Privileged background is most important factor in whether a British child goes to university, study finds

Having privileged parents is the most important factor for determining whether a student will go to university, a study has found.

Academics from York University analysed data from 5,000 children born in the UK between 1994 and 1996 to see which factors were most important for predicting academic success.

They found that the most crucial factor was having parents who are both highly educated and wealthy. This outweighed all other factors, including whether children had a high genetic propensity for education.

Professor Sophie von Stumm, the lead author of the study, said: “Genetics and socio-economic status capture the effects of both nature and nurture, and their influence is particularly dramatic for children at the extreme ends of distribution.

“However, our study also highlights the potentially protective effect of a privileged background.

“Having a genetic makeup that makes you more inclined to education does make a child from a disadvantaged background more likely to go to university, but not as likely as a child with a lower genetic propensity from a more advantaged background.”

Researchers used genome-wide polygenic scoring - a statistical technique which adds up the effect of DNA variants - to test how inherited genetic differences predict children’s educational success.

The study, published in the journal Developmental Science, found that having the right genes for school success is not as beneficial as having parents who are highly educated and wealthy.

Only 47 per cent of children with a high genetic propensity for education but a poorer background made it to university. This compares with 62 per cent of those with a low genetic propensity but parents that are more affluent. Children with a high genetic propensity for education who were also from wealthy and well-educated family backgrounds had the greatest advantage with 77 per cent going to university.

Meanwhile, only one in five (21 per cent) of children from families with low socioeconomic status and low genetic propensity carried on into higher education.

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Elite New York school is rocked by anti-Semitism claims after swastikas are daubed on walls

Jewish students at $53,000-a-year alma mater of Sofia Coppola and Jeffrey Katzenberg accuse staff of failing to call out hatred

An elite New York private school is facing anti-Semitism claims after Jewish students accused staff of failing to call out anti-Jewish hatred.

Jewish students at the $53,000-a-year Fieldston School in the Bronx, whose alumni include director Sofia Coppola and former Disney mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, say they are treated as 'white and privileged' by some of their fellow classmates and believe that discrimination against them is not taken seriously.

The school has also been accused of a lackluster response after swastikas were daubed around the building and a visiting speaker suggested that Holocaust survivors had turned into oppressors.

According to a detailed report by Tablet magazine, some parents have accused the school of having a 'problem calling out hate against this community'.

Matters reportedly came to a head last month after an invited speaker, Kayum Ahmed of Columbia University Law School, made provocative comments about the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine conflict.

Ahmed apparently suggested that Holocaust survivors had turned into oppressors in a cycle of 'victims becoming perpetrators' at a lecture on November 21.

'Jews who suffered in the Holocaust and established the State of Israel today - they perpetuate violence against Palestinians that [is] unthinkable,' he said.

Furious Jewish students said that no-one had called out the remark and that the school's response had been insufficient.

One parent told the magazine: 'If someone was coming to Fieldston to talk about apartheid and went off on a rant about the pea-sized brains of women who belong in a kitchen, or repeated racist tropes, or ranted about any form of homophobia or racism or sexism, immediately teachers would have stood up and said that’s not how we feel, that’s not an idea we share.'

Instead, parents said they had received a vaguely-worded letter which said 'we will not accept anti-Semitism' while also listing a series of other prejudices.

The school's apparent refusal to single out anti-Semitism caused further fury and one father felt that the letter was 'worse than doing nothing'.

'It's part of the assumption at Fieldston that Jewish students are rich and white and thus privileged, so it doesn't matter,' one parent said.

The comments also earned a rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organisation.

On another occasion, Fieldston students found swastikas appearing in halls and classrooms.

The school responded with a presentation highlighting the symbol's pre-Nazi history, it is claimed.

Only after an outcry did the school send out a second message which specifically described the swastika as a 'hateful symbol of the Nazi genocide' and the 'destruction of European Jewry'. 

In a further cause of anger, the school created 'affinity groups' to help students from different backgrounds discuss their identities, but blocked the creation of a Jewish group, it is claimed.

The school declined to provide any statement or clarification to the magazine. DailyMail.com has also reached out for comment.

Fieldston alumni include actress Sofia Coppola, composer Stephen Sondheim and journalist Barbara Walters.

Others include former Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, ex-New York Times editor Jill Abramson and 'father of the atomic bomb' J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The school was originally founded by New York Jews in the late 19th century.

The Anti-Defamation League reported earlier this year that violent anti-Semitic episodes in the United States doubled in 2018.

Jewish leaders have warned that the receding memory of the Holocaust and rising far-right Muslim sentiment are fuelling a growing anti-Semitic climate.

Last month a Jewish professor at Syracuse University revealed an anonymous anti-Semitic email which told her to 'get in the oven where you belong'.

