4 ms·

The racial diversity bit is clearly a red-herring.

by aston 19y ago

phony_identity 19y ago
"Mr. Packer said the decision was made principally because of demographic considerations. Only a tiny fraction of the members of underrepresented minority groups who take AP exams take the tests in one of those four affected subject areas, he said. The College Board has made it a priority to reach such students, including those who are African- American and Hispanic."
Alex3917 19y ago
I disagree. There are really two separate stories here: 1) Four AP courses are being discontinued 2) High schools are are redesigning their curriculums and dropping classes in which minorities are either doing poorly or have no interest in taking. (I know that just because there is no longer an AP test for these subjects doesn't mean that schools are obligated to stop teaching the material, but many or perhaps even most of them will. Esp. since high schools are ranked by Newsweek solely based on the number of AP tests taken divided by the number of students.) In the long run, I think story #2 is vastly more important than story #1.
- amichail 19y ago
  Why do you care so much? In the long run, if there's a problem that threatens US world dominance then it will be corrected.
  - yters 19y ago
    Yeah. The way I see it, the purpose of the US is to make an environment friendly for smart people, not to create smart people. Looking at our history, I don't think a lot of our innovation is home grown. This explains why our universities are considered so good while our education system sucks balls.
    - yters 19y ago
      Am I missing something? Our system obviously sucks and there are many better systems out there. At the same time, we definitely have many of the best minds in the world in America. If educating Americans was so important, I'd think we'd have figured it out by now. Is it really that impossible to make our school system better? On the other hand, we do seem to be good at producing the consumers who power our economic engine. Isn't there just a big gapping inconsistency here?
- _h4xr 19y ago
  You should be careful about that "minorities" thing. Jews and Asians are minorities whose test scores are above the national average -- I think they would be very surprised to find that their collective underperformance was somehow an issue. I think this kind of debate won't be fruitful as long as we're afraid to say precisely what we mean, and have to talk about 'diversity' or 'minorities'. Look at the Harvard math department: http://www.math.harvard.edu/people/senior.html http://www.math.harvard.edu/people/senior.html . You've got Gottleib and Hironaka and McMullen and Yau and basically all the proof you need that they are pulling successful people from many backgrounds. They have a higher fraction of actual minorities than the rest of the country!
  - yummyfajitas 19y ago
    "Minorities" really means "non-asian minorities, primarily black/hispanic" to anyone involved with the diversity bureaucracy. Jews are lumped in with caucasians, and therefore do not count as diversity. It gets worse. Gypsies are caucasian/european. Gypsies are known to be genetically and phenotypically non-caucasian. They also suffer from historic (and current) discrimination. No bonus points for you, whitey. However, a Brazilian of 100% European ancestry (who speaks no Spanish) qualifies as Hispanic. This, in spite of the fact that his ancestors almost certainly oppressed the natives/slaves, just like an American of Portugese ancestry (who is white/caucasian). You get bonus points, Mr. Diversity. Think it's nonsense? Are you a racist or something?
    - _h4xr 19y ago
      Good to know I'm (presumably) not the only Sailer reader here. I know Gypsies are discriminated against, but I was under the impression that they're also, uh, very criminal on average, and generally not well suited to many modern careers (outside of entertainment, especially music, at which they excel). I'm thus unsurprised that there is not a powerful Gypsy Lobby agitating for affirmative action benefits, or maybe some sort of foundation started by a wealthy Gypsy industrialist. (The punk band Gogol Bordello seems to agitate for Gypsy rights, though. It's a start!) I've heard that the Chinese and Japanese immigrants in Chile and Brazil are also treated as 'Hispanic' for these purposes, even though they obviously don't need a leg up in such matters. The same source mentioned that the 'Mestizo' ethnicity covers what people think of when they think 'Hispanic'. Is that accurate? (This problem also shows up in racial crime stats; the FBI rather promiscuously mixes whites and Mestizos, so it's very hard to tell that, for example, white-on-black rapes are incredibly rare, at fewer than ten per year -- because Mestizo-on-black rapes are more common).

