Hey Remington....

[John Kelder]

Back to the original post , Reminton has the only avatar with birds in it that aren't in a dogs mouth or about to get shot . Isn't that just wrong ?

[Hoosier]

You know he could have had flying penises.

[Tatyana]

Besides ill equipped schools and a sub-standard learning environments, have you ever tried studying on an empty belly?

Yep, but instead of blaming my environment for the problems, I actually studied hard. Plus, mom and dad weren't stupid either and passed along some good genes.

Home sweet home:


Sometimes I find it hard to believe I came from there. (Bad pic, as I was really jet lagged).

[K.Bullock]

I think I know a hell of a lot more about poverty then you'll ever know. I was raised in a shack out behind a church. When we moved out they fixed it up and turned into a storage shed. Every winter the water would freeze up, and we would carry what we needed from neighbors houses. I went hungry a lot. After paying rent on that shack my mother would have about $16 a month to buy cloths, toiletries,ect. My dad left her when she was pregnant with me, and never helped one bit, and was never to be herd from again. The house had a junk yard on one side on one side and a dumpster service on the other. No one in my family ever talked to us about the importance of education or hard work. In our neighborhood the first few days of the month was party time. The people called the 1st day of the month taco day. If you walked around the neighborhood on the first 5 or 6 days of the month all the adults were drunk, stoned,ect. On about the 10th they were at your door trying to sell you the meat they had bought earlier in the month or their food stamps for .50 cents on the Dollar. My friends sold drugs in the 5th grade sometimes to their parents. I qualified for free lunch at school, but after about 4th or 5th grade was to embarrassed to take it.
I also know what it's like to work my way out of that crap. I started stocking sheetrock after school when I was in 10th grade. This was for $3.00 an hour when minimum wage was $3.35. This was for an uncle. He then gave me a job hanging drywall for the same wage. Once I learned enough to go out on my own I did. Once I started making descent money by running my ass off 12 to 15 hours a day. My wife started collage after 7 years out of high school, and got an electrical engineering degree. She was also raised poor with no help from family. She now manages around 35 engineers for a medical devices company.
To answer your question I got my info from data from a study by Harvard psychologist Arthur Jensen. This was also a discussion we had in psychology class about The Bell Curve, and how when you bring it up your a labeled a racist. To be honest I brought it up to test that and see how long it would take for someone to jump down my throat

Tremayne

By the way the Jenen also did a study where Inuet (spelling?) people out scored whites on IQ tests and no one complained about that.

If you had a point I must have missed it somewhere ...sorry.

[K.Bullock]

Coshocton, OH

Demographics

As of the census[4] of 2000, there were 36,655 people, 14,356 households, and 10,164 families residing in the county. The population density was 65 people per square mile (25/km²). There were 16,107 housing units at an average density of 29 per square mile (11/km²). The racial makeup of the county was 97.35% White, 1.09% Black or African American, 0.17% Native American, 0.32% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.20% from other races, and 0.84% from two or more races. 0.59% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 29.4% were of German, 23.4% American, 11.6% English and 9.3% Irish ancestry according to Census 2000. 93.9% spoke English, 2.4% German and 1.5% Pennsylvania Dutch as their first language.


Certainly a hotbed of diversity I see how actually living in a urban setting could give one insight of the effects of dealing with urban living.

Racial diversity has little to do with poverty. This is Appalachia. You didn't happen to catch the mean household income did ya? And by the way the test scores as compared to more affluent areas of the state ...you guessed it ....lower, and the kids are mostly white. Again you have made an excellent point.

[K.Bullock]

I am hard pressed to understand what part of either the poster or the accompanying story represents an attack on Christianity. The poster says "Why believe in God. Be Good for Goodness Sake". I don't see that as an attack.[/QUOTE]

To me it is one of a hundred this time of year. it is a CHRISTmas poster...

Personally I am a non-theist. My belief is not an attack on Christianity or any other theist religion, it is simply my belief. Stating my belief publicly is no more an attack on Christianity than your stating a belief in God would be an attack on my beliefs. With respect to Nazi Germany, I believe you will find that most of the Nazi hierarchy attended Christian churches and most of the churches either supported or failed to challenge Nazism. That does not mean that those religions support Nazism, only that believers in any faith are ultimately human and can do very stupid and sometimes evil things.

In their defense ...they would be shot if they were openly hostile to Nazism as it was, many were executed for secretly resisting.

With respect to the "symbol" of Christmas, that has been secularized for more than a century. It is without doubt one of the two favorite holidays in my extended family of Christians and non-Christians (the second being Thanksgiving).

Can't argue much there, commercialized is more like it though.

