Reply to How do Indian and Asian parents do it?

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Reply to "How do Indian and Asian parents do it?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ancient Chinese Secret.

Seriously, it's not genetic, and it's not even exactly cultural. It's US immigration policies related to what's called the "brain drain"-- basically well-educated immigrants are fast tracked through immigration. A lot of these parents are PhDs... Or the children of them.[/quote]

According to Census data, the average Asian immigrant (and the average African immigrant) to the US is more likely than the average American to have a college degree.  The best predictor of a child's performance in school is the mother's educational level.  India has about a 50 percent high school attendance rate now, and in the 80's, when some of today's parents were in college, it was 25 percent.  The people you are meeting here in the US are people who did really well for themselves,often against long odds, in India's educational system.  They aren't a random sample.

Also, one reason that South Asians tend to do well in competitions like spelling bees is that general knowledge contests are very popular in India, and have been for decades.

I think that spelling contests and geography bees are  fun, and the kids do learn some skills, but ultimately, such contests fell out of vogue here in the US because they don't represent higher order thinking skills.  I did some spelling contests in high school, and for all of the talk about "learning Greek and Latin roots", doing well in spelling is about memorization, as English is so irregular that those Greek and Latin roots can be spelled in a couple of ways. Learning a romance language was great for learning Latin roots.  I also  found my days on the speech and debating team in high school to be much more useful in  terms of teaching me to structure a presentation or an argument, research skills, and presentation skills. [/quote]

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