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Sowell: A Challenge to Our Beliefs
Creators Syndicate ^ | December 3, 2013 | Thomas Sowell

Posted on 12/02/2013 9:09:37 AM PST by jazusamo

Depressing news about black students scoring far below white students on various mental tests has become so familiar that people in different parts of the ideological spectrum have long ago developed their different explanations for why this is so. But both may have to do some rethinking, in light of radically different news from England.

The November 9th-15th issue of the distinguished British magazine "The Economist" reports that, among children who are eligible for free meals in England's schools, black children of immigrants from Africa meet the standards of school tests nearly 60 percent of the time — as do immigrant children from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Black children of immigrants from the Caribbean meet the standards less than 50 percent of the time.

At the bottom, among those children who are all from families with low enough incomes to receive free meals at school, are white English children, who meet the standards 30 percent of the time.

"The Economist" points out that, in one borough of London, white students scored lower than black students in any London borough.

These data might seem to be some kind of fluke, but they confirm the observations in a book titled "Life at the Bottom" by British physician Theodore Dalrymple. He said that, among the patients he treated in a hospital near a low-income housing project, he could not recall any white 16-year-old who could multiply nine by seven. Some could not even do three times seven.

What jolts us is not only that this phenomenon is so different from what we are used to seeing in the United States, but also that it fits neither the genetic nor the environmental explanation of black-white educational differences here.

(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: education; leftism; socialism; sowell; thomassowell
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1 posted on 12/02/2013 9:09:37 AM PST by jazusamo
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To: abigail2; Amalie; American Quilter; arthurus; awelliott; Bahbah; bamahead; Battle Axe; ...
*PING*
Thomas Sowell

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Please FReepmail me if you would like to be added to or removed from the Thomas Sowell ping list…

2 posted on 12/02/2013 9:10:59 AM PST by jazusamo ([Obama] A Truly Great Phony -- Thomas Sowell http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3058949/posts)
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To: jazusamo

When you pay stupid people to sit around and breed more stupid people this is what you get

The movie “Idiocracy” was not a comedy- it was a documentary


3 posted on 12/02/2013 9:11:27 AM PST by Mr. K (If you like you constitution, you can keep it. Period.)
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To: Mr. K

There are plenty of stupid people of all races. No race has a lock on the stupid gene. It’s all how you are brought up.


4 posted on 12/02/2013 9:21:28 AM PST by refermech
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To: jazusamo

Those poor brit Whites are poor because they are low-IQ. They are low-IQ because their parents are stupid and keep them stupid.


5 posted on 12/02/2013 9:24:23 AM PST by I want the USA back (Media: completely irresponsible traitors. Complicit in the destruction of our country.)
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To: jazusamo

Thanks for the ping for an excellent column, by Dr Sowell


6 posted on 12/02/2013 9:24:49 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: refermech

I made no mention of race whatsoever


7 posted on 12/02/2013 9:27:01 AM PST by Mr. K (If you like you constitution, you can keep it. Period.)
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To: jazusamo

The most obvious correlation is

father at home = students meeting standards


8 posted on 12/02/2013 9:29:43 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: Kaslin; All

Hiya Kas, my pleasure...Tried to find his reference to “Teachers College Record” on Internet to post but no luck.


9 posted on 12/02/2013 9:33:18 AM PST by jazusamo ([Obama] A Truly Great Phony -- Thomas Sowell http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3058949/posts)
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To: Mr. K
When you pay stupid people to sit around and breed more stupid people this is what you get

"Survival of the least-fit".

Darwin would never have believed it.

10 posted on 12/02/2013 9:33:31 AM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: refermech
It’s all how you are brought up.

Don't think so. I think every person is born with a certain amount of potential. All the encouragement and education in the world will only allow that person to get closer to his maximum potential. It cannot be exceeded.

That noted, it is VERY easy to keep even someone with a great deal of potential from achieving: teach an explicit or implicit ideology of not trying, malnutrition, lack of education, actual oppression, etc.

