<p>if it were just realized that money-making articles are supposed to be controversial, generalizing, and fallacious to catalyze/provoke reactions…</p>
<p>You’re comparing an equal number sample of a country of 300 million to an equal number sample of over 2 billion people…</p>
<p>You take the top thirty percent of China… and you have 300 million people that may be just as smart as the top 50 percent of the US… but top 50 percent of the US equates to nearly 150 million.
Plus, the movement to get everyone in the US a degree has made the value of a degree in the US gone down(So many people have them!). Go to China… Those that are getting a degree are in the highest tier of intelligence (and often money). Not the case in America!</p>
<p>I have seen international Asian kids bend the rules way more than any other group of kids. This goes from speaking in Korean or Chinese to share answers when the teacher calls on them or when they go up to the board or even on quizzes to obtaining old copies of tests from other asian students and studying those(Which is VERY VERY similar to the version given for the next 5 years or so).
Why is this the case? The pressure to succeed is so much higher and the pressure to keep high morale standards isn’t that high… I asked some Koren kids if they got lectures about (not) cheating in middle school and almost all of them said no. The academic world they grew up in was much more cut throat and less “We’ll all learn together”.
This also leads me to say this, “THEY CHEAT, BUT THEY LEARN.” Let’s say I have 10 physics problems to do tomorrow… I might get 5 wrong. The majority of the asians will get 9-10 correct, but when we have to explain them they will get 3-6 correct. WHY? They looked up the answers online using google or another search engine or they asked another person(Sometimes their parents! At 1.50 a call that adds up!). By the time the test rolls around, most of the asian students have racked up over 30 hours of study time, while most American students attain a mere 8.</p>
<p>I have a firm belief that the asian students have more knowledge because they try harder and spend more time on it, BUT I see less raw intelligence in many cases. I see Asians reaching their potential way more tho. </p>
<p>Asian students are also used to going to school for almost 300 days a year in some cases… I barely spend 200 days in school. So they have had an extra 2 years in middle school and high school than I had.</p>
<p>^ it seems this person this poster is trying to justify his or her inadequacies</p>
<p>Nevertheless, in college I had a lot of Asian friends and man let me put it this way- these guys did what was needed to get good grades. I will not mention anything since I like them, but I would just advise American Universities to throw away the honor code if they dont really plan to use it :).</p>
<p>However there were some that were as straight as a bow, and perfectly morally upright. I would agree that a lot of them took liberties</p>
<p>“straight as a bow” - do you mean straight as an arrow, or were they bent??</p>
<p>Straight as a bow – I like that and will definitely use it. With proper attribution, of course! :D</p>
<p>I think the issue here also comes from relative ideas of success, something I can talk about from a slightly different angle. In the Asian cultures I have run across, the idea of success can be measured quite differently then in whatever “US” culture is. In Asia, to get ahead, there is a very strong concept of ‘winning’, whether it be in getting the highest grades on exams, grades in class, or in any kind of ‘competition’. From what I have seen (and keep in mind I will not claim to speak for every person in every culture in Asia, that would be idiotic, considering the size of the countries and also the diversity within those cultures), most see others as competitors, to be beaten, to do better then, to be higher on the totem pole, so I suspect as others have written that the idea of collective working and such is rare in the kind of situations we are talking about, because helping someone else gives you less of an advantage. Even in the workplace, dealing with a lot of young kids from the cultures we are talking about, it can be hard to convince them that if they see someone who is having trouble and helping them solve a problem is a good thing, that it would look better to help a colleage solving a problem, even if not assigned to that particular project, then to let them struggle and fail…and obviously, this again is not universal, just something i have seen as being common .</p>
<p>Where I see it from a different view is in music, specifically in classical music that has seen an explosion of Asian students over the past 30 years (today Juilliard, in both its pre and college level programs, is about 65% Asian, in the solo instruments more then the orchestral only ones). Asian students (again, especially on the solo instruments)tend to see success as being “winning” or ‘being higher level’ then other students earlier. You often see with Asian violin students where they go from playing Suzuki to jump to learning a Paganini Caprice (one of the hardest pieces in the rep); you see tons of Asian kids playing difficult pieces at young ages, but to do so they have sort of gamed things, because they also have skipped a lot in the middle (that eventually they will pay the price for). With musical competitions, there is a decidedly stronger involvment with Asian students, because to them competitions and ‘winning them’ shows achievement (which to be honest in some cases is true, but in others, means they were good at winning a competition). You have things like a young student, rather then working across a broad base of repertoire and technique, working on a particular concerto for a couple of years to be able to win competitions (standard learning on something like the violin would have the student progressing through the repertoire during that time and picking up new techniques and such)…obviously, this is not universally true, there are a lot of Asian students who either don’t follow this or have teachers who make sure they understand the reality…(and with this, a lot of this isn’t the kid themselves, a lot of the time it is the parents, and teachers go crazy dealing with it)</p>
