Probably.
Chuck at Occidentalist assembles a bunch of test reports, here and here. It's not as well-studied of a subject as it is in the U.S., so it's hard to make sense of all the data, but most point toward the white-black gap in the U.K. being well under a standard deviation.
I haven't seen a good meta-analyses by a British researcher who knows the ins and outs of all these acronyms like GCSE. (For example, a few years ago a British researcher slipped up on writing about regional differences in performance on the SAT in the U.S. because he didn't know that only the most ambitious students in the Midwest take the SAT instead of the ACT -- so what pitfalls await American kibbitzers among British test scores?) But most of the data seems to suggest a smaller cognitive and/or achievement gap in the U.K. than in the U.S.
I haven't seen a good meta-analyses by a British researcher who knows the ins and outs of all these acronyms like GCSE. (For example, a few years ago a British researcher slipped up on writing about regional differences in performance on the SAT in the U.S. because he didn't know that only the most ambitious students in the Midwest take the SAT instead of the ACT -- so what pitfalls await American kibbitzers among British test scores?) But most of the data seems to suggest a smaller cognitive and/or achievement gap in the U.K. than in the U.S.
It has been apparent for some time now (see this post at Racial Reality) that in Britain, the lads are not all right. In the U.S., we've become familiar with gender gaps on school achievement tests favoring black and Hispanic girls over their brothers, but we see less of this among whites and Asians. This is among the better evidence that culture -- fear of being put down by your co-ethnics for Acting White, etc. -- is depressing NAM performance.
On a lot of tests, in Britain, there's even a bigger gender gap favoring the distaff side, but it seems to go across all ethnicities, even Chinese. We see weird things like girls whose parents are from Africa outscoring white boys and maybe even East Asian boys on some tests.
As I pointed out in a couple of articles in 2005, class is the big divide in Britain rather than race. "Class" is a 1500-year-long project to civilize the Conan the Barbarian warlords who inundated the Roman Empire to act like "gentlemen." By the late 20th Century, all that politeness, all that studying, all that self-discipline, was striking young males of the lower classes as pretty gay. Thus, chavism.
In contrast, there isn't all that much of an oppositional culture among blacks in Britain, since assimilating into the white working class isn't terribly hard: You like 'aving a pint while watching footie on the telly, too? The proportion of mixed race children appears much larger than in the U.S. As historian David Starkey pointed out during the English looting last summer, that blacks were in the lead, but whites were right behind in the looting -- something you don't see in the U.S much at all.
Moreover, blacks in Britain are of immigrant origin: West Indian and African, with the Africans doing better on tests, typically. Some not insignificant fraction of Africans in Britain were brain-drained from Anglophone ex-colonies to work in National Health as nurses and doctors. In the U.S., West Indians and African immigrants tend to outperform native blacks. The Bell Curve found that in the NLSY79 longitudinal study, blacks who were immigrants or the children of immigrants outscored native African-Americans by an average of 5 IQ points.
But, those are just a few speculations. It's an interesting question that, as far as I know, hasn't been studied terribly systematically.
Update: lots of good stuff in the comments from people who know more about what they are talking about when it comes to Britain than I know.
Update: lots of good stuff in the comments from people who know more about what they are talking about when it comes to Britain than I know.
Posts
69 comments:
Are these IQ tests or school tests? Even smart kids do poorly on school tests if they don't study.
Since blacks make up a smaller minority in the UK, maybe more of them--though far from all of them--assimilate into white culture.
Even in the US, blacks in white communities tend to be more functional than blacks in black communities.
But if black numbers rise in UK and more blacks end up in black enclaves, it might become like it is here.
With the Chavs and blacks, it's hard to tell which side is assimilating into which side.
Another thing. Can UK stats be trusted?
Poor white boys getting free meals at school and poor black boys getting free meals at school.
Could it be poor white boys getting free meals are really the bottom of the barrel whereas poor black boys may be a more diverse bunch?
It could be all whites with any brains/ambition have done their best to move to better areas; it could be they care more about the stigma of receiving 'free meals',a and so whites don't sign up for free meals for kids unless it's really necessary. So, free meal whites are really low of the low.
In contrast, maybe even better-off blacks feel less shame/stigma about getting freebies. So, free meal blacks include not just trash but some better off people too.
In the US, some working class white folks are still ashamed to get welfare and freebies whereas even middle class blacks are shameless about getting free stuff.
Selection bias. How did you get to the US if you're black? Slave ship. How did you get to the UK? You came with your dad, some kind of prince or bureaucrat of an African state.
Totally different demos.
Note: GCSE = Owls
They're not IQ tests but school achievement tests and 15-16 year old students take them in a set number of chosen subjects like potions or defense against the dark arts.
Lets see some numbers. The Illinois school report card is easy to understand.
http://webprod.isbe.net/ereportcard/publicsite/searchBySchool.aspx?searchby=cityName&language=english&year=2011&keyword=chicago&type=card&city=Chicago
Although the ACT test is not broken down by race. The GAP in the state tests is readily apparent. Compare CPS scores with state scores. They are fundamentally the same. Nothing has changed even though CPS students get free food.Your nutrition angle is suspect!
I believe you've been told before: it's "footie", not "footer".
Dunno about UK statistics; the last government set up the Office of National Statistics, in what I believe, initially at least, was an uncynical move, to provide more rigorous and impartial data, but I haven't checked its performance lately.
From what I recall, English exam results by ethnic group look something like: Chinese (by a long way) > Indian > White (other European)> White(Irish) > White (British) >= Pakistani/Bangladeshi(a group that's lately been improving) > Black(African) > Black (Caribbean) > Turkish.
I could look this stuff up, but I'd hate anybody's self-esteem to suffer by comparison.
Does anyone have any links on Keynes supporting eugenics? That would be fascinating. Thanks
Does anyone have any links on Keynes supporting eugenics? That would be fascinating.
I heard about this cool site called "Wikipedia"... And Keynes is there!
This is all pretty fascinating.
