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Skin color isn't it, actually. I knew (second hand) a teacher in a rural area of a low population state. All white kids, she'd have kindergartners cussing her
by zdragnar 1y ago
Skin color isn't it, actually.
I knew (second hand) a teacher in a rural area of a low population state. All white kids, she'd have kindergartners cussing her out. Very little hope for any academic future for the other grades as things didn't get better with the older kids.
I knew a white kid who lived in a trailer park whose mom was upset he was getting tutoring after school for his dyslexia because she told him he'd never amount to anything.
My mixed race friend mentioned he was accused of "acting white" in school because he actually tried to get good grades.
What do all of those things have in common? Poverty, yes, but blended with hopelessness. The kids were surrounded by people who didn't have much, didn't think they'd get anywhere, and didn't believe the kids would ever have a chance at a better life.
That last part is what separates them from kids in third world countries who still manage to achieve academic success. Hope and optimism aren't guarantees; they aren't a replacement for social support. They are, however, a necessary ingredient for the intrinsic motivation necessary for personal growth.
- rayiner 1y agoRural low population states actually have pretty good test scores: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=NP&chort=2&sub=MAT&sj=&st=MN&year=2024R3&sscv=MN&sscvsd=desc https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=...
- somenameforme 1y agoThat's an understatement. Sort that by at or above basic and the top 5 states in the US are: North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin.
- bootsmann 1y agoEven in those states you mention, the number of students managing basic proficiency in maths fell by over 10 percentage points in the past 10 years. You can use the year selection on the site to see the picture change over the years. Texas dropped by over 20 points.
- somenameforme 1y agoInteresting! Yeah, this is a significant decline across the board. I'm curious what it is in the US in particular that's driving such sharp declines. Because many places in the world did things like shut down schools during COVID, have internet/social media, ongoing obesity epidemics, major immigration from low education sources, demographic/fertility issues, and so on. Yet somehow looking at the latest PISA (2022) [1], the US now sits between Malta and Slovakia in math. And if these scores are any indicator, we're probably looking at a further decline in the next PISA results, which should be released this year. [1] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scores-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor...
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago> Because many places in the world did things like shut down schools during COVID Most of the EU/lots of Europe focused on getting the kids back in school before the US did. I personally think that was the right trade-off, but obviously people differ.
- rayiner 1y agoNationally, seems to be mostly demographic change plus covid. For white 13 year olds, NAEP reading and math scores dipped a point from 2012-2020. Then they dipped 5-6 points from 2020-2023: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2023/ https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/ltt/2023/
- notmyjob 1y agoPupil teacher ratios in rural states are insanely low. That would impact the below basic group presumably. Edit: to say pupil teacher ratios are low, not high.
- Capricorn2481 1y agoYou can almost guarantee test scores in Minnesota and Wisconsin are being carried by the cities and suburbs, not rural areas. They have some of the best (and most expensive) schools in the country, and the highest test scores.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Meekro 1y ago"Poverty blended with hopelessness" sounds about right. I'd like to emphasize that it's not just poverty, since there are plenty of recent immigrant families who live in poverty but the kids are at the top of their class. Unfortunately, though, there's a certain kind of degeneracy some families live in: the parents have largely failed in their every endeavor, and they'll become absolutely furious if they see the kids starting to rise above that, get their lives together, and accomplish things. If you live in communities like that, it's part of the deal: no one is allowed to escape, lest they make the rest of them look bad.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bell-cot 1y agoSadly, there are a variety of such family, community, and social and peer group motivations and behaviors - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality#See_also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality#See_also
- philipallstar 1y agoIt's not the poverty; it's the learned helplessness.
- idiotsecant 1y ago[flagged]
- atwrk 1y agoThe causal direction from poverty to learned helplessness is pretty much established, though
- philipallstar 1y agoLearned helplessness is poverty+some other things, though. Otherwise no one in poverty would ever leave it. Just talking about causal direction elides reality.
