Racism? It's Not How Good; It's Skin Color

Kind of ironic that when you click on the thread, the forum says "The requested page could not be found."

Using your own post as evidence, any of us can go forever without using something a Black genius created.

 

Sure, if the parent(s) can afford it, and/or if the child is bright enough. If he's really bright, he might get a scholarship. (I'm tutoring one such boy right now, a ten year old who can name the capital city of every country in the world, apparently from some video game he plays. He's either going to discover the cure for cancer or end up as the head of an international criminal computer-hacking syndicate.)

Mrs Thatcher tried to open up the high-quality schools to that layer of children who were not quite outstandingly-brilliant enough to get serious scholarships to the private schools (there are very few such), through something called 'assisted places'. Naturally, Labour closed this scheme down when they got power.

My main concern is for the kids below the 95th percentile, who are not going to get into the academically-selective schools, state or private. (Although, I did have one tutee from a non-academic home who went to one of the local, average state schools, who was the only intuitive mathematician I have come across in over twenty years of tutoring. They didn't know what to do with him. I don't blame them, the pressure on them is to get everyone over the line -- the UK equivalent of getting a high school diploma -- they wouldn't have got any kudos or extra money for doing what should have been done with this kid, which was to have put him into some sort of accelerated maths and science program and send him off to university at 16. Even if his parents had had the social knowledge to apply for a scholarship to a private school, he wouldn't have received one, because his gift was in maths, nothing else. A rational education system would seek out such people at a young age and make sure their talents were developed.)

In general, I agree with Charles Murray: we don't ask enough of the top third, and too much of the bottom third. The bottom third don't need to learn about the theory of relativity, they need a decent environment where they can learn the basics of their culture, reading, writing and 'rithmetic, plus being put on the path to learning a saleable skill. The way to do this is provide 'escape routes' for parents who actually want to rescue their children from the ghetto environment they're in... the kind of thing the Harlem Learning Zone in the US, or Michaela School in the UK, are trying to do.

 

Bingo!

Those who idealise the poor have a lot of trouble with this harsh truth. Doesn't fit the narrative, and tends to reveal that people remain poor via choices. They can't have that. They need victims.

 

That's because they are not simply 'lacking money', as the genuinely poor are (for example, in the Third World). They have literally chosen a lifestyle. MUCH harder to fix than simple lack of money.

And no nation who is serious about equal opportunity should spend a cent on those who make the choice to be poor. IE, those living in long term poverty in the First World. They already have all they need to escape povert if they want it - particularly in places like Denmark.

 

It's not a function of money or intelligence, though. It's a function of work ethic and parental commitment!

As regards all those kids below the 95th, there is PLENTY of room between there and the 50th.

 

Empathy is a learned trait. It's merely backed up by survival instincts (which dictate that if the pack survives, we survive).

 

You said that out loud, bless you Raff. You're the gift that keeps on giving

 

While I agree with you on universal public education, I vehemently condemn the idea that those who disagree do so because they're 'evil' (my bold). That would indicate a failure to grasp that they have reasons just as noble as your own, but simply come at them via a different path.

 

Likewise, there is probably (certainly) a similar difference between Asian kids and white kids - and it has nothing to do with breakfast.

 

You read a bit deeper than I posted. Can we just leave it at universal public education? Sounds great. Fund it. Talk to a repub about spending on education.

 

This is literally the reason why I am having problems taking liberals of the US seriously when they talk about homelessness, poverty and lack of opportunities in this country.
My teenage years were spent in Ukraine in the 90s - it was like Venezuela today. American liberals have no effing idea what they are talking about when they cry about American “poor”. Those 20 year olds that came from middle class families think they know it better then anyone else and they are much more enlightened and intelligent then older generations when in reality they are the ones who have no effing clue about anything in this world.

 

You literally said the guy doesn't give a toss about his fellow Americans. There is only one way to interpret that.

And I can't talk to a Repub, since we don't have any in this country. You'll need an American for that.

