The mentioning of the fear reminds me of a book by Intel’s co-founder Andy G. with a title started with: Only the paranoid survive. He is a first generation immigrant (and is Jewish.)
Of course, few could be as great as him.
When my child was growing up with us, he occasionally said we tend to worry too much. This could be caused by a difference in two generations because I also think my parents tend to worry too much. But it may also be due to the fact that I am a first generation of immigrant while he is a second generation. Wonder how he thinks of some 1.5 immigrants of HIS generation in this regard. Unlike in his UG years, now he has plenty of opportunity to observe this. LOL.
FWIW, I’m 2nd gen (my parents came here in the 70s) and I was born and raised here, and while I see my peers raising their kids in many (but not all) the ways we were raised – I’d say my generation worries less than my parents’ as a whole. Sure many/most of us are risk averse types – groomed to go to the ivys and do well in our chosen professions and if things don’t work out as planned, we worry – but there isn’t that constant insecurity of – if I need a few thousand dollars, where will I pull it out of; or if I quit and job and have a new job in a new city and have a month in between – do I have to keep making the rent? There’s security in knowing that if you’re ever short a bit of money or need a place to land for a bit, there is a home. That was different than the prior generation, which really did not have that kind of safety net or support in this country at all.
Part of it is that my generation got a bit of a “head start” compared to our parents. We started our first jobs here in our 20s – started saving and investing right away etc. Our parents were coming from other countries when they were in their 20s or 30s and then re establishing new careers and then scrimping and saving to educate the kids, so things like retirement savings and home purchases happened later for them. Whereas my generation is benefiting from the time value of money a bit more.
Do not laugh at it: In the very first several months when I was in this country, I knew exactly how much money I had. I actually wrote down not only how much I had in my bank account, but also exactly how much I had in my pocket - I actually kept track of how many $100 bills (somehow I kept some $100 bills and were not aware that many shops may not like it when we paid with this large bill), $20 bills, $1 bills, quarters, dimes, nickels and even pennies that I had at any moment on a piece of paper. Now, I think it was really silly for me to do this at that time.
After having graduated from the school, we bought a car (our friend helped drive it back after the purchase.) The car was parked in the parking lot of the graduate school student’s apartments for the next 2-3 weeks because we did not know how to drive it yet. (We needed our friend to teach us how to drive when he was available.) I still remember the “shock” we had right after we had bought that used car because we had even less money after this purchase. But we survived.
I do not think my child would have such an experience. Need to learn to drive in high school? We are ready to teach him any time. We even sent him to a driving school. Later on, when he needed a car, we handed down one of our cars to him (the one which we think would be safer) – Just one phone call to us and we sprung into action and started to prepare the car (new tires, fixing existing issues however minor they may be) and shipped it to him when the time is convenient for him to pick up.
The idea that you have to be (or it would be best to be) an immigrant to be highly motivated or to benefit from parental priorities is absurd. My Irish mother (2nd Gen) was what would today be considered a Tiger Mother, though not in terms of vigilance and shaping like Amy Chua, but in terms of absolute immersion in academics at home (even more so than at school). Our house could have been a registered school – between my mother’s wall-to-wall library and frequent oral recitations of memorized Shakespearean soliloquies and my father’s (Hungarian, 2nd Gen) dinner quizzes on vocabulary and grammar, with further discussion of all of that. It was never even whispered whether we would go to college, and it never would have been. Nor was it on the table in my own household, with my own children.
But to be an over-the-top promoter of education and educational values, there was no need to
I’ve been wondering whether there are “growth mindset” vs. “fixed mindset” issues involved in the achievement differences between Asians and Caucasians on average.
Anecdotally, I see non-Asian kids and parents putting more value on doing well on a test or in a class with less studying. That is, they talk as if there are bonus points for scoring high with no prep. (Perhaps there is a bonus of having more personal time for other activities.) I hear more non-Asain parents saying things like, “Oh my kid hardly spent any time on homework in that AP class, and he got an A and a 5.” This is a slightly more polite way of saying, “my kid has a high IQ.” And, whether stated out loud or not, some of us tend to believe that a kid is either “a natural” or not at something even with loads of practice. And that something could be SAT/ACT/PSAT, math, science, creative writing, art, music, sports… If you believe the fixed mindset, then there’s no reason to be a Tiger Mom.
