I wonder why poor minority youths are more likely to be educated than their white counterparts. I thought that education was denied to persons of color to keep the white oppressors in power.

I would be wary about generalising on 'ethnic minorities' in the British context, as they are very diverse. The British Education Department recently for the first time released data on the ethnic breakdown of performance in the GCSE examination (taken by nearly all children at age 16). The rank order was: Chinese, Indian, White, Bangladeshi, Black African, Pakistani, Black Caribbean. Performance by the top groups was about twice as good as the lowest.

The Economist may be right about 'ethnic minorities' being better educated than whites, at a given social level, but there are numerous statistical and conceptual booby traps in such comparisons. For example, a first-generation immigrant may have a humble and low-paid job, but come from a relatively well-educated background in their country of origin. Their kids often do very well at school, and go on to become doctors, accountants, etc., due to a combination of good genes and parental encouragement/pressure. US readers can no doubt think of parallels!

Economist:
"...and the northern industrial towns that traditionally supplied men are in decline. As their populations fall, so the recruitment pool shrinks. For two out of the last three years, the army has fallen short of its recruitment targets."

Yet another manifestation of global demographic trends at work on the local level.

"The army tends to recruit from the lower echelons of society; and poor ethnic-minority youngsters tend to be better-educated than whites in the same social group."

More than likely, the Economist is simply not separating the distinct ethnicities out like David just did. So, the real question is why (presumably) are Black African and Black Carribean people not signing up for the army in more numbers?

If Burbudge is right about the ethnic 'pecking order' concerning education, why are Pakistanis doing relatively poorly? In this country, by anecdotal experience, do much better. Besides just the usual supects of caste, maybe there are environmental reasons too. As I understand it, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are assimmilating less well than Indians in England.

I like the Economist,but like the WSJ,they signed onto the economic transnational bandwagon quite a while back,and that wagon carries a lot of baggage.Remember this when they start talking about racial compositions here or elsewhere.

brown ppl in the UK are segmented. the most well educated and affluent tend to be "refugees" from the east african states of gujarati origin that are very fluent in english when they came to the UK. bangladeshis and pakistanis from mirpur (punjabis mostly) are at the bottom of the heap because they came specifically to work in the mill towns of the north. i would suspect that fundamentalist islam has a stronger influence on pakistanis than bangladeshis partially because they are more assimilated (ergo, resentfull) and it is a more powerful influence in their homeland.

the indians to compare the pakistanis and bangladeshis with is probably the sikh community, which is rather large. the gujarati mercentile caste is totally different in the values that they inculcate in their children.

richard lynn asserted that one reason bangaldeshi and pakistanis did poorly in IQ tests compared to indians is that they were far less assimilated and tended to be new immigrants. that might be part of it, but i think it is important to take east african indians out of the equation, as they are self-selected twice over....

One must also remember that the article mentioned that "poor ethnic-minority youngsters tend to be better-educated than whites in the same social group," and thus was only concerned with the GCSE scores of poor white students, whereas the ranking above included all white students, including those from the upper and middle classes.

I find the above statement very believable: most non-white people in Britain are recent immigrants, and thus automatically selected for people with ambition, for themselves and their children. In my own country, I know that not only does the act of immigration self-selecting, but the government of Canada also has such high requirements for immigration that most immigrants are more highly educated than the average Canadian.

I would be interested in knowing more about ethnicity, class and academic achievement in Britain, Canada or the US, if anyone has links to share.

JB

Here's an excellent link relating the performance of various ethnic groups in the United States, with a focus on Asian Americans in particular - Arthur Hu's index of diversity: http://www.arthurhu.com/index/overrep.htm

From Hu's site:
Comparing Asians vs Jews vs Chinese vs. Indians:
If we set Jewish representation at 1.0, the Chinese are better in some numbers, but only the Asian Indians are consistently better in almost every category.

Also, take note of this statement:
* Indians are better in every comparison for which there is a statistic.

A testament to how selective immigration can reap innumerable gains for the host society.

I would be interested in knowing more about ethnicity, class and academic achievement in Britain, Canada or the US, if anyone has links to share.

Educational Achievement of Canadian Ethnic Groups

From Educational Achievement of Canadian Ethnic Groups care of Dienekes-

I am really surprised Filipinos seem to be so educated in Canada.