 

Discipline in schools seems to be a very common problem in Australian government schools.
There are religious schools which use the Michaela methods. Not sure about rote learning.

 

not so - certainly not the USA or UK

 

17 million whites in poverty: http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html
what can be the cause? certainly not SJW or Democrats

 

Well ... I don't want to get into a debate about genes and environment, partly because 'we' -- the human race -- are still pretty ignorant about the exact relationship, and mainly because I am even more ignorant. It's complicated -- everything we learned, or I learned, at school about genes and environment is now being reinterpreted in the light of what is called 'epigenetics'. It turns out Mr Lamarck was not entirely wrong.

But ... I think it's pretty well established that there are individuals who are born with a severely diminished, even absent, sense of empathy with others. And then there's autism -- again, a biological thing but not a simple one.

So when someone says "I don't care a flip about anyone else but me", assuming it's not just an attention-seeking adolescent, my assumption is that they are suffering from some genetically-based disorder. On the other hand, something in the chemical environment we live in may be a contributing factor. There is still vast ignorance here.

Of course, your social environment as you grow up influences you a lot. I read a few years ago about a study, I think it was done in Australia, which located a gene or genes which influence the characteristic of impulsiveness. If you had the particular allele of this gene which didn't work well to restrain impulsive behavior, and were raised in a home where impulsiveness was not restrained socially -- the underclass environment -- you exhibited this trait as an adult. But even if you had this allele, and were raised in the kind of 'decent' home where you were punished for grabbing your little sister's ice cream cone -- you didn't.

I suspect empathy is like that.

 

There have been several studies along those lines, this is one of them.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/2...reveals-links-with-psychiatric-disorders.aspx

 

Thanks ... very interesting. I think we're going to see some really interesting discoveries in the field of genetics and behavior in the next few years.

 

Some of them we may wish hadn’t been discovered. From my perspective as a gay man the thought of being able to detect a ‘gay gene’ in embroyos thus inducing parents to abort could make for a very, very boring world. The religious right though will be torn between wanting to cancel Satan’s work and their claimed belief in the sanctity of life. As that ancient Chinese curse has it “May you live in interesting times”.
Anyway, the direction we’re heading in tends to suggest we’ll trigger our species extinction before genetics gets that far.

 

I think having a serious atmosphere for education, and rote learning, are two different things. 'Rote learning' has a bad name, and so it should when it means learning uncoupled from developing skills. But having certain things down as reflexes can be very handy when you're doing problem-solving -- it 'reduces the cognitive load' as the psychologists say. I prefer to talk about learning certain things 'by heart'.

Australia, at least with me, has a good reputation in mathematics education -- it punches above its weight in this field. I use some Australian ideas in my own teaching -- calling 'variables' pro-numbers, and teaching my tutees to think 'how many' or 'how many in' when they see the divide symbol, rather than the word 'divide'. I don't know if these are widespread conventions in Australia, but I learned them from an Australian.

 

That's my big fear. If we can just get through the next century or so, I think our species is going to enter a completely new world, one that we cannot even imagine. We may find that current disputes over, say, sexuality, have not been resolved so much as transcended, as we learn what influences our behavior, and we learn to shape it. But of course if we have a thermonuclear exchange, supplemented by whatever other horrors they're cooking up in the biowarfare labs, among two or more Great Powers, all bets are off.

 

They are widespread conventions in Australia but mostly come from teachers who took out their degree within the last 25 or so years.
However there’s another side to Austrlian education that’s running rampant. This is the notion that every child must be rewarded for making an ‘effort’.
We can see the results of this philosophy in art works, performances etc of appalling standard being inflicted on the public. Excellence is often now being associated with elitism.

 

The problem isn't the schools, though.

 

Are you white, by any chance?

 

Which brings me back to one of my favourite hobby horses, the importance of facing up to the core of human nature, our tendency to act in a primitive and violent tribal manner. Until we face up to this we’re not going to be around for long.