Stereotypes about Polish people being stupid?

well he does.
You two are like two little weather people popping out of the clock, one at a time..:D:D Which one wears the trousers?

50% is genetics and 50% is influenced by the environment.

What's interesting is that, according to some studies, the "the best predictor of intelligence was the IQ of the mother"

independent.co.uk/news/science/children-intelligence-iq-mother-inherit-inheritance-genetics-genes-a7345596.html

So men should date intelligent women to have more intelligent kids.
But only those really smart ones who understand that family and partnership is more important than feminist sex wars :-)

And those genetically less gifted can compensate with other qualities like: perseverance, high work ethic, pleasant personality.

Do you have an opinion if being nasty and personal is acquired, inherited, or gender-based?

All of those qualities are also largely genetically determined so I think you mean genetically less intellectually gifted. As to nature/nurture, although my theoretical knowledge and my practical expererience of teaching has shown me that what intelligence there is can be nurtured to a degree, the really important factors that determine what kind of person you will be are more down to nature.

What I find interesting is how the gene pool can produce siblings with very different characters ,and siblings who have very little in common apart from being raised in the same household. They often grow into adults who would never seek each other out or choose to be friends if they were random strangers. Indeed there can also be a very big difference in levels of intelligence between children of the same parents. Similarly parents who don't appear to be especially intelligent and have perhaps two children with below average ability can produce another one who is well above average. It's very interesting really.

Well stated. Before you celebrate, be aware that you just made yourself a "racist" to the PC morons because, to them, everything is environmental and, therefore, the white man's fault.

That's what I meant, but I also think that qualities like work ethics are acquired in the process of an early education and "socialisation" and are not sucked with mother's milk.

Yet again, in order to effectively learn those new skills higher IQ would be very beneficial.

Only to some extent. Some people are much more naturally inclined to idleness than others. I know. I've taught plenty of them. Others are industrious by nature. Some are bright and capable but are very scattered in their approach. They lack method and order and as a result they frequently get very little done.

Haha oh please its not by accident that the lowest scoring nations are also the most backward

And fyi the iq test isnt only in english. Europeans including poles simply have higher iqs than sub saharan fricans who score an average of 70 - borderline mental retardation. Asians i.e. chinese koreans japanese are the only people that beat europeans.


Is that why you work such a low wage job despite supposedly getting into such elite schools and arent a businessman doctor lawyer or professor? Congrats youre mediocre.

None of which occur in subsaharan africa or thw middle east. Thats why senior commanders think its okay for his men to screw boys and why Africa isnt building any computers, mri machines, rockets or even something as simple as indoor plumbing. Instead they live in mud huts. Yet were suppose to pretend theyre equal to the western world or e asian? LOL!

@Rich Mazur

Its all good. Shes just bitter its understandable. I would be too if i was her.

Equal? They are better!
Why would the white Euros risk their lives getting into those rickety boats to seek better life in Africa if not for that reason? Ebola is yummy but that alone would not be enough. It must be those famous African clinics if they get sick.

Nahh i think its the widespread aids and love of taking a crap outdoors and wiping your butt with leaves. It could also be all the beautiful moustached women hiding underneath black bags and ninja costumes

Just disengage, I've decided to not respond to any of their posts (outside of random)

Why do I have this feeling like I am playing the Pinball Hammer Whack a Mole Style Pop up Mushroom Game here?


And I thank you for it just in case you and others thought that I post to get a reaction from anyone here. I post for the same reason why dogs lick their balls: because I can.

Why do I get the feeling that I did not understand a word of that,despite the fact that it was in English?

On a serious note,I have noticed your posts have become a little more "Human" recently Rich.
And I applaud you for that.

Exactly Atch. My mother was:
An (amateur) concert pianist
Librarian at Britain's largest textile institute.
Sadly, I didn't inherit her brains:( And my father was supremely gifted in the brains department, gaining a scholarship to an academy from a railway family background, way before unions decreed that the industry should be paid a living wage.. No. What we call "intelligence" is to some degree down to nurturing and skills development. That's why Margaret Thatcher was full of **** in her theories that environment has no effect on achievement.

