Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!oliveb!sun!livesey
From: livesey@sun.uucp (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Bias on IQ tests
Message-ID: <49690@sun.uucp>
Date: 15 Apr 88 21:38:29 GMT
References: <3943@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <73600018@uiucdcsp> <258@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Mtn View, CA
Lines: 24

In article <258@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, mmh@ivax.doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
> Jon Livesey writes
> 
> :Rigorous testing seems to work just fine for the Japanese, and yet it seems to 
> :me that Japanese testing must also divide children who will receive more academic 
> :education, and children who will receive more practical education.   Are we 
> :going to say that it works for them, but not for us?
> 
> How perfect are the Japanese? - they have a very bad problem with creativity
> which they have acknowledged themselves. Also we very rarely hear about the
> working class Japanese - a lot of what people say about the Japanese
> only applies to the top 30% or so.
> 

	I hear this all the time, and yet I have never seen any evidence
for it.   Does anyone have a reference showing that Japanese, either as a race
or as a culture "have a very bad problem with creativity"?   Come to that,
does anyone have a reference to Japanese acknowledging that?   Unless
they do, I am inclined to write this off as unthinking racism.   Everything
I have seen recently in science and engineering leads me to think that Japanese
have absolutely no problem with creativity, and I think that the onus is
on someone who thinks that they do to produce some evidence for it.

jon.