Is School Lowering your Child’s IQ?

But what effect is school having on your child’s social cognition, i.e. the mind-reading, perspective-taking prowess that helped drive the evolution of human intelligence? (cf. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111013121519.htm )What we now call “IQ tests” are mind-blind: they lack ecological validity. No doubt encouraging consideration of what other people are thinking and feeling can use up processing power that might otherwise be allocated to, say, practice solving mathematical equations. But we are social primates: social settings typically demand skilled collaborative problem-solving that excessive solitude can hamper.

And all the hard Right can usually do is promote “school choice” and blame education unions.. if only it were that simple. If parents want their children to have the education the parents thoroughly approve of then they’d best homeschool them. School choice and fighting unions wont automatically, presto change-o, lead families to the education they want; mostly what it does is make them feel good that they are fighting the government and the unions—and sell books such as:

“How Them Government Bureaucrats Have Destroyed Education And If Only We Could Raise Ronald Reagan From The Dead Everything Would Be Peachy Dandy”

Well if only we could!

There is a counter-argument, though. While classrooms may lower some children’s measured IQ temporarily, the long-term effect. Ay still be massively positive because of the stimulation it provides both intellectual and social. As an adult I often do my best thinking when alone (in MBTI terminology I’m an “introverted thinker”), but I still need the intellectual and social stimulation of company. I may be temporarily more stupid when I’m getting it, but the long-term effect is undoubtedly positive.

The kids are just fine.

Everyone can see now that school choice has become another political football; how many decades has America been fighting over school choice? three? Four? “it’s not about the children” is correct, it’s about barracuda parents. Now there is some gain to political back and forth concerning education, however the marketplace of ideas is overrated: it is mostly chaff with little wheat to show for it, there are 99 arguments for one positive outcome and though that may be acceptable to some it appears IMO to be a pretty shitty deal since children are the topic and not pork bellies and aircraft carriers.
Parents who don’t trust public schools ought to homeschool their children, because quality private and charter schools are going to cost more, and who eventually winds up subsidising them?—the government libertopian-oriented parents dislike so much.

America can’t be run as a business, such as Ross Perot wanted; and educating children can’t be like McDonald’s with ‘Over 900 Million Served’.

...“While classrooms may lower some children’s measured IQ temporarily, the long-term effect may still be massively positive because of the stimulation it provides both intellectual and social.”

Perhaps it is different in Europe? I wouldn’t think of sending my grandchildren (if I had any) to public schools in America, not so much the quality of schools, though; more problematic is the distraction today for children, America’s classrooms are filled with dissipated energy—bad vibes, as they used to say. Students minds, in primary schools (Higher Ed is adequate) are going in different directions at once. IMO better off homeschooling. But then we’ll have a half dozen bloggers here writing the above is mistaken. We never get anywhere with this; around ‘n’ round we go, education controversy has been ongoing for 30- 40 years. Wouldn’t be surprising if it continues for another 30- 40 years. .

@Intomorrow
“education controversy has been ongoing for 30- 40 years. Wouldn’t be surprising if it continues for another 30- 40 years.”

Or forever. Education has always been a wide, mined field - at least from a purely ethical perspective. You have on one side - the stronger ones. Grown-ups are bigger, physically mightier, freer, and more informed. On the other side, you have kids - smaller, weaker, subordinates, and in need of care and protection. Sounds like the perfect setting for violence and abuse.

There is a very thin, fuzzy line between liberating someone’s potential, and limiting it according to an arbitrary blueprint. Teaching at least one linguistic code is clearly something essentially important, the benefits of basic linguistic skills are enormous. This is obvious. But schools do not stop just there. Why to force someone to learn by heart a poem, for example? Why that poem and not another poem? Why centuries-old poems and not centuries-old culinary recipes? Can we really tell which pieces of information behave as spiritual fertilizers, and which are just burdensome taxes on children’s mental resources?

Carol Loyd’s report is interesting. And it tells more about the nature of IQ measurements, rather than about human intelligence. Yes, schools are places of teaching, and not places of learning - as Carmelo Bene used to repeat. Yes, modern and contemporary schools have little to do with mental development of students. A place where more than three different individuals, with different interests, different predispositions, and different abilities are supposed to learn the same thing at the same time - is a place where knowledge cannot enter. And schools, as places of mass education, have other functions, indeed. A school is a relatively safe place to park your offspring while you go somewhere else to win your bread. Kids at school do not compete with adult workers. Schools teach physical discipline and respect for cultural authorities - two things that go against the very essence of scientific knowledge.

