Oh come on, this is not coming from the politicians. They’ve been saying the same thing for decades. How is it that only a very few communities have heard them and gone way overboard, whereas the vast majority of school systems are doing business as usual and most of our students are unmotivated and schools are mediocre at best? Listen to what the kids are saying. Find even one kid who says this comes from politicians on this site. Now find the many who say it comes from their parents, most (though not all) of whom also identify this as an Asian norm.
I’ll just quote a recent post, currently 4 threads down from here that I happened to see right after writing this: "When I got a 90 (my first A on a test in that class) on a really hard test that everyone failed, the first thing my mom asked was “So who got a 100?”. I’m Asian btw. "
Parents who grew up in India or China were educated in a system where people got one chance, on one test, and if they weren’t in the 99.5 percentile they failed and had no second chance to get in the elite. It’s not surprising that those parents bring their perfectionist attitude here when they move to the US, and insist on academic perfection from their children.
@“Cardinal Fang” : No one denies that, but that cannot be attributed to overall levels of competitiveness and stress you see in those sorts of schools. That has probably existed for a while. Language in this thread by some is suggesting that those immigrants are the change agent. Probably not. If anything, their countries are changing things from the outside by being used as a reference point of success vs. the US failings. However, several other countries with different models are also being used. Jewish students have a stereotype as being high achieving as well. Why not attribute it to them? I’m certain that plenty of more well-off districts and neighborhoods have an okay Jewish population. What about “WASPs”? I often hear of interesting cultures of competition and prestige in the mid-Atlantic (especially the northeast). This cannot all be driven by Asian populations as the other two populations are just as plentiful if not far higher.
@Waiting2exhale The rhetoric of “This country is behind in X,Y, and Z subjects and is losing global competitiveness”. This messaging has definitely been around since the Bush years (maybe earlier) and seems to have intensified during the Obama years (Race to the Top). If I hear this over and over again, I would always wonder if my (or my child’s) education was good enough to be employable at all and even in context of the “others” you allude to. I am likely to be more pushy to both the student and the school. In wealthy and middle class districts now-a-days, parents are said to be very helicopter like. This is probably not limited to certain ethnic groups. It is bound to create a more stressful environment. The top-down messaging I speak of may be exacerbating what you are seeing more so than the influence of the influx of those from other countries. If anything, this pattern is already well-aligned with some of the stereotypes one associates with, say Asians, when it comes to education. For that reason, I don’t like the concept of anyone claiming that THEY essentially have a big role in inducing these sorts of cultural change. Their numbers are far too small (<5%), and in the context of middle class and wealthy districts, are almost spread far too thin (as in far more highly concentrated in certain metropolitan areas than others) to explain, what I believe is a nationwide trend in these types of school districts.
@bernie12 “Why does the desire to have better or even more intense and competitive educational experiences have to be attributed to the influence of “other” cultures more so than the US’s own desire to figure this out?”
I don’t believe the discussion in this part of the thread has been about a ‘desire to have,’ but the new trend toward “more…competitive” educational experiences.
People have been noting that their kids comfortably take, or purposefully but stressfully endure, more than a handful of AP classes and exams, or summer study courses for acceleration during the normal school year - with some parents being in favor of exercising the option where it is available, and others highlighting some demonstrated and/or anecdotal drawbacks of the trend.
@mathyone: “…most of our students are unmotivated and schools are mediocre at best?”
Public school districts and the programs in our public schools are truly reflective of the citizenry’s (tax paying citizenry) willingness to support those districts and schools. That support comes in many forms, including student readiness for the school day. There are many factors which impinge on student readiness, even beyond the factors that I can see as major problems, hunger, sleep deprivation, homelessness, strife in the home, affluenza, etc.
Yes, many children show up at school battling things beyond their control which impede their ability to work well, but to say that most of our students are unmotivated does not reflect what I have seen on the ground. Even some of the kids who are being alluded to here as relentlessly seeking the brass ring know, and live under, some of the social conditions which negatively affect student performance.
I don’t see that “most” of our students are unmotivated, and have heard that all of my life.
Even if it isn’t that, it certainly does not help that ranking agencies rank based on number of students taking certain courses (like AP) or that decent schools gain prestige based on their placement of students at elite or other selective universities, all which like pumped up courseloads (which is, IMHO, is better than the college to professional school model of: “get the highest GPA possible by any means necessary. Cut corners where you can! Don’t challenge yourself too much.”).
The idea that “others” are introducing the forces of change, and inducing a change in the educational climate in our communities, is not mine, but one raised as the thread progressed.
I will say that helicopter parenting, and (as has also been stated here) parenting style of those who realize that they must prepare and “place” their children in advantageous positions to be on track for entry into competitive programs and colleges does indeed play a role in this new theater of the academic resume, and has not perceived or discussed as being strictly heritage specific across the entirety of the thread. (I don’t know how far back you read before you began to post.)
