Should people who got less than 500 points in the leaving even allowed to vote?

Mr.H

blinding wrote:

Should people in fianna fail be allowed to vote....

They usually just abstain......

Omackeral

Not jealousy here, Marcus. I've a career I absolutely love and the hardest part of my day is when the alarm goes off. If you can say that, you've little to be jealous of in my opinion.

Omackeral

Also, for someone so super rounded and awesome, I notice you spent the entirety of your Friday night on an internet message board.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

What about people who did the leaving before it was dumbed down? Are they all going to be disenfranchised?

Sleeper12

marcus001 wrote: »

In my experience the socially awkward ones actually did surprisingly poorly in the leaving. Turns out they weren't nerds they were just quiet.

These are the same excuses people who did poorly in the leaving cert used to use back in the day. "Well I'd rather be well rounded" etc. I did better than all the so called nerds in my school and played GAA the entire time, had plenty of friends and a girlfriend. When I went to college everyone in my course got over 500 as well and they were all more or less the same as me. Not a single one of them would be considered socially awkward. Again just an excuse people use for being a lazy ****e and not studying. Its like saying, "I could be better than Wayne Rooney if I trained as hard as him" but you don't.

Also, north of 450 seems a pretty low bar to be considered so intelligent it begins to affect your social skills. Perhaps a hint of jealousy?

Leaving cert results aren't a great way of measuring most things imo.

Had an Irish teacher. He'd come in & write an essay on the board. We had to copy it in our copy book & learn it for homework. He didn't spend more than a few minutes explaining what it all meant in English. Parents complained that he wasn't doing his job. His answer was his job was not to teach Irish but to help us pass the exams. His students had a better pass rate than anyone else. This was around 1980. Not sure if this still works.

There are some very intelligent people that just don't thrive in school & I think almost every teacher will tell you that they have some students do extremely well throughout the year but collapse during exams.
That's not trying to take away from all those wonderful lads & lasses that do great in their exams

qwerty ui op

Op you honestly show a serious lack of judgement, having had a look at the first three pages of this thread I'll bet that you make some very serious bad decisions in your life.

DuMorph

marcus001 wrote: »

How much more competent would our political class be if they were handpicked and held to account by the cognitive elite?

marcus001 wrote: »

It's up there. Grades are highly correlated with IQ and trait industriousness. People with faster brains are able to crystallise more information and are also able to cover material faster resulting in better academic performance.

How did you do in English?

VinLieger

marcus001 wrote: »

Its not a perfect measure but its the best one we have. Not many people who get below 500 could be considered "smart".

Its got nothing to woth intelligence and is to do with reproducong the answer exactly as told.

Someone with no understanding of the subjects but had an iedetic memory could walk in and get 600 points.

The leaving cert is not a grade for intelligence also your elitism is pretty fcking disgusting

myshirt

Xenji wrote: »

If you are using the leaving cert as an intellectual guage you are way off.

Absobloodyexactly. Op, you should be the one who loses the vote.

Guy:Incognito

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Sure why not scrap democracy altogether? :rolleyes:

We could have a vote and decide.

pumpkin4life

Even though marcus is right about IQ and its power as a predictor and no doubt the LC is correlated with IQ to a big degree:

The 500 points voting gap would be a really bad idea.

1: There would be a political incentive to dumb down the leaving cert to get more votes.

2: The 500 point+ lads are full of people in the 105-120 IQ range. Obviously quite intelligent, but paradoxically far easier to manipulate politically.

If you're above this range, then you're more likely to be ostracized by the above group and get massive cognitive dissonance from all these contradictions in your head.

If you're below this range, you're more likely to see what is just right in front of you and just go with that.

You have 500+ lads voting only, and you get D4 Fintan O Toole Sunday Independent reading benny politics all over the country, which would be a fecking disaster.

Trolly post noted though. IQ is a uncomfortable, dark, topic to talk about, but it is an extremely powerful and predictive and useful scientific concept.

As Jordan Peterson said in that linked video: throw out IQ and you might as well throw out all of psychology.

Pwindedd

Pray tell Marcus how do you envisage assessing voting eligibility for all those entitled to vote, yet who undertook their education in other countries? I've 8 GCSEs. 2 Bs, 4Cs, 2Ds, A level English lit - am I in? I don't earn much though. But I've an IQ in and around 140. Vote or not ? Oh wait I do watch keeping up with the Kardashians on the odd occasion. I'm out I reckon. But I can do really complicated VLOOKUPS. Back in ?

marcus001

storker wrote: »

This is so wrong that I am seriously doubting your own intelligence. Even more so that at the start of the thread...

It is a fact that university grades are highly correlated with IQ and industriousness. I'm not sure if the same is said to be true of secondary school grades but I'm sure that any study into that would be highly controversial.

Ulysses Gaze

marcus001 wrote: »

Its not a perfect measure but its the best one we have. Not many people who get below 500 could be considered "smart".

There are a lot of people who get 500 points in the Leaving that are book smart, but are some of the dumbest people you will meet in terms of making everyday decisions.

Anyway, the Leaving Cert is an exercise in Rote learning with little room for creativity.

marcus001

DuMorph wrote: »

How did you do in English?

English was one of my best subjects so no prizes for guessing.

pjohnson

Most shocking part of the thread is OP is NOT a new account!

marcus001

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

There are a lot of people who get 500 points in the Leaving that are book smart, but are some of the dumbest people you will meet in terms of making everyday decisions.