The message sent to Genevieve Garcia de Müeller had the subject line 'JEW' and included a racist term for Jewish people.  

Boycotts of Israeli products have also caused tensions, although supporters of the campaign say they are critical of the Israeli government, not Jewish people in general.

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Will Christians Become Outcasts at Public Universities?

We are Christian women, mothers of college students and college-bound children, who have serious concerns about how the “gender fluidity” movement has taken root at public schools and universities.

The idea that gender is fluid and self-determined, as opposed to biologically determined, has been germinating for decades. But today it has grown into a multimillion-dollar political cause that threatens the privacy, safety, and religious freedom of all students, and especially women.

In a recent op-ed, one of us, Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America (CWA), gave a firsthand account of how students, beginning at orientation, are being indoctrinated into this anti-Christian ideology at Virginia Tech (VT), the hard science school of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The response was overwhelming. CWA received emails from many VT students, parents, employees, professors, alumni, and state elected officials upset about the indoctrination. Many complained of coercive “diversity training” and policies. Some students reported fear of reprisal, and some school employees fear job loss. Many feel bullied into silence and believe their First Amendment rights are being infringed. The school is opening itself up to a variety of lawsuits.

VT’s response has been to post its mantra regarding civility, saying students were not forced to share their pronouns. But coercion comes in many forms, and the pressure is palpable. It is sad to say, but if you express traditional Christian beliefs at VT, you will be left outside of the community. Of course, VT is far from alone in this new woke trajectory.

Recently, the Christian student organization Young Life was denied recognition at Duke University because of its adherence to Biblical principles on LGBTQ issues. This is the culture being promoted at VT and other Virginia schools right now. It would surprise no one to see them follow the same anti-Christian discriminatory policy in the not-too-distant future.

Here is the key. President Timothy Sands was elected in 2014 after Gov. Terry McAuliffe stacked the VT Board of Visitors with liberals. He is a San Francisco, California, native and a graduate of the University of California, Berkley. His administration has ushered in diversity training that forces students and employees to submit to indoctrinating videos on “woke” orthodoxy, including microaggressions and gender fluidity. The training includes a quiz that forces people to choose the politically correct answer in order to move on to the next session. This environment separates students into perpetually offended identity groups instead of fostering school unity.

This is the issue Timothy Sands and others do not understand: To ask Christians to affirm this notion of gender fluidity is in direct contradiction of our Biblical beliefs in an everlasting, unchanging God who created humans male and female with intrinsic value and in His own image (Gen. 1:27).

Forcing all kids (and adults) to announce their pronouns, and to use false pronouns for others, is forcing them to declare a creed they do not affirm. In fact, this belief is not completely new. It is rooted in Gnosticism and sexual nihilism.

Forcing Christians to abide by this new version of the old heresy is not only asking them to deny God’s purposeful creation but to deny God Himself. It is every bit a sacrilege as being forced to bend the knee to a foreign god. We cannot do it (“we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” [Daniel 3:18b]). When government officials compel religious people to deny their God, it is tantamount to forced conversion, compelled by the government.

In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of students to refuse to salute the American flag. Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, religion or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Yet this is what public schools and state universities are doing when they force students (explicitly or implicitly) to refer to another person as “they,” “ze,” “xe,” or whatever. This is government officials coercing people to say (and believe) words (or creeds) against their will and using our tax dollars to do it.

As former Justice Anthony Kennedy (the infamous moderate voice on the Court) wrote last year in his concurring opinion in NIFLA v. Becerra, “It is not forward thinking to force individuals to ‘be an instrument for fostering public adherence to an ideological point of view [they] find unacceptable.’”

Labeling people bigots for not assenting to an anti-Christian view of the human person is not only offensive to religious freedom and free speech, it’s devastating for women.

In fact, the real-world result of removing all distinction between men and women is so pernicious that an unlikely alliance has developed between radical feminists at Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) and conservatives. Women of all political persuasions are joined by the idea that women are unique and should be celebrated — that women’s safety, privacy, and opportunities are at risk by these wrongheaded, unscientific policies.

The denial of women’s safe spaces are already happening on other campuses, as this sign sent to us by a parent from another school’s orientation event illustrates:

Should we expect this at the next VT student orientation? Students of faith, and especially female students, need strong advocates who will bravely help them fight this battle. Parents need to speak up! It is too much to ask students to stand up to the monumental pressure today’s universities are putting on them. We must stand with them and fight for justice.

The examples continue to pile on. Are women supposed to ignore this state-sponsored assault on womanhood?

Public universities should be a place for all members of the public, not just those willing to affirm an anti-Christian, anti-woman creed.

“Government must not be allowed to force persons to express a message contrary to their deepest convictions,” said Justice Kennedy last year. “Freedom of speech secures freedom of thought and belief.”

Indeed. The cost of attending an American public university must never be your conscience, your safety, or your soul.

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