Maybe we should focus on helping make people successful rather than making people identical

From A good-enough early childhood by Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst. An excellent summary of the empirical paradox that clogs our political discourse regarding education and poverty.

We really want there to be a silver bullet (pre-school, smaller classrooms, wrap-around services, etc.) which would make the lives of children in poor households better. The aspiration is noble.

The problem is that we let our aspirations supersede our empirical evidence. Over to Whitehurst:

ANOMALIES TO THE STANDARD MODEL

The standard model is more of an organizing framework than a formal, straightforwardly testable scientific theory. But to the degree that it fails to organize bodies of reliable observations to which it should be applicable, there is good reason to reconsider it.

There are a number of empirical anomalies to the standard model. I briefly review five: 1) preschool programs that do not improve and sometimes harm children’s later development; 2) normal developmental outcomes in children who have experienced very impoverished early environments; 3) weak correlations between measures of cognitive development in infants and toddlers and their later cognitive abilities; 4) disproportionately larger positive impacts of universal preschool programs on the most disadvantaged children; and 5) the strong genetic influence on many of the characteristics of children that early childhood programs are intended to influence.

He then elaborates on each of these five issues and the evidence he marshals aligns with what I have seen. I agree with his diagnosis that our current strategies are expensive and not effective.

The problem with the empirical evidence is that it has implications that are poisonously anathema to many and especially to anyway infected even a smidgen by social justice contagion.

The second half of his article strikes me as an extended effort to avoid the implications of the evidence he has displayed in the first half. I am not even confident I understand his proposed good-enough model. What I think he is saying, while doing his best not to say it, is that our expectations of what can be accomplished need to be sharply lowered. While that is probably true, it won't go down well. Telling someone that there is nothing to be done about the fact that their child is, and is destined to be, mediocre is not a message that will ever go down well.

I wish he'd taken a slightly different angle, and maybe it is there in the delicacy of the "good-enough model."

If there are no interventions which will permanently raise IQ (which is the case other than exceptional cases, usually having to do with extreme deprivation), then what are the the compensating attributes which might mitigate that. If success in life is a function of high IQ, high integrity, high self-discipline, careful risk management, low time-discounting, etc., then perhaps the focus should be on helping kids master self-discipline, behave with integrity, cultivate risk management, etc. As Whitehurst notes, some of these things, especially those which are behaviors, are also heavily genetically influenced.

However, no one attribute determines life outcomes. It is a significant advantage to have a high IQ, but we all know brilliant people who are perfectly capable of sabotaging that gift. We know many people of average talents but exceptional self-discipline who become millionaires (The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley.)

Success is usually some delicate balance of Knowledge, Experience, Skills, Values, Behaviors, Motivation, Capabilities (including IQ), and Personality. We can't easily change IQ. What are the other things which could be imparted in a school setting which are also related to life success. As long as we monomaniacally try and find a way to make everyone identical in terms of capability, we ignore or overlooking things which might make them successful.