Category Archives: Intelligence

Math Ability: Is It The Kids Or The Method Of Teaching Them?

America, Conservatism, Education, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Kids, Race, Science

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To continue the math-related conversation begun in “U.S. Kids Can’t Read, Write Or Do Math, But Are No. 1 In Critical Race Theory,” here are more warnings from The Economist:

The writer says that, “Conservatives typically campaign for classical math: a focus on algorithms (a set of rules to be followed), memorizing (of times tables and algorithmic processes) and teacher-led instruction. Pupils in these classrooms focus on the basics, exploring concepts after obtaining traditional skills …”

“…Progressives,” he argues, “typically favor a conceptual approach to math based on problem-solving and gaining number-sense, with less emphasis on algorithms and memorizing.”

Irrespective, the achievement situation on the ground is as follows:

In 2018, American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. American adults ranked fourth-from-last in numeracy when compared with other rich countries. As many as 30% of American adults are comfortable only with simple maths: basic arithmetic, counting, sorting and similar tasks. American employers are desperate for science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills: nuclear engineers, software developers and machinists are in short supply. And while pupils’ maths scores are bad enough now, they could be getting worse. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a national exam, 13-year-old pupils’ scores dropped five points in 2020 compared with their peers’ in 2012. The status quo does not add up. But teachers and academics cannot agree on where to go next.

This is not purely about “the conceptual approach to math,” versus an emphasis on “algorithms and memorizing,” as the writer frames it.

However important, more than the methods of teaching math, American failures are about the kind of kids America has and the philosophy undergirding their education—a highly variegated population educated under the philosophy of egalitarianism. Not everyone can learn math, yet this is the premise of American education.

Yes, “highly ranked mathematical nations” such as Singapore, China and Japan have the  best math in the world and are NOT teaching by progressive methodology.

But the East Asian nations are relatively homogeneous and have kids with the good potential (IQ). Although important, the statistically significant variance is to be found, I would wager, in the kind of population, more than in the method of teaching, however important.

I hate to say it, but as far as raw human capital goes, America is fast becoming a bit of a shithole.

MORE: “America’s maths wars:How teaching multiplication tables became another victim of the political divide.”

RELATED READING:
“The Wussification Of The West: Will We Ban Shakespeare For Othello And Shylock?”
“U.S. Kids Can’t Read, Write Or Do Math, But Are No. 1 In Critical Race Theory“

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UPDATED (10/15): NEW COLUMN/Video: U.S. Kids Can’t Read, Write Or Do Math, But Are No. 1 In Critical Race Theory

Argument, China, Critical Race Theory, Education, English, Family, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Kids, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Psychology & Pop-Psychology

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NEW COLUMN is “Homegrown Retardation A Bigger Problem Than Homegrown Terrorism” or “US Kids Can’t Read Or Do Math, But Are No. 1 In Critical Race Theory.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Townhall.com, The New American, and CNSNews.com.

Excerpt:

America’s crumbling education system is in the news. On October 5th, Joe Biden managed to disgorge some dismal indicators as to the future prospects of America’s youth compared to the rest of the developed world.

Joe didn’t quite say it, but America’s kids, the product of an obscenely well-funded school system, rank last in the developed world in reading, writing and math, making homegrown retardation a far more pressing problem in modern-day America than homegrown terrorism.

Yet conservatives have kept insisting, throughout the Covid lockdowns and quarantines, that kids were missing out on an education because they were out of school.

To paraphrase Joan Rivers, how can you miss out on a rash? (When Madonna accused Lady Gaga of stealing her music, the great, late, lady Joan wanted to know how you could steal a rash.)

A particularly startling fact caught my attention in the Economist. “At 15, children in Massachusetts, where education standards are higher than in most states, are so far behind their counterparts in Shanghai at math, that it would take them more than two years of regular education to catch up.”

This last fact is enormously telling and alarming. It tells you that America’s best schools and students can’t compete with the world’s best.

As the author further quipped cynically, “American children came top at thinking they were good at math, but bottom at math.”

There’s no doubt that American kids are drowning in self-esteem. As someone who had warned, in the early 2000s, about unrealistic, dangerous levels of self-esteem—I would contend that inflated self-esteem and narcissism not only mask failure, but create pumped up nihilists, ready to unleash on their surrounds, unless met with palliative praise.

Yes, self-esteem is the royal jelly upon which America’s children are raised. Our child-centered, non-hierarchical, collaborative, progressive schooling has produced kids who do not believe they can and should be corrected; and when corrected lash out in anger or bewilderment.