You disturbed me greatly with this comment so I quickly checked if I am slipping into an early onset ...but that wasn't it. Must be something else.

Who wants stereotype? I got one.

Polish girls are cheating so easily like they are eating grapes.

I can tell that English is not your native language. Not remotely funny or makes sense for that matter.

However, this stereotype fits you perfectly! And look how this thread found you across the vastness of the internet.........

Now, here's something interesting. When I was living in the Wicklow mountains I spent many hours wandering the fields and observing the cows and sheep - yes really! In the Spring, when the lambs were about, I observed how curious and inquistive they were and how they would approach and be quite ready to socialize with humans, if given the chance. But their mothers always intervened and prevented them from doing so (for obvious reasons, protecting their young etc). After a month or two, the lambs ceased to approach and ignored the humans, having clearly lost all interest in them and indeed become wary of them.

Another thing I observed was one individual sheep whom Mr Atch and I christened 'the curious sheep' :) Mr Atch and I were sitting by the river bank one day when a sheep approached. They didn't usually come that near so we stayed very still and didn't look directly at it, just watched it out of the corner of our eyes, waiting to see how far it would venture. It stood about 25 feet away from us and gazed out over the river. Then it turned its head, stared at us and literally sidled along the bank, sideways steps, so that it was a bit nearer, We glanced round and it turned its head in an instant, staring out over the river again. This tit for tat, continued until it was about 5 feet away and then when we glanced round at it, it got a bit panicked and ran off. It was very comical! But the interesting thing was that it was clearly curious about us, a quality adult sheep don't normally display. So the potential for intellectual development is present in all sentient beings.

And there were the pheasants. Now they have a death wish. Anybody who lives in the countryside has experienced pheasants running across the road into oncoming traffic. Well, one day we were driving along and up ahead we saw a pheasant hop out of the hedgerow, look right and left, proceed to cross the road, glance round again, saw us approach, decided, 'no, I'm not gonna make it in time' nipped back to the hedge and waited till we'd passed to cross :D

Just to conclude with a human example, one day I was sitting on a Dublin bus, top deck of course :) and a little boy of about four, nearer to four than five, was sitting nearby with his grandfather. The child was asking numerous very intelligent questions to which the only response was "I don't know". For example, "Grandad, why don't we have seatbelts on the bus?" "Grandad what are those birds over there, what are they called?" After a while that child will simply stop asking questions and after another while will stop wondering about things.............if a child asks you about a bird and you don't know what it is, then say "I don't know what that one is called. We must see if we can find out. We could have a look on the internet and see if we can find a picture of one that looks like it or maybe we could go to the library and get a book about birds". And then actually DO it. Never tell a child 'we'll do such-and-such' if you don't really intend to. If you've never wondered why we don't have seatbelts on the bus, then say "Goodness me, that's a very interesting question. I never thought about it before. What do you think yourself, do you have any ideas about it?" and then have a discussion. That's how you develop whatever intelligence the child has and you can expand your own mind in the process.

Exactly

twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1057962306020171777

It's not clear if early head starts and special development have lasting effects (again as children get older nurture plays less of a role than nature in terms of IQ) but you have understand the mechanism of IQ if you want to boost it. Rationalizations trying to wish it away don't help those who could most benefit from intervention.

I can only say that Montessori education definitely has permanent effects. An increasing number of studies are being carried out especially on children from disadvantaged backgrounds who've been randomly selected on a lottery basis for Montessori state funded schools. In one case in East Dallas, the local high school graduation rate for such children was 50% but for the kids who had attended Montessori, it was 94% with 88% going on to college.

I've heard almost only good things about ME but how scalable is it? How big a system can it support?

And does it level or just raise the playing field? (that is disadvantaged kids get a boost but so do advantaged kids so that inequality remains).

