White working-class British boys are falling behind nearly every other group, reports the Daily Mail. Only 15 per cent pass government reading, writing and math exams before leaving school, compared to 22 percent of working-class blacks, 29 percent of Asians and 52 percent of Chinese-British students. Twenty per cent of white working-class girls achieve the basic standards.
Studies into the trend have previously identified parental indifference and family break-ups as reasons poor white boys have slipped behind other groups.
Some white pupils are held back by a peer culture which encourages low aspirations and holds intellectual endeavour in contempt.
White students from low-income families are “often overlooked,” a report concluded. Extra attention and money goes to students from non-English-speaking homes. But the home language is not a determiner of success.
The figures suggest that poor initial knowledge of English is only a short-term handicap, with Asian and black students with English as a second language often recovering from the problems it poses by secondary school.
Via Core Knowledge Blog.
In other news, Woolworths in Britain has dropped the “Lolita” bed for little girls from its web site. Parents had complained about the sexual connotations.
“What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either,” a spokesman told British newspapers.
“We had to look it up on (online encyclopedia) Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.”
Live and learn.
So if the problem is culural, perhaps schools should return to the traditional roll of passing on th culture, which implies judging the relative merit of diverse cultures.
My kids are half english, and I lived there for several years. Englands white working class hooligan culture is as everybit self destructive as the gangbanging culture of this country.
I would never raise my kids in english public schools.
If the staff at Woolworths didn’t know the meaning of Lolita, how did the bed wind up called it in the first place?
Coincidences do happen, but we are talking about one incredible coincidence.
“We will be talking to the supplier with regard to how the branding came about.”
The supplier was probably based in foreign, non-english speaking parts. For someone in China, or Turkey, “Lolita” may have retained the meaning of “attractive young girl,” without the creepy associations. I assume the online catalog staff didn’t think too hard about the name, or had never read the book.