i am often glad when i can agree with an intelect such as david[but reserve my rights to disagree as well]...anyhow i would use different words and definitions[but blame that on my own multiculturalism]

the word has become a buzzword...david reveals he literally is a multi-cullture-ist[as am i..mine is dutch/english]...i think the strength often missed is true multi-culturism...means living across two[or more cultures..often simultainiously]

it has long been known that a second language is often able to raise the intelectual capacity..of those cursed by multicultural roots..[i would suggest the yiddish/english capable mind..to equal the chinese/english ,mind...in the educative creation..of extra neuron connections physiclly via the extra stimulation of the interlect required by multi lingual concourse

that while yiddish/arab/chinese/dutch/french..[or any other language..broadens the ability of the mind to reason,..it also has its cultural side-affects..for better or worse

with the jewish side affect clearly the mindset is towards logic/law/medicine/govt etc...im not educated enough to inform the affects of the picturesque chinese lingual/character affects on intellect..but advantage in logic/reasoning/comes to mind

anyhow there is also certain rational needed..to comprehend the inherant hate..we multiculturists regularilly recieve..[yet another thing we multiculturists have in common...

anyhow there would be many more neural connections..i would note..[not to the least of which..that of early..[sexual]awakening...but have dwelled enough on that aspect..at this time to have made that point clear in previous postings

Dear csteele,

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/opinion/07kristof.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print contains an article titled "Rising Above I.Q."

From the article:

"In the mosaic of America, three groups that have been unusually successful are Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks — and in that there may be some lessons for the rest of us.

Asian-Americans are renowned — or notorious — for ruining grade curves in schools across the land, and as a result they constitute about 20 percent of students at Harvard College.

As for Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans. One survey found that a quarter of Jewish adults in the United States have earned a graduate degree, compared with 6 percent of the population as a whole.

West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher.

These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories. In the debate over nature and nurture, they suggest the importance of improved nurture — which, from a public policy perspective, means a focus on education. Their success may also offer some lessons for you, me, our children — and for the broader effort to chip away at poverty in this country.

Richard Nisbett cites each of these groups in his superb recent book, “Intelligence and How to Get It.” Dr. Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, argues that what we think of as intelligence is quite malleable and owes little or nothing to genetics."

Read the rest to see why Nisbett thinks it has little to do with genetics.

" ... states acceptance of homosexuality, transgender, reconciliation, multiculturalism, and diversity ... "

Ah yes, such sentiments warm the cockles of my heart. As I have been reading, my (step) daughter (8yrs) has just brought me a well proportioned, multicouloured drawing of a house. This is pleasing to me. We do a lot of home schooling incidentally.

..

NEWSFLASH:

The case of the abused "princess" is still running hot, day after day, hour after hour here on Indo TV. Medical forensik reports are in, and alleged scars from being beaten up prior to being allegedly raped have been shown on TV. In the immediate aftermath of her escape, there were several incursions of malaysian warships into indonesian waters.

ALJAZHEERA:

Alleges Netan the Yahoo is persecuting Jewish conscientious objectors on grounds of inciting troops to defect at times of war.

They reply that Jewish troops are being trained only to think in terms of, attacking, destroying and killing "targets," and that this goes to dehumanise the Palestinians.

..

:-(

AUSTRALIA:

Green Browny has become infested with wig parasites to the tune of $AU240,000 approx. May he find in his supporters a fortified tower in the face of his detractors.

Dear Iftikar,

I am not sure which school or schooling system you refer to but I your topic compelled me to write about an opposite experience in Australia.

After living overseas for a while and during 2003,our daughter had to go to a public school.
I was impressed with how much care and attention she was given to fit back in the schooling system and the level of commitment from that Sydney south public school.

In all fairness, my only experience with lack of commitment was coming from her Arabic and Islamic studies teachers to the limit my wife and I had to help her with home tutoring.

Peace,

Dear davidf,

I apologise about my tardiness in replying to your expansive posts. Frustratingly I have only been able to read them via my mobile as I have been away from normal internet access.

I struggle with a genetic explanation for Jewish success. I will be the first to admit being uncomfortable with it as a notion because of what it implies. Some of the studies showing Jews and East Asians with IQ averages at 106-107 also place the Australian Aborigines with IQ averages at 62. Having met numerous members of the ‘Stolen Generation’, those of aboriginal descent who had been raised with white families, genetic conclusions from those figures are patently absurd.

Might I also question pogroms etc as genetic drivers. From my reading for many centuries the cycle of violence seemed to follow a fairly standard path. Jews, often having been denied other means of earning money were permitted to engage in usury, a practice forbidden by the Church for Christians. When debts became untenable to the populace, particularly the aristocracy, pogroms were instigated primarily to remove the creditors. One would assume the creditors were from the upper levels of the Jewish communities.

Another example was the Stalinist purges against the Jewish so called ‘Old Bolsheviks‘ who held high positions of power in the government and the Jewish literary and theatrical cream during the 1930s.

From Norman Cantor; “These two groups were physically eliminated and members of their families shot or sent to slave labour camps in Siberia. The best of the Jewish political and literary elite of the Soviet Union and their families and friends were suddenly removed from the Russian scene where they had loomed large since the Russian revolution.”. Cantor quotes a figure of around 200,000 Jews being eliminated.

Targeting the elite would have skewed the IQ profile the other way.

I like your idea that Catholic celibacy removed the genes of the best and brightest from the pool but this only holds if it was kept it their cassocks so to speak and there is ample evidence this was not the norm.

Cont

Cont

The recent SBS program on the Inquisition taken from the trial transcripts in one small town in Spain revealed a philandering priest with a startling appetite for sexual conquest that went basically unchallenged.

You wrote “I believe that religion no longer serves the purposes that it served in the past.” and I would agree but the intertwining of religion and culture must give a Jewish sense of community that is extraordinarily powerful. Even those who may have forgone a more orthodox religious observance the Jewish secular religion of Zionism surely continues that tradition.

There seems to be an historical trend of removal from tight rabbinical control appearing to take the shackles off the Jewish life and allowing intellectual ‘flowering‘. It happened in Spain and again with the great migrations from the Pale. I will read more about the Haskalah to see what was in play there. Your other forum offerings on Jesus have been shall we say less than complimentary but in a very real sense this was exactly what he was attempting. Forgetting about his deification, and taking the Gospel of Mark as the earliest and most Jewish representation of his life (notably without the virgin birth narrative nor ascent to heaven expounded in other gospels), perhaps this is a case of a very Jewish man recognising the potential of the unfettered Jewish life?

A period till the 1870s was a very promising time for European Jews who benefited from some dramatic liberalisations of many countries. I am aware of many of the factors that contributed to its decline but pertinent to this discussion is what happened in France during the turn of the century.

“Jews vehemently supported political efforts to divest the church of its old dominance in education and its privilege of state support for its schools.” (N.C.)

This battle between Catholics and the secularists over education produced some strong and vocal anti-Semitic groups like Action Francaise in the 1930s some of which was transported to Canada ultimately causing that country to refuse to admit any Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 40s.

Cont