A reader writes:
http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/about_us/media_room/docs/2008ParentCensusK-6SystemOverviewAndDetailedFindings.pdf
The funniest graph is Table 28 where parents answer whether the amount of homework assigned is just right, too little or too much. Most parents answer Just Right, and the rest are fairly evenly split, but the East Asian parents vote 38% to 2% for Too Little over Too Much. (There's no word on what East Asian children think about how much homework they're getting.)
I thought you might be interested in the Toronto School Board's parent census. They surveyed parents in Toronto and tied the results of the survey to the child's Grade 3 and Grade 6 standardised test performance. Basically no surprises here. Math performance goes something like this... East Asians, Whites, South Asians, Latin Americans, Blacks. Generalissimo Franco is still dead.
http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/about_us/media_room/docs/2008ParentCensusK-6SystemOverviewAndDetailedFindings.pdf
The funniest graph is Table 28 where parents answer whether the amount of homework assigned is just right, too little or too much. Most parents answer Just Right, and the rest are fairly evenly split, but the East Asian parents vote 38% to 2% for Too Little over Too Much. (There's no word on what East Asian children think about how much homework they're getting.)
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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67 comments:
The concluding remarks, which begin on pg 53 (as it's shown on the page itself) are what you might expect:
Yet our analysis of Grade 3 and 6 EQAO achievement data indicate that at this early age, there are already differences between the achievement of children based on student and family background characteristics, with some of the largest gaps between racialized groups.
And then the next paragraph begins:
To close the achievement gaps, the TDSB needs to act,...
Here I guess "act" means spend more money, which I further assume will have to come mostly from the upper income groups, which as the report makes clear are dominated by families with both parents born in Canada, meaning they are predominantly white. Again paying for their demographic dispossession by underachieving non-whites. To what aim?
In general the report is full of evidence that immigration produces "economic diversity" that, to a large degree, crosses racial/ethnic lines, thereby exacerbating, if not outright producing, this kind of social pathology.
Yes, those East Asians are so superior. The rest of the world is so desperate to be like them. The ROW is so fascinated by them. Because they're showing us the way into the future, just like they always have. They are the groundbreakers and the innovators. Without their genius, we'd be frankly lost. Their art, science, literature and music leaves us in awe. How many thousands of times have they "captured lightning in a bottle" and shook the world with their audacious unthinkable achievements?
All I know is that East Asian scientific and political theories are the essential key to a bright future for mankind. I don't see how anyone could argue that having an East Asian Elite installed in every country on earth wouldn't make the world a much, much better place.
Indeed, the Earth would finally be the envy of the Universe then.
It's disturbing to me that every single education institution of every State in this Union is not filled with East Asians at this very moment. The fact that they aren't simply means that we're that much more vulnerable.
How are "South Asians" defined? I thought Indians are typically very good at math. Are Iranians, Arabians, Afghanis and Egyptians included in "South Asians"?
Steve-o wrote:
There's no word on what East Asian children think about how much homework they're getting
http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/programs/student_census/docs/11-07-1201%202006StudentCensusSystemOverview126Nov07finalAppB.pdf
Is the rank Asian-European-Hispanic-Black found in every state? If so, that would be very interesting, because it would suggest that whatever differs by state, is probably not going to affect this. Every state I have lived in seems to address the problem as a unique embarrassment.
My 2nd grader brought home a homework package with the following text:
"A big rock has more mass than a pebble. That's why the big rock falls faster."
This is government school in suburban California.
I'm sure the teacher who wrote it has a master's degree from a government college here in California.
Guess I'm still naive. I was genuinely shocked.
Black people in Canada are actually pretty nice (can't speak for the very large cities like Toronto, where I've heard gang violence is a problem). I suspect that it's because most blacks in Canada are wealthy African immigrants, whereas in the U.S. there are lots of former slave descendants.
after thinking about HBD for 10 years, i'm starting to conclude that east asians consistently outperform the other groups mainly because they are extremely nerdy, conservative, non-risk takers who study books to the exclusion of almost all other pursuits. i mean seriously now. there are entire fields and industries where intelligence is important but east asians are nearly absent. frankly i believe this is because those jobs don't revolve around spending 15 years studying books and taking tests.
oh, they have decent IQs on average. but east asians avoid risk like the plague. studying longer and harder than the other groups so they can get those reliable $45,000 a year entry level office jobs. they rarely take a chance in fields were success cannot be counted on by studying books for their entire youth. where the path to success is a step by step plan, proven to work by a thousand people before them, almost like building a world of warcraft character. that's life for many east asians. a step by step process with the "correct" next step already mapped out in advance. their entire life, planned out at age 1.
africans could do better at academics if they tried, and east asians would do worse if studying books was not essentially all most of them do. there is definitely a "playing to your strengths" effect here. europeans are good at everything, so their time and talent goes in 100 different directions, not narrowly focused on any one thing.
Any black population in a developed country will tend to form an underclass, in Canada or elsewhere. That is a well-known, endlessly repeated fact. What should now be asked is "what can we do about it" ? Some very misguided policies allowed large numbers of immigrants from the Caribbeans to come to Canada in the 70's and 80's, but thankfully the door is now all but closed. Numbers are growing thanks to (again) social policies that make it a career choice for young unwed black women to have lots of kids. These policies should be reversed. Also, strong anti-gang tactics targeting (sotto voce, of course) specific ethnic groups have had marked success in Montreal. These could be usefully adopted in Toronto and other cities with significant black populations. Ok, enough 'hate FACTS' for one day, I suppose.
