Parents pressuring sister to major in "something useful".

gadad
Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:41:25 +0000

Immigrant engineer parents just are not going to get it about the opportunities in the US for non-engineers/non-medical-doctors/non-lawyers/non-fill-in-professional-degree-here. They just aren’t. In fact, they really can’t because this is part of the basic wiring of their brains due to their life experiences. Even though they may have moved here for new opportunities themselves, they still are first generation and it takes until about the third generation before families are completely in tune with life here. I’m not saying that this is bad, or wrong, just that it is the way it is.



That’s an interesting thesis Happymom, and one that may be worthy of a thread of its own. Working at a university, I have a number of close friends who have come to the U.S. for professional careers. They know all about the liberal arts and the concept of education of the whole person, but they can’t really bring themselves to buy in. I suspect that in the backs of their minds, they can’t shake the idea that there will truly come a day when a single test will be given and those who pass will be sent through one door to a professional technical career and the others will be sent through another to do menial work. And what’s truly unfortunate is that they often tend to see any extracurricular activity as a distraction from education rather than a key component of it.