<p>Does this mean all Asian kids cheat or a large proportion of them do? I think that there are strong reasons why an Asian kid might cheat, given the incredible emphasis on needing to be ‘the best’ or winning in the culture I have seen, and that could drive them to cheat, it is a pretty strong incentive. Do they cheat more then non asians? I think that would be a blanket overstatement, my speculation would be that Asian kids do well for the most part because they have been driven from an early age to achieve, to work hard at what they are doing in school, so if they cheat it probably is situational, and probably isn’t any more prevalent then with non Asian students.</p>
<p>I think the real answer is that many teachers set themselves up to allow cheating in their classrooms, maybe to ‘keep grades up’ or something. There are easy ways to prevent cheating, if a teacher gives out the answers after collecting the homework, or doesn’t put the homework away (so someone can’t hand it in late), or doesn’t maintain discipline in the classroom (like, for example, telling students anyone caught with a blackberry or similar device on will assumed to have been caught cheating), it doesn’t take much to keep kids from cheating. If you give take home exams, you have to realize it is easy to cheat, and do something to make it harder (maybe give different questions to different students). When I was in college back in the dark ages, I had an HP 41c calculator (programmable)…I used to have to dump the memory (by popping the battery pack) in science exams to show that I didn’t have formulas programmed in to the proctor…and I suspect that Asian and non Asian students avail themselves of it. It is not hard to prevent cheating, the fact that many teachers are lax tells a larger story to me.</p>
<p>I don’t have any cultural specific opinions, but in general, I feel sorry for any kid who feels the need to compete, to be the ‘best’ at anything (music, math, art, sports, leadership) at any cost. There may be situations where a kid feels a strong INTRINSIC need to spend all their time on one thing, but most of the time it is parent or culturally driven. Personally, I feel children need time to be creative, to think, to explore interests and to develop personal relationships. When it comes to too much pressure to succeed, kids will do whatever it takes to fulfill parental or societal expectations- that includes cheating, alcohol, drugs, whatever.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree, mimimom, but in some societies winning is the ONLY way to succeed: you have to be the best in your class, the best in your school, the best in your city (etc etc) to be given opportunities that here in the US come easily to most people. Quite simply, they’re hungrier for success because it means so much more, and is more limited, than here.</p>
<p>“Winning isnt everything; its the only thing!”<br>
–from a famous Asian philosopher, Vince Lombardi.</p>
<p>I disagree. The entrepreneurial class comes from all social classes, and from all educational ranks- the highly, so-so and poorly educated. I think this holds true in all cultures these days.</p>
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<p>I thought Vince Lombardi was from Bolivia!</p>
<p>^^ I definitely though Lombardi was Italian, lol.</p>
<p>I think this article was uncalled for. She’s an educator, yet she chooses to denigrate an entire group of her students based on their nationality? I don’t get that. </p>
<p>I could write an article entitled “My Lazy American Professor” by I don’t think she’d like that to much.</p>
<p>That’s not fair, Mojave. I think someone mentioned earlier that she didn’t pick the title and that she didn’t use the word “lazy” in her article.</p>
<p>re: Cheating by students from certain countries – this was endemic on TOEFL exams, particularly with students from Pakistan and India when I worked for a UC campus in the 80’s. Just last week Princeton’s paper reported on 61 TOEFL cheaters currently studying in the US – they’d hired impersonators to take the exam. (I suspect that this was the same problem we were seeing in the '80’s – all we knew were that graduate students with very solid TOEFL scores were showing up completely unable to effectively read, write and speak in English.)</p>
<p>Article:
[Fraudulent</a> TOEFL-takers face possible deportation - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2003/03/05/7516/]Fraudulent”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2003/03/05/7516/)</p>
<p>when I taught college in the nineties I had many foreign students at that time mostly Japanese and Western European. They were better trained and more organized than the Americans and initially impressive. However over time the foreign students often lost impetus and faded. Seemed like, getting into college was the game, but when it came time for the long haul they just couldn’t do it. It would have been easy teaching freshman English to form an opinion close to the writer of this article but I saw them over the years and modified my opinion. My best foreign student was a young woman from a small village in Peru, who after getting some English help, became a very fine student and transferred to an Ivy League college. The worst were usually the Japanese, faded quickly, and the well educated Russians. I was disappointed by the superficial nature of the Boston Globe article. A lot of personal opinion and not much research. Babson should hire someone more thoughtful.</p>
<p>Granted I did read in the reply piece that she didn’t choose the title, her editors did & I understand that.</p>