Indeed, to listen to our university students speak—is to hear a foreboding amalgam of dumbness and supreme confidence combined. Yet they are often high achievers in the kind of schools “tailored” for just such sub-par output. The achievement Bell Curve has been skewed. …

READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Homegrown Retardation A Bigger Problem Than Homegrown Terrorism” or “U.S. Kids Can’t Read Or Do Math, But Are No. 1 In Critical Race Theory.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Townhall.com, The New American, and CNSNews.com.

WATCH:

‘American Kids Come Top At THINKING They’re Good At Math, But Bottom At Math, Reading, Writing’

UPDATE (10/15/021): It appears that my “American Kids Can’t Read, Write, or Do Math, But Are No. 1 in CRT” beat the news again.

However, whereas my dismal assessment of the state of U.S. kids’ intellect was derived largely from The Economist—an excellent source, despite its liberalism—sources stateside euphemize the dire situation of American kids, writing:

“America’s Kids Earn Disappointing Grades on Nation’s Report Card”:
‘I’ve never reported a slide like that,’ an official with the group that administers the Nation’s Report Card said after analyzing the results.”

These results are not compared to other populations in the developed world. As I said, we’re at the bottom.

The NAEP, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what students know and can do in subjects like math, reading, science, U.S. history, civics and geography. Its long-term trends exam is administered every eight years in math and reading only, and reports results nationally by age – as opposed to the other NAEP exams, which are administered every three years and report results by grade level and are broken out by state and city.

The assessment was administered to roughly 34,000 9- and 13-year-olds during the 2019-20 school year, just prior to coronavirus pandemic disruptions to school. Typically, the results also include data for 17-year-olds, but COVID-19 restrictions prevented the age group from participating.

UPDATE III (11/27/021): Institutional Rot: Post-Vaccination Myopericarditis Could Be Linked To Fauci-Recommended, Rotten Injection Technique

Affirmative Action, COVID-19, Gender, Healthcare, Intelligence, Science, The State, The Therapuetic State

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Idiot anchors like Pamela Brown of CNN, who speaks with a childish lisp and is unable to pronounce her “ings” (as in, “We’re not goin’ to question Fauci ‘science’, I’m just sayin’), are naturally incurious. Worse: They do not brook any questioning of received “wisdom” or authority.

To the aura of a petulant, lisping baby, Brown and her feminist network colleagues at CNN and MSNBC add an authoritarian aura. So, don’t expect these news gatekeepers to delve into any area that might empower their viewers to control some aspect of their vaccine experience, should they opt to succumb to pressure and get the Covid-19 jab.

In particular, don’t expect petulant Pamela or the CNN Covid doctors to bring to your awareness a credible hypothesis that post-vaccination myopericarditis could be a consequence of shoddy injection technique, in the Age of The Idiot, whereby a jab aimed at the  muscle hits a blood vessel.

Some old-timer, solid, primary care practitioners are warning that a tried-and-true injection technique, aspiration, well-within your control to demand, is being flouted:

A paper, “Intravenous Injection of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA Vaccine Can Induce Acute Myopericarditis in Mouse Model,” hypothesizes quite credibly that post-vaccination myopericarditis could be exacerbated because,

“… current CDC … and WHO guidelines … no longer recommend precautionary measures during intra-muscular vaccine administration. Brief aspiration for blood return during intramuscular injection of medication as a preventive measure against accidental IV injection.”

The reason the Idioicrats recommend against a life-saving, old, precautionary technique?

PAIN!!!! “The CDC Pink Book 2020 and WHO 2015 position paper have recommended against aspiration prior to vaccine injection so as to minimize pain”!!!

Aspiration: “An important part of injecting medicine is aspirating a needle prior to releasing the fluid. Doing this properly will protect you from unwanted side effects and infection.”

Aspiration means to draw breath, or air from a needle. This simple process can make a big impact though. It protects you from hitting a blood vessel or artery and accidentally injecting fluid into one, which can result in a variety of different side effects.

Via “Intravenous Injection of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA Vaccine Can Induce Acute Myopericarditis in Mouse Model“:

Both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have clearly stated
that their vaccines should only be given via IM route [30, 31].
However, current CDC [6] and WHO guidelines [5] no longer
recommend precautionary measures during IM vaccine administration.
Brief aspiration for blood return during intramuscular
injection of medication as a preventive measure against accidental
IV injection was previously present in most guidelines
[32]. This practice becomes controversial as scientific evidence
of the perceived benefit of this procedure is lacking for IM injection
of vaccine. The CDC Pink Book 2020 [6] and WHO
2015 position paper [5] have recommended against aspiration
prior to vaccine injection so as to minimize pain [33]. The veins
and arteries within the reach of a syringe needle in the deltoid
region are considered too small to allow a rapid IV injection of
vaccine without blowing out the vessel [6]. However, this speculation
also lacks supportive scientific evidence. Another possibility
of getting a high blood mRNA vaccine level is the rapid
movement of the vaccine through the lymphatic system into
the venous circulation. Thus changing the vaccine injection site
from deltoid to the vastus lateralis muscle of lateral mid-thigh
may reduce the amount of vaccine lipid nanoparticles reaching
the venous circulation due to enhanced uptake by the dendritic
cells and macrophages at the regional inguinal, iliac and paraaortic
lymph nodes.

