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Comment by eplanit | Hacker News Reader

> It is more likely to be culture or (more controversially) genetics.

Perhaps not genetics, but (also controversially) perhaps 'diversity' is over-rated. Many of the least diverse countries enjoy such positive results. The U.S. slips further and further as it gets more diverse.

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Canada's got at least the diversity the US has, and yet regularly ranks quite high in worldwide educational standards.

Edit: added the following link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-ed...

Canada is far less diverse than the US. Canada is about 90% white, the US is about 68% white. And most minorities in Canada are screened for education/intelligence before arrival, whereas in the US most minorities are a byproduct of the transatlantic slave trade/illegal immigration

I guess it depends on what you consider 'diverse'. You seem to only consider skin colour.

Besides, Canada is more like 80% 'white' vs 72% in the US.

An interesting tidbit you may not know is that less then 60% of Canadians speak English as their mother tongue, vs 82% in the US.

Right, but a majority of those non-English speakers in Canada are in Quebec speaking French. I can't imagine there's that much of an IQ difference between French- and Anglo-Canadians...

Actually the non-english speakers are split evenly between french speakers, and speakers of other languages.

The discussion was about diversity (and the imagined lack thereof in Canada), not about IQ ...

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