It's easy, and politically correct, to attribute the "racial achievement gap" separating Asians and whites students from Latinos and blacks ones to socioeconomic status and class size.
But Asian and Latino students in the same socioeconomic boat (say, those who recently immigrated from Vietnam and Mexico) get very different grades in school - so what's the reason?
In this interesting article in the Los Angeles Times by Hector Becerra, students from the Lincoln High School discussed the issue still considered taboo by many:
Both the neighborhood and student body are about 15% Asian. And yet Asians make up 50% of students taking Advanced Placement classes. Staffers can't remember the last time a Latino was valedictorian.
"A lot of my friends say the achievement gap is directly attributable to the socioeconomic status of students, and that is not completely accurate," O'Connell said. "It is more than that."
But what is it? O'Connell called a summit in Sacramento that drew 4,000 educators, policymakers and experts to tackle the issue. Some teachers stomped out in frustration and anger.
No Lincoln students stomped out of their discussion. Neither did any teachers in a similar Lincoln meeting. But the observations were frank, and they clearly made some uncomfortable.
To begin with, the eight students agreed on a few generalities: Latino and Asian students came mostly from poor and working-class families.
According to a study of census data, 84% of the Asian and Latino families in the neighborhoods around Lincoln High have median annual household incomes below $50,000. And yet the Science Bowl team is 90% Asian, as is the Academic Decathlon team.
(Photo: Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)
From the article:
"Let's say a Latino student is studying and an Asian student is studying," Martinez said. "The Latino parent will often say, 'Hey, come help me out real quick, then you can go back to your studying.' Where the Asian parent will say, 'Oh, you're doing your homework. OK, you finish, and then after you're done, you come help me.' "
The adoption of the term "Asian" and denegration of the much more accurate "Oriental" is annoying to me. This fairly recent "asian" neologism seems to be particularly prevalent in the *Western* U.S., where people get seem a real bug up their butt if you ever use the term oriental. In the East, the "Asian" insisters are growing, but we still have plenty of "Oriental Grocery Stores" run by (and for!) self-described Orientals. I'm pretty sure "oriental" hasn't become a slur in Europe has it? What's the big deal?
And I'd also like to know what kind of Asians this article is talking about. There's a pretty big income disparity within the Asian population in America as well.
Oriental was a term originally used to describe all easterners not just Chinese, Japanese and is a creation of the Western cultures. So even calling them Oriental would not just be offensive but also inaccurate.
or at least that's what I've been taught several times
As I understand it, there is a huge push from parents for their children to succeed. There are even 'helicopter parents' who will intimidate university professors to get higher scores for their children.
The factors behind this? I can not say for certain, but I had thought that confucian ideals place enormous emphasis on education. Hence why educators are revered in Korean (perhaps all east asian?) culture.
Even in China there is a saying, "If a son is uneducated, his father is to blame."
I can not speak to anything in terms of the Latino culture as I lack any proper amount of experience.
Duh. Of course I know Oriental is from the Latin for "East"... do you take me for a Latino educated in Los Angeles schools?
My question is why do some (not all) in recent years consider it soooo taboo to say "Oriental", while others label themselves and their businesses "Oriental" without thinking twice? There's NOTHING perjorative about the word! Obviously it is a *relative* term, but so what? People can freely use "Westerner" (or even Occidental, which comes from Latin for West) without any uptightedness. What is the big deal about "oriental" ? If its lack of precision is that troubling, why not replace it with something better, not something worse?
"Asian" is not more accurate, and as it's typically employed (excluding a whole lot of people native to Asia) is plainly wrong. Maybe if they called themselves "East Asians" it would be a little more accurate, but striking down "Oriental" in favor of plain "Asian" is a step backwards. Far Easterners (see mike nc post) works OK, too.
On a related note, is there anyone of Afrikaan heritage now living in the U.S. who checks the "African-American" box on Census and other demographic polls and surveys? I would *love* to do this. From time to time I do pick "Other" and write in "European-American" on the fill-in space, but being able to legitimately check "African-American" and monkey with the data (a wee tiny bit) would bring me great glee.
In short, the chinese strive hard in edu not because they enjoy or love the subject but the idea of making lots of money when they are employed, maybe a study on creativity should be carried out.
Are you equally upset about the usage of Latino instead of Hispanic? Latino is the politically correct word for those from Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking cultures. The term Hispanic is taken as an insult by some people from South and Central America, since it has connotations the Spanish conquest. I guess the key is to not remind people of a time in which their native country was invaded and their people were forced to live under oppressive foreign rule. Seems sensible to me.
4000 misled educators working on this "problem" is seriously scary.
I find it amusing how nervous the teachers seemed to discuss this topic. Unfortunately, they probably have good reason to. You never know when a lawsuit from an angry parent is just around the corner.