68% of white parents and 57% of Asian parents have a university degree. The White-Asian degree gap can be accounted for by 2 factors:
a.) During the cultural revolution, many Chinese weren't allowed to go to school.
b.) Most Toronto Asians are Chinese
Black parents are at 22% university completion. So it may not be a fair comparison completely.
Jody,
"there are entire fields and industries where intelligence is important but east asians are nearly absent."
Examples please? They seem pretty well spread around to me. I tend to agree with you about creativity, though.
I thought it was interesting that parents overwhelmingly expect their children to attend university (Figure 27: 87%) even though they may not meet or exceed the provincial achievement standard (e.g. Table 13: 60% for Grade 6 math).
Steve, it’s interesting that East Asian parents want more homework but don’t particularly care about attending parent/teacher interviews, speaking with teachers, or attending school events (Table 33).
Finally, what really got my attention was large urban school district with 81% of kids coming from two-parent homes (Figure 6). Gee Wally, that’s so 1960.
I think it was Derbyshire who said that Jews study books to understand God and Chinese study to get a government job.
On a slightly related topic, I watched Idiocracy on the Comedy Channel the other night, based mainly on your review. Watching the Larry the Cable Guy commercials was surreal.
I suspect that it's because most blacks in Canada are wealthy African immigrants, whereas in the U.S. there are lots of former slave descendants.
I think a lot of Canada's blacks are actually from the Caribbean, but Canada's immigration selection system, which favours the better skilled/educated, promotes a higher standard.
europeans are good at everything
Not sprinting.
PrestoPundit: scan and post the handout please, just for giggles.
Far Cuc and Jody,
Spot on, in a LOT of ways. Although I do hate that as an E.Asian male I must always compete against Newton, Einstein, Rembrandt, Aristotle, Lincoln, the Beatles, Da Vinci, and quite often an array of movie stars and even porn stars. And I do mean compete right as though they were right there in the room with me. And it must do you two a world of good to have them looking over your shoulders wherever you travel.
Still, Stevo with his eye in they sky does raise yet another comic/tragic data point. One that recalcitrant island WASP culture must acknowledge. And THEN where will the likes of you two TRULY be?
I agree with the commenter jody. East Asians, on average, tend to have more self-discipline than whites. This often allows them to cram ungodly amounts of data into their heads. Recently I've been noticing a lot of Chinese pharmacists here in NYC - how unsurprising.
They're less creative than whites. This seems to be because they're more conformist by nature. To find the truth you often have to challenge established dogma, and they simply don't do that.
This reminds me of that test where they put newborns of different races on their stomachs, in a position where they weren't comfortable, and watched how many would turn around to lay on their backs on their own initiative. The Asian newborns stayed on their stomachs more often than white ones - they went with the flow, accepted their fate, whatever else you want to call it it. By the way, based on what I've read about Daoism, "go with the flow" would seem like a fair description of its outlook on life. Again, how unsurprising.
" east asians avoid risk like the plague."
If this is a firm assertion of yours, I'm afraid that all those years you invested in the study of HBD has yielded little in the way of substantive or accurate conclusion. You haven't noticed during your research that Eastern Asians tend to be highly, highly prone to gambling? Visit any casino in the world with a significant population of Eastern Asians and you will find that they figure disproportionately amongst its most habitual patrons. Also think about the huge enthusiasm for investment in the stock market that you will find in the cities of Hong Kong and Shanghai.
You haven't also noticed that initial wave of immigrants from Eastern Asia generaly tend to be of an entrepreneurial bent - surely also significant of a risk-taking capability?
With regard to the rest of the study - I too was surprised that South Asians fared so poorly, given their success in the United States, Australia and elsewhere.
I lived in Montreal for a brief period during my adolescence, and was enrolled, due to my parents' ignorance of local school quality, in what can best be described as the city's closest equivalent to a "ghetto" school - the Shadd Academy. It was located very close to Montreal's main Jewish district, but its students were almost exclusively from the Carribbean, South-east Asian or East Indian communities.
While it wasn't that awful, it certainly was far rougher than the relatively genteel educational environment I enjoyed at the private school I attended in Australia. There had been a recent shooting on the grounds of the school at the time of my enrolment, and one of my classmates - a huge Jamaican kid - had been capped in the knee by over-enthusiastic police officers.
There were a huge number of Eastern Indian kids at the school but none of them distinguished themselves academically the way that the South Asian kids tended to do in Australia. My sample set was small, and this was perhaps a non-representative group, but is this difference in performance significant of general geographic or demographic tendencies within India? I recall reading that the British Indians are mainly Gujaratis or Punjabis, hailing from the Western part of the sub-continent. And the Indians in Malaysia and Singapore are largely Tamil or Sikh.
Data Summary from URL
Data from Toronto School Districts
Parents with University Degrees, %
White = 68%
East Asian = 57%
Middle Eastern = 52%
South Asian = 46%
South East Asian = 38%
Latin American = 37%
Black = 22%
Annual Family Income below $30K
White = 9%
East Asian = 28%
Latin American = 39%
South East Asian = 27%
South Asian = 37%
Black = 45%
Middle Eastern = 55%
Good grades in 6th grade
East Asian = Reading - 78%, Writing - 83%, Math - 86%
White = Reading - 76%, Writing - 75%, Math - 72%
South Asian = Reading - 68%, Writing - 74%, Math - 68%
South East Asian = Reading - 69%, Writing - 77%, Math - 72%
Middle Eastern = Reading - 55%, Writing - 57%, Math - 54%
Latin American = Reading - 51%, Writing - 55%, Math - 42%
Black = Reading - 47%, Writing - 55%, Math - 37%
Peter wrote
--
How are "South Asians" defined? I thought Indians are typically very good at math. Are Iranians, Arabians, Afghanis and Egyptians included in "South Asians"?
