Not too long ago there were a series of posts concerning Tiger Moms and Paper Tigers about Asian American students and studies. There was also one article titled What happens to all the Asian American Overachievers When the Test Taking Ends? I won’t address the main point of the article but it does mention this near the beginning:
And so there is an additional concern accompanying the rise of the Tiger Children, one focused more on the narrowness of the educational experience a non-Asian child might receive in the company of fanatically preprofessional Asian students. Jenny Tsai, a student who was elected president of her class at the equally competitive New York public school Hunter College High School, remembers frequently hearing that “the school was becoming too Asian, that they would be the downfall of our school.” A couple of years ago, she revisited this issue in her senior thesis at Harvard, where she interviewed graduates of elite public schools and found that the white students regarded the Asians students with wariness. (She quotes a music teacher at Stuyvesant describing the dominance of Asians: “They were mediocre kids, but they got in because they were coached.”) In 2005, The Wall Street Journal reported on “white flight” from a high school in Cupertino, California, that began soon after the children of Asian software engineers had made the place so brutally competitive that a B average could place you in the bottom third of the class.
Colleges have a way of correcting for this imbalance: The Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade has calculated that an Asian applicant must, in practice, score 140 points higher on the SAT than a comparable white applicant to have the same chance of admission. This is obviously unfair to the many qualified Asian individuals who are punished for the success of others with similar faces. Upper-middle-class white kids, after all, have their own elite private schools, and their own private tutors, far more expensive than the cram schools, to help them game the education system.
I came across this very interesting article (however positive or negative people may interpret it such as Ask A Korean), it basically talks about what is referred to as the “bamboo ceiling.” By now it is really no secret that Asian students excel at scholastic but this article wants to look at life after all the tests are over. So what happens after school? You’ve spent your whole life studying and taking tests, now what? Perhaps it is because I am not Asian that I feel as though I am not qualified enough to talk about this, after all my upbringing was totally different. But it does point out something rather interesting regarding “Leadership and Following.”
Perhaps one of the things I haven’t really written so much about is really on being an English teacher. Particularly being an American English teacher. There is quite a bit of information out there regarding teaching, of course in this case relating to Korea and Japan – but when I read most of the information out there I can’t help but think of the situation here in America.
It feels like forever since I had anything worthy to say about Japan, seems to me that ever since I got involved with Korea, I’ve become aware on Japanese matters. But during this time I was able to learn a few differences between America, Japan and Korea. I don’t think I have to go deep into American culture as most people who read this might be from America and despite regional differences, can tell you what problems we have or don’t.
It is all about the ratings when it comes to news, this is not something unique to one country, but when it comes to Sensationalism, America is really terrible at it. That is not to say that other countries don’t do it either, it is just that America has a way of turning events into themselves rather than the victims. You can take the nuclear disaster in Japan and how they choose to concentrate it affecting Hawaii and California rather than Japan and how antiradiation meds are flying off the shelves here, where they could actually be more useful when people need them.
Perhaps one of the most common phrases I encounter is that of “American’s are so open minded.” While the rest of the world is comfortable viewing this as true as a fact, I hold different opinions as to what it means to be open minded.
7. Psychology . a system of interrelated, emotion-charged ideas, feelings, memories, and impulses that is usually repressed and that gives rise to abnormal or pathological behavior.
Before I begin this section, I would like to point out that I do not intend on stereotyping others, but I will make generalizations about Americans in order to create a helpful guide for people traveling from abroad and to avoid confusion or unexpected moments in embarrassment. Additionally, I would like to mention that this does not cover for any regional differences, as American is a pretty large country and different behaviors exist between communities.
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