of it.

BUT - and this is a very very big but - they have to want it and work for it. You simply CANNOT force someone to succeed when they don't give a shit. Well, not without lots of radically forceful motivational reorientation (i.e. illegal torture).

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Article on manufacturing in America