As the deafening silence shows, it is impossible to discuss this topic openly, even on an academic site.

Political correctness 1 Common Sense 0.

I agree with you

Extrapolating from my observations in Australia of different student's successes and failures I would suggest that culture and social structure are probably responsible. The more 'hungry' for success students are because of society, the more drive they have and the beter they will do. Reading from 'the Tiger Mom' books about successful groups in USA such as Chinese and Nigerians suggests the same. Countries whose social groups are 'comfortable' with their position are less driven in general. I am not advocating less social support to cresae drive however. I think that an appropriate social safety net is an important attribute of a society even at the cost of lower educational outcomes on average.

"I would suggest that culture and social structure are probably responsible"

This is a description of the situation, not an explanation. Surely a culture is not something passive like climate, environment or endemic disease, but is in the first palace an active construction of those humans singly and collectively who live there? Libraries no doubt lead to higher educational levels in a society, but we have only had public libraries after there was a sufficient number of literate people around to use them.

"Countries whose social groups are 'comfortable' with their position are less driven in general"

In the UK, it is the pushy comfortable middle-class parents who are blamed for sabotaging the UK educational system, and for monopolising the routes to success.

Of course culture is not static. I was referring to the current state of the culture specifically as t relates to educational attainment. If we are talking about success in PISA then the discussion is limited to a short cultural timeframe not a long term position. And it is at least a partial explanation or attempt at one, not just a description. One of the observations I referred to is the number of students who have reversed their position from 'failing' to passing in sciences merely by virtue of change in belief and hence effort. Extrapolating that to a hunger for success that results in deep effort and focus will surely result in higher average success for a population. But yes it would also be interesting to dig down for the underlying reasons for the hunger. I alluded to that by reference to the possible lack of safety nets in some asian societies. Perhaps people subsequently feel more responsible for their own welfare.

Hypothesising only.

"If we are talking about success in PISA then the discussion is limited to a short cultural timeframe not a long term position"

The sort of attainment differences found in PISA have been known to psychologists for about a century, and Lynn has argued that they are also quite consistent with the history of ancient civilisations.

So your point is that there is either a genetic or deep cultural basis for this difference? Perhaps then the 'Tiger Mom's' ideas about the three issues leading to greater outcomes is correct. Ie

1. Sense of superiority at least in educational outcomes.

2. Sense of inadequacy at least in work output

3. Good Impulse control.

Of those the last COULD be genetic but is more likely cultural.

"the last COULD be genetic but is more likely cultural".

As with all mental and physiological attributes, impulse control has a moderate genetic component. But how could culture not be a genetic marker, as well as reflecting millions of years of environmental influence? The environment shaped genomes (natural selection): genes are a crucial component of making people; people created cultures.

I would hesitate to come down one way or the other on the culture/genes argument. To me the correlation s so complex that I could be convinced either way. Subtle genetic markers could conceivably lead to cultural trajectories that have an epigentic impact. Mind you i am more of the belief that internal variation would likely be much greater than variation across cultures. And l am inclined to suggest that it is relatively unimportant. What we can say is that if we unpack at least the cultural component, we could learn something from it that could be applied in a wider range of contexts. But more importantly we may learn that we have to accomodate difference both in ability and in culture when designing leaning systems to maximise outcomes. On that point, for example, I have found that systems that downplay competition in low SES schools seems to more useful for the lower skill students than the high stakes systems which result in greater dropout or opt out rates. No negative impact on high abilty students was apparent either.