My lazy American students (Boston Globe)

Parents Forum
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<p>[My</a> lazy American students - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/21/my_lazy_american_students/]My”>http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/21/my_lazy_american_students/) </p>

<p>“My ‘C,’ ‘D,’ and ‘F’ students this semester are almost exclusively American, while my students from India, China, and Latin America have - despite language barriers - generally written solid papers, excelled on exams, and become valuable class participants.”</p>

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<p>Hmmm. And Babson has a 40% acceptance rate, a 1400 SAT 75th percentile rate and graduates 84% of their incoming freshmen within 4 years. If the students profiled in the article are not uncommon at a relatively selective school like Babson it makes you wonder what’s going on in the classrooms at the less selective majority of colleges.</p>

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<p>From my experience at school, certain groups of international students (mainly Chinese) also seem to be more willing to take certain “academic liberties” when doing their coursework.</p>

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<p>It seems she doesn’t realize that her international students are probably much more motivated than their compatriots.</p>

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<p>Stop complaining about how lazy your American students are. You have a mechanism in place for dealing with that: give them F’s. That’s what F’s are for. They make room for the good students.</p>

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<p>If you think they cheat, then just say so. No need for any James Taggart-ing.</p>

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<p>Interesting article but quite frankly, I don’t think it’s all about laziness.</p>

<p>I think many Americans go through a pretty big crisis of identity in college. I can’t say why Indians/Chinese/etc. aren’t effected by it. My guess would be that for an international student, being in the U.S. is success enough. Succeeding at a college in the U.S. is success enough. A student who is FROM the U.S. thinks differently. While all through college being in H.S. and succeeding in H.S. and getting into college were success enough…what defines success AFTER college is much more muddled for many American students. It’s certainly not just “be a doctor and make lots of money” for everyone, which is the goal for many international students. Many Americans have this weird idea of success which, in college, begins to feel unattainable. Suddenly “being there and getting the grades” isn’t enough. While international students are just getting a taste of opportunity, American students have had it all of their lives and that isn’t enough fuel to keep them going.</p>

<p>Why are depression/anxiety/etc. huge issues in colleges and why does the suicide rate spike during the college years? Inability to concentrate, falling asleep in class, failure to complete work, etc. are all signs of depression. Is a student who commits suicide “lazy”? Of course a student is going to look at their shoes and mumble something about “late night dorm parties” rather than confide in a prof about serious mental illness, insomnia, depression, etc.</p>

<p>While I’m sure laziness accounts for many of these students’ problems, a significant amount did well in high school - esp. at a competitive school. A Vast majority must have worked hard in HS to get there, and college sees a huge downturn in their performance. Something changed for many of these American kids, it didn’t “stay the same”. </p>

<p>So while I agree with some parts of the article, I find it rather trite. It really doesn’t explore the complexity of the issue at all and I feel bad for the students who might have been suffering from serious problems that the prof just thought were being “lazy”. I do think there’s a difference in work ethic between U.S. and other countries but I don’t think it’s as one-sided as the prof makes it sound (for example, there are negatives to this culture - the Japanese work themselves to death, let’s not even GO there…I never want American society to be so work-a-holic), and I don’t think that’s the ONLY difference in these students’ experience that are causing them to act differently, either - even assuming hard work is generally a good quality (and it is), it’s not the only thing separating the camps.</p>

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<p>Really? Asian students cheat more? I’d like to see your reasoning for that…
In my experience international (especially Chinese/Indian students) are more hardworking and less willing to cheat because of the high value placed on education in their cultures and families. The students I know who cheat are almost exclusively those who are lazy and don’t want to do the work…and say what you will, but there’s a reason why Asian students tend to score better statistically than other races on tests and school. And it’s NOT cheating ^^</p>

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<p>To make it even worse, the goal is not to be productive, but rather just to work a lot. In Japan I watched people sit at their desks literally for hours, doing nothing, just to avoid being the first person to leave the office, thus appearing lazy. To me (having grown up in the US) it was mind-numbingly stupid; to them, just life.</p>

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<p>The Japanese work themselves to death? The Japanese life expectancy is longer than Americans’ - it’s one of the longest in the world.</p>