(I'd like to see Harvard's president talk about this issue.)
I live in a neighborhood predominately Latino and I'm also ten minutes from the Mexican border. Of the kids I see in my neighborhood, there seems to be very little parent involvement in their lives at all. Not just parental concern and supervision of education, but of their lives. A lot of them are on track to joining gangs, and already developing criminal records. Just a few months ago I caught a man beating a dog, he was the guest of a thirteen year old Latino boy whose mother rented an apartment across the street from my home. I confronted the man, and when he ran off the boy tried to get in my face about the issue. When I later cornered the mother she confessed to having no idea who her son was spending time with, and even having no clue as to where he was most of the time. Whatever future could this boy have with a mother who doesn't involve herself in his life? From whom is he supposed to learn life lessons if she remains detached from him? Certainly, the local thugs around here will gladly teach him how to graffiti, pimp, deal and "be a man". I feel bad for this boy, and others like him - regardless of their cultural heritage - whose parents take a hands-off approach to child rearing.
I've heard success starts at home, and I think this article provided the proof of that.
Our Mexican facility constantly loses people for literally 3 cents an hour higher pay, can't get people to do overtime, and has a hard time getting them to work during the day.
These are simply observations, but it sure seems there is a difference in attitude.
"High recalled a good Latino student she had a few years ago. He also was a gang member.
'He would wear baggy pants, and he would load up his pants with books," she said. "He looked around to make sure no one was seeing him so he could look like the baddest kid in the block.'"
It was important to the student not to be seen studying or making an effort on his education. In many ways, the thing we struggle to appear as, we become.
It is also interesting to note the teacher Mrs. High was more than comfortable expressing dismay at the unfair hallway pass scandal but was quite silent about why Asians do better in school than Latino students.
Also, I covered Low Rider shows and met a really nice family of rather meager means. They were proud that they'd spent $30,000 fancy-fying an old car. That same amount of money would have bought both their kids a pretty nice college education, or at least the start of it, and the kids could have bought a fleet of fancy old cars.
Education is everything to my Asian friends and their parents are fairly overbearing in their desire for their children to succeed. One old friend, Leslie, went into the arts, and is successful. She suffers greatly because of it. Her family is constanly admonishing her, for not becoming a doctor or lawyer, And her chinese Mother won't even speak to her.
In contrast my Hispanic friends look down on education, but highly value hard work, family and street-smarts. One friend of mine is a computer geek, like me, and his family is always putting him down for being too "white". I think they feel that education endangers their traditional values and that educated people act superior. Or as my buddy Gilbert puts it, "all stuck up and shit".
I realize that these stories are anecdotal and I can think of examples where this pattern does not apply. That said, I would have to assert that this more the norm in my circles than not.
a = average
b = bad
c d f = they are not familiar with these symbols
The truth, as is often the case, probably falls somewhere between the two. My own anecdotal contribution relates to a conversation I had had with an Hispanic shuttle bus driver. She used to work at a food processing plant, but decided to get additional training in the operation of some of the machinery. With her new skills, she qualified for an increase in pay, which motivated her to take classes in computer science at the community college. She is now finishing her Bachelors degree at the local university. This was done while working full-time and raising two children, in whom she instilled an expectation of completing a college-level education.
I had been raised with all of the advantages of a middle-class background, but I don't think I could have done as well if I had been shouldering so many responsibilities at once. Her ability and expectation to do hard work, when applied to improving her education, let her come out from behind very quickly.
If a similar values/cultural change were to occur in the Hispanic population, I think people would soon be discussing the "superior genetics" of Latin America.
The reason certain people did better, asians over hispanic, or white over black.... was simply b/c of social circles.
It was OK and cool for the asian (i'm including indians as well) kids to be smart. It was ok for them to be in the math clubs and etc.
But the hispanic and black kids who did the same were pretty much shunned from their own. Called "sell-outs" or told that they were trying to be "white".
So kids who should've and could've been doing better didn't b/c they wanted to be accepted by their piers. It's actually pretty sad.
I hope things have changed since then, but... I doubt it.
Generally most of the Asian immigrants in the U.S. have higher expectations because, well, all the Asians with low expectations are still in Asia! After all, why would you leave your home country halfway around the world if you weren't ambitious or looking for something better?
And yes, IQ is largely hereditary, but that counts for nothing if you don't have the opportunity to use it.
That said, I pulled my son from his elementary school and moved him to a different one because there really are cultural differences associated with wanting to achieve education or acknowledging or accepting what education is.
One example of this was that I spoke to a neighbor about 4 years ago where I said my dream was always to buy a house, fix it up, and rent it out and she blurted out, "You want to be a landlord? What and rip people off for doing nothing?" So I knew that culturally she was teaching her kids that being a landlord was bad or evil.
