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A comment on The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education programs (2021). Parent comment

Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by dpbriggs on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @01:33PM (#31671006)
Any further reading recommendations? It's unclear why the cultural example of baking and sharing food would cause significant differences in test results but that's picking at an example. Were the six other questions also stereotypical of white middle class families? I imagine they were more abstract (lacking cultural context?). Would the solution here be to remove cultural context, or have culturally tailored exams? It would be interesting to take IQ tests from other countries and compare results.

I imagine other factors such as home life, economic status, and cultural emphasis on education would be much, much stronger predictors on IQ test performance.

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Re:The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted edu... by lmkg on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @02:38PM (#31672067)
A few straight arithmetic questions, one about the alphabet, a few about parts of speech. These don't immediately jump out to me as cultured, although anything involving letters or grammar will be sensitive to the linguistic background of the students.

Certainly home life, economic background, etc have an impact on educational outcomes. But I'm making a narrower claim here. A student with a poor home life is likely to test poorly regardless, although the difference might be larger in some tests than others. But a student with the same educational aptitude may test better or worse depending on if they're being tested on topics that are familiar or unfamiliar to them.

Removing cultural context is certainly a solution. I'm not sure it's the best solution. Excessively-abstract problems are only one aspect of intelligence. Anything involving reading comprehension is going to have some linguistic or cultural elements, but I'm not sure it's valid to just remove reading comprehension altogether.

If you want to see a standardized test from a different culture, here's one that's made the rounds a few times. This is for eight-graders in Kentucky in 1912. The sections on Geography & Physiology certainly stand out, but even the math section has a notably different emphasis than modern education.

https://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam191...

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