My mother's question
 

My mother was a woman of the Left. Many of her wartime friends were members of the Communist Party and I think her first husband was too. She voted Labour all her life. But my mother was also, by modern standards, a bit of a racist. She often used to ask me: "If all races are equal, how come it's always our children who go to university?"

By "our children" she meant Jewish children, specifically those of the Jewish refugee community to which both my parents belonged. And by "university" she meant Oxford, Cambridge, London and the old provincial universities that were collectively known as Redbrick -- what would nowadays be called "Russell Group universities". Together these could take about 5% of each year's school output. That's why our university education was free; the taxpayers could afford it because there were so few of us. But this "happy few" seems to have included all the Jewish children who wanted a university education.

I'm not talking about the children of rich English Jews, the kind of people who lived in Bishop's Avenue (I met a few of them at grammar school). I'm talking about refugee children whose parents were poor like mine and who grew up in slums like I did. My parents couldn't afford coaching to help me to pass exams. They didn't know how to game the system. But then they never thought they needed to. They just took it for granted that I would pass my 11+ and go to grammar school (I did) and that I would get good A-levels and go to university (I did). That was what "our children" did.

It was the same for the other London refugees for whom my mother sewed clothes after my father died. Often she would tell me that Mrs So-and-so had called for a fitting and that her son or daughter had just received news that they had got a university place. And invariably she would follow it up with the same unanswerable question.

I am over seventy now and my mother has been dead for over 17 years, but I still haven't found a politically correct answer to her question.

For educational success, you need both ability and the correct attitude. It's not about how much money is spent on schools: the US high-schools are worse than the Kenyan ones. It's not about class size: Korean schools have larger classes than ours. It's about wanting to be educated. The highest standards are in places where educated people are traditionally respected, like central Europe and the Far East. Some of the lowest in the developed world are in the English-speaking countries, where being ignorant is no shame. Your family came from that culture where the goal of everyone was to get as much education as they could. There's also the Jewish respect for learning, derived from the fact that the authority for Judaism has long been written. It's not for nothing that the Yiddish for synagogue is "schul".

It is my opinion that the question was "loaded" and should be rephrased with "culture" substituted for "race" implied in "our children". Race is an inefficient, non-specific term at the start since we are all the same species. As for mostly minor localized differences I find that there is no "typical Jew" since Israelis are different from Russian Jews are different from < insert any others here > etc, etc, etc.. Even biologically although racists lump all Blacks into one group, the scientific fact is there is more genetic diversity among Blacks than any other sub-group. In fact, "human genetic diversity decreases as distance from Africa increases" with Native Americans being the least diverse.

I am reasonably sure that just as Nazis liked to think of themselves as The Master Race, genetically predisposed to excel and even rule, Roman foot soldiers assumed they were more intelligent than "barbarians", Normans over Anglo-Saxons, ad infinitum, when in truth intelligence and education, for one example, are not interchangeable terms. The Group Think concept that all or even nearly all individuals of any one group is superior to any individual in some other group is a conceit disregarding diversity.

I think "equal" applies for society human rights where one shouldn't be considered as superior or inferior depending on "race"/ group category he belongs to (not sure there is biological human races btw!). In general sense, no human is equal to another (unless cloned, I don't know), being white jew doesn't guarantee your success at university and being black jamaican doesn't make you a successful sprinter

You mean, why did your mother perceive (you didn't say anything about actual numbers or statistics) that an ethnic group she identified as her own was disproportionately likely to have children who went to university? With the scope of that perception being localized to a very specific part of the world? A part of the world where everyone in that group had, within her living memory, overcome great hardship in order to be in?

Well, gee...

The explanation is incredibly easy and obvious. It has two parts:

1. extremely biased sample (to the extent that her observation is true)

2. confirmation bias (to the extent that it isn't)

Your mother's observation may well have been largely or even completely true for the part of the world she was talking about. Extrapolating it beyond that isn't "politically" incorrect; it's just incorrect.

(Honestly, if you've had an ivy-league education then you should have recognized all of this).

No answers. A couple of musings. By way of background, I will mention that I am a white son of the U. S. South who went to racially-segregated schools and whose ancestors wore the grey.

All races (or people are individuals or whatever term you prefer) are equal, except in the eyes of man. All socio-politico-economic systems are not equal. Many of them are grossly and purposefully unequal.

In the United States, we are still in many ways fighting our Civil War, which formally ended a century and a half ago. The phrase "All men are created equal" in the U. S. Declaration of Independence remains something between a dream and a promise, but hardly a reality.

