
Understanding and dealing with overbearing Asian parents - rglovejoy
http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/understanding-asian-parents.htm
======
patio11
_I assert that Asian parents' obsessive emphasis on grades, test scores, and
college rankings originate from their upbringing in a poor, oppressive, and
politically-unstable third-world society._

Asia is not China and China is not Asia.

~~~
elbenshira
The author never made this claim. In fact, the author writes:

"Your parents grew up 30 to 40 years ago in a poor third-world country. I
don't care whether they came from China, Korea, Vietnam, or any other Asian
country --- chances are that they grew up much poorer than the parents of your
middle-class (probably white) American friends."

~~~
tptacek
30 years ago South Korea wasn't a poor third-world country. Very few
overbearing Asian-American parents come from North Korea.

~~~
patio11
Well, for a few years in the early 80s they would have looked a bit more like
a poor cousin of Mexico than a peer to an Ireland or Italy, and they would
have been a military dictatorship, but I am sympathetic to the general point.

~~~
Poiesis
Yes, Mexico is a pretty good description based on the folks I've talked to
that have been stationed in Korea in that time period. Hosting the Olympics
(1988) apparently really brought some positive change, at least to Seoul. It
surprised a lot of people, seeing open sewers and the like before and coming
back some twenty years later to see all the changes.

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teuobk
Were there similar phenomena during earlier waves of immigration?

For example, the majority of my ancestors immigrated to America from Prussia
in the mid to late 1800s. In general, they were professionals or businessmen,
a tendency which has survived through the generations to me. I've always been
encouraged in my intellectual and business pursuits, though not to the
exclusion of more frivolous activities. Perhaps the German work ethic was/is
in play?

~~~
epochwolf
I'm pretty sure American culture used to be this way about a hundred years
ago, given the little research I've done. I also have some personal
experience. My paternal grandfather believes that you can't get a white collar
job without a GPA of 3.5 or higher. (I don't think he knows the A in GPA means
Average) My maternal grandmother told me grades used to meant a lot more back
when she was younger.

To be simplistic: Grading in an organized public school system is fairly new
to the world. Everyone thought it was the greatest thing ever and used it as
the ultimate measuring stick.

In America (forgive me for ignoring Europe, etc.) people have realized that
grades are far from a perfect measurement. Because of this, changes has been
made in many companies to find new measures to grade people by. I believe this
is because American culture has always had some disrespect for authority in
it. (It varies from decade to decade) It is cultural acceptable to challenge
old ideas of thinking even if you aren't in charge. (Culturally acceptable
doesn't mean you won't get your ass in a sling)

Asian cultural is very different. It is family centric and puts great focus on
respect. Old age is respected in a way it never was in America. Once you get
stuck with some bad or marginal ideas they tend to stick around for awhile.

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occam
He has described symptoms well, but his explanations only make sense if you
ignore other immigrant groups. Latin American immigrants come from similar
range of poor, politically unstable backgrounds, yet their children aren't
being driven to academic excellence by their parents. In fact, instead of
outperforming the white American natives, they substantially underperform
them. Why the difference?

Let me give an answer: it appears to be genetics. Why else are the very
different experiences of mainland Chinese, Chinese Hong Kongers, Chinese
people from Taiwan, Chinese people from Singapore, Chinese people from
Indonesian and Malaysia resulting in only minor differences in average
outcomes in the USA?

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pgbovine
uhhh, ok guys, i seriously don't think this is relevant to HN at all. it's not
even remotely about hacking to any degree!

i don't have enough karma to kill submissions; could somebody kill this?

(i'm the author of this article, btw)

~~~
moseslee
This is very much relevant to HN.

For many Asian-Americans, starting a company is just not something they would
want to deal with. Not because they don't have the talent and vision to start
a company, but because the added stress of having to deal with overbearing
parents is not worth it. Starting a company is hard enough as it is.

------
epochwolf
This is a perfect example of how not to use bold and profanity. They only
subtract from the point he was trying to make.