Think of it this way. Every person is born with a genetic potential to achieve a given height. It can be stunted by malnutrition and other factors. But it doesn't matter how well he is fed, he cannot exceed that genetic potential.

11 posted on 12/02/2013 9:34:38 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: jazusamo
he could not recall any white 16-year-old who could multiply nine by seven

Iirc, a patient told him, "We didn't get that far."

12 posted on 12/02/2013 9:38:16 AM PST by Tax-chick (Now with more LOL and less UNNNGH.)
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To: refermech
Of course Albinos have hiher grade points than people of color. In once met an albino child. I was a lifeguard at Seaside Heights and it was 6:00PM and I was going off duty. A family was just coming on the beach and the father asked me the usual questions about tide, wave activity and guard acitivity. There were no guards after 6:00PM and then I noticed his child and asked what was his beach costume. He was wearing a pants, hoody white gloves and sun glasses although the beach was in shadow and the sun had dipped below the boardwalk arcades. the Dad called him over and said that he could disrobe. When I saw his eyes there was no iris pigment. When he stripped down to his bathing suit there was no skin pigmantation and then I knew that I was viewing an albino.

He told me that his parents took care of him because of his "condition. He lived at night and mentioned that his condition was not new but had been recognized in the middle ages as that of ghosts and vampires sincee he was a night dwelling creature. He was an ecellent A student and although only 14 had been accepted into college where he would live his night time existence. I stayed and watched him cavort in the moonlight.

13 posted on 12/02/2013 9:38:31 AM PST by Young Werther (Julius Caesar said "Quae cum ita sunt. Since these things are so.".)
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To: Tax-chick

Sounds like that’s probably right, also looks like some didn’t get through their 3’s.


14 posted on 12/02/2013 9:44:23 AM PST by jazusamo ([Obama] A Truly Great Phony -- Thomas Sowell http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3058949/posts)
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To: jazusamo
Noticed one of Jessie Owens Olympic Gold Medals is up for auction.

I think it should go to Thomas Sowell, because he personally debunks the myth that if you're Black, you must either be dependent on government handouts, or a race baiting politician, to be successful.

15 posted on 12/02/2013 9:50:32 AM PST by G Larry (Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Psalms 109:8)
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To: jazusamo
What low-income whites in England and ghetto blacks in the United States have in common is a generations-long indoctrination in victimhood. The political left in both countries has, for more than half a century, maintained a steady and loud drumbeat of claims that the deck is stacked against those at the bottom.

Almost like 'learned helplessness' - only much worse. Sowell's on to something important here... Are parents in England rewarded with extra 'welfare' for having children who are 'out of control'?

16 posted on 12/02/2013 9:52:15 AM PST by GOPJ ("Remember who the real enemy is... ")
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To: refermech

That is no doubt one of a few dominant factors. Unfortunately, many children are being brought up by a government rather than parents. I suspect that immigrants do well because they are driven - probably by desperation, but driven nonetheless - since government in their native countries does not “bring them up.”


17 posted on 12/02/2013 9:54:02 AM PST by DPMD
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To: jazusamo

Most people are finally wising up to the fact that different peoples of the world have varying levels of hard-wired intelligence. And since the differences are quite uneven, some groups with many people on the left side of bell curve are going to have problems. But differences occur between the “races” as well. Caucasians from Asia don’t score as high as Caucasians from Europe. Certain Asians don’t score as high as other Asians. This does not mean that everybody from the lower-scoring ethnicities cannot compete in the modern world, it just means many of them will have a tougher time of it.


18 posted on 12/02/2013 9:59:42 AM PST by driftless2
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To: jazusamo
Thanks, jaz -- I sent this to several friends.

God bless and protect Thomas Sowell.

19 posted on 12/02/2013 10:15:24 AM PST by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
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To: jazusamo

You got freepmail


20 posted on 12/02/2013 10:20:33 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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