Following the link to occidentalist, I found a number of other links to various test results. Some of the more telling, I believe, were those on the Cognitive Ability Test (CAT) in Britain, on which the Blacks performed about 7 IQ pts less than whites. Also, apparently 7.3% white students score 3 or more A on their A-level exams, whereas 2.3% of blacks do. Making some reasonable, if a bit crude, assumptions, that amounts to about a .55 SD difference -- again just about 7 IQ pts. So there seems to be some concordance, even in the upper end.
My conclusion is that, most likely, black immigrants from Africa and the Western Indians really are shifted up significantly in their distribution in cognitive abilities from that of the overall set of African-Americans. It would be interesting to know why.
Could it be poor white boys getting free meals are really the bottom of the barrel whereas poor black boys may be a more diverse bunch?
Yes.
Poor in these British studies was defined exactly like that. Meaning in receipt of free school meals.
I looked the numbers a while back and thats a very small minority of white male school children but a very large percentage, possibly a majority, of black male school children.
So these studies are comparing somewhat atypical whites with more typical blacks.
Every time I read about this, I find a mention of the fact that the GCSEs involve grades. If that's true, then that's why poor white boys are doing poorly.
Test
- gather 100 6' people
- gather 100 4' people
- get them to attempt a high jump with the bar set at 4'
- count the total successful jumps for each group and the gap between the totals
Increase the bar to 5' and the gap between the two groups will increase.
Lower the bar to 3' and the gap will decrease.
Lower the bar to 2' and the gap will decrease some more.
Lower the bar to 1' and the gap between the two groups will almost disappear.
///
http://www.marketdraytonadvertiser.com/2011/08/26/students-celebrate-record-gcse-results/
"Forty seven per cent of students collected 10 or more GCSEs with grades A* to C, with some achieving 12 or 13."
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/GCSE-results-heading-for-new-record-25082011.htm
"Nearly a quarter of students at St Mary’s School, Cambridge, are jumping for joy on hearing that they have achieved more than 10 A* to A grades in today’s GCSE results."
///
In the same time period the black-white gap allegedly disappeared
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336410/OECD-condemns-British-education-inferior-Estonias.html
"the UK slipped from eighth to 28th in maths, from seventh to 25th in reading and from fourth to 16th in science over the same period."
It's a total joke. GCSEs replaced the old O Level system *because* of racial disparities and becasue that wasn't enough the GCSE system has been continuously ever since - ironically to the extent that it's the brighter immigrant populations that now want it made harder.
There is no g loading in the GCSE system by design. The only way to extract g loading would be to do something like only look at the kids with 10+ A's.
I am very familiar with American Blacks; I happened to be in London for some time a year or so ago and I noticed that blacks, say in groups on buses or underground seemed loud, but pretty well spoken. Not hoody in groups like in USA. My favorite black was an underground employee I asked for directions. The guy looked like Idi Amin and sounded like Winston Churchill. In general the blacks in London were more like Islanders in USA (Bahamas etc) than native blacks.
Some of the Best and Brightest from Africa go to UK, and immigrant kids tend to be more respectful of authority, so they are more likely to listen to teachers.
Also, what number of blacks are mixed-race? I heard UK has very high rates of race mixing. So how black is black?
Could it be some white kids are TRYING TO BAD IN SCHOOL? In the early 90s, when I was working at a video store, a Hispanic kid stopped by and showed me his grades. It was straight Fs and he was proud of it.
It could be some African immigrants came from nations with little, and so they grew up with conviction, "you gotta struggle and work for stuff." But white underclass grew up with the knowledge that even if you do nothing, you get something from the state, so why even bother?
The gap apparently is a little smaller there, with blacks in Britain scoring an 89 average iq. Robert Lindsey claims that it is up to 93.5, but his link does not seem to say that.
Anyways, I see that the graph only includes GCSE pass rates at the math A-G levels, where blacks are slightly above whites, but virtually everyone reaches this level so it hardly matters, while the pass rates at A-C are decidedly in favor of whites. The numbers are not included here, but I saw in an Amren article from about a year ago that the A level pass rates are 24% for whites vs only 9% for blacks. So the higher the bar is set, the larger is the black-white gap.
But pass rates really are not the way to measure this; we need average numerical scores. Why don't we get those numbers? Are these really tests, or just grades for a course?
"On a lot of tests, in Britain, there's even a bigger gender gap favoring the distaff side, but it seems to go across all ethnicities, even Chinese."
GCSEs are dominated by coursework - up to 60% of the marks in some courses.
.
"By the late 20th Century, all that politeness, all that studying, all that self-discipline, was striking young males of the lower classes as pretty gay. Thus, chavism."
The working class became the unemployed class when the factories were offshored.
.
"Moreover, blacks in Britain are of immigrant origin: West Indian and African, with the Africans doing better on tests, typically."
Some truth in this but it's much more at the top end where rich Africans have sent their kids to private schools.
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"In contrast, there isn't all that much of an oppositional culture among blacks in Britain"
Erm...it's exactly the same as the US except...proportions.
Black immigration was into pre-existing white working class areas so when there were only a few blacks in an area you got things like this, black skins in predominantly white skinhead gangs
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PSgfPol1T0o/TVZhTaekrQI/AAAAAAAAAtg/611Bs7WP_yM/s1600/old+style+england+8.jpg
as the proportions increase you get more conflict and division and when they become close to the majority of young men in an area the violence goes exponential until the bulk of the white population is driven out.
At any one time there are multiple areas at different stages of this terminal process: some areas where things would seem surprisingly integrated by US standards all the way through to areas where it's as bad as the states but with fewer guns - which actually makes it more violent in terms of number of violent incidents but with fewer fatalities.
The other big difference with the states is the white working class can't get away in the UK. The white working class in America moved to the suburbs to get away from black violent crime in the 1960s when there were still well paying factory jobs and lots of land to build suburbs on.
In the UK the flight process from black crime - which applies to everyone not just white - didn't begin in earnest until the 1980s but by then all the factories were in the process of being shipped offshore so the new white unemployed class in the UK couldn't afford to move to suburbs even if there was space to build them which there isn't in the UK - at least not to the same extent.
So although chavism started out simply as a decayed, underclass version of the old working class culture it's morphing into a feral white version of the black underclass culture as a means of self-defence because there's no escape.
