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The Unz Review •�An Alternative Media Selection$
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Education
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Education

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Dr. Bildungsphilister
•�December 14, 2020
•�200 Words •�67 Comments
True elites: Rarely flaunt status or obsess over conventions - sometimes actively troll them, by dressing scruffily to formal events. Can be vulgar where appropriate, make no apologies about it. Don't make much of displaying their credentials ("we know the lion by his claw"). Proles misplaced into elites: Insist on proper norms and protocols. Are... Read More
Timss 2019
•�December 9, 2020
•�200 Words •�127 Comments
The data is all here: Here is the report [big PDF]. Here is the PISA 2018 data for comparison. *** No particular surprises, with adjustment for the usual TIMSS quirks (East Asia & ex-USSR do systemically better than on PISA, Western countries do worse). Obligatory reminder to take this test FWIW (i.e., less than PISA):... Read More
When Entrance Exams Were Abolished
•�May 22, 2020
•�500 Words •�49 Comments
Less than a year after their coup, the Sovnarkom of the RSFSR abolished university entrance exams on August 2, 1918. The admissions process of 1918/19 was annulled and universities were ordered to open up to everybody, with no tests for subject knowledge or even literacy. Thus came to an end one of the few unmitigated... Read More
PISA Will Now Test for Tolerance
•�January 26, 2018
•�400 Words •�25 Comments
We are reaching levels of neoliberalism that shouldn't even be possible. In the USSR, getting a "red diploma" in university - the rough equivalent of a American summa cum laude - was contingent on acing the courses on scientific communism and similar crap. Interesting to see neoliberalism.txt developing in a similar direction. Andreas Schleicher, the... Read More
Russia Tops PIRLS 2016 (4th Graders)
•�December 5, 2017
•�400 Words •�36 Comments
Results of PIRLS 2016 (4th Graders) have just come out (h/t Polish Perspective). The official website is somewhat of a pain to navigate, and there doesn't appear to be any single master report, but fortunately they left their root directory unblocked so you can just look at all the charts and Excel tables here: Unlike... Read More
TIMSS 2015 Released
•�December 2, 2016
•�500 Words •�26 Comments
The TIMSS 2015 results for math and science are out and the results are pretty predictable. All the data can be conveniently downloaded from here: See also Steve Sailer's post from yesterday. An extension of Heiner Rindermann's observation on the differences between the two major international standardized tests - namely, that PISA is more a... Read More
Rationalizing University Education
•�September 29, 2015
•�800 Words •�11 Comments
Recent news of the Japanese government directing its public universities to stop offering social sciences and humanities courses raises some pretty important questions over the future of higher education in the age of fiscal deficits, automation, and e-learning ahead. An entirely predictable debate followed, with skeptical conservatives (and I daresay most Unz readers) saying good... Read More
Preliminary Thoughts on TIMSS/PIRLS 2012
•�July 15, 2013
•�400 Words •�11 Comments
I had been meaning to post about this for a long time. Better late than never, I suppose.The TIMSS and PIRLS are international assessments of academic ability in math, science and literacy that are conducted once every four years. They are similar to the PISA tests, although the latter are less purely academically focused and... Read More
Cheating In the Unified State Exams
•�July 1, 2013
•�200 Words •�3 Comments
Izvestia writes: I wrote half a year ago (highlights are recent): Not to mention: To the contrary, Dagestan – the biggest Caucasian Muslim republic – has very few top scores relative to the number of very bright people we can expect to find there relative to most other Russian
Translation: Russia to Build 11 Centers of Tolerance
•�May 25, 2013
•�1,000 Words
Russia is to spend 1.5 billion rubles building "Centers of Tolerance" to improve inter-ethnic relations in the next few years. Is this a good use of resources? Pyotr Kozlov examines the issue. The Ministry of Regional Development plans to start constructing Centers of Tolerance all across Russia from 2014, where anyone can go to learn... Read More
Are Caucasians Stealing Russian University Places? the Data Says, "Probably Not."
•�February 20, 2013
•�800 Words •�4 Comments
In one of the recent posts on corruption, commentator AP wrote: Is this true? Seeing as how the Russian state doesn't release Unified State Exam (USE) results by region, probably due to PC considerations, at first this assertion might appear to be unanswerable. However, there is a way to get round the problem. (1) We... Read More
Minorities' Cognitive Performance In the UK
•�August 22, 2012
•�600 Words •�69 Comments
Here is data from the Cognitive Abilities Test for UK students in 2009/10 via Ambiguous. Some interesting things to take away here: (1) The sample is very large. Verbal IQ has the highest correlation with academic performance in most subjects, followed by Quantitative IQ, and then Non-Verbal Reasoning (recognizing patterns and such, I imagine). (2)... Read More
Here be Dragons: World Map of Women's Studies Programs
•�August 18, 2012
•�23 Comments
One notices a remarkable correlation between this, and the perceived attitudes of local women and their obesity rates. (The map above was made by RVF commentator "durangotang" based on the geographic data here).
