[silverleaf]

Education and ambition are not always the same thing 50 years ago (and before that) the Irish Polish an Italian catholics in my western PA town were all paying
scarce money and sending their kids to parochial schools to be beaten by the nuns into being respectful in school and to get a decent education. That was ambition.

Ambition was the hallmark of my Irish ancestors who came here in the 1720’s. ‘course they were not catholics but they were poor. The first luxury they bought once they accumulated enough assets everyone didn't have to plant fields was - schooling for their kids to give them an advantage

It was not ambition that was looked down on by the European catholic cultures, nor education!! Just ambitions toward certain vocations, maybe.
The Kennedys seemed to be among the first to make public service a desired and attainable vocation for these cultures. Entering the priesthood- required education.

imho you cannot equivocate cultural expectations of “catholics” with the nonexpectations, low expectations, or expectations of entitlement, that taint the educational outcomes of many “families of color”

BTW, my hispanic friends whose kids were taunted and shunned by other hispanics for being too studious and “wasp”- - one graduated Harvard Law and the other from med School- and the taunters? Many came from poor families whose folks were working 2-3 menial jobs to live in the best suburban school district to try and give them a good education so they wouldn't have to work menial jobs.

Go figure (I always thought it would be Clemenza- but Tessio was the smart one)

[Clemenza]

Sorry, but aspiring to live in an ethnic/religious ghetto and being told not to "rise above your station" and working in a low wage/low status occupation just like "your old man" is not something to be proud of. This is what held many Catholic "ethnics" back for generations.

Keep in mind also that those who came here were often the more ambitious ones, and you see this today with the entrepreneur class among Latin/Filipino/Vietnamese immigrants. Nevertheless, there was a large population of folks who were dependent on the city or the union for their low status jobs which kept them living in the same ethnic ghettos for three generations, as they failed to shake the "village"/tribal mentality towards material success and upward mobility.

It was even worse back in Europe itself, where the larger culture was dominated by the "material success and surpassing your family is Pride" ethos. Again, this changed in several countries at different times (France in the 1840s, Ireland in the 1970s, Brazil in the 1990s, etc.) but you can't deny it was a major factor keeping Catholic cultures in relative poverty.