--
South Asians include Nepalese, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis
Iranians, Afghanis and Egyptians
are considered Middle Eastern in this report
About 20% of the south asians are
Pakistanis and Bangladeshi and this drags down the South Asian score
Also the caste composition has lots of peasants from Punjab and Sri Lanka and overall this Diaspora is a slightly lower blend than the UK diaspora
Jody, Let me play devils advocate with east asians ( and south asians )
Typically they come 1 or 2 generations away from starvation, and the goal is to get a safe job and avoid starvation
In addition, they may the sole or main breadwinner for lots of dependents ( uncles, cousins, nieces , etc )
and have to be focused on making a living
Barzouf,
The data from canada and
from UK( not shown here ), shows that in addition to blacks, muslims will also form an underclass ( as well as latin americans )
after thinking about HBD for 10 years, i'm starting to conclude that east asians consistently outperform the other groups mainly because [snip]
East Asians haven't taken over law yet. Maybe Verbal vs. Performance IQ is the answer, as La Griffe suggests.
after thinking about HBD for 10 years, i'm starting to conclude that east asians consistently outperform the other groups mainly because they are extremely nerdy, conservative, non-risk takers who study books to the exclusion of almost all other pursuits.
I really don't think this is correct...
Frankly, since about the age of seven, it's been pretty obvious to me that East Asians are *on average* smarter than whites/Europeans. And a lifetime of experience interacting with both these groups in a variety of different situations has merely reinforced this observation. An endless number of IQ studies say exactly the same thing, which hardly surprises me.
Now obviously, there are many, many, many individual whites who are smarter than most or nearly all Asians, but that doesn't change this basic fact about averages.
On the other hand, it's also true that *on average* Asians are also more diligent and studious than whites, which obviously enhances their performance, but also much less aggressive (and perhaps less innovative/creative?), which often makes them less likely to reach the top of their given profession.
But leaving those secondary traits aside, I really don't have the slightest doubt they tend to be significantly smarter on average. In fact, I'm not even aware of any credible analyst anywhere in the world who seriously disputes this basic fact.
You know the quality of comments is going downhill and towards less intellectual white nationalism when a simple post about East Asians performing well in math tests in a school district turns into an opportunity to explode about the inferiority of Asians in all endeavors of human accomplishment.
And then someone makes sure we all know Asian math results should be qualified by their lack of uniqueness and creativity.
Statistics Steve provided in previous posts indicate less marrying among American ethnic groups, however, while this may be true in general, there are local variations. My observations of California's silicon valley couples in their late 20s and early 30s indicate otherwise. I estimate the probability of seeing a Caucasian-Caucasian or Caucasian-Asian couple, age 25-35, is about 50-50. Yet, I may be wrong, these are people I encounter in stores, restaurants, and shopping malls. There may be many same age couples who remain at home.
"there are entire fields and industries where intelligence is important but east asians are nearly absent."
I find this very hard to believe. Similarly, I don't agree with the comments regarding creativity. Some of the most impressive young musicians and artists at my school (who also tended to be good across the academic spectrum) were of East Asian descent. Also, some of the most far out designs I saw at Architecture school were by Asian designers.
"East Asians haven't taken over law yet. Maybe Verbal vs. Performance IQ is the answer, as La Griffe suggests."
The study in question shows that Eastern Asian kids also performed better on tests of reading and writing ability. I know that the verbal deficit of Eastern Asians is a much belaboured point in certain sections of the HBD community, but recent studies - this one and a study of students in the U.K., have found the contrary to be the case.
It's quite obvious that much of the deficit in the verbal scores of Eastern Asian students in Western countries was the result of hailing from a non-English speaking environment, or migrating to the host country at a more advanced age.
The notion that Eastern Asians are less creative than other races is absurd, and invariably signifcant of a profound ignorance of human cultural history on the part of those who subscribe to it. Forget about the remarkable accomplishments of Confucian civilization in the areas of the visual arts and belle lettres, or the fact that they are host to some of the richest culinary traditions of the world - just look at their track record in pivotal creative industries of the modern era - movies and computer games. The Hong Kong film industry was a hotbed of the most remarkable innovation through the 1990's, and the Japanese influence on Western pop culture, through computer games, comic books and animation, is immense. What about the recent wave of Korean movies that have enjoyed tremendous successes at international film festivals, and like Hong Kong and Japanese movies before them, inspired Hollywood emulations? Western movies based on Asian predecessors are legion: the films of Sergio Leone were based on the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, George Lucas heavily modelled aspects of "Star Wars" on Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress". Scorcese's "The Departed" was based on Hong Kong's "Infernal Affairs", and breakthrough movie, Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" is a rip-off of Ringo Lam's "City on Fire". "The Matrix" contained Hong Kong movie editing styles and martial arts choreography. Gore Verbinski's "The Ring", one of the most successful horror movies of the based decade, was based on a Japanese original.
You know the quality of comments is going downhill and towards less intellectual white nationalism when a simple post about East Asians performing well in math tests in a school district turns into an opportunity to explode about the inferiority of Asians in all endeavors of human accomplishment.
White nationalism is quite a bit more intellectual than simple group comparisons, asians do this, whites do that, blah, blah, blah.
