<p>Yup, I agree with self-selection thing, too. </p>
<p>This prof really doesn’t seem to understand the complexities of the situation, which is weird, considering it’s, um, a college prof.</p>
<p>“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>
<p>Starting education at age 2 has surely resulted in many negative consequences as well.</p>
<p>Another reason more American students are “lazy” is because many more attend American universities than do international students.</p>
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<p>many times in my AP calculus class, when we weren’t allowed to use calculators on tests, some of the asian students in my class declared that they needed to use their translators for the test, even though the teacher was going to use the same wording that she was using all throughout the class, so there wouldnt be any surprises. why for the test did they need their translators all of a sudden when they didnt even use them during normal class periods? i doubt they had translators that didnt have a calculator function…</p>
<p>…just saying. im not bitter (i ended up doing better on the tests than some of them based on the fact that i knew the concepts better) but i agree with the quoted statement</p>
<p>If you were to see the entire population of college-aged kids in those countries, the picture would be very different. The professor is a snob and a fool.</p>
<p>I have a friend who is a professor at a nearby university. Very talented, smart woman. Her vision of herself is that she is bestowing a gift on her students (which she is) and she has a very interesting perspective on all her students. She is an elite school grad, with the lifestyle that would have made that expected, so she is comfortable with the very wealthy kids, thinking that they are intellectually curious and talented and treats them accordingly. She will accept just about any kind of behavior from very poor or minority kids because she is so completely out of touch with them that she can’t really get a handle on what they are capable of and treats THEM accordingly. She considers herself to be very open-minded and tolerant, but I actually think she’s doing her students a disservice. She recently taught at a small, private university nearby that was more middle-of-the-road in terms of intellectual achievement, but the students are generally white, not elite, and middle class. She loathed those kids. Just hated them and the school because it didn’t fit her vision of herself. The students could have walked on water to get to class and cured cancer and she’d still hate them. I’ve scoped her out on “ratemyprofessor” and it’s amazing to me the difference in the reviews from her previous job to the current one, which befits her view of herself. She means well, but she just can’t see her own bias.</p>
<p>[ quote]American students are lazier as a whole[ /quote]</p>
<p>Then who has the best students that started Google, Facebook, Youtube, etc., and got the largest share of Nobel Laureates?</p>
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<p>The statement about life expectancy in Japan being longer than in most other countries is correct. An oddity of World Health Organization statistics about Japan (which go back to before World War II for Japan, because Japan was part of the League of Nations) is that the youth suicide rate in Japan actually declined in the postwar years, and is much lower than the youth suicide rate in the United States today, even though the aggregate all-age national suicide rate is higher in Japan than in the United States. Something about teenage life in the United States bears more suicide risk than teenage life in Japan. Japan still has, as it has always had, a lower overall national suicide rate than several countries in Europe. </p>
<p>[WHO</a> | Global charts](<a href=“http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/charts/en/index.html]WHO”>http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/charts/en/index.html)</p>
<p>very interesting discussion. i am just now advising an international student applying to us colleges. he was absolutely amazed when he discovered just what is expected of kids applying to elite schools. he couldn’t believe that IN ADDITION to outstanding grades in very tough schools, and top test scores, students were also expected to have worked, done volunteer work, participated in sports, music. “when do they get the time?” he asked in amazement. </p>
<p>ah yes. the lazy american.</p>
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<p>Many of the business founders you mention were first-generation immigrants to the United States and less culturally “American” than people like me who have colonial-era American ancestry.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the “American students are lazy “meme. In my observations from undergrad to grad, there are serious and not so serious in each cohort.</p>
<p>tokenadult, the guy who started facebook was an american student at harvard who dropped out once his website took off. mark zuckerburg… an immigrant? doesnt sound like it</p>
<p>Re 26</p>
<p>Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google with Larry Page, was born in Russia. Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who co-founded Youtube together with Chad Hurley, were born in Taiwan and East Germany, respectively.</p>
<p>As for American Nobel Laureates, Wikipedia reveals that quite a few were born outside the United States. It’s especially apparent in the last three years. Of the nine Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans in 2009, three went to naturalized Americans. President Obama himself is actually a “young” American, as his father was an international student from Kenya. Of the five awarded to Americans in 2008, two went to naturalized Americans, and Roger Tsien is the son of two Chinese immigrants. Of the five awarded to Americans in 2007, another two went to naturalized Americans.</p>
<p>Of course, there are plenty of natural-born American Nobel Laureates, but don’t forget that there are a lot of naturalized American Nobel Laurates, too.</p>
<p>This article makes a very sad statement about the condition of our education system in America. Of course, one must note as well that the foreign students are likely among the hardest working students where they come from to be enrolled at a school thousands of miles away from home.</p>
<p>Does the author or the article ever stop to contemplate the fact that she teaches at babson university?</p>
<p>I assure you that if she were ever to come to Yale there would be absolutely no difference between the Americans and the immigrants.</p>
<p>" tega</p>
<p>Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 4,294,967,294 "</p>
<p>Now that’s an active CC poster!</p>
<p>I’ll also back the “Chinese kids cheat” with anecdotal evidence but that’s just recent immigrants, not Chinese kids raised in America. Hard to cheat on a test though, so those are the moments of truth there.</p>
<p>That and as someone else said, you’re comparing the very best from other countries against the average from our own country.</p>
<p>Post #12 nailed it. Self selection bias. Prof needs a statistics class. And Fabrizio - that’s the beauty of America. It’s made of folks who have struggled to get here from all over the world. Since the beginning.</p>
<p>Whoa … tega has to be a staff member who get his/her post coumt amilified, since getting 4 billion is … realistically impossible.</p>
<p>Anyway … I think at top schools there p robably wouldn’t be a differene.</p>
<p>I think a lot of this article is blatant stereotyping…that said, here are some (very general) thoughts.</p>
<p>There is definitely self-selection bias. All of the international students I have met were <em>the</em> brightest people and had to jump through a lot of loops to get into the United States. As another poster said, at a top school, there isn’t much of a difference between the international vs. American kids.</p>
<p>Another…As a college student myself, a lot of Americans value extracurricular activities (ie, dance teams, college sports, acapella groups, etc) that aren’t as highly valued with other cultures. To me, as an American, part of the ‘education’ of college is meeting other people, discussing new perspectives. It isn’t just studying out of a book-which may be what is the fundamental difference here. FWIW, many of the college lectures/etc (pure ‘learning for the sake of learning’) experiences are attended by an all American crowd, so I doubt the problem is laziness or lack of intellectual curiosity.</p>
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<p>You’re labeling first graders–first graders!–as lazy? And it’s because they are struggling with math concepts? Which other kids were apparently introduced to at home? I sure hope you don’t teach any kids I know, if you can dismiss them at 6. That’s just sad.</p>
<p>I volunteer in a neonatal ward. Same hospital, same doctors, same nurses. I LOVE Asian and African babies because they can’t wait to learn to crawl to the potty. You can see them tugging at their own little diapers, trying to change themselves. The American babies just lay there peeing and pooping and whining if you don’t change their diapers for them. What a sad commentary on our culture.</p>