After school coaching and the 'politically correct' race debate The Sydney Morning Herald, which may be described as Australia's standard broadsheet for the 'right thinking' liberal-left (replete with outdated reprints from The Guardian and the New York Times) has a story today on the futility of after school coaching. Gene Expression readers who share Godless's obsession with genetic limits on IQ may find this of interest. What is also of interest is the 'cultural' angle towards the end of the article which is selectively quoted below:

A study of more than 1700 girls at MLC Burwood girls' school found that the high school students who had no out-of-school coaching did better at end-of-year exams than those coached for specific subjects. The coaching made no difference for students in years 7, 11 or 12, said Professor Dianna Kenny, of the University of Sydney, and was simply wasting young lives and lots of money. Of those coached, some did 30 hours a week, with an average of 3.3. It is the first major study of the effects of coaching colleges on entry to selective schools and comes as the Eduction Minister, John Watkins, is considering regulation of the booming industry. Professor Kenny said yesterday that the effect of coaching in many cases could be likened to occupational stress on workers forced to do overtime ... The study involved all the students from years 4 to 12 and asked parents and students to fill in questionnaires about individual coaching histories. Sixty-five per cent had received out-of-school coaching, either privately or at a college, and in some cases students had been receiving out-of-school coaching for six years. Fifty-three per cent had a main language other than English, with 40 per cent of these students speaking an Asian language.

I don't necessarily doubt the veracity of the research or at least its implication that there are limits to coaching. What I am more interested in is the media treatment and spin on the issue. This story is interesting on many levels and provokes mixed responses from me. I certainly agree that school should be about more than striving for good exam results and that the current approach to tertiary education in Australia which rations access according to performance in a final high school exam creates an imbalance in incentives. However there would be coaching even if such problems were resolved. It is important to understand that this story follows quite closely a recent ruckus that has erupted among the 'right thinking' liberal-left types in Sydney over the influence of Australians of Asian descent on the schooling culture as this older piece (April 2002) demonstrates:

Shhh. We are tiptoeing ever so delicately here around the secret debate about selective high schools. That debate is about the extremely high percentage of students of Asian background attending the best government schools. But very few people want to say so publicly for fear of being declared racist. Just look at the reaction to the Herald story last Saturday that a group of influential former students from Sydney Boys' High were pushing for changes in government policy to allow some limited preference to boys whose brothers, fathers or grandfathers attended the school. All the predictable protests about nepotism and racism poured forth. A committee of old boys is an easy target, particularly when the old boys' magazine notes that the current Year 7 is "90 per Asian which has a flow-on effect on the school's traditional sports". The committee says the issue is really about the need to bolster the tradition of parental involvement and volunteer activities in the school. But it's hard to argue against the idea that academic success should be celebrated solely on its merits, no matter anyone's family connections or ethnic background ... These days, students of Asian background predominate - partly because of their increased numbers but largely because of their record of academic excellence and strong cultural emphasis on study ... Such academic achievement can only be applauded, particularly given the impetus clever kids give to any society. It is also of clear benefit for children - and the country - to have a truly multicultural mix at school. But it does raise tricky questions about balance. The immediate one is the weight given to maths and science in the selective test as opposed to English and what used to be known as the humanities. Is this appropriate and does a multiple-choice test discriminate against valuable skills of communication and general knowledge? ... Then there's the even more sensitive balance of ethnic background. The common perception is that students of Asian background as a group tend to participate less in non-academic activities and that their parents - as a cultural preference - are often less involved in the various volunteer activities of the school. Is it racist to question this or consider trying to change it? Does it matter anyway? Let's have the debate - without the name calling.

I suggest that these two articles taken together reveal the mix of contradictory attitudes among 'right thinking' liberal-left readers and journalists of the Herald 1) Generalisations about Asians which would be condemned as gross generalisations if made about other ethnic minorities are treated with a sophisticated and tolerant blase-ness. But of course Asians, as 'model minorities' (perhaps even too willing to adapt to the status quo rather than moaning about oppression) do not meet this test of PC sensitivity. Just contrast this with the mildest generalisations about Arab-Muslim cultural practices in Australia today (or in the US for that matter). 2) The distaste for 'competition' and the pursuit of excellence is expressed in a dislike for after school tuition even though in this case it involves citing a study which implicitly endorses the idea that genetics can trump enviroinment in determining intelligence, an idea usually regarded as heresy among left-liberals. Really, if coaching is so bad, can't we say the same thing about after school study that is self-motivated? What exactly is being endorsed here? Perhaps in some cases coaching may still be useful because the parent worries that children won't be sufficiently self-motivating. Perhaps even if there are limits on enhancing scholastic abilities, coaching can help uncover diamonds in the rough, under achieving gifted children. If the propensity of Asian parent to engage coaching activities encourages or 'forces' other parents to do the same, then what exactly is wrong with this? 3) It should be noted that the government that funded the anti-coaching study is in the process of downgrading selective schools. Note too the reference to those poor students finding themselves out of their depth if through coaching they ended up in selective schools with naturally bright children. 4) The distaste for elitism, the aspirational class and rigorous academic standards finds expression ironically in an almost anti-intellectual attitude towards swots. Note the imputation that selective schools are bad because they create pressures for competition that have adverse effects similar to that induced in poor hapless overworked employees under the capitalist system. Update from Godless: I forwarded the April article to Jason some time ago, because I thought it illustrated an important principle: no population is "above" jealousy for a population with higher mean IQ. I plan on treating this in more detail if/when I ever get around to replying to refuting_rm on Kevin MacDonald's work, but the upshot is that whites of European ancestry will be just as ready to play the racial spoils game when their ox is getting noticeably gored. They can afford to be magnanimous to blacks and Hispanics, who generally won't compete with them academically. However, the tables are turned when dealing with North Asians (as above),Ashkenazi Jews, or some South Asians. At that point, the backbiting and recriminations start, and whites begin to sound just like blacks when they blame the academically dominant group for its "undeserved" rewards, its slavish attention to duty over "extracurriculars", etcetera. That's not to assign blame...I just find it darkly humorous. After all, it's easy to preach meritocracy when your group is going to come out on top... Update from Jason: I should point out of course that I have agreed to disagree with Godless on the issue of whether recorded IQ differences between the races have any biological basis at all - Godless assures me that the matter will be settled in 5 years or less. I am sceptical given the statistical intricacies of attributing x% of such differences to genetic markers that may happen to correlate to particular ethnic groups as well as having a straightforward enough relationship to enhancing of mental processing that can then be shown to manifest itself in IQ; and y% to non-genetic factors. I'd be terribly interested in seeing how one can ever arrive at a convincing demonstration of these things. So I do believe these differences in scholastic performance are cultural and will probably even out over time - ironically one reason for this may well be the transmission of more scholastically oriented memes into the non-Western population precisely because of this pressure cooker environment created by aspirational Asian parents.