In contrast, it seems that Asian parents (especially more recent immigrants) believe that if you put enough time into anything, you’ll be good at it.
I’m non-Asian, and I’ve consciously changed my praise for my kids from implying that they did well because they are “smart” to praising them for working hard on projects, which doesn’t always correlate with scoring well or receiving external recognition. I think their schools must have been using mindset theory in the way they talk to kids, because they believe the growth thing more than I do, even though I’ve read about the growth mindset enough to know that I should believe in it more.
Seems like another way of saying “nature versus nurture” (i.e. nature = inherently smart or not, nurture = will get smart if one works hard enough, although this is not the only possible way for nurture to help), even though reality is a combination of both.
Back to the original point – immigrants from some course countries are selected by the way immigration works to have a very high percentage of high educational attainment people. The kids of these immigrants will likely have both nature and nurture on their side.
Re: #83
Of course, this does not mean that one has to be an immigrant or kid of immigrants to succeed, since the actual association is that of high educational attainment. It just means that the high educational attainment parents are selected for in some groups of immigrants, creating the appearance of academic achievement being associated with race and ethnicity, due to race and ethnicity being a more obvious characteristic at first glance. Certainly, there are non-immigrant parents of high educational attainment around, and their kids likely have similar advantages in academic achievement (on the nurture side, consider as examples your wall of books, intellectual dinner conversations, etc., rather than the use of the television as a babysitter).
sure, I appreciate what you’re saying, ucb. But for me the larger issue is other kinds of identifiers, which is what I was trying to address instead. IOW, definitely not just on CC, or even primarily on CC – I hear over and over that mere “dedication” or, if one prefers, “primary focus” or “constancy of concern” as manifest quantitatively – i.e., in time spent and a particular emphasis during that time spent – that this is some kind of proof of a superior interest in education. That was the reason for my linking that interview from the other thread. It is not an indication of a “superior interest” or an elevated priority. There’s an elevated priority on a particular style of study, and because that style is often more “obvious” than other styles, there’s a false assumption that Asian immigrant families put “greater priority on education” than families not from Asia. I’m not buying it because I see no proof of that. (And I’m in education.)
In support of epiphany’s point about study styles:
My wife and I both had pretty high levels of educational attainment (HYP summa cum laude, junior PBK, upper part of class at top-10 law schools). Our parents were certainly supportive of us and went to bat for us with school administrators as we were growing up, and we grew up in homes where everyone was talking and using big words all the time. But none of our parents ever drilled us or checked our homework or put pressure on us to get good grades. That came from us, internally. We did no formal enrichment during our summers. We engaged in a certain amount of underage drinking and illegal drug use in high school. My wife spent her high school years at a truly awful exurban public school. Her parents refused to consider private school, on principle (they could have afforded it without serious strain), but they did help her graduate early so she didn't have to spend another year in that school.
We were a little more directly engaged in our children’s education, but only after their school made it clear that was what everyone expected. We only went over our kids’ homework for a few months for either child. We never enforced study times, or punished bad grades, or gave our children extra assignments. (Of course, we suggested things they might be interested in reading, and discussed them with our kids if a kid read them. Both children had extensive non-curricular intellectual interests.) Both kids did lots of extracurricular activities, but both worked at least 10 hours/week, too, in jobs for pay from 10th grade on. They went to decidedly non-academic summer camps. Their academic achievement is maybe less than ours was (both cum laude at a non-HYP elite university), but not by such a wide margin.
There was a kid (non-Asian) in my class growing up whose parents followed what people are calling the typical Asian pattern here: strict rules about everything, homework before anything else (oh how I hated going to his house after school!), limits on social life, extensive drilling, tons of scheduled lessons. He was pretty thoroughly mocked for that by his classmates. He was a good performer, but never someone whose achievements were outshining anyone else's. His younger sister, who was my younger sister's best friend, rebelled a lot more against her parents, and actually did meaningfully better in school and college. Maybe as a result of that rebellion; maybe not. You can't tell. I don't know whether my classmate outperformed his limited gifts because of the parental pressure or whether he underperformed because he was so unhappy and was so focused on memorization vs. creativity.