Analysis of Russia's PISA 2009 Results
•�August 18, 2012
•�1,300 Words •�18 Comments
A few months ago I posted a table and map of Russian IQ's as derived from regional PISA performance. Those figures are based on Jarkko Hautamäki’s slideshow comparing regional PISA performance in Finland and Russia. That material is a bit inadequate because, as had been my custom up that point, I was only making IQ... Read More
Is the Ukrainian Children Learning?
•�June 4, 2012
•�200 Words •�58 Comments
According to a recent Vzglyad article by Olga Gritsenko titled Universal Stupefaction, no they are not. Here are the cold raw facts: Libraries stock 4% of books published in Ukraine, compared to 18% in Russia and 40% in the US and Canada. The average Ukrainian spends $2.5 on books in one year, compared to $22... Read More
Proof of Genetic Memory
•�May 27, 2012
[youtube= h/t Red Hot Russia. :)
Is Khodorkovsky A Political Prisoner? Read the ECHR Judgments Before Quacking
•�April 12, 2012
•�6,500 Words •�33 Comments
It's one thing if Western journalists and Yukos PR henchmen - if there is indeed any difference - shill for all they're worth about the travails of Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch doing time for fleecing the Russian Treasury to the tune of billions of dollars, charges he sooner boasts about than denies when given the... Read More
Potemkin Georgia: Exposing the Lies of the Saakashvili PR Machine
•�April 9, 2012
•�2,600 Words •�59 Comments
Despite the unremitting hostility of its Russian neighbor, which crescendoed in a military occupation of a chunk of its territories, plucky Georgia's commitment to reform and democratic values will ensure its rapid development into a "booming Western-style economy." Under its charismatic Western-trained President, Saakashvili, it has rooted out corruption, ushered in untold prosperity and freedoms,... Read More
Italy, A Showcase for Why Human Capital Matters
•�March 2, 2012
•�600 Words •�25 Comments
One of the key criticisms of my last post on the tight connections between (educational) human capital and economic performance is that correlation need not imply causation. An alternate (and PC-compliant) explanation is that "you get the education system you could afford, and the level of human capital in the kids is mostly determined by... Read More
Education as the Elixir of Growth III
•�February 25, 2012
•�2,800 Words •�20 Comments
Just in case you thought the correlation between human capital and economic development was an artifice of the post-socialist world, here is a similar graph (R2=0.4273) for all the world's countries that have participated in the Math and Science portions of the PISA or TIMMS (8th grade) international standardized student assessments. The methodology is the... Read More
The Profound Irrelevance of Corruption, Institutions, and Ease of Business to Economic Growth
•�February 23, 2012
•�1,500 Words •�64 Comments
That title sure caught you attention? Good. Now for the 1000-words-in-a-picture evidence. Human capital refers to educational attainment, as measured by the results of the PISA and TIMMS standardized tests*. As you can see, there is a very close correlation between human capital and GDP (PPP) per capita. The exceptions all confirm the rule. For... Read More
Russia's Economic "Stagnation" In Global Perspective
•�July 14, 2011
•�1,500 Words •�38 Comments
Иn the wake of the 2009 recession, declinist rhetoric has come to dominate discussion of Russia's economic prospects. Jim O'Neill, the founder of the BRIC's concept, has his work cut out defending Russia's expulsion from the group in favor of Indonesia, Mexico, or some other random middle-sized country. Journalists in the Western media claim its... Read More
National Comparisons: Everyday Life
•�April 11, 2011
•�8,200 Words •�13 Comments
In this third part of my series on national comparisons between Britain, Russia, and the US, I look at the social institutions and infrastructure that play such a big role in our everyday lives. Why is Russia's life expectancy ten years lower than in the US? What are the most popular university subjects? Where do... Read More
Why Russia Is Cemented to the Other BRICs
•�June 13, 2010
•�2,400 Words •�5 Comments
In the wake of the economic crisis in which Russia's GDP fell by a stunning 7.9% in 2009, its status as a BRIC economy - with its connotations of promise and progress - was brought into question. After all, isn't it a dying nation with rapidly degrading infrastructure? Isn't it amazingly corrupt? Wouldn't its contempt... Read More
Kremlin Dreams Sometimes Come True
•�May 31, 2009
•�1,100 Words •�2 Comments
This April, Michael Bohm, editor at the Moscow Times, published the article New Kremlin Dreamers, which questioned Russia's stated intention of becoming an advanced industrial nation by 2020. I wasn't much impressed by its pessimistic assertions - for instance, regarding Russia's hopes of becoming the world's fifth largest economy by 2020, he falls into the... Read More
