Bryan didn’t touch this subject with a 10-foot pole, but on the subject of why adults mostly don’t retain anything they learn in school, it’s worth mentioning that learning things is cognitively difficult and most people aren’t all that smart. Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life by Linda S. Gottfredson is the most revealing thing I’ve read on this subject by far. Some choice quotes, although much of the info in this paper is in large tables:
If the 25th WPT percentile of applicants is used to estimate the minimum threshold for employability in an occupation, it suggests that virtually all occupations accommodate individuals down to IQ 110, but virtually none routinely accommodates individuals below IQ 80.… Lest IQ 80 seem an unreasonably high (i.e., exclusionary) threshold in hiring, it should be noted that the military is prohibited by law (except under a declaration of war) from enlisting recruits below that level (the 10th percentile). That law was enacted because of the extraordinarily high training costs and high rates of failure among such men during the mobilization of forces in World War II (Laurence & Ramsberger, 1991; Sticht et al., 1987; U.S. Department of the Army, 1965).
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Table 3 provides the passing rates in the 1955 standardization sample of the WAIS for its 40 vocabulary items (Matarazzo, 1972, p. 514). All individuals tested were able to provide at least a tolerable definition of concrete items such as bed, ship, and penny, but passing rates dropped quickly for more abstract and nuanced concepts such as slice (94%), sentence (83%), domestic (65%), and obstruct (58%). Only half of this nationally representative sample of 16 to 65-year-olds could define the words “remorse,” “ reluctant,” and “calamity.” Fewer than one in five knew the words “ominous” and “tirade,” and only 5% could provide even a partial definition of “travesty.” None of these words is esoteric; anyone who has attended U. S . high schools or read national newspapers or magazines has surely encountered them. Vocabulary tests gauge the ease with which individuals have routinely caught on to new and more complex concepts they encounter in the general culture.
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The Similarities subtest of the WAIS provides another example of how the manifest content of a test serves merely as a vehicle for creating differentially complex cognitive tasks. As shown in Table 4, all concepts in the subtest are well known; the most difficult test item uses the words “fly” and “tree.” What the test requires is for people to state one way in which the two concepts (say, orangebanana or table-chair) are similar. It thus requires people to abstract key attributes or uses for each, compare those attributes, and then judge which ones are similar. Passing rates drop quickly as relations between the items become more abstract. Over 90% of the WAIS standardization sample could identify one pertinent similarity between oranges and bananas, but only 69% could do so for eyes and ears. Fewer than half succeeded in giving a similarity between egg and seed, and only one quarter produced one similarity between praise and punishment.
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Table 8 shows the percentages of White adults who are proficient at each of the five levels on the three NALS scales. Generally about 4% reach the highest level. Level 5 (376-500) signals an 80% probability, for example, of being able to summarize two ways that lawyers challenge prospective jurors (based on a passage discussing such practices) and to use a calculator to determine the total cost of carpet to cover a room (see Figure 2). Roughly another 20% of White adults reach Level 4 (326-375), where individuals can perform such tasks as restating an argument made in a lengthy news article and calculating the money needed to raise a child based on information stated in a news article. A total of about one third of White adults reach Level 3 (276-325), but no higher, which includes capabilities for writing a brief letter explaining an error in a credit card bill and using a flight schedule to plan travel arrangements. Level 2 proficiency (226-275) includes locating an intersection on a street map, entering background information on an application for a social security card, and determining the price difference between two show tickets. This level is reached but not exceeded by about 25% of Whites. Finally, one out of seven White adults functions routinely no higher than Level 1 (less than 225), which is limited to 80% proficiency in skills like locating an expiration date on a driver’s license and totaling a bank deposit. Individuals at Level 1 or 2 “are not likely to be able to perform the range of complex literacy tasks that the National Education Goals Panel considers important for competing successfully in a global economy and exercising fully the rights and responsibilities of citizenship” (Baldwin et al., 1995, p. 16).
The picture of the world I get from reading this paper is depressing as hell. I get a sense of a form of suffering that is politically difficult to talk about: suffering because you don’t have enough cognitive resources to tackle the challenges the world gives you, including but not limited to the torture of schools attempting to teach you things that are both pointless and difficult for insane reasons. I also get a sense of the privilege—let’s call it cognitive privilege—of being able to ignore this, because it’s not a problem that you or the people you know have.
Bryan didn’t touch this subject with a 10-foot pole, but on the subject of why adults mostly don’t retain anything they learn in school, it’s worth mentioning that learning things is cognitively difficult and most people aren’t all that smart. Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life by Linda S. Gottfredson is the most revealing thing I’ve read on this subject by far. Some choice quotes, although much of the info in this paper is in large tables:
The picture of the world I get from reading this paper is depressing as hell. I get a sense of a form of suffering that is politically difficult to talk about: suffering because you don’t have enough cognitive resources to tackle the challenges the world gives you, including but not limited to the torture of schools attempting to teach you things that are both pointless and difficult for insane reasons. I also get a sense of the privilege—let’s call it cognitive privilege—of being able to ignore this, because it’s not a problem that you or the people you know have.