

The New Child-Testing Craze - bootload
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-17/the-new-child-testing-craze/full/

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JeffL
FTA:

"The rush to judge kids on their good behavior has been accelerated by the
notion of emotional intelligence. In the 1995 publication of his book,
Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman theorized that EI could be more
determinative of a child's academic success than the child's IQ. That idea is
so popular that few have noticed it’s not supported by the data—the theory has
proven to be a fallacy. In a recent meta-analysis of 57 studies, scholars at
Florida International University determined that the correlation between
emotional intelligence and school success tops out at 0.10. That was for
teens; for 5 year olds, it’s even more problematic."

I thought that part was particularly interesting, having been to a private
elementary school where they talked about EI _all_ the time.

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ZeroGravitas
If your private school is oversubscribed, and your entrance tests are
basically random, why not just raise prices?

I could understand a proud parent enjoying the kudos of having a child in a
school that selected on IQ (even if we all know it's a dodgy measure) but why
be proud of a child being selected on entirely arbitrary standards of
compliance and obedience?

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tungstenfurnace
Isn't it better to focus on oneself -- trying to be a better parent or teacher
-- than to focus on testing the child in your care and trying to predict his
future? It's not possible to predict people's futures anyway and all this
tyrannical nonsense is simply contributing to depression and to the
bureaucratisation of childhood.