- eunos 1y ago>"acting white" Honestly this is one of the biggest bullshit I've ever heard. Assuming that this mentality is quite widespread(not necessarily universal) among non White, then any attempt to introduce affirmative action or other equalizer practice would be futile. That kind of mentality must be purged hard from yesterday.
- pavlov 1y agoTeenage boys everywhere have a widespread bias against putting in the effort to get good grades. They might call it "gay" or "sissy" or "acting white" or whatever, but the root cause is usually their perception of what masculinity should look like. The men they look up to are anti-intellectual. This exists in all communities, race is not the main problem here.
- eunos 1y agoThat must be dealt with full spectrum crackdown on national level.
- 0xEF 1y agoI'd like to see what a "full-spectrum crackdown" on anti-intellectualism in the US would look like, given that most of its population struggles to discern fact from fiction in the news cycle, healthcare and legal proceedings. The introduction of generative AI has only made that worse, pushing more distrust of any information that didn't come from a source counted among "one of us." Our problem stems from an intentionally poorly educated populace that still heavily relies on idolatry, allowing whatever demagogue with the means to rise and essentially manipulate the masses. I'm pretty sure, at this point, this was intentional, individuals and orgs with the resources to create finely tuned systemic problems having been at it since the country's inception.
- eunos 1y agoMedia from mainstream to alternative march in tune with pro intellectualism messages. Any works of art that espouse anti intellectualism would be swiftly and immediately canceled (including its authors) without hesitation. Do this for a generation or two minimum.
- hopelite 1y ago[flagged]
- DiogenesKynikos 1y ago> it is simply a convenient identifier for underlying significant biological differences It's actually not. Skin color does not correlate well with the genetic diversity among humans at all. It's just one particular trait that is very easy to identify by eye. > There is absolutely zero reason one would rationally conclude that biological differences would somehow magically stop at the brain. There is absolutely zero reason to rationally conclude that a random physical trait that happens to be easy to distinguish by eye correlates with brain function at all. On the other hand, there are massive socioeconomic disparities that arise from the history of slavery, which easily explain both the disparities and the reasons why racists such as yourself want to boil things down to skin color.
- graemep 1y ago> And yes, skin color itself is irrelevant, it is simply a convenient identifier for underlying significant biological differences No, its a terrible identifier. If you group people by genetic similarity (which is of dubious usefulness) you essentially end up with three different black African races, one Australian, Pacific and Native American, and one everyone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering
- nobody9999 1y ago>If you group people by genetic similarity (which is of dubious usefulness) you essentially end up with three different black African races, one Australian, Pacific and Native American, and one everyone else. There's only one sentient primate race: Homo Sapiens. There absolutely are genetic differences between groups that were geographically isolated from each other (as you note). However, when genetic variation is compared both between and within those groups, we see more variation within those once isolated groups than we do between those groups[0]. What's more, even within such groups genetic variation is only around 0.5-1.5%. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics#Race_and_human_genetic_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics#Race_and_hum... Edit: Cleaned up prose.
- poemxo 1y agoI don't appreciate reading anecdata in response to cited findings. It cheapens the discussion. Now everyone is going to spend time writing knee-jerk responses to you. At least the parent commenter had the grace to reply with another source instead of falling for it.
- JohnMakin 1y agoThe parent commenter’s “source” makes no claims about race related performance whatsoever - it measures by just about everything but that, and then sorts by country. So maybe this is one of those darned reflexive knee jerk responses.
- Tarq0n 1y agoPages 16, 32, 50 and 62 have breakdowns of mean score by ethnicity actually.
- chongli 1y agoEthnicity is way too coarse-grained to answer questions about culture and family wealth/connections. That’s lumping together a kid from an old-money family in New Haven with a kid from a trailer park in Virginia.