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"In general the blacks in London were more like Islanders in USA (Bahamas etc) than native blacks."
Go onto a majority black housing project after dark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=911nP-Y3Mk4&feature=related
All immigrant groups are like this. When they're a small minority in majority white areas they conform more to the majority culture. When they're in a minority-majority area they go back to their own way.
black skinhead link above should have been
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PSgfPol1T0o/TVZhTaekrQI/AAAAAAAAAtg/611Bs7WP_yM/s1600/old+style+england+8.jpg
Everything you say seems accurate and fits my experiences working in British Higher Education.
My University was founded to uplift working class white Englishmen, when all such were white. My classes in a typical year, among 130 or so students contain zero working class indigenous white males, off-hand I can think of one in eight years.
My typical class breakdown is around 70% female, two thirds of such being south-Asian (most of those Muslim), with some working-class indigenous white female representation, a small number of indigenous white female middle class, a good number of black African and Afro-Caribbean, scatterings of east-Asian, and increasing numbers of eastern-European (Latvian etc). I was talking to a Latvian immigrant student yesterday who looks like a Swedish fashion model, I suspect she'll do ok.
"We see weird things like girls whose parents are from Africa outscoring white boys and maybe even East Asian boys on some tests." - This matches my experience. The African girls may be fairly bright, BUT their big advantage over everyone else is HARD WORK - they turn up in their Sainsburys supermarket check-out-girl uniforms having just worked an 8 hour shift, and are still much better prepared than the Pakistani boy (or, often, girl) who apparently got up at noon.
____
The ca 30% of my undergrads who are male break down as follows:
1. Very very rare to see any indigenous whites.
2. Smallish numbers of African and Afro-Caribbean. Nigerians have always been quite good; we're getting Somali students now, they have surprised me by being pretty good too.
The Afro-Caribbeans tend to have a bit of an 'Alpha' attitude, but it usually turns out they are actually smart and well-prepared students, notably better than the average student (typically Muslim female). I see this with some Afro-Caribbean 'gang banger' type girls too - initially difficult but gain their respect and they're good students who actually work.
3. Lots of eastern-Europeans starting to come through now, this is new.
4. Largest group is south-Asian males, nearly all Muslim. They are by far the worst on average; many are extremely lazy, they often seem dull in that 'incurious' way. If they were white they would never have gone to University, I'm guessing parental pressure may be a factor.
I think that comparing my experience to the US, probably our lower-class Pakistanis & Bangladeshis equate fairly closely to your lower-class Mexican students. The big, big contrast is that without Affirmative Action, our black students are not only better than the south-Asian students, they tend to be better than the white students, too! And while this is most obvious with black African girls, I'd say it was arguably still true with Afro-Caribbean boys, albeit they're a relatively small group; the dim ones don't get pushed into University as happens with Pakistani youths. The statistics seem to back this up - white British working class boys often do worse on educational attainment tests than Afro-Caribbean boys do.
anon:
"Selection bias. How did you get to the US if you're black? Slave ship. How did you get to the UK? You came with your dad, some kind of prince or bureaucrat of an African state.
Totally different demos."
Our Afro-Caribbean immigrants are descended from slaves taken to the Caribbean.
According to Lynn's data, this group do not have massively better IQs than African-Americans. They certainly perform much better though; I think the difference must be cultural attitudes. We have a large black underclass; muggers and home invaders in London are mostly black. But relatively high black criminality is not the same as the kind of truly adversarial culture that exists in the USA. A black guy in Britain might beat and rob me to get my stuff, but it's very unlikely he hates me just because I'm white. To the extent an adversary culture exists in the UK, IME it's among radicalised Pakistani Muslims, not black Christians. And while that is a long term bubble-under threat, it only really manifests much when our leaders do something stupid like invade Iraq. Around 2004-2006 Pakistanis would spit on the street as I walked past, I haven't experienced that in years.
Getting back to black-white, I think it's easy for Americans to miss just how uniquely toxic black-white relations in much* of the USA are, and how much that mutual racial animosity affects other factors. The IQ gap and the crime rate differential seem to be pretty much global constants; the racial hatred is not.
*Certainly the northern and eastern cities, DC and up, and Louisiana. A bit better in other parts of the South, IME.
Steve, from what I seen and know black school kids in London are, in general, completely and utterly dysfunctional.Loud, leery, bullying, surly, sullen, badly behaived, thuggish and not very bright.Apart from stabbing each other at regular intervals and getting excluded from school, beating up and sometimes raping teachers, they seem to me to be undistiguished.
Something smells distinctly fishy about the data.
To put it bluntly, they are just simply not interested in school and don't have the temperament for it.
anon:
"So although chavism started out simply as a decayed, underclass version of the old working class culture it's morphing into a feral white version of the black underclass culture as a means of self-defence because there's no escape."
In London the white chavs are mostly integrated into the black underclass, not fighting it. There are a few exceptions in the BNP supporting bits of east London.
In general, organised white vs black violence - race riots - is very rare in the UK. Black vs Pakistani is more common, as in Birmingham a few years ago. The recent black-led London riots started as anti-police, then went anti-government & general looting; whites including indigenous chavs and eastern-European immigrants joined in. With the police refusing to defend the people, those on the side of Order included some groups of upper-working-class whites (on whom the police swiftly clamped down) and south-Asian immigrants, Sikh, Muslim and Hindus defending their own turf, the latter groups celebrated by the police and media. The large Tamil and especially Salafist* Pakistani populations in my immediate neighbourhood ensured it stayed quiet, whereas middle-class white areas nearby were looted, and Croydon (previously working class white, now mostly black & east-European Albanian & Gypsy) was trashed.
*When they're not whipping up hatred against 'kuffars' & Amadiyya heretics, those Saudi-backed Imans are clearly good for something after all! >:)
the league tables have systematic bias.
In school and national GCSE league tables, vocational qualifications (GNVQs) are indistinguishable from academic GCSEs.
Poorer, free school meals, black pupils are disproportionately pushed into these vocational subjects.
But while subjects such as tourism, construction and retail are counted as up to 4 A*-C GCSEs, they are probably only worth around 1. Also the pass rate is 80%+ as opposed to 60%+ with GCSEs.