Just goes to show how important it is to pick the right parents. @epiphany and @JHS, it is great that you had such rich childhoods; certainly growing up that way was a great foundation in living fulfilling lives. As for Asian parents and their strict parenting styles, I think that they are just trying to do the best they can with the information that they have. It’s educational to read these boards and to learn how I can improve as a parent. I hope other parents are doing the same.
There are plenty of Asian parents who do not use the Amy Chua tiger parenting model.
In any case, tiger parenting or not is probably a relatively small effect (and not necessarily always positive) compared to the selection of people with high educational attainment as immigrants from some countries.
I absolutely agree. I believe that Asian immigrants want to be involved in their child’s education but they may be limited in what they can offer. STEM subjects are universal so they can probably help in those subjects, but their limited exposure to literature or philosophy taught in American schools may hinder them. Also, I don’t think you can discount the possible language barrier between parent and child. In the name of assimilation, my parents encouraged us to only speak English. Eventually it became very difficult to have deep meaningful conversations with them when their English was very limited. That’s pretty sad.
Probably the primary problem I see, leading to the awkwardness that is being implied, is the failure to first of all assume that one needs to absorb a different culture – in whatever limited way that means – by actually interacting with that culture in a receptive way. Granted, part of this is language-dependent, since culture is imbedded within language. (And I’ll address the language part more specifically in a moment.) But here’s what I’m referring to: Let’s change the model, for a minute, but make it parallel. Suppose I, someone born in the U.S., were to travel to South Korea or Vietnam in the hopes of getting a job there or putting my children through school there. How successful do you think I would be in those goals if I hung out only or mostly with other Americans, rather than (1) learning the languages of those countries; (2) asking questions of those natives as to how their – not my country’s – institutions work? Now, of course I would also associate with other Americans if I were overseas: I would have to, to some extent. Maybe they would even be my “home base.”
I don’t know where you live, but in many regions in this country – and I’m not limiting it to the East Asians, but it does seem to be more prevalent among East Asians and particularly the Chinese – it is possible to spend most of one’s time almost exclusively with people from the same culture, especially (obviously) if there are a large number of them there. It’s possible to do quite well, professionally, and never learn English beyond the most rudimentary level. But if you do so you will not understand American culture and American values and American priorities in higher education.
Now, in fairness, so do some other groups (stay with their own). Many Latin Americans come here and live in Hispanic communities, speak mostly Spanish, do most or all of their business with other local Hispanics. However, not nearly as many of them expect to matriculate to higher education. Some of their children, do – yes-- naturally. And there can be for these, also, a cultural hurdle if the children have not done a better job of truly assimilating (understanding, not “changing”). But I think there’s an intuitive grasp among them that the U.S. isn’t “just like” Mexico or Guatemala or El Salvador. It’s a particular problem that I see among East Asians that the U.S. is or “should be” just like their countries. Why? Why “should it be” or would it be just like China, South Korea, etc.? Again, if you’re being honest and applying my earlier model, you would find it embarrassing if I went East and assumed that those countries should be “just like” the U.S. You would consider me culturally ignorant and tell me to do some reading and listening.
Indeed. And it is exactly what happens with (especially) illegal immigrants from Mexico, by the way. First of all, they typically don’t come as a whole family, but in stages. But second, when the 1st generation born here are bilingual and the parents (many of whom are functionally illiterate in their own language) are not, there is indeed a limit to the deeper conversation, including, in this case, the inability of the older generation to pass on nuances about morality, behavior, expectations – that sort of thing. I should put “bilingual” in quotes, of course, because it’s different growing up in Mexico and growing up here. There is a surface way that the American-born child of Mexican immigrants is fluent but not always with the subtleties he would have there.