@Peter
I think that being an “introverted thinker” is not something so specific to your condition. Authentic theoretical learning cannot but happen in solitude. We are not talking about learning some practical skill here. Your mirror neurons need another human example to start working - and they are very useful indeed, for a number of functions. However, where there is nobody’s gestures to copy, being in a group does not make things easier. It makes things worse. You cannot imitate what your teacher’s brain is doing while he or she is explaining you Cantor’s transfinite numbers. You cannot see inside his her skull. And while your mirror neurons cannot be used, you still have to process a number of complex social signals in a classroom. Social environments are very demanding in terms of mental resources. That is why often autistic people are savants, and in general all nerds are never particularly popular. Their brains do not have to cope with complex social cognitive tasks - so they can channel more mental resources towards abstract concepts and fantasies. This is a great thing - at least, as long as your cognitive predispositions do not make you socially worthless.

... this isn’t to dismiss Public Ed.
A question has to be asked parents:
how can they expect public schools to teach students the curriculum old fashioned parents want while having schools remain pluralistic? if old-fashioned parents want, they can send their children to fundamentalist Christian, Islamist, etc., schools for an orthodox education.

Parents can send their students to private schools/ set up strict charter schools, otherwise they’d have to homeschool their children to give them a strict education.

... PS,
thanks so much for answering, Andre’; was hoping all night Pete would reply. BTW, re the following:

“... Why to force someone to learn by heart a poem, for example? Why that poem and not another poem? Why centuries-old poems…”,

why anything like poems or recipes at all? why not have the students participate in Primal Scream Therapy in-class, for instance? probably get as much from that as anything else.
You got it just so: curricula is excessively random, arbitrary and capricious.

PPS (wont write again today):
poetry, recipes, all effluvia, make sense in an orthodox, traditionalist curricula; the whole purpose of an old-fashioned education is to draw on the codes of the past. But what I don’t get is how can America live in 1776 any more than England can live in 1066?
Or if old-fashioned Americans aren’t living in 1776, they are often living in 1955, say. Whenever the era was, it appears they want to live in the past present and future simultaneously—not merely have the past as a guide…‘past is prologue’...
but to in some manner live in the past in their minds. Fundamentalists live in the pas, for them Bible stories are real, they can visualise the scenes as if they are occurring today. The old-fashioned have the modern gadgets, however they do live in the past as far as non-material life goes.

So naturally it is reflected in education.

This isn’t a subject about which I’ve developed very entrenched views so far, so the only point I really wanted to make is that studies showing temporary influence on measured IQ don’t necessarily tell us much about what the longer-term effects might be. Not have children myself my knowledge of schooling today, even in Europe let alone US, is second-hand at best. To a large extent, schools are today somewhere to park the kids while the parents get on with (other aspects of) their lives. Good or bad? Remains to be seen, I guess. I’m not a huge believer in the nuclear family, but that doesn’t mean that the current schooling system is serving the children’s needs, or those of the wider community. Certainly there is plenty of evidence they are not. But is homeschooling the answer?

A related question might be: what do we really need/want today’s children to learn anyway? And this of course depends crucial on how we expect technology and society to evolve. We certainly need to better address the needs of children who do not thrive in the current system, i.e. better than the current approach of medicating away their personality, but on the whole, for most, I would have thought regular social interaction, with other kids, must be a plus? And maybe we can find other ways to get them to learn transfinite numbers. It’s in any case only a small minority who are going to be remotely interested/capable of such abstraction anyway. Why not leave that to those of us who are, and of course our friends the AIs?

“But is homeschooling the answer?”

No, homeschooling is merely one answer; as the nuclear family is one family arrangement, and nuclear power is one energy source, etc.

“I would have thought regular social interaction, with other kids, must be a plus?”

Yes, regular social interaction with other kids is the great plus of public schools. As you wrote, “To a large extent, schools are today somewhere to park the kids while the parents get on with (other aspects of) their lives. Good or bad?”,

schools are today indeed somewhere to park the kids albeit with those other kids and the situation is both good and bad, not either/or.

I can only write one thing for sure on this matter: if I had children I would homeschool them not because public schools are as bad as they are alleged to be (though perhaps many schools are); the reason I would homeschool my children is so they would become the students I think they ought to be—for better and worse.