<p>But while (thankfully) she didn’t use the term “lazy” she DID separate her students by nationality and proceed to claim that one group had a better work ethic than another. Perhaps this is a bit personal for me because I’ve had teachers do this (based on race) and their personal assessments were always biased or unsound in some way. They think so-and-so is lazy and unmotivated because they fall asleep in class; not knowing that this kid had to work two shifts last night to help their mom out, or that this kid hadn’t eaten since lunch at school yesterday, or that this kid walked three miles in the rain to even get to school that day. </p>
<p>I’ll assume that at a Northeastern college like Babson the above examples don’t occur that much, and its more than likely true that the majority of Ms. Miller’s students are from middle or upper middle class backgrounds and might feel entitled to good grades with little work. Had her article stated that her more economically privileged students had a disappointing work ethic or something similar, I wouldn’t have an issue.There are a litany of factors she just didn’t even consider before writing off her American students. I personally am just very wary of people who divide people into groups and then make declarations about them based on something as personal and concrete as nationality/race/ethnicity/gender/etc because it ALWAYS deteriorates into an “us vs. them” type of thing. This very thread has now turned to talk of which country has students that cheat the most. I felt that as an educator, she should’ve known better than to make her point like this.</p>
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<p>speedo, over time how did the Americans tend to fare?</p>
<p>My prof friend at a local CC would agree with the article as written. The tendency he’s seen is for his Asian students (all origins) to cheat, turning in identical computer programs for example. And many of his “American” i.e. Anglo students are slackers, rudely using cell phones during class, walking out during class, etc. He is very happy with his Japanese students, however.</p>
<p>So I’m wondering how socioeconomic status plays into this?</p>
<p>Socioeconomic status might play heavily into it. Some of the foreign kids may very well come from priviliged backgrounds (having access to things tends to increase with wealth, as it does anywhere else, including the US), and get into ‘good schools’ because of the influence of family wealth, and also the ability to send them through prep programs and such, not to mention not so subtle bribes in the form of donations to the school. Like their “legacy” US counterparts, the scions of the well off might not be as motivated to do well in school, since getting there is most of what they want based on experience…so that could be part of it, too. Thus a rich Russian kid, whose father is an oil billionaire, may want the ivy league diploma for the name, cause he knows given russian companies, he will inherit the company presidency from the old man anyway…</p>
<p>With the Japanese students, it could be that that is still part of the Japanese educational culture. When I was in grad school in the mid 90’s, one of my courses did a lot of work on Japan and its educational system…according to the prof and the studies we had, in Japan the big thing is getting into a high level university, and then many kids coast (they feel they have already learned enough by the time they get to college that there is little to learn there)…so everything was in the 12 years of education before, to get into that prestigious school, and that is what got you on the track…from what I know, Japan made serious efforts to change their ed system, and of course there are probably plenty of students who work hard all the way through…</p>
<p>I think the key to this is looking at the picture in terms of culture and the societies the kids come from, and work from there. In a society with limited opportunities to get head, where traditionally and culturally emphasis is on ‘being first’ (not unlike the sports metaphor people throw around) or ‘beating out the other guy’ (not unknown, obviously, in all cultures, at places like MIT and Harvard and the like there is plenty of lore about students doing what they could to sabotage other students, like making research material from the library “disappear” and the like), it is likely that this could lead some to cheat, if not a lot situationally; and in some cases societies have systems set up where corruption is part of the system…That said, I think saying that US students are unmotivated or lazy is as disgusting as saying Asian students are all cheaters or whatever; and the “Asian Work ethic” itself can be a misnomer; you might have an Asian kid who spends all his time studying and such, getting good grades, but does little else, while another kid, who might not be a 4.0, is working and acquiring other skills during college (no,beer pong is not a skill! <em>lol</em>)</p>
<p>“I disagree. The entrepreneurial class comes from all social classes, and from all educational ranks- the highly, so-so and poorly educated. I think this holds true in all cultures these days.” </p>
<p>mimimox – what if you’re not interested in being an entrepreneur? Shopkeepers do not a society make. And poor people do not loans get. Even in this society :)</p>
<p>post #179 Babson is focussed on entreprenuership so Mimimox’s statement has some validity here.</p>
<p>Point taken on the stereotyping and as for my experience with the American students, in the long run they are just as good as the best of the foreign students. Although my teaching experience is 15 years behind now. The Japanese system has indeed changed as has the American one. I suspect the top levels of the better districts are producing kids with similar skills to the best of the rest of the world and they are just as grade oriented.
btw, my D an American, did very well in this particular teachers class so apparently she wasn’t one of the cell phone hungover talkers - which is refreshing.</p>