<p>I think the author of this article is stereotyping - not all international students are hard-working and not all American students are lazy. I agree that international students take a different approach to school and schoolwork because their school systems are set up differently; their systems of paying for college might also be different, so while most middle-class American high school students “expect” to go to college after high school many of these international students might be grateful just for the chance to go to the U.S. and study. Still, that’s stereotyping. A lot of American students are also grateful for the chance and work their butts off just like they did in high school. I mean, one minute we’re complaining that American high school students are lazy and the next we’re complaining that they never have any free time between studying for the SAT, ECs and actually going to school.</p>

<p>At the same time, there’s some stereotyping going on in this thread, too. I’ve seen no evidence that international students are more likely to cheat than their American counterparts. And assuming that American students’ goals are so fundamentally different from their international counterparts - implying that most international students just want to be a doctor and make money, but American students somehow have higher-minded goals and conceptions of success - is absurd. I’ve known plenty of American students who want to be physicians because they know that kind of work makes lots of money (or engineers, or attorneys, or i-bankers). Not that anything is WRONG with that. And I know lots of international students going into lower-paying fields because that’s their passion.</p>

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<p>Frankly, I think many high schools are too easy which encourages bad habits. </p>

<p>I sent my kids to schools where they had a lot of homework and many essays to write (and their essays were graded using high standards - any misplaced modifiers and other errors were found and marked! Strict rubrics had to be followed or their grades suffered). On the other hand, I’ve known other schools to hardly assign any homework and very few essays. Essays take a long time to grade correctly, so many teachers assign few or they don’t bother to grade them correctly.</p>

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<p>Has anyone considered how much harder it is for an international student to get into a U.S. college? Self-selection bias, plain and simple.</p>

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<p>They don’t really live longer. They just spend a lot of time at their desks before anyone notices that they’ve passed on.</p>

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<p>Yes! Hence all the kids on CC with a 3.9 GPA who get rejected from top schools. In my opinion, if you get almost all A’s and are anything less than a super-hard-working academic stud, then your school isn’t teaching you good habits. I put my own high school in that category; our valedictorian was a grade-grubbing dullard. The really brilliant kids were bored and got lower grades, but went on to do impressive things afterward.</p>

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<p>“The Japanese work themselves to death? The Japanese life expectancy is longer than Americans’ - it’s one of the longest in the world.”</p>

<p>It’s a figure of speech <em>rolls eyes</em>. And you can’t deny there’s a work-a-holic culture there that many people aren’t a fan of. Different strokes for different folks, and I’m sorry, I wouldn’t want to be part of that society (not just for the fact that I’m a woman - ahah!).</p>

<p>“implying that most international students just want to be a doctor and make money, but American students somehow have higher-minded goals and conceptions of success - is absurd”</p>

<p>Again, that’s taking what I said waaaay too literally. </p>

<p>I never said American students have higher-minded goals, but it’s true that a lot of foreign PARENTS anyway, place a lot of emphasis on the ‘right’ jobs and the ‘right’ amount of money and that’s SOME kind of structure. Americans may reject that idea of success but they have no other structure besides it, oftentimes. Their parents were “do whatever you want/you can be anything” hippies (YES that is a cultural difference - there are exceptions but we’re talking about overarching themes here) and so the American student is often LOST in college. They don’t have HIGHER MINDED ideas of success, they don’t have /any/ idea of success.</p>

<p>“I’ve known plenty of American students who want to be physicians because they know that kind of work makes lots of money (or engineers, or attorneys, or i-bankers).”</p>

<p>“plenty of Americans are grateful to just be there and work their butt…”</p>

<p>Yes, and those usually aren’t the kind to fall asleep in class and not turn their work in. </p>

<p>We’re working with stereotypes here and going out on a limb and assuming it’s true - overall if you’re an American, you’re more likely to fail to turn in work/ask for extensions/etc. than if you’re an international student. Although we all aknowledge it’s not like the author did a statistically rigorous study <em>rolls eyes</em>, I can humor him to some extent and say maybe the phenomenon is true (a big leap, I know) because I have seen examples of that - stereotypes usually come from somewhere, the problem is we assign the wrong reasons to them.</p>

<p>Ex. stereotype that “black men are big scary criminals”</p>

<p>WELL, it’s true that a higher percentage of people in jail are african american men than you’d expect.</p>

<p>But is it because of racial profiling, not because they’re all criminals? Because of the poverty they grow up in that causes young African American men to turn to crime, not because theyre “big and scary”? Etc.</p>

<p>I see this stereotype as a similar example. Possible true in some ways, but certainly explored only on a surface and misleading level by the article.</p>

