Achievement

• Through most of human history, our species has had to cope with food scarcity.
• When food was abundant, our bodies stored excess energy in the form of fat to draw upon when food was not available.

Ancient metabolism in a modern world

• Our brains enabled our species to develop an easier, more comfortable life and a steady supply of food to support population growth.
• Later, they invented machines to move ourselves and our belongings from place to place, and life became even easier.
• Today, mountains of calorie-rich (and often nutritionally poor) food and lakes of sugary beverages are readily available in much of the world.

The brain’s role in obesity

• For far too long society has treated obesity as a personal failing while in reality it’s a biological, physiological, environmental, chronic disease.
• The fact is that for many, trying to lose excess fat is very difficult without help.
• People living with obesity may have a genetic predisposition toward a heightened reward system associated with food.
• Glossy packaging, aggressive marketing (often targeting children), delicious but nutrient-poor foods, drive-through windows and online delivery services all enable this.

Effective treatment

• That begins with accepting that polygenic obesity is a disease and not a matter of willpower.
• Rather than blaming and shaming one another for our size, we should be more understanding and educate ourselves about obesity, to help take stigma and judgment out of the equation.
• It’s important to recognize that when obesity does impair one’s health, it needs treatment, and effective treatment is available.
• She has participated in the development and delivery of continued medical education with pharmaceutical companies who have obesity medications including Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.

• The Enhanced Games seeks to answer these questions by removing all restrictions on doping.
• In lifting the ban on performance-enhancing drugs, the Enhanced Games challenges a core tenet of modern sports ethics – that sport should be doping-free.
• However, it is far from clear that enhanced sport will open new horizons of sports performance, support athlete autonomy, or promote fair competition.

Peak performance?

• Anti-doping rules limit the substances that athletes can use to reach peak performance.
• Anabolic steroids can help weightlifters to lift heavier and erythropoietin can help distance runners to run faster.
• So the prohibition of these substances appears to place a ceiling on the pursuit of sporting achievement.
• Furthermore, sports are designed to test a specific cluster of skills and capacities, including physical, psychological, tactical and technical abilities.

Time to abandon a failed system?

• However, lifting the doping ban would grant further competitive advantage to athletes who represent economic superpowers such as the US and China.
• These governments could invest huge sums into drug research and development for the benefit of their athletes.
• The Enhanced Games will increase the risk to athletes’ health, render competition even more unfair and threaten to undermine the fundamental purpose of sport.

• The United States’ founders firmly rejected King George III and the entire idea of monarchy 247 years ago, on July 4, 1776.
• Political power does not come from some absolute authority of a king over people, the founders argued.
• America’s founders did not trust everyone’s ability to equally participate in the new democracy, as laws at the time showed.

First steps

• “Few men, who have no property, have any judgment of their own,” as former President John Adams wrote in 1776.
• As activists – including some women and Black Americans – proclaimed their equality, public education spread, and social thinking shifted.
• Congress passed the 15th Amendment in 1870, giving Black men and others the right to vote, regardless of race.

An unfinished history

• State lawmakers also used bureaucratic measures, such as a poll tax, renewed attempts at a property requirement and literacy tests, to prevent African Americans from voting.
• In the 1960s, Congress passed additional legal measures to protect the voting rights of Black Americans.
• This included the 24th Amendment, which outlawed the use of poll taxes, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibited any racial discrimination in voting.

Women’s turn

In 1920, women gained the right to vote with the addition of the 19th Amendment, following another decadeslong struggle. Women’s rights activists made the first organized call for female suffrage at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. In the following years, suffragists pushed for constitutional amendments, state laws and a change in public thinking to include women in “We the People.”

Native American rights

• While that supposedly gave Native Americans the same rights as other Americans, Native Americans faced the same tactics, like violence, that white racists used to prevent Black Americans from voting.
• Like other people excluded from “We the People,” Native Americans have continued to push for voting rights and other ways to ensure they are included in American self-government.

Making democracy more democratic

• The ongoing Vietnam War shifted public opinion, and there was popular support for the idea that someone old enough to die fighting for their country should also be able to vote.
• Social equality remains far off for many people, including undocumented immigrants, for example, and LGBTQ+ individuals.

Current limitations to ‘We the People’

• While some states have passed new laws that make it harder to vote in recent years, other states have made it easier.
• North Carolina passed new ID requirements in April 2023 that make it difficult for those without current state identification to vote.
• Twenty-five states, meanwhile, including Hawaii and Delaware, have passed laws over the last few years that make it easier to vote.

The big picture

• People can be respected at work, paid what they are worth and treated with dignity.
• Community members can be treated fairly by police, school officials and other authorities, given an equal opportunity for justice and education to improve their lives.

• If students have poor academic results early in school, do they continue to fall further and further behind as they move through their education?
• Read more:
  No wonder no one wants to be a teacher: world-first study looks at 65,000 news articles about Australian teachers

The ‘Matthew effect’

• If achievement gaps do widen as children develop, this would be evidence for what researchers call the “Matthew effect”.
• This theory, first described by Canadian psychologist Keith Stanovich, proposes students who start with poor academic skills early in school make less progress over time compared with their higher-achieving peers.
• (Or, as Matthew put it, “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance.

Our research

• So results on one test can be directly compared to the next or the previous one.
• Our research
  examined patterns growth in literacy and numeracy in two states.
• We matched NAPLAN reading comprehension and numeracy results for each student from Year 3 through to Year 9.

Our findings

• While surprising, our research aligns with findings from a 2014 meta-analysis of Matthew effects research in reading.
• Our research is the first in Australia to build on these findings and examine reading and numeracy development in state-wide data using individual student scores across the NAPLAN years.
• Although, our findings also indicate the highest achieving students do not make as much growth in NAPLAN as their lower performing peers.

But what does this mean for high achievers?

• But our research suggests students who begin with poorer literacy and numeracy skills are supported by classroom teachers, and do make progress over time.
• Perhaps the progress of high-ability students is not a high priority for schools once these students have attained the basic skills expected of their age group.
• Further research in Australian schools is needed to identify the reasons for underachievement relative to potential for high-ability students.