At 10:27 AM +0000 12/7/00, Steve Mynott wrote:

On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 05:02:17PM -0800, Tim May wrote:

...

Rasha sounds like the typical illiterate student who has to take remedial English upon her arrival at Beaver College. I had a roommate in college who was one of these types, having to take the equivalent of "English for Dummies." He couldn't spell, he couldn't construct a sentence, and he couldn't read worth a damn.

Although I dislike, as ever, Tim's tone in these matters he has, as he often does, a valid point hidden under his bitterness and his experience at an American university is similar to my own, more recent, experiences at English universities.

In a basic course that purported to teach "economics" (actually a dumbed down blend of vague sociology and Keynesianism) the majority of students were foreign and had a poor grasp of the English language.

The level of debate was poor and the lecturer had an easy job.

I am not racist against foreign students and think poking fun at poor English isn't constructive (they generally speak English better than I speak their own language) but there seems to me something basically broken about a system which doesn't teach basic English _before_ trying to teach complex ideas in that language.

Nor am I a racist. I don't even believe the concept of "race" is a meaningful one. After all, the latest evidence from mitochondrial DNA studies is that nearly everyone in the world is descended from a group which was in Africa about 50,000 years ago. A mere blink of an eye. However, I believe people and groups of people, through their culture, vary in their approach to education. Few can dispute that Jews are very strongly represented in medicine, law, science, and professions in general...and underrepresented in sports, for example. Few can dispute the opposite about blacks, at least in America. There are well-known _cultural_ reasons for this. Without even giving the ethnic group for these statements, it is obvious which ones they belong to: "My son, the _doctor_." "Books are for whiteys." The role of culture is readily apparent at public libraries in Silicon Valley. Large numbers of Asians, men and women, usually in couples, with large numbers of Asian children hauling armloads of books. And Asian children dominate the science fairs, the engineering programs. (The Vietnamese do especially well. This was noticeable to many of us as early as 1980-83, when the Valedictorians and Salutatorians--the top students--at area high schools were largely "boat people." These BPs had "floated under the Golden Gate Bridge in rafts," as I like to say, and yet several years later they had mastered enough English to dominate their high schools. It was seeing this that finished off any sympathy I had that black and Mexican students were failing because they hadn't mastered English, blah blah blah. I realized it was culture, pressure from parents, and desire to succeed.) One could look at the success of blacks who are from the West Indies, and who tend to be academically-oriented, to see that culture is more important than race. Many blacks from the Dominican Republic, even dirt-poor Haiti, are doctors and lawyers. The issue remains culture. Perhaps a remnant of slavery, perhaps a remnant of the plantation lifetstyle. Whatever. They must change this culture. Whitey and Big Brother can't do it for them. The black family in America is fragmented, drug use is rampant, children are strongly, strongly discouraged by their peers and their mothers (the fathers are absent, in most cases) from academically excelling. A culture of "deliberate slacking," like a union shop that is on a work slowdown. Those who excel, academically, are seen as "white inside" with a variety of deprecating names applied to them. Obviously this is not true in all cases. There are black scientists and black doctors, and there are Jewish tramps and winos, Asian drug dealers. But the "distributions" basically fit what I have described. And many black intellectuals, dismissed by other blacks as Unca Toms and "race traitors," are saying the same thing with increasing concern about their culture. Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, many others. Biologically, it is just plain crazy to think that groups which only recently scattered into Europe, Japan, Australia, and other corners of the world have evolved different brain structures. They haven't. But cultures can change in the blink of an eye, in a few decades. This is what is at issue. Call me a culturalist, but not a racist. Correlation is not causation. --Tim May -- (This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)

At 05:14 PM 12/6/00 -0800, Alan Olsen wrote:

For some reason I am reminded of a line from the movie _A Shoggoth On The Roof_ (yes, there is such a beastie.):

"Every one of us has a shoggoth on the roof. Not a metaphorical shoggoth, but a REAL Shoggoth! And how does he stay there you might ask? TENTACLES!"

YOW! Where can I find it? (Or how do I keep the Shoggoth from finding me?)(Oh. Not mentioning its name.)(Oh..........) ]-9028iu3r =EQ-WSD9A0fc8zuedxtg v-=]3wr 14508eux[;colf8itjmkqsvA] zx=]F\QSF*$q(*iztfg v\3-=Wqa(zidxcz0po[ikf]3-wpe[o04pirdfx=[] 0-p3iwsdARECfo0jygvh5]-9r3ud -g]94yut793]1q vt57575758yrtg043=qierg[vkrc kc=re[dsqaacdrsxz~~~