From Turkey’s PISA 2015 National Report:
Science
Reading
Math
In 2015, Richard Lynn and coauthors did one of their standard national IQ analyses on Turkey (based on the results of PISA 2012).
Summary:
There are seven points of interest in the results. First, the total PISA scores adopted as IQs were significantly positively correlated with per capita income (r = .81), higher educational graduation rate (r = .63) and with educational achievement measured by the YGS examination (r = .87), and significantly negatively correlated with total fertility rate (r = −.89), the infant mortality rate (r = −.80) and the percentage of Kurds (r = −.87).
If Europe’s (and Russia’s) problems with low-IQ, high-fertility minorities with a chip on their shoulder seem bad, Turkey’s are arguably far worse.
“If Europe’s (and Russia’s) problems with low-IQ, high-fertility minorities with a chip on their shoulder seem bad, Turkey’s are arguably far worse.”
Hopefully this will eventually destroy Turkey or at least reduce their ability to cause mischief outside their own borders…but of course Europe will need hardcore border restrictions when this happens.
Btw, I’m too lazy to look up right now how Pisa works…how good/bad are those values like 385 or 442 on the map?
Here’s a convenient list/map.
Ok, thank you; so it looks like even Istanbul and the traditionally more secular coastal regions of Turkey are significantly below the national levels of e.g. Italy, Spain or Portugal.
the percentage of Kurds (r = −.87).
This helps explain why the Kurds keep getting used and abused by the US and keep coming back for more.
Don’t know about that, Kurds in Iraq have done quite well through their alliance with the US (at least a lot better than under Saddam).
Wouldn’t surprise me though if the Kurds in Syria eventually get dropped by their great power supporters and are crushed between Assad and Erdogan.
But who knows what will happen…maybe Turkey itself will implode, their economy seems to be in pretty bad shape.
I will confess that I know very little about the Kurds except for two things, that nobody in the region wants to give them their own nation and that the neocons love them. The neocon love affair is surely a dangerous sign that Kurds are going to become ever more troublesome in the future.
Kurds only ever play a destructive role, never a constructive one, no matter what they are involved in.
Those place have large numbers of recent arrivals from Anatolia. If you could break-out the results for “native” Stamboulis it might be interesting.
Turkey has quite a big tech sector and a significant smart fraction.
They have a big test prep industry. I know a Turkish guy who was recruited as a star high school pupil, taken to a hotel in Istambul, and trained 7 days a week for months. The trainees were given exams every morning and then the afternoon would be spent going through the results. Then lessons late into the evening.
The company who did this provided the service for free to my acquaintance, on the understanding that when he was placed highly in the university entrance exam they could use him in advertising.
“Those place have large numbers of recent arrivals from Anatolia. If you could break-out the results for “native” Stamboulis it might be interesting.”
Well yes, but that’s kind of the point…even the parts of Turkey that once were secular/Westernized and presumably had a comparably smart population get taken over by backwards Islamic peasants from central Anatolia. Pretty sad in a way, but probably inevitable.
mountains
There is indeed a big test prep industry. There are a few elite institutions that teach in English, although you have to be pretty well off or your family is to study at them. The AKP has recently been trying to de-emphasise English (not that there are many speakers as it is in Turkey) and promote Arabic. Free education in Turkey only goes to elementary level. You have to pay school fees to go to high school. In remote rural areas some children manage not to get any schooling at all, and illiteracy is widespread. Kurdish areas in the south-east are traditionally neglected, conflict-torn and despite Turkification campaigns people often do not speak, read or write Turkish well or in some cases at all, so lower scores there are not surprising.
The AKP has started removing the theory of evolution and increasing the role of religion in schools, which is not a good sign.
Conspiracy theories of one kind or another dominate newspapers in Turkey, not unlike Unz in fact, with the Jews being seen everywhere, and a recent survey identified that people in Turkey spend a minute a day reading a book on average, and about six hours a day watching TV.
PISA does not include students who don’t turn up to take the test, so if anything this would bias the Kurdish results upwards.
In my observations, book readership plummets once average IQ dips below 95 or so. Mexico and Latin America are also well known for very low readership rates.
Perhaps, but the lowest scores happen also to be in the areas where Turkish is a second language, not a first.
There were some tentative moves towards allowing education in Kurdish but this has ended over the past two years. Institutions that teach Kurdish have been closed, much less institutions that would teach subjects in Kurdish.
The post-coup attempt purges have resulted in many teachers being fired. The AKP is training up replacements who will probably be both politically reliable and educationally incompetent.