So the type of grades obtained by poor performers doing vocational tests should probably be divided by half to get their real equivalent.
see http://montrose42.wordpress.com/
anon:
"Steve, from what I seen and know black school kids in London are, in general, completely and utterly dysfunctional.Loud, leery, bullying, surly, sullen, badly behaived, thuggish and not very bright.Apart from stabbing each other at regular intervals and getting excluded from school, beating up and sometimes raping teachers, they seem to me to be undistiguished.
Something smells distinctly fishy about the data.
To put it bluntly, they are just simply not interested in school and don't have the temperament for it."
I only see a selection, as I'm in Higher Ed not secondary school, but IME Afro-Caribbean students both black and white can be obstreperous but they respect:
1) respect for them as individuals - don't patronise, combined with
2) firmness, discipline and
3) a bit of an alpha-dog display. Win them over and they're good students. Basically they (m & f) are like white males, only more macho, and respond accordingly.
In our highly feminines education system, the typical 'nice white lady' teacher is really bad at all of 1-3, I think. They're simultaneously too soft and too patronising. They won't point out failure, set out high expectations, nor properly praise success. I get instructions from them like "don't correct papers in red - it looks like blood on the page and traumatises the students!' - Well, it only traumatises them if they've never in their life been corrected before!
African immigrants as distinct from Carribean blacks are a case in point.
Initially they seem to have a reverance for education and study hard.But as time and generations pass they revert to their African norm.
Simon in London
"But relatively high black criminality is not the same as the kind of truly adversarial culture that exists in the USA. A black guy in Britain might beat and rob me to get my stuff, but it's very unlikely he hates me just because I'm white."
I don't disagree exactly but i think you're missing a distinction. In the US most blacks grow up in black or mostly black neighborhoods. In the UK the first waves of immigrants didn't have that experience and it's only the most recent generations in certain areas that have grown up that way. If you're white and you walk onto an estate like that without a uniform - and often even with one - then the local gangstas will attack you on sight or throw something at you from a balcony.
I agree this has not been the general case in the UK so far but it is becoming increasingly so as more areas gradually drift towards being 100% black.
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"In London the white chavs are mostly integrated into the black underclass, not fighting it."
Adopting the dominant culture is part of self-defence - like the black skinhead. But also there are estates on the edges of London and other cities which are still majority-white and who have adopted chav-gangsta culture. If they survive for a few generations they will end up feral enough to hold their own against the black gangs because gangsta culture selects for sociopaths.
According to Richard Lynn, black Americans average IQ 85 and black British average IQ 86. However according to rushton and Jensen, the black American average might actually be only 78, since the most disadvantaged blacks living in the inner-city and rural south are seldom sampled in the studies that find a mean of 85.
It makes sense that descendants of slaves would be less intelligent than descendants of voluntary immigrants since the ancestors of the formers were not smart enough to escape or hide from the slave traders.
i have heard of african girls being good students at the college level. not in the US though. this was outside the US.
Simon of London, thank you for your observations. That was very interesting.
Some notes on racial realities in NYC:
Traditional African-Americans are by far the worst-behaving group here. Black women in retail, at the Department of Motor Vehicles and other government institutions, at security screening checkpoints, are loud and sometimes openly hostile. They prefer talking to each other to talking to customers, and when they do talk to you they're often rude and unhelpful.
In the office environment blacks have a habit of cranking up their radios (rap and R&B) to the max. The general attitude from others is to tolerate that. Groups of black kids can be extremely loud in subway cars. I would say that about 80% of all the beggars in the subway are black, even though they make up only a quarter of the city's population. A subway car is a captive audience, so you'll usually hear a loud speech. How often? I'd say one for every 40 minutes spent commuting.
Caribbean blacks have a better attitude and do better economically than traditional US blacks. US-born children of Caribbean black parents retain this comparatively good attitude while picking up the common US black accent. I would estimate that roughly half of NYC's black population comes from the Caribbean or directly from Africa. Haitian immigrants have an even better attitude than Jamaicans, Trinis, etc.
Certain subway lines are frequented by middle-aged black Caribbean preachers, both male and female. Again, a subway car is a captive audience. They preach very loudly, in thick Caribbean accents. This can go on for 30 or more minutes at a time and is quite frequent, though not as frequent as the solicitations of the homeless. Some of the sermons touch on un-PC subjects (homosexuality is sometimes cited as a sign of the coming apocalypse). In spite of that, I've never seen any gay, hipster or SWPL commuters engage them in debate. The only hecklers I've seen (about a handful) have been religious Jews.
African immigrants have an even better attitude than Caribbean blacks. If they're smarter than local blacks, I doubt it's by much. They're definitely very polite though. And quiet. No chippiness whatsoever - it's amazing.
There are quite a few upper middle class South Asians - doctors, high-end corporate people. However, lots of South Asians have menial jobs too. The ones who work in newsstands, grocery stores, grimy little cell phone stores are taciturn and don't seem very bright.
Mexicans, though not as common here as elsewhere in America, are the muscle at construction sites, landscaping companies, restaurants' kitchens and other places.
The East Asian population has less of a menial-labor component than the South Asian one. FOB (fresh off the boat) Chinese women can be pretty loud when talking to each other, but US-raised East Asians are uniformly quiet.
Don't forget, we got the Africans the other Africans didn't want. They sold them as they were considered expendable. That should tell you something right there.
Anon 1.32 spot on. Blacks in london and other UK cities are desparate to be seen as bad in the US sense.
It is hardly surprising that working-class boys do not do well. The entire political system has been against for about 25 years but they still do not behave like blacks or Muslims.
No incest, no hounour killings, no gang-rape, pratically no shootings, no fgm, no terrorism, no grooming, etc
Things are changing though. I have started an educational support group for British kids in the East-end of London.
RB
London
There you go again. (you know what I mean)
All I know is that Great Britain would be a much safer and happier place today had Enoch Powell been listened too.
"This matches my experience. The African girls may be fairly bright, BUT their big advantage over everyone else is HARD WORK - they turn up in their Sainsburys supermarket check-out-girl uniforms having just worked an 8 hour shift, and are still much better prepared than the Pakistani boy (or, often, girl) who apparently got up at noon."
