[patel011393]

I would like to point out for context that the author, Jordan Lasker, is a eugenist derided for shoddy science, falsely using university affiliations, and racist commentary.

I do not write this to contradict particular claims in the article above, but @cremieux should be read cautiously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Lasker

[chatmasta]

He should also be derided for terrible writing. It's not until the 24th paragraph (of 30 total) that we encounter something resembling a thesis.

> With all the pieces on the board, the key to Romania’s Olympiad success is three-fold: put the best students in the same classrooms, put the best teachers with the best students, and then incentivize schools, teachers, and students each to win Olympiads.

This could have been much shorter, but then the reader might notice the abject lack of supporting evidence for these central claims. I don't blame the author for burying them at the end.

[adrian_b]

I have no idea about author's background or about his other writings, but the conclusion quoted by you seems absolutely correct.

I do not understand why you say that it lacks supporting evidence.

Before this conclusion, the author has explained the system of national exams and of distribution into high schools and inside high schools, that ensures that the best students are grouped together and also that the best teachers are assigned to them.

There is no doubt that even if the average level of education is bad, this system guarantees that the best become very good and much better than students with similar native qualities who have stayed in high school in the middle of less capable colleagues, while being not taught things deemed too difficult for the general population. Moreover, the author has mentioned that the state provides rewards for good results at the International Olympiads, both for teachers and for students.

I do not see what more evidence could be brought. In my opinion the conclusion of the author is well supported and it explains why these students compete successfully against students from much bigger countries.

[generationP]

NB: None of what you are saying is confirmed by the WP page you are citing.

[Kudos]

None?

> Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics.

[trallnag]

So talking about eugenics in a positive way equals racist commentary?

I have a genetic mutation (de novo) that leads to a disability and that I don't want to pass on. Natural approach: Die, due to the lack of therapeutic modalities. No chance of offspring. With the help of medicine, I am alive. Now, to prevent passing on mutated genes but still have children, I could use something like IVF and reproductive genetics. This is textbook eugenics(?)

Obviously I disapprove of the stereotypical eugenics of the century. Ranging from Germans murdering disabled children to Danes forcing Greenland women on birth control.

[saagarjha]

Given that humanity has had a bad track record discussing eugenics positively, yes.

[dyauspitr]

Yes, culling the population by any means to select for the “intelligent” population is highly subjective and will result in racist outcomes.

[pierrec]

This definitely adds a grain of salt, but as far as I can tell, none of that shows in the article, especially in the final paragraphs explaining how the elitist system is overall bad for the country. But it does make me wonder about possible hidden flaws in the methodology (I'm still confused at some of the earlier statistics contradicting the claims made later)

[avs733]

> Yet another possibility is that Romania has an undersampled ethnic group that overperforms, but whose schools aren’t tested very well. The only group this might be is Romanian Jews and using them as an explanation is problematic for two reasons. The first is that there are too few to realistically explain Romanian Olympiad performance. The second is that we know the identities of Olympiad participants from Romania, and they don’t seem to be Jewish.

This struck me as…odd…before I even saw the parent comment.

[ivan_gammel]

This one is not odd and was worth mentioning before rejecting. Just look at American IMO team of 2024, in which most team members have Asian ancestry - some ethnic groups may indeed perform better than others. Picking Jews for this matter wasn’t unreasonable if you know the history of Eastern Europe.

[saagarjha]

This is not because people with Asian ancestry are smarter.

[ivan_gammel]

Who said they are smarter?

[_alternator_]

The general vibe of this magazine: support mainstreaming of eugenics ideas (and now eigenicists), the ubermensch / great man theory of history, and other ideas that we’ve largely shied away from for the last 75 years.

[avs733]

And cloak it in layers of language so that a quick read doesn’t catch it. It’s like human prompt poisoning.

[blast]

Shouldn't everyone be read cautiously?

[borski]

Sure, but knowing the intention and bias of the author is sometimes more important than other times. For example, it doesn’t really matter what the bias is of the person giving you the weather report; the weather either is or isn’t accurate, based on the data.

The author of an article about how an education system is or should be structured, however, very much matters.