Not that WN need be intellectual, mind you. Nobody needs to "prove" why he prefers his own kind over aliens. If that were the case, we'd be demanding to know why rec1man plasters the blog with stats about his glorious "southern brahmins" rather than just assuming he does it because he is one, or why illegal aliens are a "hispanic" issue rather than just assuming it's because blood is thicker than borders.
PrestoPundit you need to move to a better school district. The California standards are actually pretty tough these days - at least one grade level ahead of where they were when I grew up (and my school district was excellent - ranked in the top 200 nationally in US News recently). My fourth grader is doing algebra in math here in our top API-scoring school in the OC.
Yawn, another post on the supposed superiority of asians. A lot of them are over-achievers rather than born bright (particularly the Indians). They get pushed into high paying, high status jobs by their parents (just like Jews). Once they get into the workplace how do they do? I can't recall too many high level managers or the real go-to lead problem solvers at my big aerospace engineering company being asian. As I recall the brightest (scary smartest) engineers I ever worked with were of German or Jewish heritage.
"after thinking about HBD for 10 years, i'm starting to conclude that east asians consistently outperform the other groups mainly because they are extremely nerdy, conservative, non-risk takers who study books to the exclusion of almost all other pursuits."
You miss the key point: Asians study longer because they have greater aptitude and intelligence. No one should be afraid of this fact. Asians are smarter and t's a bit misguided to downplay their success. Whites have a big problem with looming white idiocracy.
"They're less creative than whites. This seems to be because they're more conformist by nature. To find the truth you often have to challenge established dogma, and they simply don't do that."
This notion of low Asian creativity is not part of my experience on average. In fact, I find Asians to be more creative than whites. Sure you might look at the top one half of one percent and find a difference (maybe), but if you look at the creativity index for people in the middle percentiles, I think you will find Asians are more creative.
"there are entire fields and industries where intelligence is important but east asians are nearly absent."
in america, 3 that i can think of right away are sports, defense, and film.
internationally, east asians do very little in sports science, despite sports being very important to them. but in the US it's even worse. east asian men appear to have nearly zero interest in making 5 to 10 million dollars a year to outcoach and outscheme the "clearly" less intelligent european men who coordinate NFL and NCAA teams. let alone the black coordinators, some of whom are positively dense.
"not sprinting"
europeans are decent sprinters. wait, is this one of those things where only the best group is good at something? like, east asians are not good at math, because ashkenazi jews are better?
"If this is a firm assertion of yours"
it is. east asians generally avoid risk. paths leading to low probability outcomes are usually avoided. if they were really prone to wild, random gambling, wouldn't the streets of california be filled with broke, homeless east asians? but they don't gamble that way. they're calculated gamblers. they're not blowing the life savings on roulette. they don't bet the house on football. america is not filled with thousands of problem asian gamblers who lose $500 a week on parlays. they play blackjack, poker, pai gow. games with odds. games involving plans. i lived in las vegas. i saw how they gambled. craps is probably the only random game they play much.
"You haven't also noticed that initial wave of immigrants from Eastern Asia generaly tend to be of an entrepreneurial bent"
the initial wave of every immigrant group is filled with people that start business. it's a normal part of being the vanguard. mexicans lead all ethnic groups in business creation. selective immigrant east asians are brighter than mestizo peasants though, and instead of opening 1 million taco shops, they open enterprises.
what's strange is how east asians don't found colleges and universities are nearly the rate europeans do, despite being so obviously more interested at what happens inside them. sorry, there's just no way you can spin that into a tale about how east asians are "obviously" smarter. all the best universities should be in east asia and there should be more of them per capita. they aren't, and there aren't.
"Jody, Let me play devils advocate with east asians"
i don't have a problem with east asians or the strategy for life that many of them employ. it works. it's a winner. i think they definitely do better at school than the other groups. but i remain unconvinced that they do better than europeans because they're smarter. i think they're about equal in intelligence, but far more interested in studying, almost to the point of excluding all other activity.
they learn how to play instruments, but they rarely start bands. that's risky. the band could fail. a music career has a low ROI. forget the band and concentrate on math. it has a high ROI. if you look at the billboard 200, east asians barely even appear. they're so far underrepresented, an effect is at work. that effect is risk aversion. east asian musicians could have success, if more of them were willing to risk failure at music. some of them are pretty good at writing music that other people would want to hear. but is the gamble worth it? for every 100 guys that do less math so they can do more music, only 1 or 2 of them will have success. low ROI. better to stick with a heavy dose of math homework.
"I really don't think this is correct"
it's merely my opinion, but a considered one after observing and thinking on the matter for over a decade. i definitely disagree that east asians are indisuputably smarter than europeans. the evidence does not support the hypothesis. i'd say the two groups are about equally intelligent. the superior academic performance, which is real, and reproducable, is mostly due to them playing to their strength. study the books, take the tests, skip the other activities, do not consider non-academic careers. i think people underestimate how much difference can appear in the performance numbers by group behavior. are korean women really that much better at archery and golf, per capita, than all other women? nah. they are just more active in the field. many groups aren't even trying. as is their normal procedure, they surveyed the landscape and picked out the place with the highest ROI.
africans could definitely do better if they took school seriously. lots of them barely even try. europeans could easily stop doing all the random stuff they do that leads to them developing 80% of everything that's part of the modern world, and instead, all european youth worldwide could just study a math book every day for 3 hours after school. but thankfully, they don't do that. they get into all sorts of tangents and odd activities with low ROI which produce massive amounts of useful stuff.
in fact, i'm pretty confident at this point that the han chinese are less intelligent than europeans. comparing chinese IQ and population to chinese activity in science, engineering, and medicine bears this out. chinese UNDERperformance is the greatest unexamined story in all of HBD. i've posted before that is it mind boggling how steve never blogs about it.
in particular, as with the lower per capita college and university creation, there's just no way to twist chinese weapons technology, or rather lack thereof, into evidence of superior east asian intelligence. the explanation that communism prevents chinese superiority in this field fails spectacularly here. communism encourages military development.
it's goofy anybody thinks i'm saying that east asians are not smart. i doubt anybody here talks more often about china's nearly certain economic domination of the US due to demographic and scholastic trends. i also frequently point out that a monoethnic, monolingual classroom of east asians produces the best students, despite the delusions of american educrats.