That's nurture, Steve. That young man just fired a torpedo through the hull of the S.S. Sailer.
There's one big point being left out in comparing the SAT gap to the GCSE non-gap: the SAT is taken at 18, GCSEs are taken at 16. Look at the A-Levels that British children take at age 18: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/pupil_attainment_by_ethnic_group_-_gce-vce_a-as
The gap in average score at 18 is quite considerable - particularly given that comparing GCSE and A-Level takeup it seems whites are more likely to carry on to 18, and so have a less selected pool taking the A-Level. In fact whites outperform South Asians, though the Chinese are still, predictably, far out in front. I don't have the data to fit this to a standard deviation, but it seems like a very significant shift towards the sort of pattern seen in the SAT occurs from 16 to 18 in British education.
Another part of what is going on here is that whites actually outperform blacks in every region of the UK, even at 16 in the GCSEs - but a much greater proportion of blacks live in London, where scores for both groups are higher.
Finally, I believe, based admittedly on anecdotal evidence, that the British black community is far more studious and open to the majority culture than African Americans. As a Londoner I would expect the average black person on the underground to be roughly as friendly, polite and helpful as the average white (unless they're aping their American counterparts in gang warfare in Peckham). When I first went to America and met African Americans, I was absolutely shocked by how standoffish, hostile and insular they were. That sense of division and distrust just doesn't exist in the UK: black people here believe that if they work hard, white culture will reward them fairly.
There's one big point being left out in comparing the SAT gap to the GCSE non-gap: the SAT is taken at 18, GCSEs are taken at 16.
Most students take the SAT for the first time in the spring of their junior year in high school. Some of the students will be 16, others 17, in what's usually about a 50-50 split.
I'm in foreign countries about once a month. I also pay attention to race.
Frankly, it's still striking to see blacks in many European countries (if you think British blacks are different, you should see the ones in Switzerland!).
It's hard to put into words, but it seems like American blacks go out of their way to look different than everyone else. If you showed me only an American's clothes or accessories, I could tell you whether the person was black or white 95+% of the time. That's not true everywhere, which I am still taken aback by when abroad.
anon:
" In the UK the first waves of immigrants didn't have that experience and it's only the most recent generations in certain areas that have grown up that way. If you're white and you walk onto an estate like that without a uniform - and often even with one - then the local gangstas will attack you on sight or throw something at you from a balcony."
I've walked several times through a black* housing estate in Lambeth to get to a friend's house, right beside the estate. Nothing was thrown at me. I was a bit nervous, but not as nervous as I'd been when walking through housing estates back in Belfast, Northern Ireland!
*As black as it gets, in London. We don't have US-style black-white segregation, there are lots of whites in every majority-black area. It's a few of the Pakistani Muslim areas outside London that tend to be most segregated.
maidavale:
"As a Londoner I would expect the average black person on the underground to be roughly as friendly, polite and helpful as the average white (unless they're aping their American counterparts in gang warfare in Peckham). When I first went to America and met African Americans, I was absolutely shocked by how standoffish, hostile and insular they were. "
That matches my experience exactly. My first experience with black women working at Detroit airport was pretty traumatic! I do find that black people across most of the South of the US are much less hostile than in the North, though. Exceptions were Louisiana (both New Orleans and northern) and especially Washington DC, but DC isn't really Southern except geographically.
BTW when my son was about 3, he fell off a high 3' stool in KFC, he would have smashed his head on the ground except the black man sitting beside him immediately flung himself to the ground, hurting himself as
he caught my son in his arms and saved him.
I remember that just as much as I remember the black guy who broke into my house years before, and had to be chased off.
Truth:
"That's nurture, Steve. That young man just fired a torpedo through the hull of the S.S. Sailer."
Lynn-style IQ data definitely doesn't show the whole truth, anyway. I supervised a brilliant south-African black (not mixed race) female student through the successful completion of her PhD, in a hard, technical subject. If you looked at Lynn's data you'd think she must be the smartest person in Africa! I've supervised similarly brilliant black female students from SA and Lesotho at postgraduate Masters level.
"Finally, I believe, based admittedly on anecdotal evidence, that the British black community is far more studious and open to the majority culture than African Americans. As a Londoner I would expect the average black person on the underground to be roughly as friendly, polite and helpful as the average white (unless they're aping their American counterparts in gang warfare in Peckham). When I first went to America and met African Americans, I was absolutely shocked by how standoffish, hostile and insular they were. That sense of division and distrust just doesn't exist in the UK: black people here believe that if they work hard, white culture will reward them fairly."
Weird, isn't it? I spent quite some time in France, and black people there were just like anyone else, in my experience. They just acted like French people. However, the North Africans and other Arabs often displayed hostile/confrontation attitude, made a show of a shared solidarity, liked to claim victimhood and to bring up their ethnicity all the time and acted in a flashy, loud, attention seeking manner. On the other hand, Arab Americans don't act like that at all. It seems that when the majority starts to apologize to a certain group and incorporates that apologizing into the everyday mainstream behavior, a sizable chunk of that group loses touch with reality and dignity.
Maidavale's link to GCE A level scores is interesting. These, I gather, are university placement exams, and one must get 5 A-C GSCE scores to take them. Considering that qualification, it is strange that there are such sizable achievement gaps, but at the single test level the gaps still aren't very big (students choose how many tests to take), with blacks at the bottom at 203.6 and the Chinese at the top at 226.2.
Observations:
The data does say that whites outscored Asians, but not South Asians. That may be mostly a distinction in England, but I imagine that Indians outscored other Asians. How much? Enough so to equal or surpass whites?
Mixed race kids outscored Asians, and were not far behind whites, but their pass rates were below the Asians' i.e. someone is bringing up the average. Maybe it's the American in me, but I'm guessing it's not the work of the Mulattos.
Still, whites fall closer to blacks than to the Chinese in both individual test scores and composite scores, landing at about the opposite position they do in the US. That is to say, about 1/3 of the way between blacks and Chinese as opposed to 2/3 of the way.
