Depends where you are from, JMH. In my public school system, I was looked at funny when I finished my math textbook (got bored and started working chapters ahead of time) in 2nd grade and wanted to start the last chapter on multiplication. I didn’t get to that until 4th or 5th.
bchad mustve done well on the gmat.
Yeah I was sort of the same. Some of the schools I went to growing up (only public) were better than others, but I imagine that there are schools way worse than even the worst school I went to. It could be that it was that my parents tried to be white proto-tiger parents. I was in kumon, which is like an Asian approach to math, apparently. I definitely recall when kumon switched to dividing fractions because I never had seen it before and was probably the first thing I really remember failing utterly hopeless at. Can’t recall when we did it in school, though, but it was way later than when I first saw it in Kumon.
I think it is interesting to see how widespread education only started to be valued after the industrial revolution. Maybe it got slightly better during the Renaissance but before the 16th century schism within western christianity, it was even widely regarded as pious to know and understand very little of the world around you, e.g. before Luther the mess was held in Latin and christians went to church sunday after sunday just listening to sounds. As pointed out above the exclusion from almost all professions, the ban on land ownership and the constant threat of displacement gave education as a portable asset a much higher standing in the jewish culture.
Yep. Knowing about logic, medicine, trade, money, etc. comes in pretty handy when you can be asked to pack up and move at a moment’s notice, taking only what you can carry with you. Education is a portable asset.
Rabinnical Judaism (as opposed to the ancient stuff run by Jewish Priests before 70 AD) also forces people to understand and argue about what the meaning of the Torah is in a world where Jews aren’t running their own country. This meant that Jews (particularly the men) were generally supposed to be literate, which - during much of the Middle Ages - meant that the average Jew was better educated than the average Gentile.
Education only could become widespread after this was invented:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press#Gutenberg.27s_press
Before this, mass production of books is impossible, which makes reading relatively unimportant. Only due to this do we see tensions break out in the Catholic church.
Yes, I think Jews’ high levels of education, little land, and a background in trade, explains their success far more than “banned from doing other things”.
Very interesting discourse. Respect.
Let’s see if I got this right, if you need someone skilled at…
Finance - Jew
Sports - Black
Labor - Latino
IT/Math - Asian
Word.
Gas station - Indian
Dry cleaner - Asian
Parking attendant - African
Seems like white Christians aren’t skilled at anything.
^ Respect. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Used to be politics, y’all fcked that up.
Also used to be golf, y’all got complacent and let the brotha in.
Maybe hockey? But once they make a heated hockey rink, the brothas will take that over too.
Black players have already starting making their mark in the NHL. Grant Fuhr - one of the greatest goalies of all time; Donald Brashear - probably the best enforcer of his generation; and Jarome Iginla - one of the best power forwards of his generation. Kyle Okposo and Wanye Simmonds ain’t too bad either and Seth Jones was taken 4th overall in the draft this year.
Soccer.
^ Nope, Germans and Brazilians.
At my firm, they have something called white glove service. Everyone automatically calls it white service.
^ You work at a car wash?
The Subban brothers are doing very well. One is a top defenseman in the NHL, one is a top junior goaltender, and another promising defenseman.
You can’t really stereotype WASPs. It’s hard to poke fun at the people who took over the world.
Wait 'till you see LeBron on some skates. You ain’t seen nothing yet! He just gonna have one skate, chilling. He won’t even have a stick, he’ll just smack the puck in with his dck. Pow! Slapshot, btch!
–thus said the great philosopher Christopher Rock III
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbqrzflpoAo]
respect.