As a high-IQ white who has spent over a decade teaching English in east Asian unis, I feel I must weigh in. I have long noticed that east Asian students are tops at memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules, but significantly less good at inventing their own discourses and spontaneously expressing themselves generally. This, I believe, corresponds to their tendency to study intensely but narrowly and to be generally not very inventive or exploratory.
I have traveled extensively in China, Korea and Taiwan, and can testify that east Asians vary considerably in intelligence, too.
It's only some groups of them that are all that bright. Furthermore, their style of management is a huge hindrance to progress. Anyone spending any time at all living among east Asians will be much less in awe of them than the education stats would suggest.
"As a high-IQ white who has spent over a decade teaching English in east Asian unis"
With all due respect H., I knew an abundance of high-IQ Westerners when I lived in Shanghai and Taipei, who completely failed to achieve even a basic understanding of their society of residence, and subscribed to the most absurd and improbable misconceptions about them. This was certainly not because they were stupid - I would completely trust their opinion on their areas of expertise.
Their failure to understand their host societies can be imputed to a combination of two reasons - 1. Failure to learn the local language, and 2. Application of deductive reasoning to human cultures.
The first is pretty much endemic to expat communities in Asia - it's incredibly difficult to learn a language which is unrelated to your own as an adult, with no cognate vocbulary, employing an ideogrammatic writing system.
And the second is just a ubiqtuitous flaw in general human reasoning - when human beings encounter another tribe, they assume that peculiarities or idiosyncracies they encounter in any member of the tribe apply to the tribe as a whole.
So H., you've taught English in universities in Eastern Asia for a over decade. With all due respect to your profession, this immediately tells me that you only possess a rudimentary level of proficiency in the languages of your host countries. Correct me if I am wrong on this, but I think it's a fairly safe assumption. If you were capable of reading and understanding any of those languages, you would have shifted to a different occupation niche within the expat community.
And with only a rudimentary level of proficiency in the language of your host society, it's very easy to make the wrong call about their actual characteristics and tendencies.
" east asians generally avoid risk. paths leading to low probability outcomes are usually avoided. if they were really prone to wild, random gambling, wouldn't the streets of california be filled with broke, homeless east asians? but they don't gamble that way. they're calculated gamblers. "
Calculated risk-taking is still risk-taking.
I know of quite a few members of the Chinese community in Sydney who have lost everything they have due to gambling. The obvious reason why they don't remain homeless and broke afterwards is that they get jobs to sustain themselves.
""there are entire fields and industries where intelligence is important but east asians are nearly absent."
in america, 3 that i can think of right away are sports, defense, and film."
Sports and defense I agree with. I think there is one good reason for this - these are not highly-regarded areas or professions in post-Confucian cultures.
With regard to film though, I think you're wrong. There are a considerable number of extremely talented, up-and-coming film makeres in Hollywood - just look as the credits for "Watchmen", for which the lead cinematographer, editor and screenwriter were all Asian.
There's also John Woo, that kid who made those awful "Saw" movies, and one of the main screenwriters for the "X-Files" television series. They figure pretty prominently in the production side as well.
There aren't too many well-known Asian actors, but that's perfectly understandable - America is a predominantly (at present) European country, why would should films or television shows be forced to accommodate an ethnic group that comprises only a small percentage of the population? You don't see too many caucasians in Asian movies or TV shows either.
jody -- I don't get it. if koreans are into golf, other groups just aren't as interested. but if koreans aren't into defense or coaching sports, that reflects negatively on them?
The only point that you can salvage is that at the very highest ends of achievement (Fields Medalists, Nobelists), East Asians are less frequent than Europeans who are in turn less frequent than ashkenazi jews (per capita). Everything else in your posts is invention (africans can do better in schools? east asians are "just as smart" as europeans) and so on.
Antoine Zhang - when human beings encounter another tribe, they assume that peculiarities or idiosyncracies they encounter in any member of the tribe apply to the tribe as a whole.
Isnt that the problem of induction rather than deduction?
Our liberal pals fall back on induction all the time in the face of unfriendly facts. Deduction is the stick we beat them with.
Very interesting document. Nice stats which surprised me at some points but otherwise I found what I expected. Interesting numbers about South Asians though, I wonder what learning and teaching techniques they use.
Take care, Elli
Anyone spending any time at all living among east Asians will be much less in awe of them than the education stats would suggest.
I don't know about Chinese universities, but I can tell you that, with the exception of the University of Tokyo, Japanese universities are astoundingly bad. People have compared them to American junior colleges, but it would be more accurate to compare them to American junior high schools.