Are there really that few Chinese kids in England? Why are they their own special category?
And on a heartening note, I was glad to see that the white share of test takers remained pretty constant between 2005 and 2010. Seventy eight percent is much too low, but at least it's holding pretty steady.
Simon in London
"As black as it gets, in London. We don't have US-style black-white segregation, there are lots of whites in every majority-black area."
There's working class and middle class segregation within the same area. The working class segments have been mostly cleansed apart from a few stragglers and the elderly. The middle class segments are still mainly white (or other ethnicity).
In the ex working class segments where this process began earliest and which are now almost 100% black, the US style ghetto has completely taken root.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUUn2EddbNA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bZfaS2jZXM
There are tens of thousands of them and the riots last year were just a foretaste of the 1960s US style mega riots that are brewing. When it comes they will clear out the middle class segments of those areas and go full US style ghetto.
It's not visible to most people (outside of youtube) partly because of media censorship but also partly because the culture itself is so violent the gangs themselves pin each other to their own estates for safety. It takes a temporary truce - like in the summer - for them all to come out at once.
But they will and soon.
However this is off-topic on this thread so i won't go on about it any more.
///
The main point on this thread is the UK education system has closed the racial gap through dumbing down as shown by the UK's meteoric descent down the OECD rankings. The cost of this method of closing the racial gap is 20% functional illiteracy and climbing.
anon:
"There are tens of thousands of them and the riots last year were just a foretaste of the 1960s US style mega riots that are brewing. When it comes they will clear out the middle class segments of those areas and go full US style ghetto."
Well, maybe. The thing you need to realise though about those US riots - all US riots, really - is that they routinely involve a huge number of killings and grievous bodily harm. In a US race riot, dozens of people are killed; and since the 1960s that has meant dozens of whites being killed by blacks. When your neighbours are being killed and brutalised in significant numbers, you tend to want to leave, unless you're as ornery and well-armed as Scots-Irish Southern whites, in which case the riot probably never occurred in the first place.
But in US Northern cities and California, there is a history of lots and lots of whites being killed by blacks. The US media tends to strongly downplay this, but it's a major reason for segregation. I would be very surprised to see similar race riots in the UK by Afro-Caribbean blacks where whites were effectively targetted for extermination, with dozens or hundreds killed. If that sort of thing does happen here, IMO it is much more likely to have a religious basis, with radicalised Muslims targetting non-Muslims for extermination & ethnic cleansing. In such an eventuality the Afro-Caribbeans and black Christians would be on the same side as the white non-Muslims.
More likely than a massive race-religious war though is low level ethno-religious cleansing, more like what's happening to working class blacks in LA under Mexican pressure. In that kind of environment the authorities act as a sort of neutral arbitrator between black-Christian and Muslim factions, while targetting any white-non-Muslim resistance. This is the kind of dynamic we've seen so far.
In contrast to exam based O-level that it replaced in 1988, GCSE relies on coursework.
From wiki:
"Pirie also observes that the GCSE focus on coursework has disadvantaged boys reversing the gender gap in attainment, to the degree where in all subjects girls outperform boys, including traditionally male subjects such as sciences and physical education."
Grade inflation in A-level is worse than that at GCSE:
"The most common criticism of the A-level system is an accusation of grade inflation. The Press have noted the steady rise in average grades for 29 consecutive years and drawn the conclusion that A-levels are becoming consistently easier.[18]
"In a 2007 report Robert Coe compared students scores in the ALIS ability test with equivalent grades achieved in A level exams between 1988 and 2006. He found that students of similar ability were achieving on average about 2 grades higher in 2006 than they were in 1988. In the case of maths it was nearer to 3.5 grades higher"
Students who would have failed, can now get Bs.
"Academics said rises in GCSE results were more modest, increasing by less than a grade in science, English, history, French and maths between 1996 and last summer."
They introduced the A* grade in A-level two years back.
--------
And a comparison with Hong Kong from Wikipedia:
"In Hong Kong, the British A-level has been accused of grade inflation, and thus over time the HKAL has become more strictly graded compared to its British counterpart, as shown by NARIC research.[13] Compared to the usual 25-30% rate of achieving an A-grade in the UK AS/A2, there could be statistically fewer than 0.05% candidates scoring an "A" in a single examination in the Hong Kong Advanced Supplementary Level Examination and less than 5% rate of achieving an A-grade every year in an A-level subject."
-------------
And it isn't Flynn effect in work here (as noticed above in Coe's report).
"In the United Kingdom, a study by Flynn (2009) found that tests carried out in 1980 and again in 2008 show that the IQ score of an average 14-year-old dropped by more than two points over the period. For the upper half of the results the performance was even worse. Average IQ scores declined by six points. "
Apparently Tories want to abolish the coursework altogether, whereas there are some watchdogs that want more of it, alongwith multiple-choice questions.
Boys outdid girls on maths GCSE third time straight after the coursework was dropped. Though the lead is very tiny compared to differences in other subjects, which were at a record high in favor of girls in 2011.
There were also talks of separate gender tests. Doubt that they will make much of a difference it makes in the light of above.
Other google finds:
"It really is that bad
After marking GCSE exam papers for the past two weeks, Tom Smith says standards are not only dropping, but they are unbelievably low"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/aug/25/schools.uk2
"A-level results 2011: pass rate hits new record high
Boys achieve as many top grades as girls – and entries for maths soar"
"GCSE results 2011: girls widen their lead
"Worrying trend" sees boys getting fewer top grades - though they have beaten girls at maths"
From a 2004 article:
"Twenty years ago, when 15% of the population sat A-levels, a fixed proportion in every subject - 10% - were awarded an A grade. So a top grade meant that a student was in the top 1.5% of their age group. This year more than a third of the age group sat the exam, and more than a fifth got an A grade. So an A grade now puts a student in the top 8%."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/aug/20/schools.alevels2004
And a funny take on other things.
