Why Asian American kids excel. It’s not ‘Tiger Moms.’

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not a tiger mom?

From article:

They (parents) also make sure their kids get plenty of supplementary help such as tutoring.

These families have incredibly high standards, according to the study. If kids come home with a 3.5 grade-point average, parents are disappointed that it’s not 4.0 — and they show it.

If a child gets into, say, Cal State, the question is why they didn’t make it into Stanford.

If a son or daughter comes home and settles for a bachelor’s degree, they’re made to feel less accomplished because they don’t have a PhD.

+1. I read the article. Pretty much it’s tiger moms and dads - and expectations therefrom

[Anonymous]

Asian/Indian parents will continue to raise their children the way we have been doing - and we will do so because it WORKS.

You can go on decrying it until the cows come home but it will not make any difference to us. When we see proven results that another method works better, we will be all ears.

Have you ever noticed Asian parents are hardly ever critical of non-Asian parents approach to education? We are perfectly happy leaving it to them to do what they think works for them. It is invariably non-Asian parents - mainly white parents - who focus on the ills of Asian parenting when it comes to education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Asian/Indian parents will continue to raise their children the way we have been doing - and we will do so because it WORKS.

You can go on decrying it until the cows come home but it will not make any difference to us. When we see proven results that another method works better, we will be all ears.

Have you ever noticed Asian parents are hardly ever critical of non-Asian parents approach to education? We are perfectly happy leaving it to them to do what they think works for them. It is invariably non-Asian parents - mainly white parents - who focus on the ills of Asian parenting when it comes to education.

Asian parents are very critical of non-Asian parents and this even came out in the article some. The fact that they only measure themselves against Asians is one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does the article explain why the kids are socially awkward?

What a racist stereotyping. If you run out of valid arguments, do you resort to stereotyping. How about stereotypes for whites, blacks and Hispanics?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does the article explain why the kids are socially awkward?

What a racist stereotyping. If you run out of valid arguments, do you resort to stereotyping. How about stereotypes for whites, blacks and Hispanics?

I've seen some pretty socially awkward white kids. What's their reason?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My own daughter (Indian American) one day jokingly explained to me that she works hard because - "I am an A-sian, so I need to get an A. If I get a B, I will become a B-sian"

My (Chinese) SIL joked that if she became ill, her parents would probably say, "You got Hepatitis C? Why you couldn't get Hepatitis A???"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My own daughter (Indian American) one day jokingly explained to me that she works hard because - "I am an A-sian, so I need to get an A. If I get a B, I will become a B-sian"

My (Chinese) SIL joked that if she became ill, her parents would probably say, "You got Hepatitis C? Why you couldn't get Hepatitis A???"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Asian/Indian parents will continue to raise their children the way we have been doing - and we will do so because it WORKS.

You can go on decrying it until the cows come home but it will not make any difference to us. When we see proven results that another method works better, we will be all ears.

Have you ever noticed Asian parents are hardly ever critical of non-Asian parents approach to education? We are perfectly happy leaving it to them to do what they think works for them. It is invariably non-Asian parents - mainly white parents - who focus on the ills of Asian parenting when it comes to education.

Asian parents are very critical of non-Asian parents and this even came out in the article some. The fact that they only measure themselves against Asians is one.

That is not because they are critical of non-Asian parents. It is because that even though they are a minority, they are not eligible for any affirmative action AND they have to actually score higher than Whites to gain admittance to colleges.

Asians can complain - or - just work harder than anyone and succeed. Thankfully, many come from intact families and they have the support system of family and community to make it somewhat easier. AND most parents do pay for the college, even if they have to live very frugally and launch their kids.

I am confused why White americans are so threatened by Asians. I mean they berate blacks and hispanics for being lazy and bad students and eating their resources and tax dollars, but when Asians become the model minority, work hard and excel - there is still derision. Why?

The hard work that the Asian kids and parents do is not something that is particularly easy to do. There is a lot of sacrifice by both the parents and kids. If others are able to make these sacrifices then more power to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The authors of “The Success Frame and Achievement Paradox: The Costs and Consequences for Asian Americans” are Min Zhou, professor of sociology and Asian American Studies at the Univ. of California at Los Angeles, currently on leave at Nanyang Technological University, and Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology at the Univ. of California at Irvine.

A better way to understand Asian American academic success, they write, is to look at families who don’t have resources and succeed nonetheless. That is exactly what they’ve done.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/08/forget-tiger-moms-asian-american-students-succeed-because-its-expected-say-scholars/?postshare=2521440741636692

Here is the abstract:

The status attainment model highlights the role of family socioeconomic status (SES) in the intergenerational reproduction of educational attainment; however, the model falls short in predicting the educational outcomes of the children of Asian immigrants, whose attainment exceeds that which would have been predicted based on family SES alone. On the other hand, the cultural capital model gives primacy to the role of middle-class cultural capital in reproducing advantage, but neglects contextual factors outside the family. We fill a theoretical and empirical niche by introducing a model of cultural frames to explain how the children of immigrants whose families exhibit low SES and lack middle-class cultural capital attain exceptional educational outcomes. Based on in-depth interviews with adult children of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants randomly drawn from the survey of Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles, we show that Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant parents and their children use ethnicity as a resource to construct and support a strict “success frame” that helps the poor and working class override their disadvantages. However, there are unintended consequences to adopting such a strict success frame: those who do not meet its exacting tenets feel like ethnic outliers, and as a result, they distance themselves from coethnics and from their ethnic identities because they link achievement with ethnicity. We conclude by underscoring the benefits of decoupling race/ethnicity and achievement for all groups.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12552-014-9112-7

So it's a Tiger Culture.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

This one isn't funny. Anything else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does the article explain why the kids are socially awkward?

What a racist stereotyping. If you run out of valid arguments, do you resort to stereotyping. How about stereotypes for whites, blacks and Hispanics?

Comments like that always come up... Along with "it's not just test scores", "private colleges can do whatever they want"..etc. Repeats over and over and over...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This one isn't funny. Anything else?

OMG! Are you kidding? This one cracked me up!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not a tiger mom?

From article:

They (parents) also make sure their kids get plenty of supplementary help such as tutoring.

These families have incredibly high standards, according to the study. If kids come home with a 3.5 grade-point average, parents are disappointed that it’s not 4.0 — and they show it.

If a child gets into, say, Cal State, the question is why they didn’t make it into Stanford.

If a son or daughter comes home and settles for a bachelor’s degree, they’re made to feel less accomplished because they don’t have a PhD.

Exactly! I read the article and it screamed tiger parents. They are why Asian kids excel is school and at unhappiness.

[Anonymous]

I went to college with a lot of Asian kids whose parents were tiger parents. 10 years later, they are successful and normal. They are not unhappy or bad at their jobs or having social problems. They are successful in their careers and doing great.

Those of you who are assuming kids whose parents expect more of them are going to be miserable maybe need to check your assumptions. Do you feel these kids are going to be miserable because that is what you have seen or because you want some sort of consolation prize for not being/having tiger parents?