from Hacker News

What Happens to Asian-American Overachievers When the Test-Taking Ends? (2011)

by not_paul_graham on 4/1/14, 7:29 AM with 23 comments

• by einhverfr on 4/1/14, 8:44 AM

  I am married to a Chinese-Indonesian woman. We have three children. It is fascinating to be forced to stare across a cultural gap every day navigating two very, very different worlds. I therefore feel I am in a very different position to discuss this issue than I suspect most here are.

  There is a fundamental mismatch between Asian culture and American culture. This mismatch is even greater than it is between European culture and Asian culture. Americans are extraordinarily individualist. Asians are extraordinarily communitarian. Family is, in a very real way, the economic and social basis of survival in most of Asia. And yes, filial piety is a big part of that. I will also say that my wife can't stand the US because of the cultural gap, so she took the opposite direction than many of these writers, and instead of wondering about Asian values, rejected entirely the American ones. We now live in Indonesia.

  Asian culture works for the most part, even as strict and harsh as it is. Many of my Asian-American friends in the US have been able to retire early. And yes, Asians do dominate some industries. And later in life, having children who will care for you in your old age is far better than the American way. There is much that mainstream American culture can learn from Asian culture as we must find more sustainable ways to live.

  But there are costs too. At least here among the Chinese-Indonesians, very little or no value is placed on childhood play. It's just a waste of time when one could be learning how to be an adult. What is vitally missing in my view is a recognition that kids learn extremely important lessons through play, and that these lessons are no less important to success than learning math or science in school. This has been a challenge for our kids because cultivating a sense of play goes against the culture.

  What disappoints me about the article is the fact that it seems very much like a one-sided self-critique. Immigrants generally have the potential to disrupt existing cultural ways of thinking by offering a different sort of critique. But here what I see is "I want to stop being Asian and be just American."

  But instead if we had a dialog, we'd see that there are things we can learn from eachother, and that is a far better way forward than lamenting Asian values.

• by _xhok on 4/1/14, 8:22 AM

  This is the fifth or so time I've upvoted an article simply because I wanted to see discussion on it. In this case, I found the topic interesting but the article itself long-winded and boring to read. Is this a permissible reason to upvote something?

• by fidotron on 4/1/14, 11:09 AM

  I wonder how much of this derives from the history of the Imperial Exam ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_exam ).

  If you have just one exam which basically defines your ability (and effectively that of your family) to succeed then it encourages exactly the sort of behaviour that is stereotypical of Asian-Americans. You could argue that certain schools in France, Oxbridge in the UK, and the US' Ivy League are part of a similar phenomenon, but the difference there is even if you don't get to those institutions you can still do reasonably well in life.

• by dnautics on 4/1/14, 11:34 AM

  I think the article overplays asian stereotypes. I, personally think that I fall into almost none of them. I'm rarely subservient and am generally anti-authoritarian. I speak up at meetings. All the time. I even called out a fellow postdoc for using a line graph when he should have used a bar graph (In a moment of passion I called the incorrect usage f---ing retarded, which then got picked up by the 80 year old nobel laureate in the lab). My science isn't terrible - I improved an enzyme four fold, which is a feat only a handful of people in the world can claim. I even started my own nonprofit with a future view of securing science funding outside of the traditional (and increasingly scarce) funding streams. Yet, I still can't advance beyond the "bamboo ceiling" and failed to obtain a faculty position in academia.

  When applying to colleges, I only got into one school (although I only applied to six) - despite having rather good scores, but also having directed a full-length theatre production, and being captain of a regionally victorious chess team (which, you would think, would imply leadership potential). I even placed in my category at the International Science Fair and failed to get a position at MIT.

  There's racism against Asians, it's deep-seated, and it's not going away anytime soon for many many reasons.

• by z92 on 4/1/14, 12:58 PM

  tl;dr? The article is too long. No chapter index either.