The racial diversity bit is clearly a red-herring.

by aston 19y ago

The racial diversity bit is clearly a red-herring.

"Mr. Packer said the decision was made principally because of demographic considerations. Only a tiny fraction of the members of underrepresented minority groups who take AP exams take the tests in one of those four affected subject areas, he said. The College Board has made it a priority to reach such students, including those who are African- American and Hispanic."

Alex3917 19y ago

I disagree. There are really two separate stories here: 1) Four AP courses are being discontinued 2) High schools are are redesigning their curriculums and dropping classes in which minorities are either doing poorly or have no interest in taking. (I know that just because there is no longer an AP test for these subjects doesn't mean that schools are obligated to stop teaching the material, but many or perhaps even most of them will. Esp. since high schools are ranked by Newsweek solely based on the number of AP tests taken divided by the number of students.) In the long run, I think story #2 is vastly more important than story #1.

amichail 19y ago
Why do you care so much? In the long run, if there's a problem that threatens US world dominance then it will be corrected.
- yters 19y ago
  Yeah. The way I see it, the purpose of the US is to make an environment friendly for smart people, not to create smart people. Looking at our history, I don't think a lot of our innovation is home grown. This explains why our universities are considered so good while our education system sucks balls.
  - yters 19y ago
    Am I missing something? Our system obviously sucks and there are many better systems out there. At the same time, we definitely have many of the best minds in the world in America. If educating Americans was so important, I'd think we'd have figured it out by now. Is it really that impossible to make our school system better? On the other hand, we do seem to be good at producing the consumers who power our economic engine. Isn't there just a big gapping inconsistency here?
_h4xr 19y ago
You should be careful about that "minorities" thing. Jews and Asians are minorities whose test scores are above the national average -- I think they would be very surprised to find that their collective underperformance was somehow an issue. I think this kind of debate won't be fruitful as long as we're afraid to say precisely what we mean, and have to talk about 'diversity' or 'minorities'. Look at the Harvard math department: http://www.math.harvard.edu/people/senior.html http://www.math.harvard.edu/people/senior.html . You've got Gottleib and Hironaka and McMullen and Yau and basically all the proof you need that they are pulling successful people from many backgrounds. They have a higher fraction of actual minorities than the rest of the country!
- yummyfajitas 19y ago
  "Minorities" really means "non-asian minorities, primarily black/hispanic" to anyone involved with the diversity bureaucracy. Jews are lumped in with caucasians, and therefore do not count as diversity. It gets worse. Gypsies are caucasian/european. Gypsies are known to be genetically and phenotypically non-caucasian. They also suffer from historic (and current) discrimination. No bonus points for you, whitey. However, a Brazilian of 100% European ancestry (who speaks no Spanish) qualifies as Hispanic. This, in spite of the fact that his ancestors almost certainly oppressed the natives/slaves, just like an American of Portugese ancestry (who is white/caucasian). You get bonus points, Mr. Diversity. Think it's nonsense? Are you a racist or something?
  - _h4xr 19y ago
    Good to know I'm (presumably) not the only Sailer reader here. I know Gypsies are discriminated against, but I was under the impression that they're also, uh, very criminal on average, and generally not well suited to many modern careers (outside of entertainment, especially music, at which they excel). I'm thus unsurprised that there is not a powerful Gypsy Lobby agitating for affirmative action benefits, or maybe some sort of foundation started by a wealthy Gypsy industrialist. (The punk band Gogol Bordello seems to agitate for Gypsy rights, though. It's a start!) I've heard that the Chinese and Japanese immigrants in Chile and Brazil are also treated as 'Hispanic' for these purposes, even though they obviously don't need a leg up in such matters. The same source mentioned that the 'Mestizo' ethnicity covers what people think of when they think 'Hispanic'. Is that accurate? (This problem also shows up in racial crime stats; the FBI rather promiscuously mixes whites and Mestizos, so it's very hard to tell that, for example, white-on-black rapes are incredibly rare, at fewer than ten per year -- because Mestizo-on-black rapes are more common).