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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't understand.  Kids that prep like mad for the SAT entrance exams and even jack their scores up 200 points  and get into Harvard will end up at this school and not be able to keep up with classmates?  Kids who prep for their magnet entrance exams, Catholic school exams, SSAT with outstanding results will have artificial  (unnatural and performance-enhanced) scores and will be doomed when they attend their favorite Big 3 school?  Kids who play with puzzles, analogy word games, number sense, puzzles and raven-like exercises will fall on their faces in your fine private schools loaded with the brightest of the intelligensia due to artificial and performance-enhanced scores?  Many performance-enhanced Asian Americans and other immigrants are stilling kicking much butt in our fancy private schools.  On the contrary, I don't see these kids failing to keep.  It is your kids that can't keep up. the ones with natural intelligence and no performance.  Those are my observations.

I will not even comment on your NFL analogy and spare you.[/quote]

Of course all those kids applying to Harvard prep for the SAT.  The SAT test is designed to measure achievement, not aptitude.  And because those Harvard applicants all prep for the achievement test, comparing their fully-prepped scores is something Harvard can easily do.  But when you try to extend that comparison to prepping for an IQ test, your argument falls.  The IQ test is designed to be taken without prep.  Prepping for it invalidates the test and its norms.  I suppose if every child were equally prepped for the same IQ test, then maybe researchers could develop new norms based on that performance-enhanced model, but that's not the world we live in.

Your argument is now starting to sound like the old "Prince and the Pauper" meme (or "Trading Places" or "Gattaca" depending on your demographic) of nature versus nurture.  You want to claim that any child can increase his abilities -- perhaps not infinitely, you now admit, but significantly -- through simple hard work.  Certainly hard work can take many people a long way.  But just working hard is never going to grant me the ability to play basketball like Lebron James, and it's never going to grant you the ability to design the next iPhone.  For better or worse, we all are constrained by our genetics.

No need to "spare me" on the NFL analogy.  It's OK if you just admit you have no answer for it.  It seems you don't know as much about athletics as you've implied.[/quote]

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