Do you mean, as a system of standard state funded education? Or do you mean, how big can an individual school be, and still be effective? The main problem I see is with getting enough decently trained teachers. Any school is only as good as its staff in the end.


I think there are so many other factors at work in life that you can never absolutely level the playing field but raising it significantly is certainly a satisfactory outcome in my view. Parental involvement and committment to the Montessori approach makes a huge difference though and ironically the kids from the 'better' homes sometimes fare less well in that respect. Upper income bracket parents often focus on achievement, excellence, competetiveness and incentives/rewards for 'good' work or behaviour, which are at odds with the Montessori approach. Montessori really is a philoshophy and approach to life, rather than simply an academic education method.

For the best results you need to carry the approach right through in your home life as well and that takes some effort because it feels unnatural to many parents who are accustomed to 'helping' their children with everything from putting on their coats, cutting up their meat, making their beds, picking up their toys, bribing them, wheedling, coaxing, praising etc. Also many parents are fixated on their child's self-esteem which they think is boosted by constantly telling them they are wonderful and that also is very much in opposition to Montessori.

Yeah, my understanding (possibly wrong) is that it depends on a degree of commitment that might be hard to instill in numbers. A lot of real world teacher training is more about weeding out bad practices (damage control) than installing good ones...


so teachers need something like a calling?

I think it could be done but the logistics of it would be huge, especially in a country the size of the USA. I think one way to go would be to gradually make it the standard in your most disadvantaged communities and work outwards from there because in the Montessori Magnet schools with a large number of black students (70% or more) it's been amazingly effective. It could make a huge difference to some of the social problems in America. But it would probably take about fifty years realistically to replace the entire system across a nation from pre-school to secondary.


To be a good Montessori teacher you need to be willing to surrender your own ideas of how you think things should be and follow the Method. If you do that, it works. However that requires a degree of humility on the part of the teacher and many of them simply can't resist doing their own thing. But if you start tweaking it and changing a bit here and a bit there, it doesn't work. Simple as that. You have to accept that Montessori based her system on observations of thousands of children all over the world, she was tireless in that respect. She observed their natural behaviours and then designed the materials, the enviroment, the curriculum, the teaching approach, everything, around what she observed. That's why it's so effective.

Also known as "the approach followed in Poland by many Montessori places".

I visited a "Montessori" nursery once (that can remain nameless to protect the guilty) as part of the teacher training here. The place was a shambles, as it was clearly obvious that the owner had established it to make money and nothing else. They were clearly changing things to meet parental demands, the teachers were dreadful and very inexperienced, and you could see that they had no real idea beyond some books.

I went to a different one, owned and managed by a real Montessori teacher, and you could see the difference - she was very honest that financially, it was a struggle, and that to provide the kids with a great environment for learning, she had to spend most of her evenings applying for various grants and prizes. She was telling me how parents would come, argue with the philosophy and then take their kids out when she wouldn't bend and break to their demands. Her answer was always the same - it's a Montessori nursery, and if they want something different, they should go elsewhere.

It's the same with the democratic schools that are set up here. They don't work for various reasons, and that's speaking as someone who adores the lunatic that was A.S. Neill. Parents think they're some magic solution, but they panic as soon as they realise that their kid isn't actually attending all these lovely lessons, but instead prefers to sit around doing nothing.

Socialism never has worked. (pun intended)

Sounds like a calling...


It's a non-starter in the US I think because of the current mania for standardized testing. I was thinking more of Poland, but parents are way too meddling here for it to work on a broad scale.

Any parent who spends 40 gees a year to put a kid in a private school is a nut or very rich or both. Pushing wet noodles seldom works.

Bachelors is a rip off now anyway. If you dont go all the way to grad school and become like a doctor lawyer etc its not really worth it. If you just do a bachelors amd dont have plans for grad level then stem fields are the best. Otherwise its better to just learn a trade or make your own business. Youll make more money that way