“I absolutely agree. I believe that Asian immigrants want to be involved in their child’s education but they may be limited in what they can offer.”
-disagree. Even parents that did not attend college, received much higher level of education than any American after k - 12. Asian and other immigrants may help A LOT and they do, primarily with math and sciences where k - 12 is lacking horribly. No need to help with the English, kids pick up English very fast, unless they are provided “help”. which only an obstacle to faster learning of the language at the young age.
I understand that immigrants need to assimilate to their new culture. I’m not convinced that Asians feel that college admissions “should” be a certain way. They’re probably confused by the whole process so they “wish” it were a certain way. The idea of finding an “And” or marketing yourself as an interesting/unique person is probably very confounding. Some of the gamesmanship in admissions is just plain bewildering and I don’t think Asians are the only ones who feel that way.
@miamiDAP, I think some people question why Asians seem to be so STEM focused. My point is that the parents can probably help their kids in STEM subjects but their limited exposure to the humanities taught in US schools could be a detriment when educating their kids.
I think it has little to do with immigration and more to do with societies expectations. Just look at the original question, it implies that it is “common” for asians to do well in school. Meaning that the average asian is expected to perform well. I dont know what it is like to grow up asian, but I do know what its like to grow up with expectations. Think about it, if you see a 20ish year old asian walking down the street youd probably think that guys good at math maybe a computer science major, but if you saw a latino of the same age walking around youd probably think oh that kids on his way to his waiter job, that is if you even gave him a second thought at all. Its easy to see then that when asians are encouraged to try hard in school its ok if they fumble because eventually they will get good at it just like they are meant to. As for latinos, when they fumble its because they arent meant to be there in the first place.
This is just compounded when they look around in the work force or even 4 year universities. Their dominated by asians so of course some 14 year old asian can think well obviously my people are meant to be there. While latinos look around and see their people in virtual wage slavery.
The whole point of the thread is that the patterns of immigration select highly educated people of some ethnic origins, but less educated people of some other ethnic origins. While you may see race and ethnicity associated with academic achievement, what you may actually be seeing is the effect of immigration selection on the immigrants and their kids. Societal expectations (whether misguidedly by race and ethnicity or otherwise) do not just appear out of nowhere. People (often incorrectly) latch on to associations of race and ethnicity mainly because those characteristics are much more visible than the parents’ educational attainment.
The whole point of the thread is that the patterns of immigration select highly educated people of some ethnic origins, but less educated people of some other ethnic origins. While you may see race and ethnicity associated with academic achievement, what you may actually be seeing is the effect of immigration selection on the immigrants and their kids. Societal expectations (whether misguidedly by race and ethnicity or otherwise) do not just appear out of nowhere. People (often incorrectly) latch on to associations of race and ethnicity mainly because those characteristics are much more visible than the parents’ educational attainment.
"Think about it, if you see a 20ish year old asian walking down the street youd probably think that guys good at math maybe a computer science major, but if you saw a latino of the same age walking around youd probably think oh that kids on his way to his waiter job, that is if you even gave him a second thought at all. "
Ewwww. YOU may think that way. If I see a 20 yo Asian man walking down the street I don’t assume anything other than he’s a 20 yo Asian. If I see a 20 yo Hispanic man walking down the street I don’t assume anything either. This way of thinking is gross and offensive.
“I’m not convinced that Asians feel that college admissions “should” be a certain way. They’re probably confused by the whole process so they “wish” it were a certain way. The idea of finding an “And” or marketing yourself as an interesting/unique person is probably very confounding”
The only way it is “confounding” is if you assume that how things are done in your home country are how they are done in the U.S.
Look, there’s nothing “confounding” about the fact that in these countries, college entry is score-based, and the college you go to determines the trajectory of your life. Supposedly “smart” people should be able to understand that hey - what things were like in my home country doesn’t necessarily translate to here. There are a lot of different types of intelligence, including the ability to observe one’s environment.
The “concern” about Asian Americans do differently than what Caucasian Americans do now will become a greater fear that Asian Americans will do exactly what Causian Americans do in order to gain advantages in life later.