Unitarianism was historically monotheistic and rejected the notion of Jesus as a manifestation of God as a violation of that monotheism. Universalism was historically a Christian religion that believed (to simplify greatly) that God was simply too good to condemn anyone to hell. Both churches evolved in parallel ways and merged in 1961. Today the Unitarian-Universalist church expresses no creed. Rather it focuses on a shared set of principles:
[From the UUA Website]
"
There are seven principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."

Members of UU churches have many beliefs. These are viewed as individual beliefs that may or may not be right for all. Writings from different religious traditions are read because each religion is viewed as an effort to find meaning in life and as such contains some inherent truth. Most UU's would reject the notion of any one religion being "correct" while the others are "incorrect".

As I noted before, I am a non-theist. I would not generally call myself an atheist. For the most part, I think that belief (or non-belief) in God is irrelevant. What counts is how you live the life you have been given. If you live a good, caring, charitable and ethical life, then in my mind you are a good person. If there were a God capable of creating all the miracles that envelope our lives every day, I cannot imagine that God condemning such a good person regardless of that person's beliefs. In the same manner, if you live a life of selfishness, intolerance, and cruelty to others, I cannot imagine a God that would not condemn that life regardless of the individual's beliefs.

However, my personal beliefs are just that. Other members of my church may or may not share them. That does not affect our common commitments which include, for me, going to church in a few more minutes where I will tutor homeless children for the evening as I have for the last five years. At least half the tutors there will be high school students, college students, and other adults who come from throughout the area and are not affiliated with our church. As I have for years, I will also distribute portraits that I have taken of these kids so they can take them "home" (typically a shelter, a motel, or other temporary housing) to their parents. I believe that it's important for these kids, as with any others, to know that they are beautiful.

Thanks, very cool.

[Hoosier]

If you had a point I must have missed it somewhere ...sorry.

Learning with an empty belly. Been there, done that. Am stronger for it. Wouldn't change a thing. Didn't whine about it.

[jburn34]

Yep, but instead of blaming my environment for the problems, I actually studied hard. Plus, mom and dad weren't stupid either and passed along some good genes.

Home sweet home:


Sometimes I find it hard to believe I came from there. (Bad pic, as I was really jet lagged).

Great story. None of us have any excuse.

[K.Bullock]

Learning with an empty belly. Been there, done that. Am stronger for it. Wouldn't change a thing. Didn't whine about it.

I guess that is what I am missing ..just who exactly is whining about it?

[Julie R.]

Actually the reasons blacks continue to score lower is known. It is because they predominantly inhabit the poverty stricken zones of our cities.
Besides ill equipped schools and a sub-standard learning environments, have you ever tried studying on an empty belly? How about walking home from school past a spot where someone was shot last week. Throw in drugs, pregnancy rates and everything else that comes along with poverty and it is a wonder anyone from a minority school district ever succeeds.

Your allusion to their mental capacity is incorrect. Poverty precludes these kids from sharing in the same cultural experiences and norms that our kids take for granted. The tests for I.Q. and proficiency sometimes include things that these kids have not been exposed too.


BTW what are you basing that number on? I couldn't find it.


Edit* Reading back through the thread what does what you are posting have to do with anything anyway? You just felt like asserting your "superior intellect" against disadvantaged kids today?

Actually Hoosier is correct; there have been several studies that have shown that on average blacks do test lower on IQ tests than whites across the board. Here is a link to one http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/

But if you choose to fight the evidence, here's what you're up against. Among white Americans, the average IQ, as of a decade or so ago, was 103. Among Asian-Americans, it was 106. Among Jewish Americans, it was 113. Among Latino Americans, it was 89. Among African-Americans, it was 85. Around the world, studies find the same general pattern: whites 100, East Asians 106, sub-Sarahan Africans 70. One IQ table shows 113 in Hong Kong, 110 in Japan, and 100 in Britain. White populations in Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States score closer to one another than to the worldwide black average. It's been that way for at least a century.

Now bear in mind this is an article written in Slate which is hardly a bastion of conservative thinking.

...head measurement had been discredited as Eurocentric pseudoscience. In fact, it's been bolstered by MRI. On average, Asian-American kids have bigger brains than white American kids, who in turn have bigger brains than black American kids. This is true even though the order of body size and weight runs in the other direction. The pattern holds true throughout the world and persists at death, as measured by brain weight.

Finally, I do see the point Hoosier was trying to make, which is that no one race has a monopoly on poverty and disadvantage. Maybe, instead of dismissing as racist such studies, we should explore more and find out why traditional teaching methods are such abject failures on a subset of society.

Maybe big college teacher Remington can chime in with some words of wisdom....