Giftedness vs Hardwork
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Anonymous
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On Saturday, more than 15,000 students are expected to file into classrooms to take a grueling 95-question test for admission to New York City’s elite public high schools....
No one will be surprised if Asian students, who make up 14 percent of the city’s public school students, once again win most of the seats, and if black and Hispanic students win few. Last school year, of the 14,415 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools that require a test for admissions, 8,549 were Asian.... Several students said their parents did not shy away from corporal punishment as a means of motivating them. And they said that rigorous testing was generally an accepted practice in their home countries, with the tests viewed not so much as measures of intelligence, but of industriousness. “Most of our parents don’t believe in ‘gifted,’ ” said Riyan Iqbal, 15, the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, as he and his friends — of Bengali, Korean and Indian descent — meandered toward the subway from the Bronx High School of Science one recent afternoon. “It’s all about hard work.”... Jerome Krase, a professor emeritus in sociology at Brooklyn College, and one of the editors of “Race and Ethnicity in New York City,” said that a growing number of Asian immigrants in recent years had experienced serious adversity in their home countries. “The children hold the honor of the family in their hands,” Professor Krase said. “If they succeed, the family succeeds.”... Complaints about the test and its effect on the racial makeup of the top schools date back at least to the civil rights era. When school officials began openly discussing changing the admissions policy in the early 1970s, white parents persuaded the State Legislature to pass a law cementing the test as the only basis of admission to the specialized high schools. At the time, according to an article in The New York Times in 1971, Stuyvesant High School was mostly white, 10 percent black, 4 percent Puerto Rican or “other Spanish surnamed,” and 6 percent Asian. This year at Stuyvesant, 72 percent are Asian and less than 4 percent are black or Hispanic. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/education/a-grueling-admissions-test-highlights-a-racial-divide.html Maybe American students don't have enough adversity to overcome to do well in academics. |
Anonymous
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"Most of our parents don't believe in 'giftedness'...It's all about hard work".
I love this quote. My kids are 5 and 3 and this has become my mantra. I grew up in California with Asian kids and saw this over and over again. |
Anonymous
| Hard work- the great equalizer. |
Anonymous
| I like the quote too and think it fits in most cases. There are children who are truly gifted and then those not gifted but still far ahead of the curve naturally. And then there are the hard workers. There is nothing wrong w/ just being a hard worker - why can we admire this everywhere else (sports, music, etc) but not when it comes to school. no one is trying to set quotas for maximum racial participation in school sports teams when they are racially unbalanced.... |
Anonymous
Mainly because participation in sports is voluntary, while education is compulsory. |
Anonymous
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When I read "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", I was so relieved not to be the worst!
The reason I push my asian child is because he is differently-abled, and I want him to learn he can succeed just as well or better than his peers if he puts in the work. I want him to be confident in his abilities and think of himself as smart instead of stupid. So far this has led to academic success and better self-esteem. Personally I am half-asian, but my parents never pushed me hard, although they did prize academics above all else. |
Anonymous
| Giftedness at birth is an illusion. This illusion fails in life without hard work. Therefore, hard work is the only reality we can measure to date. |
Anonymous
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I live in SF. When I go to the main library in the children's section here's what I see:
white parent: sitting somewhere, texting or reading a magazine while their toddler runs around the children's area playing with the toys asian parent: sitting at a kiddie table next to their toddler practicing puzzles over and over again I'm white. The first time I saw it, I did a double-take. |
Anonymous
In the end though don't they come out the same because whites get ahead with white privilege and don't have to work as hard? |
Anonymous
Not exactly. I would never knock hard work. But there are a lot of ingredients to *success* besides hard work, such as: - willingness to take risks, - thinking outside the box, and - good social skills None of these is linked to either work ethic or race. Please, don't let's make this into a discussion about which races have which qualities. But I think it's undeniably true that thinking outside the box, being ready to take a risk on your idea, and then having the social skills to sell it to investors can get you at least as far, maybe further, than working hard. You'll never be mayor if you can't convince people to support you. You'll never get tenure at a top university if you can't think outside the box. You'll never be CEO if you aren't willing to take risks. And on, and on. |
Anonymous
- willingness to take risks: translation - always have families to fall back on => advantage, rich white people - thinking outside the box: translation - always have families to worry about "inside the box" for you => advantage, rich white people - good social skills: translation - always have family ties to build on the 'social skills' => advantage, rich white people no, it's not about which races have which qualities. |
Anonymous
Many blacks and Hispanics have great social skills. |
Anonymous
Honestly, this is BS. I think you know it, too. If you want, we can play this game a totally different way: - willingness to take risks: translation - willingness to go broke => disadvantage, rich white people who want to preserve their assets so they can stay on top of the heap - thinking outside the box: translation - always have families to worry about "inside the box" for you => advantage ... I dunno because this makes no sense. What does "have families to worry about 'inside the box' for you" even mean? It's gibberish. One thing I do know is that nailing your butt to a desk chair is not conducive to thinking outside the box. So if your argument is that familial support helps, I'd argue that the type of familial support that involves nailing a kid's butt to the desk chair is the opposite of helpful. - good social skills: translation - always have family ties to build on the 'social skills' => advantage, anyone with social skills. I feel sorry for you if you think only rich white people have good social skills. |
Anonymous
Racism is alive and well. |
Anonymous
From observing two parents, you extrapolate out and ascribe those traits to millions of parents? Wow. |