The hard part is getting into a Japanese university. Once in, your goal has been achieved, so, between the tedious grind of Japanese high school and the tedious grind at the office for the rest of your life, you drink and goof off and never learn a thing in four years (engineering/science students are the sole exception to this dismal rule). Nobody takes academic study seriously, least of all the professors, who are not required to "publish or perish". Yeah, yeah, I know all about our "party schools", but this is far worse than anything I've seen even at a low-tier American state university. In America, college is where you can go to make up for substandard secondary schooling. In Japan, it's a paid holiday for silly rich kids, nothing more.
in particular, as with the lower per capita college and university creation, there's just no way to twist chinese weapons technology, or rather lack thereof, into evidence of superior east asian intelligence. the explanation that communism prevents chinese superiority in this field fails spectacularly here. communism encourages military development.
Well the fact that they basically lost an entire generation of scientists and engineers thanks to the Cultural Revolution sure hurt a lot.
Your point would be valid if they were stagnating technologically, but that is definitely not the case. The idea is to catch up before you start pushing ahead. And they've done a pretty impressive job of closing the gap so far, considering they were an agrarian society that beat up, imprisoned, or murdered intellectuals not too long ago in Maoist China.
Funny thing: Tsien Hsue-shen was one of the leading rocket scientists in the United States, until he was deported during the red scare in the 1950s. It was thanks to him that China was able to get their rocketry program started, despite being poorer than an African country at the time.
Do I even need to mention how the Chinese military was more advanced than European militaries in the olden days? jody seems to have a very heavy, "What have you done for me lately?" mindset.
"europeans are good at everything"
Not at reproduction, maintenance, repair, leaving things alone, relating to black and brown people, Asian men, dealing with Jews, preserving animal life, peace of mind, aging gracefully, keeping it "real", being personable, not being screwed by ideology, long wave stability.
And they aren't as good as blacks and Asians it a whole LOT of things. BTW did you see the Olympic medal count you scawny, IQ 110 cur.
“they learn how to play instruments, but they rarely start bands. that's risky. the band could fail. a music career has a low ROI. forget the band and concentrate on math. it has a high ROI. if you look at the billboard 200, east asians barely even appear. they're so far underrepresented, an effect is at work. that effect is risk aversion.”
What else was Kurt Cobain going to do, but become a musician? If you are a good Asian kid, from a good family, you have lots of options. If you are Kurt Cobain, your choice is to become a musician, a druggie, or perhaps both.
Where you see risk aversion in the Asian community, I see proper planning and decision making. Where you see risk aversion, I see a kid who understands there is more to life than making it big. What you fail to see among the supposed risk seeking whites, is how it is backfiring culturally. Those risk loving whites are importing the world, because they want to see what happens. How does risk taking sound now? Pretty stupid - I hope.
the quality of comments is going downhill and towards less intellectual white nationalism
East Asians have a huge chunk of a continent to themselves. If they don't like a bit of dirt in the eyes, they can decamp there. Europeans haven't a square inch on the planet to themselves. So you can probably see why some of us might overcompensate a bit.
Even the Indians wound up with some real estate. Care to lay odds we will, if the question is left to others?
Count me among the people who has always disagreed with the "Asians aren't creative" tripe that white supremacists like to trumpet. Last time I checked, the Japanese are dominating the video game industry. Before you say, "Bleh, who cares about video games", realize that they are a perfectly valid creative medium. And, you may be surprised to learn this, but the video game industry dwarfs the movie industry when it comes to the amount of money at stake. I've mentioned this in another thread, but you would be amazed at how beautiful the music is in famous Japanese RPGs; I would put composers like Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, or Yasunori Mitsuda in the league of modern Western composers like John Williams without hesitation.
I HIGHLY prefer Japanese animation and comics to Western ones. As someone else mentioned, Chinese and Korean movies are very popular and now spawning countless Western remakes.
I realize that the older people on this site probably aren't up to speed on such things, so why don't you try reading some Chinese literature like Dream of the Red Chamber, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms? No, of course you won't, because you suffer from confirmation bias.
One last thing I forgot to comment on!
chinese UNDERperformance is the greatest unexamined story in all of HBD. i've posted before that is it mind boggling how steve never blogs about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions
Yeah, it's a mystery all right!
Data show that Asians that attend high school in Asia tend to significantly outscore American-educated Asians on the SATs - both verbal and math. As I said above, the academic rigor of the Asian social system probably accounts for this. Just as the academic rigor of Asian-American homes accounts for the strong performance of AA children.
Though I think we need to be open to the possibility that Asians have alleles that make them more studious, on average, than other groups and more responsive to academic pressure. Some amount of gene-cultural-behavioral interaction may be at work here.
Let's not diminish the accomplishments of Asians either. HK, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore are first world countries and technologically quite advanced. Building a prosperous nation, in my opinion, takes both intelligence and creativity. While the evidence doesn't suggest Asians have higher IQs than whites, it does sugges that the two groups are roughly comparable.
Tough to compare whites and Asians on creativity, but the Japanese have made quite a few contributions. Especially in gaming, robotics, anime, toys, automobiles, etc.
For Jews though, there is evidence that they are close to a SD above the white/Asian mean on g and maybe more creative. So the pattern of Jews>whites>Asians on nobel prizes makes some level of sense. I think if Asians were a bit more non-conformist, they'd probably be about equal to whites though on Nobel Prizes.
Some of you are under the impression that the smartest kids get the best grades. My experience has been that IQ matters, but it's not the decisive factor by any means. Diligence is the most important factor when IQs are relatively close.
Your point would be valid if they were stagnating technologically, but that is definitely not the case. The idea is to catch up before you start pushing ahead. And they've done a pretty impressive job of closing the gap so far, considering they were an agrarian society that beat up, imprisoned, or murdered intellectuals not too long ago in Maoist China.