Some exotic stuff has been appearing in school materials on the AKP’s watch – there was an outcry when a book for school pupils discussed whether necrophilia was un-Islamic. It concluded that it was not something to be allowed during Ramadan. The book was withdrawn but it was pretty much of a piece with what the AKP thinks education is.
So is necrophilia allowed outside of Ramadan? Islam is indeed most progressive religion. Allah is Great!
Hey DC,
This is complete nonsense – I see this silliness pop up again and again being reported by Western sources that can’t grasp what they are dealing with (and frankly have a questionable grip on logic when it comes to certain subjects like religion – and I don’t mean just Islam). The question is not whether necrophilia is allowed or not – nobody says it is. The question is, if someone does engage in it or bestiality or other prohibited actions while fasting, does it break the fast and furthermore does it not only obligate simply the making up of the fast or the make up plus the expiation penalty (which is fasting for 60 days in a row). I don’t have a huge set of confidence in the AKP, but there is no way they would be teaching that it is allowed.
Same could be asked about smoking crack cocaine – which doesn’t mean it is allowed outside Ramadan.
As far as Kurdish population numbers – well, if that region doesn’t figure this stuff out soon, we have only begun to see the tip of instability since there are sizable Kurdish populations in all surrounding countries including Iran, Syria, etc.
Peace.
No, but there are bigger problems in the educational system of Turkey than low Pisa test scores. A paedophile and necrophiliac named Jimmy Savile was a long-lasting feature of Britain’s society and entertainment world, was knighted, had the ear of royalty and prime ministers etc.
Under the AKP the equivalents of Jimmy Savile in Turkey can have a stab at writing the school textbooks on religion and are closer to the centres of power.
Oh yes, it discussed bestiality as well.
It may have been a trial balloon to see what religious exegesis they could get into a school textbook. And it may be that religious scholars talk about that kind of thing in a theoretical way, which reminds me a little of some things to be found in the Talmud. However, the AKP appears to be wanting 12-year-olds to discuss the attitude to take to zoo- and necrophilia in relation to Ramadan while remaining blissfully unaware of the theory of evolution. And scandals about rape and child molestation have swirled around AKP foundations and individuals.
Hey Ueber,
Nothing to do with the AKP – this kind of discussion is quite normal for boys on the cusp of manhood in traditional Islamic societies. Exposure to Islamic rules and rituals about cleanliness and purity and the like is the normative process for learning about the ‘birds and the bees’ and they likewise need to know what they are responsible for as adults – under the sacred law, a man becomes just as liable as a 40 year old for his fasting and prayers once he enters puberty. Young men in Yemen, Algeria are also exposed to this stuff. People are making a mountain out of a molehill, it takes about two lines* on a discussion of fasting that takes pages.
Does that surprise you? Rape and molestation is about power – those who are covetous of power in one regard usually allow their impulses to spill over into other areas. This is not unique to either the AKP or Muslims – scratch under the surface and you’ll start seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes in the societies we consider civilized.
Peace.
*Note: There are also a couple of lines on whether or not eating dirt breaks your fast and how that breaks down whether or not you come from a region where that is a common practice among people, etc. Really silly stuff to get people all up in a knot about.
Abuses of power abound in Turkey, and the AKP as the governing party since 2002 has committed a great many of them. It seems to be aiming at a society where “teaching about the birds and the bees” in this way as you describe it is normal. But the theory of evolution is some kind of perversion.
I am perfectly aware that other societies have those abuses of power – I mentioned Savile. But Erdogan has closed TV stations and newspapers down for allegedly insulting him. Erdogan, and those he likes, might be able to get away with even more exotic behaviour than Savile did in circumstances where critics can be jailed and their presses or TV signals stopped at the stroke of a pen.
Hey Ueber,
Well, honestly – you can’t really expect a Muslim society to teach the materialist version of the theory of evolution – can you? I mean to drill it in as the explanation of human history – I’m actually surprised that you are surprised. Where in the Muslim world is the theory being taught as taught in Danish high schools – and why should it?
Partially what is happening in Turkey is a swing back toward religion after it being stamped on its face for decades by the Kemalists and secularists.
Your comments on Erdogan and the gathering of too much executive power (and the dangers that can arise from such) are duly noted. This is one of the reasons why the princely elite of many gulf nations cavort with prostitutes all the time, and everyone may know of it – but, speak openly of such things and well, how does the word ‘dungeon’ move you?
Peace.