India backs out of global education test for 15-year-olds.
Indians were put to test for the first time in the last assessment in 2009. On the global stage, they stood second last among 73 countries, only beating Kyrgyzstan on reading, math and science abilities… This time around, sources said India shied away from the assessment as government officials felt our children were not prepared for such a test.
“India didn’t sign up for the PISA 2012 assessment because when countries were asked to sign up for that assessment, India had only signed up for the PISA 2009 assessment, which it carried out with a year later delay in 2010,” said Juliet Evans, who handles communication and administration for the PISA Secretariat. Unlike India, several other countries like Costa Rica, Malaysia, Georgia and the UAE who had carried out the PISA evaluation in 2010 did sign up for the upcoming assessment.
Which of these Soviet leaders does this remind you of?
Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev are all travelling together in a railway carriage. Unexpectedly the train stops. Lenin suggests: “Perhaps, we should call a subbotnik, so that workers and peasants fix the problem.” Stalin puts his head out of the window and shouts, “If the train does not start moving, the driver will be shot!” But the train doesn’t start moving. Khrushchev then shouts, “Let’s take the rails behind the train and use them to construct the tracks in the front”. But it still doesn’t move. Brezhnev then says, “Comrades, Comrades, let’s draw the curtains, turn on the gramophone and pretend we’re moving!”
Anyhow, most countries will continue participating, including some new ones. I am especially looking forwards to seeing how Vietnam performs. It is about ten years behind China, and its genetic IQ level is probably about 5 points lower than China’s. As such, if its IQ comes out to be appreciable lower than 95 (my own estimate is 90-92) then it would be a further blow against Ron Unz’s theory of the East Asian Exception (to the Flynn Effect).
Ignorance is bliss?
Sense of superiority is based on ignorance a lot of time. Knowing too much can lead to depression. Correlation between IQ and suicide rate is real.
Brezhnev then says, “Comrades, Comrades, let’s draw the curtains, turn on the gramophone and pretend we’re moving!”
Ha, ha, ha.
As such, if its IQ comes out to be appreciable lower than 95 (my own estimate is 90-92) then it would be a further blow against Ron Unz’s theory of the East Asian Exception (to the Flynn Effect).
Well, maybe. But do the Southeast Asians such as the Vietnamese really tend to cluster with the East Asian peoples? Perhaps, perhaps not. Genetically, they supposedly have a good deal of overlap with Southern Han, but they lack 2000 years of heavy economic pressure, which might be a factor. So I’m not sure their performance would necessarily impact the hypothesis one way or the other. I’d certainly never argue it applies to Malays or Filipinos, though for all I know it might.
I thought Vietnam had an IQ of about a 100?
A Thai IQ study found an IQ of 99 for Thailand. I can’t read Thai though. Can some who can copy and paste Thai script translate this paper with Google Translate?
http://forum.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/jmht/article/view/1667
News article:
http://sports.tmcnet.com//news/2011/07/08/5623876.htm
“BANGKOK, Jul 08, 2011 (The Nation – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) — Thai children’s average intelligence quotient (IQ) is just 98.59, a little lower than the world’s median of 100, according to new research.
He said the survey of Thai students was conducted using the Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM parallel version; updated 2003) in December and January.”
I need to understand the paper to check what it was normed on, but aren’t the norms of SPM based on British norms?
Thailand has a big difference between the rich and the poor so you expect a low score
I would think that good reliable data for IQs in SE Asia are lacking. IIRC some of the Vietnamese IQ scores floating around were just estimates made by averaging Thai IQ scores with Chinese ones. And if the Thai IQ scores were inaccurately low, then so are Vietnamese.
Anyway, Vietnam and all the SE Asian nations (and China) have multiple ethnic groups, with lots of obscure hill people communities across Vietnam. I would like to see IQ data for just the majority Kinh Vietnamese, which I would estimate to be roughly around the same as the south of China, maybe 1-2 pts. difference at most?
Vietnamese average IQ test was done twice during 2000s by Ministry of Education, but not announced loudly. As far as I remember, the results are 99.5 and 101.
In general perspective, the South Vietnamese have lower IQ than the North Vietnamese, due to genetic and cultural reasons. The South Vietnamese have absorbed Cham, Khmer element for too long time, and in fact, many Viet in the South are actually Viet-speaking Cham or Khmer.
In every year, the university entrance score in the Southern Vietnam universities are always lower than in the Northern Vietnam ones, since when test became uniform countrywide around 10 – 15 years ago..
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Uhm, my bet is that the elite of Vietnam is Northern based. I haven’t a clue why but i doubt that being the loosing side has anything to do with it.
Contrary to the belief of many people, the ethnic Hoa (of Chinese origin) in Vietnam contribute almost none to our intellectual heritage. There is virtually no Vietnamese great scientist with Chinese origin, in the past as well as in modern times, although there are a lot of dynasties, high-ranking government officials and rich businessmen having Chinese blood (for example, the ancestor of Tran dynasty, one of the greatest ever Vietnamese dynasties, came from Fujian province in China. The next Ho dynasty, also came from strong Chinese heritage, so strong that Ho Quy Ly named country Dai Ngu, after the name of ancient state in China).
In modern times, as far as my observation can go, the people who still claim Hoa heritage (mostly in the south of Vietnam, because North Vietnamese ethnic Hoa seems to mix well with ethnic King and abandon their Hoa heritage), are generally lower-educated than mainstream ethnic King. They may excel in business, but clearly not in science and education.
That’s because all such Chinese origin Vietnamese all fled to USA after Vietnam war. I personally know many of them and they are all either professionals or scientists. So you argument is totally based on ignorance.
By the way, is there any Vietnam Scientists in Vietnam? ’cause I am a scientist who are working on a disease that is rampant in Vietnam yet I never, never encountered a single research paper in this field from Vietnam. Even Cambodia got several such research papers.
It’s hard to tell who is Hoa in Vietnam today due to the government’s forced change of Hoa names to Vietnamese names. Despite being forced to abandon their Hoa heritage, most Hoa kept their heritage by attending Hoa school rather than lower quality and less competitive Vietnamese language schools. Wealth has a strong correlation with IQ. Hoa’s business acumen correlates well with Hoa’s dominance in other fields particularly in science in Vietnam. This can be seen in Vietnamese university science faculties where about 40% are of Hoa origin (Chinese in Vietnam is only about 2.6% but controls about 40% of the economy and academics).