Our study indicates that IV injection of vaccines might partially contribute to this clinical phenotype, thus warranting a reconsideration of the practice of IM injection without aspiration, which carries the risk of inadvertent IV injection. Increasing the size of mRNA-vaccine lipid-nanoparticle or decreasing the vaccine dose in normal adolescents to reduce  risks of myopericarditis warrant further investigations.

MORE.

UPDATED I (10/5): Indian press is more open to inquiry than the American presstitutes. Reporters are asking questions:

“Is faulty injection technique behind rare clot disorder reported post Covid vaccination?”

UPDATE II (10/26/021):

UPDATE III (11/27/021):
Injection technique: The first South African injector does NOT aspirate the needle. The second is commendably careful and DOES aspirate. If you get jabbed, insist on aspiration, which ensures a jab aimed at muscle doesn’t hit a blood vessel.

UPDATED (9/7): Lara Logan, Tucker Carlson’s Kissinger, Discovers Occam’s Razor And Misapplies The Theory of Simple

America, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Neoconservatism, Politics, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, South-Africa

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Were it possible to “lose face,” in this day-and-age, I’d say Fox New persona Tucker Carlson is embarrassing himself having crowned Lara Logan as his go-to Henry Kissinger on Afghanistan. That’s an indictment right there.

Carlson is also in thrall to Logan’s ersatz “philosophical” observations, treating this shamelessly confident woman as a Delphic oracle of sort.

You might have heard Logan claim recently and repetitively that everything in the world is very simple.  “Everything is simple,” she keeps intoning in her appearances on the nepotistic Fox News. Logan’s “simple” premise being that America is omnipotent. Whatever occurs under its watch is all planned.

Ridiculous and wrong, yet Tucker giggles in delight.

They want you to believe Afghanistan is complicated. Because if you complicate it, it is a tactic in information warfare called ‘ambiguity increasing.’ So now we’re talking about all the corruption and this and that… But at its heart, every single thing in the world… always comes down to one or two things …”

Ridiculous and wrong why? Primarily because Logan’s explanation for America’s defeat in Afghanistan is not even the simplest explanation, despite her claim that it is. The simplest explanation, based on as much information as possible, would be that the US was outsmarted and outmaneuvered, and that the mission was impossible in the first place. Here:

Unlike Lara Kissinger Logan of Fox News, who “thinks” America could have won a war that other superpowers have lost—the Chinese and the Iranians are hip to what just happened. This was “probably one of the best conceived and planned guerrilla campaigns ever,” says Mike Martin, a former British army officer in Helmand province, now at King’s College London. “The Taliban went into every district and flipped all the local militias by doing deals along tribal lines.”

It would appear that our new Roger Scruton of philosophy likely read up recently on Occam’s Razor, which is a broad principle—hardly a philosophy—and she is currently applying it to everything under the sun, with little evidence or geopolitical and historic understanding in support of her Theory of Simple.

Occam’s Razor via the Browser’s first-page search:

What is an example of Occam’s razor?
For example, if a doctor is examining a patient with a high fever and cough, they may settle on the simplest explanation: the patient has a cold. … Occam’s razor is a good rule of thumb if you remember that it depends on making fewer assumptions based on as much evidence as possible.

A nifty principle, and certainly not a philosophy—Occam’s razor was not meant to apply to everything in the world.

RELATED: “Lara Logan: ‘Conservative’ Media’s Latest Blond Ambition”

IMPORTANT:

Platitudes are what media, liberal and con, offer about their own drab homogeneity. A fellow South African expat, the well-to-do Lara Logan has not used her influenceto expose the horrors unfolding in our homeland of South Africa. Had Logan done so in 2011, she’d have been authentically heroic.
It’s certainly too late for Logan, who’s been mum about the systematic murder of whites in the country of our birth, to be a hero to South Africans.

UPDATE (9/7): What do you know? The Economist did not ask foxette Lara Logan for her “analysis” of “why America failed in Afghanistan.” The august magazine asked Henry Kissinger, a statesman, for his analysis. Kissinger says what this writer said over a decade back in columns like these. Read:

“To Pee Or Not To Pee is Not the Question”

“‘JUST WAR’ FOR DUMMIES”

“Grunts, Get In Touch With Your Inner-Muslim”

“Afghanistan: A War Obama Can Call His Own”

Excerpts from “Henry Kissinger on why America failed in Afghanistan” to follow.