An additional current point to consider is raw economic growth rate. China has been growing at approaching 10% per year for around thirty years now, and doing so from an absolute standing start. Unless I'm sorely mistaken that's a feat which has never been remotely approached in all human history.
I'm hardly an ultra-economic determinist, but offhand I'd say that having achieved the highest sustained economic/industrial growth rate in the history of the human species isn't exactly a sign of low mental ability...
MacSweeney said...
Last time I checked, the Japanese are dominating the video game industry...I HIGHLY prefer Japanese animation and comics to Western ones.
I bet you do:
www.slate.com/id/2213073/
www.slate.com/id/2089630/entry/2089646/
My experience has been that IQ matters, but it's not the decisive factor by any means. Diligence is the most important factor when IQs are relatively close.
Wrong.
Dillegence> Family Support> Deference> IQ
Which by the way is the hierarchy with just about everything.
USA - 2003 New Immigrant Children Survey- Data Span IQ test
Digit span data (IQ equivalents) by U.S. immigrant group:
Europe 99, Northeast Asia 106, Southeast Asia 104, India 112, sub-Saharan African 89, Mexico 82, Central America/Caribbean 83, South America 86.
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Since this test is done on children, it reflects regression to the mean and reduces the effect of over-qualified parent
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The Indian data is skewed due to the caste blend of the immigrants to US being different from that in India
Brahmin = 5 % in India = 25% in US
Merchant = 15% in India = 35% in US
Peasant = 40% in India = 35% in US
Dalit, Muslim, Tribal = 40% in India = 5% in USA
The data here is slightly misleading.
It should be mentioned that city scores, on the whole, are higher than rural areas (I've seen EQAO data). And minorities live mainly in the city areas. So the white marks we see here are artificially higher than the other groups. One would expect if the whole of Ontario is taken white marks would actually be lower, while other racial groups marks remaining the same.
East asians are also overwhelmingly represented in Canadian mathematics and physics competitions - a measure of the right tail:
http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/apsc/davinci/2004_exam/results.html
http://sin.uwaterloo.ca/2008_Top_100.pdf
http://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/past_contests/EuclidResults.pdf
China has been growing at approaching 10% per year for around thirty years now, and doing so from an absolute standing start. Unless I'm sorely mistaken that's a feat which has never been remotely approached in all human history. - RKU
Whereas the industrial revolution is a mere historically trivial detail.
Whats more impressive A) Inventing industry itself, technology etc Or B) Copying it once someone else (white people) have already done it.
Apparently its B then.
Antoine. Interesting post about Indians in Montreal. Care to elaborate on your experiences with them?
Funny thing: Tsien Hsue-shen was one of the leading rocket scientists in the United States, until he was deported during the red scare in the 1950s. It was thanks to him that China was able to get their rocketry program started, despite being poorer than an African country at the time.
Another funny thing, he had to work in the US to become a top rocket scientist.
Do I even need to mention how the Chinese military was more advanced than European militaries in the olden days? jody seems to have a very heavy, "What have you done for me lately?" mindset.
We can have these fantasy football type debates all day but what counts is who beat who. The west and Chinese never fought each other on a large scale in the era when you think they were so great. The Chinese appear to have fallen back on having vast manpower than exhibiting any great fighting or military prowess.
What can we see re the PRC.
Stalemate in Korea at the cost of vast Chinese casualties.
Inconclusive conflict with India.
Inconclusive conflict with Vietnam, though some see it as a defeat for China.
Oh and there is the defeat of Tibet, a tiny nation inhabited by buddhists. Not to mention crushing the Tiananmen square folks. Way to go Chinese fighting dudes!
The war nerd thinks that the Chinese are top class warriors btw.
To Antoine Zhang: I happen to have learned quite a bit of mandarin and basic Korean, too, and do in fact know quite a bit about the cultures of those countries. Telling me that I don't understand them is preposterous, given what I have seen. They may be able to develop technologically and in infrastucture by copying the west, but their social mentalities are still way behind. And I could get a job outside of teaching if it suited me. I never met any businesspeople over there who could speak the language.
Korean War was a great victory for the Chinese (stalemate being a victory).
1. They pushed back American/UN/Korean forces
2. These guys were working with African-like resources. Maybe poorer than half of Africa.
3. Technology gap
Are Asians catching up in the sciences?
This year's Nobel prizes in Chem, Med, and Physics
5/9 people were Asians
The Japanese have done well this decade.
"Antoine. Interesting post about Indians in Montreal. Care to elaborate on your experiences with them?"
I was only in the same school with them for about six months. At the time, I was perhaps 13 years old, and my father was on sabbatical at a Canadian university. He was concerned about educational standards at the "Shadd Academy", and insisted I be advanced a year. A lot of the Jamaican and Carribean kids had been held back one or even several years, however, so my scrawny and precocious, barely-pubescent self had to share the same classroom with a number of 16 to 17 year old, burly black guys.
It wasn't that bad actually - I was a bit of a joke to every one because I was so much younger than them. I found the East Indians to all be genial, civil individuals, but as stated before, nothing remarkable academically, the way they tend to be in other parts of the South Asian diaspora. I think there was also a general tendency for all the kids - regardless of ethnicity, to aspire to the character and style of some of the tougher Carribean boys.
As regards China's historic martial accomplishments and current military prowess - China, probably because of Confucian cultural biases, never placed a great emphasis on military technology or achievement except for reasons of necessity (pastoral nomadic invaders of the steppe) or the ambitions of belligerent emperors. Although they invented gun-powder, no one ever bothered to improve the technology.
