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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"New data! Judging fairly how well states are doing at educating their children"

7 Comments -

1 – 7 of 7
Blogger Sampieru said...

Positive discrimination in French public sector

11/14/07, 5:54 PM

Anonymous SFG said...

So can we finally say nice things about Massachusetts? Their math scores are high too.

11/14/07, 7:46 PM

Blogger Sampieru said...

Sorry, here is the link:

http://en.fdesouche.com/?p=37

11/14/07, 7:52 PM

Anonymous Galactic Overlord said...

As a former resident of West Virginia for about a dozen years, I can tell you that your speculation on Audacious Epigone's original post -- namely, that people on the ball are moving out -- has been largely true since World War II, if not earlier. I think I can best illustrate this with an anecdote.

My best friend is a physician in Kentucky. Both her parents were born and raised in West Virginia, but left shortly after they married, first to Pennsylvania, then Michigan, and finally to Kentucky (to a town not far from Louisville). She once told me that so many of her mom's high school class (the school is in the middle of Southern West Virginia coal country) moved north that they wound up holding their reunions in Columbus, Ohio because it was more convenient for everyone involved.

Interestingly, David Hackett Fischer noted in Albion's Seed that the backcountry culture historically had a genuine disdain for book learning. Probably no state is as identified--culturally and ethnically--with the backcountry culture as West Virginia. Contrary to your column in VDARE regarding Utah's lack of diversity, Utah is not the "whitest state that doesn't border Canada"--it's West Virginia. (In decreasing order, the four whitest states are Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, and New Hampshire). West Virginia also has the highest percentage of people who identify their ethnicity on US Census forms as "American", a choice which often coincides with British descent and especially border descent.

In summary, West Virginia's low educational ranking is what you get when you combine a culture with a lingering distrust of advanced learning, a boom-and-bust economy that has historically been dependent on coal and timber in the south and heavy industry in the Ohio Valley, and the pull of more dynamic areas within an easy day's drive.

11/14/07, 7:54 PM

Anonymous Mark said...

It's fun to see, for once, a ranking of school performance that's not obviously dominated by demographics.

Or student spending - D.C. has one of the highest rates of per student spending, but Connecticut does, too.

Wonder if DC is already losing some of its worst students to the criminal justice system by the time they're in 8th grade?

Contrary to your column in VDARE regarding Utah's lack of diversity, Utah is not the "whitest state that doesn't border Canada"--it's West Virginia.

Utah is getting browner by the minute. Politicians here, especially the Republicans, are big-time supporters of illegal immigration. They get licenses, in-state tuition, and all sorts of other groovy benefits. Mormons aren't as conservative as people like to think - or as I used to think. Logical thinking and belief in the Book of Mormon and other lies of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young don't really go together.

Feel free to leave West Virginia, but hang onto your property. Like so many other chamring, quaint mountain areas it will turn into a playground for the rich soon enough.

11/14/07, 9:38 PM

Anonymous Mark said...

S-u-r-e, Dan and George! It must be proximity to Canada!! Everybody knows that playing hockey makes people monogamous and smart!!!

Now Steve...

George Will knew Moynihan was saying this tongue-in-cheek. Pointing out the connection between quality family life and academic performance was as far along as Will could go on the IQ/genes axis. The connection is still real and still matters because unlike genes it's one of the few things people can actually do something about.

Given that George Will is (by far) the most widely circulated conservative columnist in the US, it would be a shame to lose him to a PC witch hunt.

11/14/07, 10:46 PM

Anonymous Reg Cæsar said...

S-u-r-e, Dan and George! It must be proximity to Canada!!

Moynihan always went by "Pat", never "Dan".

And he followed his own advice. He was born (like Tony Randall) in Tulsa, grew up in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan, and ended up in the minuscule hamlet of Pindar's Corners on the Susquehanna upstate.

11/15/07, 12:22 AM

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