40000 Rapes in Congo

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Here's another snippet for you. I trawled this quote up earlier-

However, the recent trend that IQ has increased by at least 15 points in the last 30 years poses alarming problems for IQ theorists. Even though the effect of parental IQ is still robust, the effect is no longer an absolute effect and there are not as yet a satisfactory explanation as to why the population IQ is generally increasing.

So what's causing that, Cal? Is the world getting whiter?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Caligastia

In addition, this quote comes from Liberal apologist Abigail Thernstrom, co-author America in Black and White.

One of the most disturbing, I think perhaps the most disturbing fact in our whole book is that black students coming from families earning over 70,000 are doing worse on their SATS, on average--it's always on average--than white students from families in the lowest income group. You want to cry hearing that figure. I mean, it's so terrible.

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001379.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/interviews/thernstrom.html

Placing that Thernstrom quote in a more coherent context gives us this....

The test score gap did close in 70's and 80's. Then in 88, it took a nose dive. Do you have any guesses or theories as to why that happened?

There is a mystery. The racial gap in academic achievement was closing in 1971 to 1988. And in 1988, the black scores start to turn around. And the gap has been widening. It looks like it's plateaued now. But the picture is not good. And the question is, why the change? Why, when we were making so much progress, should that progress have stopped? It's the one place in our book, in America in Black and White, where we say we're stumped. We don't know. Then of course, we go on to write 40 pages making some guesses.

I have a few guesses. One, I think the level of disorder in the schools increased with the rival of crack cocaine. People talk about violence in the schools. I mean, when somebody's shot, it makes headlines. What they don't talk about is the day in and day out chaos--that five percent of the kids in the classroom, or at most ten percent of the kids in the classroom. And which in fact, ruins education for everybody else. So I think that the increasing violence and disorder in the streets began to spill into the classrooms. I also think that we're going to discover that there were changes in the 80's in the educational culture. An increasingly, an increasing nervousness on the part of teachers about holding black students to the same standards. In the name of sensitivity, they were dumbing down their expectations for black kids.

I'm not sure what else explains it.

You make an interesting point that the higher levels of income and education of black parents are not translating to the next generation. Can you talk about that at all?

One of the most disturbing, I think perhaps the most disturbing fact in our whole book is that black students coming from families earning over 70,000 are doing worse on their SATS, on average--it's always on average--than white students from families in the lowest income group. You want to cry hearing that figure. I mean, it's so terrible.

I don't have an explanation for it. I was having lunch with somebody who is African American, and very distinguished, and very smart, and thoughtful about these issues, the other day. Who said to me, you know, middle class habits, in terms of the way children are talked to the books that are read to kids, the books in the household altogether--they take more than one generation. So you can't look at income alone. And maybe that's true. And so it's a question of time. So many of these questions are a question of the time table and how impatient you are. And I don't blame blacks in this country for being very impatient. They've waited too long for equality. They're still waiting. I understand that. The only question is whether short cuts can get us where we want to go. And my answer is no.

There's another factor here which we have not touched on. And that is the academic skills of the teachers. Particularly, in the urban school districts. I'm not a teacher basher. I think a lot of teachers work incredibly hard and do a very good job. But I also think that too many have education degrees. They mainly took courses in pedagogy. They don't know enough about the subjects they have to teach. Even elementary school kids. And that's particularly true for math and science.