I wouldn't say its a lot. There are always a few who come across that way but its like 1 in 20 at best. The rest are fairly sharp individuals and can hold a conversation at a high level.

Ulysses Gaze

marcus001 wrote: »

I wouldn't say its a lot. There are always a few who come across that way but its like 1 in 20 at best. The rest are fairly sharp individuals and can hold a conversation at a high level.

And I have met many people that have not gotten 500 points in the Leaving that would also be fairly sharp individuals that can hold a conversation at a high level.

As I said, the Leaving Cert is no indicator of this as it is a pure rote learning exercise.

marcus001

VinLieger wrote: »

Its got nothing to woth intelligence and is to do with reproducong the answer exactly as told.

Someone with no understanding of the subjects but had an iedetic memory could walk in and get 600 points.

The leaving cert is not a grade for intelligence also your elitism is pretty fcking disgusting

It has nothing to do with intelligence he says. Then why do all the intelligent hard working people do well and all the slow slackers do poorly?

pjohnson

Got less than 500pts in the leaving but got a Masters from NUIG. That really blows this utopian intellectual system to ****r.

marcus001

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

And I have met many people that have not gotten 500 points in the Leaving that would also be fairly sharp individuals that can hold a conversation at a high level.

As I said, the Leaving Cert is no indicator of this as it is a pure rote learning exercise.

Not really. Things like maths and accounting are more about practice and skill, intelligent people get more out of practice.

When it comes to memorisation, intelligent people can memorise more information in a shorter span of time and can crystallise far more complex knowledge.

Sunny Disposition

The Leaving Cert is done by 17 and 18 year olds who know almost nothing about the real world! How you do in it means virtually nothing. There are idiots with great leaving Certs and very intelligent people who did very poorly, that's the reality and anyone who has seen a bit of life knows it.
It no more says anything about an adult than how they did in their sixth class tests does!

Ulysses Gaze

marcus001 wrote: »

Not really. Things like maths and accounting are more about practice and skill, intelligent people get more out of practice.

When it comes to memorisation, intelligent people can memorise more information in a shorter span of time and can crystallise far more complex knowledge.

I was ****e at maths in the Leaving but waltzed through both Accountancy and Business Finance in University. Scored 1.1's in both. And this was University years ago before the grade inflation.

I didn't get 500 in the Leaving. Not even close.

I have a a couple of Masters Degrees and a Diploma in SQL programming as well.

Should I not be allowed vote?

marcus001

marcus001 wrote: »

Yes but once you start to get into the millions the difference in income starts to become more about connections and being in the right place at the right time than just pure brains.

To make these connections you need a certain amount of intelligence and street smarts.

Anyway this is a pointless argument. The leaving cert is an absolute grind. Too much is made of it. For those who do very well its a vanity trap, for those who dont its not the end of the world.

gordongekko

LittleMuppet wrote: »

I got below 500 in the LC and I've got a degree in Chemistry. I don't consider myself a brainbox but I'm no thick. My OH didn't even do his leaving yet he's very successful in his chosen career so less of the generalising please. Ireland is a democracy and all Irish citizens over 18 are entitled to vote, whether YOU like it or not.

Are all the people who got less than 500 points as touchy about it as you are?

Omackeral

One of the core subjects of the LC is Irish. For all intents and purposes and checking romance at the door, it's a dead language in the 21st century. It's functionless these days in the working world, let's be honest. And here we are as a society putting all this stock into the Leaving Cert when a near useless tongue is one of the key mandatory examinations.

I say this as a person who took Higher Level Irish at Leaving Cert and would be semi-fluent speaking it and have somewhat of a fondness for it.

Spider Web

Spider Web wrote: »

You could have been realistic and used 400 points but no, straight to the obvious wind-up number. Must try harder.

400 points is an excellent score on the leaving cert tbf but i know plenty who have got north of 400 that failed college the following year. I done quite shíte myself to be honest but ive now achieved a full degree and postgrad. Also such an absurd notion of needing 500 points on the leaving cert to vote is an insult to the many parents (some of whom never even went to secondary school) who worked hard all their lives to put their children in a position where they can get 500 points on the leaving cert

Intelligence is a more multi layered concept then the OP thinks.

Omackeral

Omackeral wrote: »

One of the core subjects of the LC is Irish. For all intents and purposes and checking romance at the door, it's a dead language in the 21st century. It's functionless these days in the working world, let's be honest. And here we are as a society putting all this stock into the Leaving Cert when a near useless tongue is one of the key mandatory examinations.

I say this as a person who took Higher Level Irish at Leaving Cert and would be semi-fluent speaking it and have somewhat of a fondness for it.

I agree with this. Actually perhaps if it was taken off the curriculum and more emphasis on nurture and enjoying learning the language it could be actually fun to learn.

vegetables

marcus001 wrote: »

Its not a perfect measure but its the best one we have. Not many people who get below 500 could be considered "smart".

''Should people who got less than 500 points in the leaving even allowed to vote?''

You not english good. No vote you.

pumpkin4life

Another problem with using the leaving cert as a voter proxy:

Fluid intelligence and crystalized intelligence tends to peak at around 25 years old or so, latter for crystal. For some people, (men more than women apparently) it peaks at around 30 or so. So the cut off point could be far too early for a lot of people. Same thing for work ethic/consciousness according to the big five etc.