February 01, 2006
Failing Flynn Effect in Britain?
It is a commonplace among people who study IQ that every generation has been geting smarter than the last. The effect whose causes are a matter of controversy is called the "Flynn Effect". Now a new study indicates that things have started to move in the other direction in Britain:
For a decade we’ve been told that our kids, just as they seem to be getting taller with each generation, are also getting brighter. Every year new waves of children get better GCSE, A-level and degree results than their predecessors. Meanwhile, in primary schools, the standards in national maths and English tests at 11 head in one direction — relentlessly upwards.Last week came the bombshell that blew a gaping hole in this one-way escalator of achievement.
Far from getting cleverer, our 11-year-olds are, in fact, less “intelligent” than their counterparts of 30 years ago. Or so say a team who are among Britain’s most respected education researchers.
After studying 25,000 children across both state and private schools Philip Adey, a professor of education at King’s College London confidently declares: “The intelligence of 11-year-olds has fallen by three years’ worth in the past two decades.”
Now, one of the things to do when you see surprising data is to check your experimental assumptions. One BIG question that is not answered by the article is whether the children studied are really from the same population that was studied in the 1990s and the 1970s. Given the vast amount of immigration to Britain and the fact that there are now more active Muslims than active Christians there, it is highly likely that the studied population has simply changed.
It would be helpful to compare the IQs of the children of recent immigrants with the IQs of multigenerational Brits. It is entirely possible that British cultural insitutions are intact and functioning, but that either they are not operating on the immigrant population or the immigrant population is simply less intelligent than the Brits.
Note, given that Arab Muslim culture is both polygamous and historically nomadic, it would be unsurprising if they did not compete well in practical intelligence with the monogamous and industrious Brits. (See my prior post on Polygamy. I will discuss the problems of nomads in a future post).
Note, it is also quite possible that the Brits themselves have really gotten stupider. The welfare state has created all the wrong incentives and European culture has been failing in all sorts of ways in the recent past. Given that immigrants are typically more energized than native populations, it is entirely possible that the immigrants are actually bringing up the score.
My point here is that more data would be really helpful.
Posted by Alex at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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