[MMMMMM]

Points taken.

What do you think about the idea that study habits and discussions away from school have much to do with a child's success?

I'm not saying economics plays no role, but if on average, scholastically speaking, Asians significantly outperform whites, and whites significantly outperform blacks...is this only due to economics, or is it also as Sowell says: Asian parents demand that their kids study hard, and their kids really do. I think a lot of it is due to culture as well as economics. If it were solely due to economics then Asians would have to be considerably richer than whites on average in order to explain their superior academic averages (heck maybe they are richer, I don't know). Also, Jewish students tend to outperform other groups. Yet they would be grouped under "white" thus serving as a counterweight to the Asian scholastic achievement (by comparison)--yet Asians still outperform whites as a group. So unless I'm missing something big I just don't see how academic performance isn't significantly influenced on average by cultural considerations as well as by economic considerations.

Personally, I think I would have benefitted had I had more structure and discipline in my school years, and also probably would have achieved more in life thus far if I had had more of it earlier. Never too late to improve one's habits though.