The sad fact is, that in the marketplace of ideas, hate always finds buyers.

Some races are historically more disadvantaged compared to (presumably) European refugees belonging to the jewish faith who despite systematic discrimination have had access to education due to the relatively high standards of living in Europe compared to say Asia not to speak of Africa and the worst of segregation and denial of opportunities there.

Let me give you an example. Take the polish upheavals during lech walesa's times. They had food riots for what? For lack of meat on the shelves. Imagine that. Compare it to South Asia where even today, people go hungry and fight for water and the governments have to invent jargon like calling people stunted to avoid saying famine and malnutrition.

If you look at it statistically, you may find that the educated refugees of your times (twice oppressed at home as jews and commies) while surely never in the top 1% would surely not have been in the below poverty line category - even then. So it's not surprising that they might have scored better academically.

It is also true that the refugee/immigrants were the more educated or richer persons in every community. This is true nowadays too. Recently there was an article about how Hungary takes in only educated, computer science graduate immigrants.

Now compare your own people with the West Indian immigrants who came here during WWII as soldiers and stayed on (a few of whom married mostly working class white women). vis-avis education, the jewish community surely had a historical advantage.

Then next the insular culture that comes with being consigned to your own localities. This breeds an attitude that YOU AND YOUR PEOPLE are better than THEM or THE OTHER. There's nobody to daily counter the loose racist talk that goes on in these localities and is taken for fact.

These "racist" ancestors of yours were typical products of their times. Accept their history as it is. Be sympathetic towards people from less privileged backgrounds and don't keep looking for politically correct ways to describe your ancestors.

Today your group might have become relatively nonracist but this casual racism still exists and it's victims in western countries live in the inner cities and denuded wastelands of the post industrial era of job less stagnation.

OK

The biggest single factor BY FAR in educational outcome is respect for learning. Which kids get from their parents' attitude. Actually, I suspect the "happy few" would have included all the children who wanted a university education. And I'm almost willing to bet folding money that their parents had the same attitude as yours. All major immigrant groups seem to have this in common: In my time as one of the "happy few" (lovely phrase!), first generation migrants* from Italy and Greece were (statistically speaking) over-represented (anecdotal evidence from a head count of my colleagues). A quarter of a century later it was first generation migrants from Vietnam (anecdotal evidence from a head count of the students in my (university) laboratory). In twenty years I'll be very surprised if it won't be first generation migrants from Syria.

Hope this helps.

*I'm one.

Well, it's true that it's not just Jews. Chinese and Japanese children do famously well in Western schools (in the US as well as here). Children whose roots are in the Indian subcontinent often do quite well in the UK, especially if they have a Hindu or Sikh background (Muslims not so much). But Afro-Caribbean children have not historically done well here, especially the boys. They blame racism of course, but I've never quite bought that because the Chinese and Indian children have to face racism as well and it doesn't seem to discourage them.

It is a combination of nature and nurture. They affect each other. It will be a while before that web is untangled. Identical twins become genetically different as they grow older. The question is what are the successful individuals doing compared to the unsuccessful individuals and how their genetic makeup affects that if it all.

Also read John Taylor Gatto (look on youtube too). I know of a former teacher who had an issue with their district because they wanted to do remedial math for some students who needed it. The school district refused. If you don't get it the first time you are screwed. That is how people are sorted into occupation and it also is the tool to decide who goes to university and who doesn't. If they can't figure out the order of operations then they have no hope of learning calculus. Since it is policy not to do remedial education then they will never be able to do higher level math unless they take the initiative themselves.

Edit: Removing thoughts and choosing to unsubscribe

Do you seriously not know the main reason for this? It's because public schools in China, Japan and Korea are much more fast-paced. By the end of high school, they've covered what a Western university would cover for a bachelor's degree. (I'm aware that the college experience in Korea and Japan, for this reason, is essentially treated as a time off). I'd be surprised if people who come here when midway through that system don't do really well.

Clearly, this also applies to the Jewish kids in the neighborhood your mother raised you in. ;)

No, it's irrelevant. The children I'm talking about are second generation, not immigrants. They've never experienced Asian schooling, but they still score higher in our schools than white kids do. And it certainly doesn't apply to my generation of Jewish kids because we were second generation too. However we did have a home background in which learning was revered and going to university was considered normal, and I suppose that must have made a big difference.

Cultural colonization has a lot to do with this discussion. Boarding schools in the US for 'Indians' from about 1920 to 1970 being an example.

I tend to think old King Solomon was right about books and much learning leading to much sorrow. With that, I'll agree.

Feel superior? :)