@Waitingtoexhale, yes, I do think that most of our students are unmotivated. Even doing the homework regularly is not a given for our honors students. Some honors teachers have turned the desks backwards so that kids cannot spend their class time holding their phones inside their desks and texting. These are the honor students, the better ones in an above-average school district. Copying homework off the web is commonplace. I know some students have lied to get out of assignments. Perhaps you consider all this “motivated”. I don’t. Yes, we have a few homeless kids in our school, it’s a mixed SES school, but unsurprisingly, the majority of the honors students are middle class. They are more worried about their next sports practice than their next meal.
And I’m not even beginning to talk about the 6% or so who won’t even graduate from high school (that’s a pretty good figure compared to most schools, I believe) or those who will be working at Walmart after they barely squeak out a diploma.
“Even doing the homework regularly is not a given for our honors students. Some honors teachers have turned the desks backwards so that kids cannot spend their class time holding their phones inside their desks and texting. These are the honor students…”
I’m going to have to go back and re-read some of your older comments, as I guess I missed that that was the environment in which your kids sought to learn.
I know that kids sneak a peak at their handheld devices, but that sounds a bit like total disregard and disrespect, and not what I know about the honors programs that kids have had to earn placement into.
In this district, first-generation children from Asian families are an outright majority in the district. These families are concentrated in this district. The percentage of Asian families will likely rise in the near future–look at page 33 of the document. Asian children are more than 81% of the preschoolers in the district.
@Waitingtoexhale, actually I don’t think that the majority of honors students in our particular school are unmotivated. But I think some of them are, I think quite a few of the non-honors students are, and I think there are plenty of schools where the majority of students are unmotivated. Even in our AP classes, there are plenty of kids not willing to step up and do their part on group projects etc.
Eiholi, I think your interpretation is off. The parents we are talking about WANT precisely that - numbers- based admissions. And “guarantees” that the 2400 kid will beat the 2200 kid out for a spot. They are the ones flummoxed by the admission of the 2200 kid with a really interesting EC over their 2400 kid who punched all the right buttons, but their only response is to double down. They want order and structure and guarantees and test based. They order the schools in fixed rank and would always believe there is a meaningful difference between number 3 and 9.
But eiholi’s point is still valid. Some of this stress comes from the colleges themselves as they reward the arms race and nod approvingly at the resumes that boast sleeplessness, overscheduling, and sometimes accomplishments that are just a little bit too good to be true.
@Pizzagirl it’s not that people believe there is a meaningful difference between number 3 and number 9, it’s that people try to control what they can control. That means there’s a frenzy to get the highest grades and highest scores possible and to garner as many badges of leadership and honor as they can. It’s not limited to one racial or ethnic group and it goes beyond the brass ring schools. There’s a feeling of generalized anxiety that characterizes the middle and upper middle class high school experience.
I still maintain you don’t HAVE to “make” your kid participate in the arms race. You only “have to” if you presuppose that the goal is a brass-ring school.
@Periwinkle : Okay, so because the article mentions those statistics, that must explain it all right? Because they are attempting to make the association by dropping some stats about the demographics, that must make the association real? Media sources love to do things like that all the time…
@Pizzagirl : It likely depends on the elite school and whether the school likes laundry list or more depth. Many elites may be tired of the laundry list thing where students appear almost too well-rounded to have real passion for anything on their resumes. Furthermore, their essays may go on to lend evidence to their suspicion. Based on the incoming statistics at many elite schools, especially some of those in the top 10, it is clear that many are looking for more substance at this point. Schools in the phase of trying to quickly increase their rank (I mention who these are over and over again) are likely more stats based (they will have higher stats than schools with better and similar reputations. Furthermore, even if their application numbers plateau or drop a little, the stats for the incoming class will still increase). Other schools who feel more comfortable with their positions are likely picking based on something else once they have a exceeded a certain stats. threshold. As I always say, most of the best among elite schools want the prize winning students even if they don’t have perfect SAT’s. Places like HYPM can easily have students fitting both categories, but the other type (quickly trying to raise rank) will probably have a harder time getting the “prize winners” and may just bias themselves toward higher scores and standard levels of high achieving ECs as USNews likely doesn’t know the difference anyway. It just sees: “Mores, yaah, lower admit rate, higher SAT’s!” and thus rank may marginally improve based on that (as selectivity metrics a weighted small. However, some consider the idea that the selectivity metric itself ultimately influences other metrics, some which may have higher weight).
This seems like another of those topics with pretty divided, yet entrenched opinions. It feels like a game of chicken. “Your kid should lighten up their load first-- then mine has a better chance to move ahead”. We have become so competitive.