Monday, August 31, 2009

More on teachers' IQs: Here's a follow-up to the last post. I calculated mean IQ for different types of teachers. Keep in mind that samples sizes are low:


Mean IQ

High school teachers
Whites 108
Blacks 91

Women 107
Men 105

Teaches math 114
Teaches art, drama, or music 116
Teaches English 119
Teaches foreign languages 121

Elementary school teachers
1980s-90s 106
This decade 105

Kindergarten and pre-k
1980s-90s 99
This decade 102


The most striking finding is that IQs for black high school teachers are so much lower than for whites. I included specific types of high school teachers with large enough samples to calculate a mean. The numbers are all high. Elementary school teachers are not less intelligent than high school teachers, but people who teach little kids are.

11 comments:

  1. But how can we trust this data when it gives results like the following?

    Teaches math 114
    Teaches art, drama, or music 116
    Teaches English 119
    Teaches foreign languages 121

    That makes no sense at all. Especially such a high number for people who teach drama, art, and music.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Keep in mind that IQ is measured here with a vocabulary test. Ns are very low--10 to 20 for each category--so we shouldn't be confident about the results.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9:45 AM

    Kindergarten teachers generally have to meet the same educational and certification requirements as those who teach elementary school, but that may not always be true for pre-K teachers. Many of the latter may be more accurately described as aides or paraprofessionals rather than as full-fledged teachers.

    Peter

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Keep in mind that IQ is measured here with a vocabulary test."

    Well that explains it.

    But if the data is so sparse and unreliable, then why post it? Why present it when there's a good chance it's wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous11:11 AM

    Ron

    Slightly off topic here, but what kind of questions are asked for the WORDSUM? Do they use GRE level words?
    I'm curious.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous12:44 PM

    It's mildly surprising that the gap between men and women isn't larger than just two points. Traditionally, women often viewed teaching as a desirable career choice, while men not infrequently stumbled into the field after being unable to make a go of it in other occupations. While this hasn't been the case in many years, one would think that the GSS catches some older teachers who began their careers under these circumstances.

    Peter

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous3:19 PM

    Man I had a black English teacher in the eighth grade. A big fat black woman.


    Dont get me wrong, this was a decent Christian lady but oh heavens-to-friggin'-Betsy did she make a bunch of grammatical mistakes.


    I honestly thought sitting in that class that I was smarter (really smarter) as an eighth grader than she was as a middle aged woman.


    OneSTDV,
    Im guessing many high school math teachers didn't have the intellectual firepower to be using math professionally in engineering, science, or whatnot and fell back on teaching mass as a third or fourth option.



    BTW----ALL...............Ive been told you can make some decent money on the side tutoring if you can pass various tests. Havent checked it out personally, but might be something to look into

    ReplyDelete
  8. If high school math teachers average 14/15ths of a standard deviation above the mean on the GSS's 10 word vocabulary test, then they would no doubt average higher on a genuine IQ test.

    ReplyDelete
  9. wrt: Teaches math 114
    Teaches art, drama, or music 116
    Teaches English 119
    Teaches foreign languages 121

    These values might well be broadly valid, giving the selection crieria. For example (this is from memory), Warren Farrell (in Why men earn more) provides some data that foreign language majors earn less than they would if they had not been to college.

    The reasoning is that there is an overprovision of women who love to learn languages and are good at it, and they want to use their acquired languages in their work, so this suppresses average wages.

    In other words, you may get a high average intelligence is fields which people (especially women) find intrinsically rewarding - especially for women because they are on average more motivated by wanting job satisfaction than men (who instead tend to seek jobs of higher status).

    This might also apply to music teaching - music is intrinsically rewarding, professional standards in music education are very high (and highly objective) but there are very few well-paid or secure jobs. It might therefore be expected that school teaching will take a lot of this very able group of (mostly) women.

    ReplyDelete
  10. One STDV:

    People who can teach math have more options which are at least as lucrative as teaching than do people who can teach a foreign language.

    ReplyDelete
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