Skip to main content

Should Schools Teach Personality?


A response to Should Schools Teach Personality?

The push to discipline, while seeming 'good for kids' is questionable for several reasons:

  • Why not teach openness to ideas, another quality shown correlated with academic performance.
  • Conscientiousness is a slightly more conservative quality, while openness is a liberal quality (it is the stronger correlate of political viewpoint), and this just seems to push the same negative conservative agenda.
  • The blame for failure is simply pushed further on to students, without any awareness about larger societal issues and/or social issues impacting one's ability at discipline.
  • Teaching personality might have secondary negative effects


As to the last point, I have read of a study showing an inverse correlation between conscientiousness and fluid intelligence, and an increase in g with some dimensions of intelligence, although it was not verified in a follow-up study:

Original: What Facets of Openness and Conscientiousness Predict Fluid Intelligence Score?

Attempt to verify: Personality-intelligence interface : the relationship between conscientiousness and intelligence



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, Third Edition

Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, Third Edition by Geert Hofstede My rating: 4 of 5 stars A detailed and fascinating review of Hofstede's dimensions, by the researcher himself, showing broad high-level insights into history and culture, although a bit tedious, as it often describes in detail relationships many of us implicitly understand. View all my reviews

Global Warming and Methane Reduction

I was an ovolactovegetarian for several years in my twenties, in the late 1980's, but the lack of convenient food sources, social pressure, and mild athletic anemia, pushed me to adopt more meat-oriented diet. Also, being an insulin-dependent diabetic, eating low-fat, low-carbohydrate protein sources reduced my need for injections. Over time, I have returned to vegetarianism, although my reasons are grounded in self-interest and concern for the environment. My energy consumption is relatively low, as I live in a major city and very selectively use automobiles for transportation. Lately though, I have been reminded that domesticated animals are large contributors to global warming (methane creation) and inefficient protein producers (4 to 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat). Additionally, vegetarianism, and related calorie reduction, are associated with increased longevity. Both have pushed my back to vegetarianism. Regardless of the history, vegetarianism is a better c...

Daily Fantasy Fools

The NY Times ran a piece on daily fantasy sports , of which I felt the need to say something: #1: The skilled and privileged taking advantage of the stupid and the ill. #2: I remember being disgusted after reading how a startup founder for Box targeted the biggest losers on a poker site to raise 100K for his venture. Well, you could think him smart, or you could think him corrupt, taking advantage of the stupid and addicted, but regardless, do you want to buy anything from him, knowing that his path to success is based on taking advantage of others? Eventually, that means taking advantage of you...