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 ...
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
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.
Those poor brit Whites are poor because they are low-IQ. They are low-IQ because their parents are stupid and keep them stupid.
Thanks for the ping for an excellent column, by Dr Sowell
I made no mention of race whatsoever
The most obvious correlation is
father at home = students meeting standards
Hiya Kas, my pleasure...Tried to find his reference to “Teachers College Record” on Internet to post but no luck.
"Survival of the least-fit".
Darwin would never have believed it.
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.
Iirc, a patient told him, "We didn't get that far."
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.
Sounds like that’s probably right, also looks like some didn’t get through their 3’s.
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.
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'?
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.”
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.
God bless and protect Thomas Sowell.
You got freepmail
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