Standing Still Predicts School Success Better Than IQ

Awful headline.<p>One of multiple exercises in a 1940s test of 'self-regulation' involved standing still. Children in 2001 don't obediently stand still as well. Separately, the article notes (without referencing source) that "good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ".<p>The custom headline going from 'standing' to 'school success' is tenuous extrapolation that, if the reporter had put it directly in their article, would not have survived editing and fact-checking.<p>Bad headlines waste readers' time and send discussion off in tangential directions based on skewed understandings.<p>OTOH, I love the article -- good info on how self-management, in individual children (or even groups) might be best encouraged, and how toys/things might be just the wrong thing. (What would that mean for the OLPC?)

I've had a bit of insight into this, through some exposure to a program that attempts to treat ADHD, Aspergers and Dyslexia. The program is based on the premise that these conditions are caused by an underdeveloped cerebellum, and provides a program of exercises that are specifically designed to develop this part of the brain.<p>One of the tests they do in diagnosis and progress assessment is a basic "standing still" test, performed on a platform with computer-monitored sensors, and several of the exercises involve simply standing as still as possible for a few minutes.<p>They find that over the 12-24 months the candidate participates in the program, as their ability to stand still increases, the extent to which they suffer from these conditions diminishes.<p>As I'm sure many here would attest, people with ADHD, AS and Dyslexia often have above-average IQ scores, but struggle with school performance or endeavors that require similar strengths, like conventional office jobs.

From this headline it sounds like this is an article about the lameness of schools, but actually it's a very interesting article about the importance of self-discipline.

This is a great article. Key paragraphs for me:<p>It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.<p>We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning says, the results were very different.<p>"Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago," Bodrova explains. "So the results were very sad."

So, is it a good thing that I talk to myself when programming? My parents always look at me a little strangely when I do that. (I suspect that my coworkers would've done so too, except that many of them also mumble to themselves while programming.)

Self regulation and IQ are both important characteristics. It makes sense that self regulation has a stronger correlation with better school performance than IQ. School tests one's ability to regulate their time and focus, studying a paying attention.<p>I believe that children must mix "raw" play where they can imagine their surroundings. The good old empty box comes to mind... it can be a race car, a castle, a rocket ship and so on and so forth.<p>On the other hand I think the commentary undervalues the importance of regulated play. The learning of rules will come in handy when one enters school and the work world where there are many formal rules to follow.

The problem is much bigger than merely children's toys. In general, our society is progressively less imaginative, and merely consuming what we've inherited from our past. This is why a lot of entertainment is based around destruction: cutting humor, violent action/horror films, most video games, pop music (angry rock, gangsta rap).<p>The hacker community has an advantage here, since we are so used to using our minds. Games like nethack are entirely dependent upon the user being logical and having a good imagination.

old fashioned play involved mimicing what the children saw in the adult world on a much simpler level. What do you do when you want to understand something? You make a simplistic model of it and go from there. Are the children of today not doing this and thus not building an understanding of the world? Is WoW and MySpace the same thing?

But I was only hungry for one marshmallow...

The headline is a sad mark on our schools...<p>Especially as they talk about young children, any faults lie with their parents--the same generations who think they were tougher when they were kids, are creating problems by never saying no to their own offspring. And, schools don't ever want to keep students back, so the curriculum is designed so that anybody who shows up to class can pass. Required daily homework and classwork that might represent 50% of one's grade, instead of a couple of tests that define 80% of one's grade, teaches kids to focus on submitting paperwork instead of actually putting in thought nor allowing them to figure out how to do the learning they might need to do.<p>This process works to ignore incompetency in basic abilities year after year in students, as long as they have good grades, the fact which allows educators to say that college opportunities their kids have available to them are also good, and therefore, that they did their job. Not to mention that schooling our students one month longer, and for 2 years longer, than other countries do, in the same "conditions" described, furthers work towards decreasing independent thought and leaves many kids unprepared for real life.<p>Sometimes I wonder if that when people think our education system does our kids justice because our students are better at sports (that are mostly only played in the US), have more options of after-school activities, and have the chance (based on parent income) to utilize many different types of expensive private educational tools, tutors, "theories", consultants, certifications, and textbooks, if they're not missing that...<p>...the huge factor that explains why our students end up being more entrepreneurial or have the potential to get paid a lot of money when they finally do grow up, is that the US is incredibly wealthy--and at the same time cannot keep track of money any better than its average citizen--than that we're good at educating our students remotely close to what we should be given the money the government budgets for education.<p>I don't think we would hinder our country's strength in either entrepreneurship or Football, Baseball, Lacrosse, and Softball programs if we were to increase our understanding of math and science in this country; nor would it hurt to have a law that would require mandatory monthly teacher to parent education on what is expected of their student and ways the parent can help the student actually succeed at learning the material rather than submitting enough homework assignments to pass. Of course, having more educated people instead of "consumers" could affect our economy "negatively" as well as positively, but there are already many ways our economy is being pulled in both directions, so I don't think that teaching arithmetic and the scientific method to everyone would be a crazy thing to do.

Thanks for the great read.

I read this as "Social Standing Still Predicts Better than IQ..." ... coulda used a better headline.