People's perspectives on IQ vary greatly. Some tend to think that it is genetics that explains IQ while others believe it is the environment which determines ones IQ. However, both genes and environment affect IQ scores. I want to know which kind of environmental factors influence IQ. One thing that really stood out to me was the significance of the social environment as well as the biological environment. Research indicates that schooling does indeed influence ones IQ. This seems obvious, as it should, but what about when the students have a long break away from the school environment. It was pretty interesting to learn that children's IQ's tend to drop significantly during summer vacation. All of a sudden the social environment of school, books, and homework is replaced by the biological environment of beaches, lakes, and ice cream. It is kind of cool to see how big of an impact the social and biological environments have on our IQ. I can certainly relate to this because this happens to me every single fall of a new school year. The last thing that I do during the summer months is think about school. As I am sitting through my first few weeks of classes it gets really hard to adjust back to the social environment of school. You have to be able to transfer from the biological environment of beaches and lakes back to the school environment of books, homework and tests. Your focus completely changes simply because of the environment!
IQ: Is it the genes or the scenes?
It is interesting that our IQ drops during the summer months, and it makes me think that schooling with no summer is a smart solution to this problem. How important is what we learn in summer to how much our IQ scores actually drop?
It would be interesting to compare the IQs of an American child to a European/Asian child since they do go to school all year round. A question that I have is, what if you are really smart but you are a bad test taker? Isn't that a little unfair to your IQ since it reflects on your ability to take tests?
I also think that IQ dropping during the summer break is interesting. I lived near a school that was an all year school and always wondered what it would be like to go there. I don't think it would be too bad because they have short breaks every once and a while instead of one very long break during the summer. I think it would be interesting to test how much it affects IQ scores and happiness. The kids possibly might not be as stressed out too because they don't have to relearn at the beginning of each year.
Nice example! Do you think this means that IQ changes throughout our lives? What happens when we are no longer in school?
I think the IQ drop that occurs over summer break is very interesting. I remember summers where I would look back at my previous years' work and be clueless on how to complete it. I remember my teachers discuss this with my class at various times and how administrators were considering the possibility or year-round schooling. I think the idea ultimately fails in this part of the United States because the winters are so cold. Kids can always keep busy when it's nice outside, but not so much during the winter.
Since there is obvious evidence that IQ scores usually drop during the summer I wonder why schools in America have not switched to school all year round. I think that it would not be as bad as it sounds because there would probably be little breaks throughout the school period. Also kids would benefit more in the long run.
I've never been one to focus too much IQ and whether or not I'm sustaining it, but reading the good points you made on how much our IQ is thrown around with school, summer break, then school again, made me realize it's something somewhat interesting to pay attention to. I wonder if one were to take a summer class, that would help or improve their grades and/or IQ for that year. I feel like it would since instead of completely dropping the school environment for the environment of beaches and lakes, you only get to dive half into the beach and lake environment and half out of the school environment. I feel like if one were to take a summer class they would have an easier time getting back into school that next fall. Seems pretty easy and obvious, but I've really never considered it this much.