Translation: The Case of the "Stalinist" Textbook
•�May 28, 2009
•�5,100 Words •�47 Comments
Ever since the publication of Filippov's (in)famous textbook A History of Russia 1945-2006 in 2007, the state of Russian history teaching drew a fair degree of negative commentary in the West, some of it reasonably lucid, most of it superficial or hysterical. What the latter have in common is that they almost invariably haven't read... Read More
Rite of Spring: Russia Fertility Trends
•�April 26, 2009
•�5,100 Words •�5 Comments
After its long pre-modern stint as Europe's most populated nation, France started transitioning to lower birth rates from the Napoleonic era, about a century in advance of the rest of Europe. On the eve of the First World War, its stagnant population made a stark contrast to German youth and virility. Considering the disparity in... Read More
Grenade Fishing on the Potomac, or: The Idiocy of George F. Will
•�April 20, 2009
•�1,700 Words •�7 Comments
Though hard to imagine, the Washington Post - or Pravda on the Potomac, as Eugene Ivanov quite rightly labels it - surpassed even its own sordid standards for Russia coverage, in the form of the latest op-ed from George F. Will in Potemkin Country. Time to go grenade fishing again, I guess. I suppose turning... Read More
Voice of the People (Since July 2008)
•�February 24, 2009
•�4,300 Words •�2 Comments
Since the last time I covered Levada's opinion polls was a whopping half a year back, I reckon its time to make an update on what Russians are thinking since then. A comprehensive kind of post, like what I did in Lovely Levada (check it out, if you haven't already!) and hopefully a good resource... Read More
Education as the Elixir of Growth II
•�July 18, 2008
•�2,200 Words
A while ago I wrote Education as the Elixir of Growth on DR, in which I noted that in most countries the educational profile is closely correlated to their level of productivity. The major exceptions are nations with resource windfalls (inflated productivity) and socialist legacies (deflated productivity). Furthermore, the greater the gap between the 'potential... Read More
News 2 May: Russia's Second Oil Peak
•�April 25, 2008
•�4,600 Words •�5 Comments
For all the noise being made this month about Georgia, about NATO, about Tibet, etc, possibly the most portentous is that it seems Russia hit its oil peak (strictly speaking, its second - the first happened in 1987), well in line with peakist predictions. Production increases via application of new technology, as seen in the... Read More
Demography II - Out of the Death Spiral
•�April 14, 2008
•�5,900 Words •�32 Comments
As we covered in the previous instalment, Demographics I: The Russian Cross Reversed?, fertility rates are not abnormally low by European standards and are likely to rise further in the future. The same cannot be said of mortality rates - a 'quiet crisis' that has been a 'catastrophe of historic proportions'. Take life expectancy. As... Read More
Top 10 Russophobe Myths
•�March 25, 2008
•�3,300 Words •�46 Comments
EDIT: Check out the updated Top 50 Russophobe Myths. According to this blog's philosophy, every thesis needs an antithesis. Hence I present the Top 10 Russophobe Myths, in opposition to La Russophobe's Top 10 Russophile Myths. (As well as to celebrate our 2000th visit). 10 MYTH: The barbarous state of Muscovy arose in the sixteenth... Read More
Education as the Elixir of Growth
•�March 10, 2008
•�2,900 Words •�11 Comments
What are the reasons behind the wealth and poverty of nations? Since this question has exercised the minds of thinkers from Adam Smith to David Landes, Jared Diamond and Richard Lynn, I decided to take a look at it myself. I came to the conclusion that while geography, macroeconomic policies, resource windfalls and the microeconomic... Read More
Core Article: What We Believe
•�January 15, 2008
•�4,000 Words •�9 Comments
In the first 5 days of its existence, this blog has been priveleged to receive more than more than 200 page views from more than 100 visitors from 18 different countries. We have also been linked to by the Winthrop88 blog and Marginalia (probably the leading English-language blog about Latvia) - of those that we're... Read More
Reading Russia Right
•�January 9, 2008
•�1,900 Words
Assessing Russia's effective strength has been a problem for observers of the country since its inception. It's a riddle, an enigma and a mystery all wrapped up in one, as Churchill wryly noted long ago, and that's unlikely to change soon. In any case the paradigm has certainly held these past fifteen years since the... Read More
"Education" Items Across Entire Archive
Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.