That being said, I think China's military accomplishments aren't too bad - their primary adversaries until the modern era were the pastoral nomads of the steppe. China is today a nation-state with a huge territory and vast population. Look at what remains of the once glorious Byzantine Empire, who confronted the same set of adversaries. They are mostly now Turkified Muslims.
H. said: "To Antoine Zhang: I happen to have learned quite a bit of mandarin and basic Korean, too, and do in fact know quite a bit about the cultures of those countries. Telling me that I don't understand them is preposterous, given what I have seen. They may be able to develop technologically and in infrastucture by copying the west, but their social mentalities are still way behind. "
This statement just proves my point - you say you've lived in Eastern Asia for over a decade, but all that you know is a "quite a bit of Mandarin and basic Korean." Which really means - and correct me if I'm wrong on this - you can't read a newspaper, or conduct a proper topical conversation with a taxi driver. As consequence, you lack proper means to make valid or substantive judgements about these societies. You just don't know anything about the character or intellect of a person unless you can understand them in their native language.
I've met scores and scores of guys in Asia like you who subscribe to the most erroneous notions about the societies where they reside - most frequently with regard to "social mentalities". The most preposterous thing is their failure to realize their want of empirical means for reaching their conclusion.
And you've worked exclusively as an English teacher during your time in Asia - you have no experience in the fields of either business or commerce in these countries.
Antoine Zhang--For the last time, east Asians are not as impressive as the education stats suggest. It doesn't matter whether I know any mandarin or not; I wouldn't need to know any to make the observations I did. I can in fact carry on a conversation with a Chinese cabbie, and I learned a lot from them. In Taiwan, many cabbies needed me to tell them where to go, because they didn't know their way around town as well as me. I've known scores of east Asian students who have discussed with me their problems with their social and educational systems, too. To say that I need fluent mandarin to pass judgment on Chinese society is absurd.
"And you've worked exclusively as an English teacher during your time in Asia - you have no experience in the fields of either business or commerce in these countries."
I've worked as director of an English program in Korea, I'm Korean and know Korean well enough to read a newspaper, hold a converstion, etc.
H's statement about Korea's management are "on" in a way . I find the managerial class in Korea to be whimsical, unprincipled, poor in communication, custom bound, and authoritarian. But here is the caveat - especially to English teachers. ESL teachers, btw, are regarded as extremely fungible and not true professionals and certainly aren't accorded the same amount of respect, the way a history teacher or a math teacher might be.
One thing to note about Korean management. The top person in any Korean organization has an inordinate amount of power. This gives the organization speed of change. It's not uncommon to see stores in Korea open in a week, stay in business a year, close and reopen under a new name with different services or product lines in response to market change. Its a very cutthroat marketplace, without the patience for college students' notions of leisurely creativity and how businesses should be ideally run
and humanity SHOULD interact.
>>>>>How are "South Asians" defined? I thought Indians are typically very good at math. Are Iranians, Arabians, Afghanis and Egyptians included in "South Asians"?<<<<<
Indians may be good at math, but the U.S. Census nicely separates Indo-Americans in their Asian census readings allowing us to see their separate achievement.
This TDSB chart just uses the term "South Asian" which includes a lot of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who have never been remarkable wherever they are (America or U.K. or Australia, stark contrast to emigrated Indians).
P.S. Anyone still disputing the genetic superiority of East Asians is deluded. But I only assume as Asia begins to overwhelm the rest of the world that there will be more of this kind of backlash.
If you look at the IQ scores of Asian-Americans (Japanese and Chinese) gathered during the Coleman Report and Project Talent in the 1960s, you'll see that Asians and whites are about on par. There's no significant advantage for IQ for either group, though whites scored 0.1 SD higher overall. Asians have been academically outperforming whites significantly since that period (despite no IQ advantage), which suggests something independent of g is responsible for their success in school. As I said above, innate behavioral traits associated with studiousness (combined with a pro-education culture) probably play the major role in Asian academic achievement.
There's nothing incongruent about Asians doing better in school, but having the same intelligence distribution as whites. Unless you believe that bright kids always get good grades and that IQ is the only variable that correlates with academic success.
You might be interested to know that the HBD blogger Half Sigma analyzed GSS data and found that when education is controlled for, IQ tends to have a weak correlation with income. Education, when IQ is controlled for, tends to correlate highly with income.
Some of you IQ fanatics to stop obsessing with one variable and get out in the real world. Plenty of smart people end up going nowhere in school or life, plenty of average people succeed. Life is not all about IQ. Ambition, drive, work ethic, connections, applied knowledge, creativity, intellectual curiosity, etc. often count for more. As long as you're not seriously IQ deficient, you can do pretty well for yourself in life. The world is full of rich/educated mediocre people and high-IQ failures.
Flynn found that when matched for IQ, Chinese-American and Japanese-American kids academically outperformed whites by at least 2/3of a SD. Good for them that they don't listen to people like you.
For Indian-Americans, I'd guess innate studiousness and culture also play a major role in their academic success.
Interesting post about Korean managerial culture. Perhaps Confucianism has its down sides too....
@H maybe your cabbies needed directions because your manderin was so poor they couldn't understand you.
Anon wrote
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For Indian-Americans, I'd guess innate studiousness and culture also play a major role in their academic success.
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2003 USA Immigrant Children IQ test
Digit span data (IQ equivalents) by U.S. immigrant group:
Europe 99, Northeast Asia 106, Southeast Asia 104, India 112, sub-Saharan African 89, Mexico 82, Central America/Caribbean 83, South America 86.
I can't wait to see these stats 50 years down the road. Better yet population composition ;D
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