"A blog exploring the hypothesis that UK newspapers believe that only attractive girls in low cut tops do A-Levels."
http://sexyalevels.tumblr.com/
Simon in London
"I would be very surprised to see similar race riots in the UK by Afro-Caribbean blacks where whites were effectively targetted for extermination"
I don't think it will be like that. I think there'll be a mega riot - basically an ethnic threat display - which completely overloads the police causing the non-black middle class segments that are mixed in among the patchwork ghetto segments to temporarily evacuate for safety which are then burned out to create a more contiguous ethnic terriotory.
A better way of putting my view is not that we are close to the US black-white adversarial culture Mr Sailer mentioned in terms of current behavior but we are close in time i.e. i'm expecting that culture currently locked into the patchwork ghetto to produce an amalgamating mega-riot event any summer now.
I think the mainstreaming of that adversarial culture will be a product of that amalgamation.
.
"If that sort of thing does happen here, IMO it is much more likely to have a religious basis, with radicalised Muslims targetting non-Muslims"
Yes, i think that's true also.
My main point is simply that most people don't realise what's brewing in the patchwork ghetto because the culture is so terriotorially violent that except when there's a truce it mostly contains itself.
The thing you need to realise though about those US riots - all US riots, really - is that they routinely involve a huge number of killings and grievous bodily harm. In a US race riot, dozens of people are killed; and since the 1960s that has meant dozens of whites being killed by blacks.
Um, like when? In the 1992 Los Angeles riot there were a handful of interracial attacks, as far as I know none of them fatal. Before that, there were a few fatal attacks in the 1980 Miami riots, though ironically most of the victims were light-skinned Cubans mistaken for white. Even the big riots of the late 1960's involved very few if any fatal attacks on whites.
The main comment didn't make it through? The one about how GCSE and A-level exams have been diluted, grade inflation and that Flynn has shown UK teenagers' IQs to be lower than their parents.
not going to bother with a point by point rebuttal (right now) of some of the nonsense in these comments
there are many things wrong with the british education system, but these flaws are not the result of misdirected attempts to eliminate the racial achievement gap. suggesting this betrays your ignorance of the history of education in the uk. it's not a big issue in this country, and usually only hits the news in connection with oxbridge entrance.
some of you need to respect the limits of what you know about a different society and education system, and the others need to stop trying to manipulate the data to fit their agenda.
Lynn-style IQ data definitely doesn't show the whole truth, anyway. I supervised a brilliant south-African black (not mixed race) female student through the successful completion of her PhD, in a hard, technical subject. If you looked at Lynn's data you'd think she must be the smartest person in Africa!
Lynn claims black Africa has an average IQ of 67 (on a scale where the white American mean is 100). Assuming a normal distribution and a standard deviation of 15, there should be tens of thousands of black Africans with an IQ above 125, so the existence of brilliant black Africans in no way contradicts Lynn's data.
I would like to know what evidence exists for the following claim:
"It's a total joke. GCSEs replaced the old O Level system *because* of racial disparities and becasue that wasn't enough the GCSE system has been continuously ever since - ironically to the extent that it's the brighter immigrant populations that now want it made harder."
The government's desire to increase the numbers of people studying to a higher level seems like a more obvious explanation.
It is hardly surprising that working-class boys do not do well. The entire political system has been against for about 25 years but they still do not behave like blacks or Muslims.
No incest, no hounour killings, no gang-rape, pratically no shootings, no fgm, no terrorism, no grooming, etc
BULL!!!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1264883/Man-26-tortured-death-asking-young-mother-date.html
no said:
"Lynn claims black Africa has an average IQ of 67 (on a scale where the white American mean is 100). Assuming a normal distribution and a standard deviation of 15, there should be tens of thousands of black Africans with an IQ above 125, so the existence of brilliant black Africans in no way contradicts Lynn's data."
The standard deviation is thought to be well below 15 though, AFAICT.
Simon,
Couldn't your varying experiences of blacks be biased vis-a-vis UK and US?
As a teacher in the UK you are an authority figure. When you are percieved as such in YOUR OWN COUNTRY, on your own turf, in your own classroom, blacks and other immigrants, especially women, should naturally (in a sane world) be deferential. Outside of the UK your status is equalized, even inferior to American blacks who are super sensitive to foreign accents. Maybe a more honest atittude is exhibited by blacks towards you in such an environment when you lose the protection of authority. In other words, its a power relationship that you have been taking for granted because of the necessity of making a living.
What's so amazing to me is that even in your own country with authority on your side you should have any insolent behavior at all in adult students.
According to the CIA Factbook the UK is still 92% white, while only 2% black. As someone else has pointed out this might have a bearing on black behavior. There just aren't enough blacks to really screw themselves up . . . and everybody else.
As I understood another comment, there is no Affirmative Action in the UK? This a huge difference. The change in black behavior before and after AA is, well, the inverse of white male behavior. [This sense of entitlement extends to white women also.] Popular culture in England is still white compared to the US, isn't it?
The standard deviation is thought to be well below 15 though, AFAICT
It really depends on the test, the sample, the study etc. No consistent data has emerged on the standard deviations of different races so occams razor: they're all 15.
Also one reason why studies might report a smaller SD for black Africans is floor bumping on the IQ tests which happens when a large percentage of the sample is not above the chance guessing level.
Don´t forget:
- Afro-americans are descendents of Negros from West-Africa and Caucasians from West-Europe. They are "Blacks", distinct from both.
- The Caucasian contribution is mainly from the elite (slaves owners); the Negro contribution is also, in great part from the elite (the defeated in tribal wars).
- "Afro-Americans" are entirely Americans in their sub-culture.
- "Blacks" in Great-Britain are racially (mostly) pure Negros; culturally they are a mix afro-british... And they are not more from the "elite", than the ancient Negro slaves.
- The word "Paquistanis", describe manny diferent nations, basically Caucasians (sometimes totally).
- If Lynn makes sense, Paquistanis should be in the top, and Negro Africans in the bottom.
- Black-americans should be better, by far...
"but these flaws are not the result of misdirected attempts to eliminate the racial achievement gap. suggesting this betrays your ignorance of the history of education in the uk. it's not a big issue in this country, and usually only hits the news in connection with oxbridge entrance."
Obviously closing the gap at sixteen won't be a big issue in a country where there is no longer any gap at sixteen. However it was a very big issue when the GCSEs replaced O Levels in 1988 and had been for more than a decade beforehand.
