Quote: (09-14-2016 12:54 AM)WalterBlack Wrote:
From this article it seems that educational achievement is a combination of location, income and culture of the parents.
Indians are above average, Pakistanis are below average, but they are the same race - a lot of Pakistani parents don't give a shit about education, they're more interested in religion, whereas Indian parents are more about education.
Black Africans are above average, black Caribbeans are below average. A lot of black Africans in UK come from religious strong families, whereas a lot of black Caribbean kids come from broken homes.
Poor white boys do poorly, because their parents don't care about education and they go to shitty schools.
As you can see from these results, attainment is all over the place - I wouldn't link it to race...
This study was conducted by the Social Market Foundation, a 'think tank' who's goal is to "champion ideas that marry a pro-market orientation with concern for social justice".
This peer-reviewed study was conducted earlier the same year by a team of geneticists.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article...ne.0080341
Both evaluated the same test in the same city, but the scientists found that scores were roughly 58% genes and 36% environment and gives detailed break downs of the data and scores.
The SMF's "Commission on Inequality in Education", headed by Labour Party politicians and no scientists, on the other hand doesn't really share any of their data.
For instance, what were the parents' scores? Were they more affluent because they were more intelligent?
Are there many low IQ, rich Africans, Indians, Haitians, Pakistanis, etc. immigrating to the UK? Or were they actually higher IQ individuals to begin with, and that was precisely why they were able to immigrate and thrive in one of the most expensive cities in the world?
Also, it says that whites went from above average to below average. But is that because the average changed, or the scores of whites went down? I'm assuming London saw fairly large population/demographic changes between 1970 and 2000.
I have no doubt that there's a large environmental factor to intelligence and success.
But the study you posted also doesn't seem to provide much evidence at all that there's not also a significant genetic factor.
What people seem to be missing on both sides of the argument is that genetics are not set in stone.
A group of people who were selective about who they had children with could eventually encourage or eliminate all kinds of genetics traits over a period of generations.
A group of lower IQ people can also still be successful without being geniuses.
The problem is that no one will actually admit genetic differences exist between groups of humans. They try to teach, govern, etc. everyone the same, whether you're a white woman or a Latino man.
It doesn't make sense, and it hurts everyone involved.