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<p>Completely agreed. Like my friend at Stanford from China is a complete academic stud and he had to be prodded to apply to American schools (he was under the impression, which is somewhat correct, that he had such a little shot). And being accepted at other schools which Americans treat as commonplace was a huge deal in his country. </p>

<p>If you guys read the comments, you’d notice that professors in Asian schools have noted that there are students there that are just like the Americans described in the article.</p>

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<p>Interesting that said professor has taken to labelling her lower achieving students as “lazy”. “Lazy” is a loaded term that implies willful disregard for accomplishing necessary tasks.</p>

<p>The kid with “poor time management skills” isn’t necessarily lazy (trust me plenty of ADD types have poor time management skills). Perhaps when mommy and daddy helicoptor through high school scheduling every waking minute of ECs and whatnot to get into said school, when the foreign student model is much simpler (eat, sleep, study - not necessarily in that order) and easier to manage. Foreign cultures don’'t deal with the distraction of ECs as foreign universities typically don’t weight them very heavily.</p>

<p>What I’m saying here is that we have 2 bunches here that are not “trained” to be a student in the same way. Putting labels on them doesn’t change anything or actually may be more destructive than good.</p>

<p>Neither the Eat/Sleep/Work foreign student or the ADD/Lacking-time-management caucasian is well prepared to be successful in the real world where both getting things done well and navigating the social network of the society are necessary for optimum performance. However, this professor clearly has a preference for one model over the other.</p>

<p>Did anyone notice that nothing was said about non-foreign non-caucasians here? Probably wouldln’t have been politically correct. Their culture and socialization may be something else yet, and we can’t be calling that lazy if they aren’t getting A’s and B’s (don’t even know how they stack up).</p>

<p>Maybe if said professor looked at students as they come instead of treating them as brains in a jar, a better appreciation of individuals might occur.</p>

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<p>Well, testing is something that can be trained…which it is. And clearly it’s a poor thing to say that ALL chinese students cheat, or might cheat, but I’ve been reading China Underground [Amazon.com:</a> China Underground (9781593762230): Zachary Mexico: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/China-Underground-Zachary-Mexico/dp/1593762232]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/China-Underground-Zachary-Mexico/dp/1593762232) and he does spend some time detailing the HUGE problem China has with cheating in Academia/Paper-writing. Apparently, many/most attempt to plagerize and then it is overlooked because no one wants to be shamed by the fact that someone did cheat.</p>

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<p>I work in a 1st grade class room with ESL students AND American students. Same class, same teacher, same living conditions. I LOVE working with the foreign students because they WANT to learn whereas the American students are just… lazy (for the most part). While most of the American students are struggling with addition, many of the immigrants are doing multiplication and division, and they’re not all from Asia (there are many African children as well). </p>

<p>It is not JUST Asians or JUST college or JUST anything, American students are lazier as a whole… I don’t think that is debatable (in my opinion). The CAUSES are debatable though.</p>

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<p>“Chinese undergraduates have consistently impressed me with their work ethic, though I have seen similar habits in students from India, Thailand, Brazil, and Venezuela. Often, they’ve done little English-language writing in their home countries, and they frequently struggle to understand my lectures. But their respect for professors - and for knowledge itself - is palpable. The students listen intently to everything I say, whether in class or during office hours, and try to engage in the conversation.”</p>

<p>Many international students should not have been enrolled into the colleges they got into. Nor should they have been denied admission. The system is broken. They get in because they work very hard to clearly outstat many english speakers. Unfortunately, they are then forced to work overly hard to keep up once they arrive. They are taught to the test and they are brainwashed to suck up to their superiors, and this creates almost a learning disability in them when they enter university. We need a new system that spends 6 months to a year retraining these hard working and ambitious students so they can easily succeed in college, rather than needlessly working themselves to death because they weren’t truly ready language-wise. Such a system would make them get much more out of their learning experience, as well as benefitting the students around them and their teachers.</p>

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<p>Hmmm… I started my schooling in Asia, and then once I returned to the United States, I was so bored I refused to do the work. I wonder if it’s because we act like education is a hassle? I attribute a lot of it to the fact that my parents wanted me to be educated, but there is no denying that American schooling starts several YEARS later than other schools. For example, in Singapore, they start schooling at age two. There’s no mystery as to why they’d be years ahead of their American counterparts.</p>