It wasn't the only reason for the change as there was the general desire to equalize class disparities, race disparities, and gender disparities e.g. research saying exams favored boys and coursework favored girls lay behind the shift away from exams because at the time boys did better than girls.
.
"The government's desire to increase the numbers of people studying to a higher level seems like a more obvious explanation."
GCSEs came in a decade earlier. I agree the bulk of the dumbing down occurred during the fourteen years of the previous Labour government.
.
The main point remains that GCSEs have now been dumbed down so much there's no g loading at the bottom end of the spectrum - by design imo or by accident it comes to the same thing.
Steve
Thanks for the recent posts of British interest, I would love to see more. Your previous commenters are right - GCSE scores are designed to disguise ability levels and raw scores mean nothing unless you know whether they relate to academic or vocational subjects. Look instead at rates of admission to grammar schools, state funded schools which only admit students resident in their catchment areas who score in the top quartile of a g-loaded aptitude test at the age of 11 or 12. There are some figures for 2007 in table A3.6 of this report from the Department of Education:
http://www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SBU/b000796/b02-2008.pdf
In brief
Percentage of state school population
White 83.0
Mixed 2.8
Asian 7.0 (Asian = Indian subcontinent)
Black 3.8
Chinese 0.4
Other 2.0
Percentage of grammar school population
White 80.8
Mixed 3.3
Asian 9.9
Black 1.6
Chinese 1.5
Other 3.0
The report correctly notes that ethnic minorities are slightly over-represented in these schools, mainly because of the number of Indian students, but that is almost certainly not the whole story.
Grammar schools are found only in areas untypical of the country as a whole: under permanent Conservative control, with large white majorities and predominantly white-collar populations, including disproportionately white-collar ethnic minorities. Furthermore, property values are high - to get into the schools you have to get into the towns - and many parents are able to afford private education (grammar schools are, in British terminology, lower middle class rather than upper middle class). In short, these figures probably underestimate White, and possibly Chinese, achievement, but they are a starting point.
idealart:
"Couldn't your varying experiences of blacks be biased vis-a-vis UK and US?"
Equating my experience of black students in the class room with my experience of black women check-in workers at Detroit Airport would be pretty silly, yes. Comparing my experience in the classroom with an American relative's experience in *his* classroom would not be silly, though. Nor I think would equating my 'street' experiences where I live (mixed but mostly lower class area about 15% black) with my experiences around the USA.
I told my wife about the black guy who hurt himself saving my son from harm in the KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), and she agreed with me that in (most of?) the USA most black men would not have immediately acted as he did.
I don't want to exaggerate the differences, I could give plenty of anecdotes that would support the more BNP-leaning posters here, too. Yesterday evening on the Tube on the way into town there was a crazy black guy screaming repeatedly about killing people, slitting them from neck to crotch with his knife. That wasn't very nice.
ATBOTL:
"This Scotch-Irish nonsense again. Most Southerners are just plain English and they don't have some kind of special immunity to black violence."
Yes, but us Scots-Irish (and Ulstermen) are all mighty fear-breathing warriors, ten feet tall. Just ask my 'kinsman' Mr Whiskey. >:)
idealart:
"As I understood another comment, there is no Affirmative Action in the UK? This a huge difference. The change in black behavior before and after AA is, well, the inverse of white male behavior. [This sense of entitlement extends to white women also.] Popular culture in England is still white compared to the US, isn't it?"
Yes, popular culture is much whiter than in the USA. And Affirmative Action per se is illegal, though various opportunities are only available to blacks. The lack of AA certainly makes a big difference in the classroom.
idealart:
"What's so amazing to me is that even in your own country with authority on your side you should have any insolent behavior at all in adult students."
I don't have any behaviour I would class as insolent. I do get behaviour that falls short of the high standard I expect. I had a couple students briefly play-fighting in class today, neither black - one was Pakistani, the other Sailer's 'Men with Gold Chains' demographic. No black student has ever done anything like that.
idealart
"Couldn't your varying experiences of blacks be biased vis-a-vis UK and US?"
Simon in London
"I don't want to exaggerate the differences, I could give plenty of anecdotes that would support the more BNP-leaning posters here, too."
On reflection i think Simon in London's (and iSteve's) perception is closer to the general experience in the UK as of now. The situation inside the patchwork ghetto is the same as in the US but because it's patchwork only about 10% of the violence spills out into the surrounding areas largely because the gangs from each patch scare each other into staying close to safe ground.
If you've worked in the patchs you get a different view from the average person and it's easy to forget life there where girls can be gang-raped with complete impunity co-exist only a few hundred yards away from relatively civilized streets.
However the gangstas could easily take on and beat the police now and the riots in London were the first precursor of them realising that so i expect a 60s Detroit syle riot within a few years where the patchwork ghetto is made more contiguous. Time will tell.
Although this discussion is a little too White for me, I would suggest taking Simon's (from which part of London I wonder) description of the UK with a pinch of salt.
Firstly, the UK? I'm sure Simon isn't referring to Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland but perhaps just England. Even then, is he speaking about London or the whole of England?
I suspect that he is speaking primarily about London and the surrounding regions largely due to his assertion that 'chavs' are assimilating into Black culture.
Chav culture is uniquely White English (British maybe). It could clearly be seen in hooliganism which had very little to do with Britain's Black population.
England's Black populations are not without their problems, but please do not attribute White English faults to assimilating into Black culture...it's really quite pathetic.
The correlation of GSCE English/Maths to iq, and to g particularly, looks to be high.
"Intelligence and educational achievement" Ian J. Deary
http://www.psy.ed.ac.uk/people/iand/Deary%20(2007)%20Intelligence%20intelligence%20educational%20achievement%20nfer%20cat.pdf
"Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT) and GCSE grades: 2009/10"
https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/glassessment.pdf
The Black-White gaps, especially White-African, in English/Maths and Key stage 4 Math/reading exams are small.
http://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/more-evidence-uk-math-and-reading-achievement-gaps/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdHk1UVhtaXRoZU5SNnBjdFY3Nm9hWXc#gid=1
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