Well, Duh!

From time to time you’ll see news reports about lavishly-funded scientific studies that reach conclusions that seem obvious to ordinary people. You know the kind of thing I mean — $200,000 to find out that women who are unhappy in their marriages are more likely to cheat on their husbands. Or maybe a half a million to demonstrate that people with arthritis play squash poorly.

The following report from the Netherlands is the same sort of thing. Once upon a time, a sensible person could have reached the same conclusions without conducting the scientific research. But when common sense runs contrary to political correctness, it takes expensive professional studies to override the PC — and even that may not be enough to do it.

According to Radio Netherlands:

Lower Achievements at Mixed Schools

For years and years, the ‘perfect school’ was defined by having the right ratio of black to white, native to migrant and rich to poor. However, recent Dutch research has exposed this myth. Children at mixed schools consistently score lower grades than their peers at predominantly white or black schools.

Dutch sociology professor Jaap Dronkers has carried out research into the pros and cons of ethnic diversity in secondary education. He compared student achievement in language, math and physics of 15-year-old children in 15 Western countries. Much to his surprise, students’ grades were inversely proportional to ethnic diversity.

“I interpret lower student achievement at ethnically diverse schools to mean that a great deal of energy is spent on bridging the various cultural gaps between students. As a result, teachers are unable to focus on teaching. They keep hopping from one culture to the next. It uses up time and energy not spent on teaching.”

Dr. Dronkers’ interpretation surely has merit. But additional factors may be at work — what about inter-ethnic violence in hallways and on the playground? That’s one of the ugly little secrets of Multiculturalism that no one wants to talk about, especially when the violence is “brown-on-brown”. When Pakistanis gang up on the Hmong kids, it brings the whole PC-MC fairy tale crashing down. One must avert one’s fastidious glance from such sordid realities.

Nevertheless, racial or cultural violence — or even the constant dread of it — must surely “negatively impact the learning environment”.

The article continues:
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Comparable

No data were available for the Netherlands, but Professor Dronkers believes his findings are also applicable to this country as education in surrounding countries like Denmark, Belgium and Germany is in his opinion comparable to the Netherlands.

The ethnic make-up of Dutch schools is a highly sensitive issue. The existence of separate ‘black’ and ‘white’ schools is generally regarded as undesirable. However, as long as the segregation leads to a homogenous student body, the effects are not necessarily negative. On the contrary, a ‘black’ school where 80 percent of the children were of Turkish descent outperformed a school of much greater ethnic diversity.

Islamic

Another noteworthy finding from his research are the generally below-average achievements of students with an Islamic background.

“This cannot be explained by their socio-economic backgrounds or the characteristics of schools or educational systems. So what is the reason? It is very well possible that they are being discriminated against, but this also holds true for non-Islamic children. People will say: they are the children of migrant workers, but so were the Italians. The remaining factor is religion.“ [emphasis added]

Prof. Dronkers has broached a forbidden topic here. According to the ground rules of modern multicultural orthodoxy, Islam in the West can never, ever have a negative impact. It simply isn’t possible, and anyone who says otherwise is a racist and an Islamophobe.

Fortunately, other experts are on hand to refute the wayward professor’s conclusions:

Not everybody agrees with Professor Dronkers’ conclusions. Dutch writer and educational expert Anja Vink says the professor places too much emphasis on culture and religion. She argues that socio-economical circumstances are widely accepted as determining factors for the educational achievement of children.

“We are focussing on colour, culture and religion, but what is being left out is that these children are from poor families. This could also apply to poor native children. If you attend a ‘white trash school’ you would get the same results. You will see this in the provinces of Friesland, Groningen en Limburg.”

Ms. Vink is repeating a common assumption here, that there is always an economic explanation for the negative characteristics of Third World minority groups in the West.

Yet whenever scientific studies on the subject are undertaken — studies like Dr. Dronkers’ — they reach the same conclusions: even when income and social class are taken into account, ethnicity plays a demonstrable role in behavioral differences.

This is the news that the gutmenschen don’t want to hear, and will refuse to believe, no matter how much evidence accumulates to support it.

Of course, not all immigrants have a negative effect on the educational environment. Can you guess which countries these beneficial influences come from?

Professor Dronkers agrees that ethnic diversity can have a positive effect on children of highly educated parents. “In that case there is an added value.” The scientist says that migrant children from non-Islamic countries like China, South Korea and India are also a positive exception to the rule.

I’d like to venture a further common-sense hypothesis. Imagine that all these schools were “segregated” instead of multicultural. Obviously the average educational performance of their students would be significantly higher.

However, the most poorly-performing schools would be the Muslim ones, particularly those populated by Somalis. The Turks would fare somewhat better, and white Europeans would clock in at the average. But the Indians, the Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese would be at the top of the performance heap, and would form the bulk of the student body moving on to a higher education in engineering and the sciences.

This is a truth that no one wants to face. All the available scientific evidence points to it, but it is systematically denied, buried, denounced, and demonized by academia and the educational establishment. They don’t want it to be true; therefore it is false.

No one will ever be able to prove it, because segregated schools will never again be permitted in the West. But the average citizen knows it’s true.

It’s common sense. And sometimes common sense is right.


Hat tip: C. Cantoni.