- ethbr1 1y agoI'd say it's an incomplete measure, but it's far from useless given the US' continued statistically-significant disparities between ethnicity outcomes. The first step of solving a problem, etc. etc. I do agree with the general sentiment though and think that too much research/news over the last couple decades has been exclusively ethnically segmented, given the economic segmentation that should always also be involved. They're perpendicular questions and best triangulate the American experience in tandem. E.g. what are outcomes for wealthy members of disadvantaged ethnicities? What are outcomes for poor members of advantaged ethnicities? Those are interesting socioeconomic questions!
- inglor_cz 1y agoI cannot think of any single ethnocultural group in the West that highly values education and, at the same time, has bad outcomes doing so. We have invested a lot of money and effort into our educational systems. Even traditionally oppressed groups like the Jews or the Chinese (Chinese Exclusion Act anyone?) or descendants of Russian muzhiks or Indian untouchable castes do have good outcomes if they actually motivate their kids to learn. The groups that are systematically out (in Czechia, the part of the Roma that lives in ghettos - contrary what people tend to think, a lot of the Roma marry into the wider society, mix with it and live quite comfortable self-sufficient lives) tend to be the ones that despise schooling, and it will take a century or so of concerted efforts to change the attitudes.
- graemep 1y agoJews were motived to achieve because they were oppressed. How do Indian low castes do compared to higher castes in the same country? They often continue to suffer from discrimination from higher castes in the west. I can believe they do better than some other groups, but how to they compare to higher caste Indians?
- rayiner 1y agoI don’t know about low caste indians, but a good data point might be vietnamese. They are generally looked down on by other east asians. Their poverty rate in 1980 was higher than among black people. Today (where 60% are still foreign born) their median income and poverty rate is right around the national average, about 10% behind white americans.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- graemep 1y ago> Skin color isn't it, actually. Is contradicted by this > My mixed race friend mentioned he was accused of "acting white" in school because he actually tried to get good grades. Unless you are taking skin colour very literally, which is obviously not it (someone's academic performance is not going to change if they get a heavy tan or use s kin whitening cream or take a drug that changes skin colour etc.). I interpreted "white" to mean an ethnic identity, not a literal description.
- kingkawn 1y ago[flagged]
- graemep 1y agoSaying that skin colour is not important is racist? Or are you objecting to the idea that culture matters? Or are you saying that how people identify, and how society classifies them has no impact? Really confused by what you are claiming is racist.
- tomrod 1y agoI find this sort of claim really common (the commenter you responded to). Skin color is unfortunately correlated to socioeconomic outcomes in the United States. Once poverty is controlled for, at least in my analysis, most of this difference is ameliorated (though mild correlation persists). Most people in this vein, at least in my experience, will describe after a long conversation that they think there can only be two sources of correlation - genetic ("nature", which I disagree is a primary cause of socioeconomic outcomes) and a weird subset of nurture that fails to take into account intergenerational impact (history), instead focusing solely on state (assertion of Markovian process to life). In my view, nuture breaks out into those components -- history defines the resources you have access to in your broader community, and state defines your immediate challenges. It's hard to get resources to change your life if you have a bad state, but it is possible. Americans love an underdog story and the bad-state good-history fits it well. Bad-history leads to a lot of additional issues -- systemic type issues. Americans have seen this in both hostile urban planning to a full community and to hostile resource reallocation to rural areas (towns shutting down with no way to recover) in favor of suburbia. From my studies, I think Strongtown lands the description of the issues (Youtube channel). I'm not epistemically arrogant enough to assume I am 100% right here -- much of this is from 20 years of research experience but there is always more to understand at a population level and how that relates to the individual level. I am epistemically arrogant enough to require people to hold to their ideals -- if someone wants to ensure equality of opportunity, that has to both be for the state (Little Jimmy and Jane come from a poor family) as well as history (and none of Little Jane's community has been to college and nor do they understand the college application or financial assistance process; further, most are unbanked and most of the male population can't get gainful employment due prison sentences connected to overpolicing and/or desperation behaviors [a catch-22 for communities wanting to build a brighter future while also exercising punitive justice]).
- tomrod 1y agoHow might we formalize these anecdotes and prove them out from a systemic issue?