My son taught English in Korea for a few years and told me that young students there were great at math but in learning were not allowed to use calculators.So? You become great at math by learning about math very in depth. Calculators are tools to aid in the problem-solving process after you become great at math. I'm not seeing what is so unusual about what your son observed in Korea.
IMO, it's rather more complicated than "simply" ethnicity or culture -- class, urbanity and other factors play into it, as well as what one defines as "education". My father received a scholarship and worked his way from being a farmer's son (albeit a privileged one due to my grandfather's status) to a comfortable petit-bourgeoisie city life by the time I finished primary school. He was a qualified lawyer and saw formal education (note "formal") as the key to a better life for me and my siblings. Of course I got caught up in the rat race. I *cried* over my *UPSR*[primary school exam] results cos they weren't up to mark. With my mother, it was a matter of family tradition and a religious upbringing -- she was taught that Islam exhorts its followers to gain knowledge, and so educated I must be.posted by divabat at 10:57 PM on July 23, 2008
Incidentally, my mother grew up in a small town as part of a large, respectable family.
Many of you have criticized parts of the genetic argument as I related them. Others have pointed to alternative theories I truncated or left out. But the thing that has upset me most concerns a co-author of one of the articles I cited. In researching this subject, I focused on published data and relied on peer review and rebuttals to expose any relevant issue. As a result, I missed something I could have picked up from a simple glance at Wikipedia.See what I mean? A whole bunch of the "science" on race and intelligence is no better then the "science" on intelligent design or global warming denialism. It's agenda driven bullshit put into scientific form in order to fool people, and it does fool people, obviously.
For the past five years, J. Philippe Rushton has been president of the Pioneer Fund, an organization dedicated to "the scientific study of heredity and human differences." During this time, the fund has awarded at least $70,000 to the New Century Foundation. To get a flavor of what New Century stands for, check out its publications on crime ("Everyone knows that blacks are dangerous") and heresy ("Unless whites shake off the teachings of racial orthodoxy they will cease to be a distinct people"). New Century publishes a magazine called American Renaissance, which preaches segregation. Rushton routinely speaks at its conferences.
I was negligent in failing to research and report this. I'm sorry. I owe you better than that.
In a semi-retraction, labeled "Regrets," Saletan writes, "The thing that has upset me most concerns a co-author of one of the articles I cited," and goes on to describe how that author is pretty clearly a white supremacist. This Clintonian admission is technically true—Saletan did cite the work of J. Philippe Rushton, and and some may consider Rushton, based on his comments and connections, to be a dyed-in-the-wool, old-fashioned racist. Rushton is not the author of "one of the articles" Saletan cited. Rushton is the author of the article from which Saletan draws almost all of his ammunition. Rushton's paper, co-authored with Arthur Jensen, "Thirty Years of Research Into Race Differences on Cognitive Abilities," is a meta-analysis, a purportedly even-handed review of all the relevant research on race and intelligence. The majority of Saletan's facts come to a reader, therefore, not secondhand, but third-hand, and via the prism of two highly biased researchers.Saletan was taken in by racist hucksters the same way less then intelligent people are taken in by 'scientific' arguments denying global warming, or evolution, or whatever. A patina of 'studies' and 'references' on top of bullshit.
Here's the thing: there's a drastically different situation involving the indignenous tribes and the middle class, Valleyite problem of being boxed up. And that is one of poverty. Incredible, terrible poverty.So to me (though I could be mistaken), once you get past the issue of poverty and actually obtain enough privilege to get to school, you'll get sucked into the straight As race by virtue of the school system (though you'll probably also get caught in the middle of inter-racial rivalry). If you aren't in the urban public school system, you're pretty free from the education rat race.
One of my friends in Form Six was planning on quitting at Form Five because he had siblings to look out for. The average salary of a non-politically affiliated person per MONTH in Sarawak is several hundred, sometimes even less than RM 500 per month. I know at least one son who had to quit his studies in the University of Malaya -- a government-funded institution -- because he couldn't afford it.
How do I know this? I know people who sign their pay slips. And my father keeps a very close relationship with the people in our longhouse, a place that I now rarely visit. In the longhouse, the children would be happy to receive second hand clothing.
The reason why there is no pressure of getting As is because the young are still stuck in a way of life where they have to struggle just to survive. There is no pressure to get into universities by rank or show off your As because in the very first place, it is never even a luxury that one could choose.
I think that the people in your Facebook list are an exception, and are by no means reliable info on this. They are all members of the more priivleged indigenous group -- including myself -- who all have enough money, earned by the upwards mobility, luck, and foresight of our grandparents or parents, to have middle class problems like pressure on getting A's. We do not represent the vast majority of the Sarawakian and Sabahan indigenous (well, I know that I cannot represent the Sarawakian indigenous). The majority are struggling to survive on a salary that qualifies being below the global poverty line.
So the short answer: there is no struggle to grab A's. In fact the opposite is true, and even more tragic: there is pressure to quit school in order to find a job and make a living, to support a large family.
Curiosity requires no defense. People wonder and they discuss. And I have seen no proof that the GNXP post is racist dreck. An analogy of races to dog breeds doesn't do it. All that he was illustrating there was an isolated population...So you didn't link to it, but you did defend it, and you did excerpt it approvingly.
Another critical quote for all those too lazy to read the GNXP blog:"In fact, economists Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann report that the association between economic outcomes and measured intelligence appear to be even higher within developing African countries than within Western countries. (pp 13-15) Similarly, at the national level, psychologists Earl Hunt and Werner Wittmann found that the relationship between GDP and national average IQ was stronger for the mostly African developing countries than it was among the developed industrial countries. (0.70 vs 0.58)" (Psst! This means IQ is real, and it matters. As in it has real world effects.)
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2. Their parents push them like crazy, which may be a function of 1.
posted by plexi at 6:03 PM on July 23, 2008