What I think would be more interesting is to compare the experiences between Cuban and Puerto Rican families where the local Cuban families are highly successful and Puerto Rican families are viewed as less-successful.
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/004064.html
Read the comment section as well.
Matt believes the usual left-leaning, feel-good statements that all races (not ethnic groups, though they are sometimes linked) have equal distributions of intelligence. This is a fallacy. Some genetic groups are smarter, some are stronger, some are faster, some handle cold better, some handle heat better.
However, I have seen no evidence that Asians are inherently smarter than Mexicans, although this may be possible. The single most important reason why Asians do well academically is the same reason why European- and Russian-descent Jews do well academically: their cultures and their families prize educational achievements and professional attainments. The intense desire for education makes the kids work much harder than average, and these kids succeed academically. Other groups in the U.S. do not prize education, and their kids do poorly and drop out at high rates. So, if Mexican and Central American immigrants or descendants of immigrants want their kids to succeed in school, they have to make education a family and neighborhood priority. They can't whine and play victim; they must convince their kids to work hard at school.
See post above. The evidence contradicts the role of family environment in behavior.
One of the most important factors is that Hispanics mainly come to the us for a better life and most parents have not had much education. Asians coke here with education being the only thing to look for while Hispanics concentrate on finding a way to live. Also most of the Hispanics are from California why not look at Hispanics from less rural areas. I'm sure that test results will change drastically.
Can the same be said of the Latino students? It depends doesn't it? For a lot of US border states, no. The immigration is via family unification. And yes, I am generalizing. But I am backed up my studies such as Population and Environment, Volume 20, Number 6, July 1999 , pp. 527-544(18) which basically say the same thing. In fact, Asian immigrants are more educated than their American peers.
As evidence, Asian immigrants and workers in Asia don't do nearly as well. Singapore, Hong Kong and other developed Asian countries import a lot of immigrant labor from poorer Asian countries and none of these emigrant groups have settled and done prospered.
Culture is a reflection of the genetics of the population. A superior culture derives from a superior genetic pool. Humans are the same as animals. Why do we consider pit bulls vicious and golden retrievers calm just based on their breed? That is because genetics influences the behavior.
Take Singapore as an example of how superior people overcome tremendous obstacles. Singapore is an island with no fresh water sources, no minerals, no self sufficient arable land, no large areas for military training, a small population, surrounded by enemies, impoverished at their founding, and the list goes on. Yet, the Singaporeans have become a 1st world nation. No black or Latino nation can claim the same. They are in their own country, ruling themselves, blessed with enormous natural resources, have the support of many Europeans. They should be one of the greatest areas in the world. Yet they are so dumb and poor and unimportant that even in America, they can't achieve much. If they can't do it in their own nations or in America, there is something inherently inferior in them.
First of all, Latin America and Asian countries face different realities. While Asian countries are mostly homogeneous, Latin American countries are not; and, this represents a significant difference between both (That's for you stupid koolau). In almost all Latin American countries there will not just be socioeconomic but ethnic discrimination. And most of the large indigenous/indian-featured mestizo or black people are more likely to stumble with ethnic-based barriers to succeed in their own countries. They will be relegated to live in rural or marginal metropolitan areas without have even finished elementary school. In these countries there are too much more people than job positions. That's why if many capable people won't find any job, unfavored people are more unlikely to do so. They will be rather worried to SUBSIST than to get an education. They won't even have water, and the goverments, usually made up for discriminating light skinned ones, won't care about it. Then, while the middle-class people will be pursuing a post secondary education, these people -who hold the habit of subsistence- won't have any other choice but emigrate TO THE CLOSEST PLACES looking for a better future.
So usually you will see no matter how poor their countries are that those people who come from further places will demostrate better performance. The ones who are willing to change their lives in a significant way and can afford a journey from far away come with specific goals unlike the ones who move to the nearest place they find in order to subsist. That's what happen with some Asian and some Latin American immigrants in the USA. They are the ones of their countries' WHOLE population who decided to come to the USA, and they DON'T represent their entire race neither their countries. They came to the USA pursuing specific purposes. An example of this is that within Latin Americans the ones who came with VISA and some previous education (usually South Americans--you see, the further Latin America) will perform better than their counterparts those Mexicans who came from small towns crossing the border. Kids will be directly affected by this kind of situations.
It's more complex than what many of you think. It's not about immigrants' socioeconomic status IN THE USA, it's about how they lived before coming here, WHO they were and how they were treated in their own societies. Most of them will hold these values wherever they go. But Americans love to divide and categorize people without understanding the reasons why some things are the way they are. They will go against our human nature, and dehumanizing us, they will put us into categories; but by doing so, they're forgetting that no individual is identical to other. Anyway, the crowds will always be there to believe whatever others make them believe is true. It's sad to see how very few people can be really intelligent.