Sophomore year my kids take APEURO so I’m not sure how they would have been studying simultaneously for APUSH which they take junior year.
Did your class require no written homework just 10 minutes of studying every night? APUSH and APEURO both take an hour or so every night at their school, with written essays, questions, notes, etc.
@iwannabe_Brown
I also had a college classmate a couple of classes ahead of me who graduated from our college with high honors at 17.
One semester, he managed to register for and complete the equivalent of 7-8 full time classes and audited a couple more just to see if he could do it. And there were all 300-400 level colloquium/seminar type classes with massive reading loads and research requirements…no gut courses or easy intermediate/intro classes with 400 pages of reading/week or less. He crushed them academically, but even he admitted that was a struggle and one he wouldn’t repeat or recommend to others.
We all thought he was nuts while also feeling awed by how he managed to get through it without crashing and burning.
How do you know that it took her that long to learn the material? She could have learned enough to get A’s in a short time too. But sounds like her parents want her to have a deeper understanding than you can get in a 10 minute soundbite. There’s nothing wrong with that.
I think the “pushy Asian parents” have shown us that it’s not all about innate talent. If you study hard you can accomplish a lot more than you might think. As others have said, we don’t know if your friend needed that summer studying, or if she’d have done fine without it. My kid would be the first to tell you he learned a lot of his history from reading all the background info that came with computer games like Civ 4. But he was reading about at least military history avidly since he was in first grade. He also had a real ability to write essays on the fly. Many in his AP World class went into a panic when the main DBQ essay was about the first modern Olympics (which they had not studied in class needless to say!) Having that background was a big help, as was realizing the mindset of the people putting together the exam. ("They probably want me to write about Nationalism Internationalism and all the other issues that led to WW1.)
I don’t think reading a review book is a bad way to start an AP course - it gives you a good idea about the salient points which you will study in greater depth over the course of the year. Here in NY where AP kids are shortchanged a month or so of school compared to other parts of the US, reading a review book is a common summer assignment for AP classes.
mathmom, the local high school had plenty of summer work for AP classes, but reading a review book was never one of them. I think it might have made the students drop the course like flies, if it had been. 
I think American history is fascinating, but quick dips into several review books left me mostly bored to tears (except in one case where I wondered whether the sample essay had really been written by a high school student in an AP class, or by someone who was considerably further along).
Being academically gifted is definitely a thing. However, gifted kids are at risk of getting used to good grades without too much work, and they may give up easily or get depressed when later they inevitably hit some subject or work assignment that’s hard for them. I don’t see why you need to 'sacrifice your happiness" for marginally better grades, but make sure you’re prepared when you actually need to work harder.
What Asian Americans are “doing right” in this context is being selected by the immigration system for high educational attainment (through visas for skilled workers and PhD students). For recent immigrants, 70% of Indian and 50% of Chinese immigrants to the US have bachelor’s degrees (versus about 30% of non-immigrant Americans and smaller percentages of people in India and China). Given that these immigrants are numerous compared to older generations of the same ethnicity, their characteristics have a significant impact on how the ethnicity as a whole is perceived (unlike European or African immigrants who also skew toward high educational attainment, but do not visibly make much impact how the much larger white and black populations in the US are viewed).
Educational attainment tends to be highly transmissible across generations, whether or not there is any “pushy tiger parenting” involved. You can argue nature or nurture, but either one tends to be advantageous with highly educated parents.
But note that most students (Asian or otherwise) do not attend colleges like Ivy League schools or Berkeley. You can find large percentages of Asian students at colleges like Mission College (an open admission two year community college), for example.
Note also Hawaii, an example where the Asian American population is high, but was not filtered for high educational attainment when its immigrant ancestors came.
Chuckle. I had a guy like that in my fraternity (he’s a MD/PhD researcher specializing in disabled kids). He took something like the following in one semester:
7 1/2 course units in one semester and his lowest grade was an A- in orgo. Probably not that much reading but a pile of problem sets combined with orgo’s cutthroat grind. Later, he blew his MCATs out of the water with a (pre-1992) score equivalent to a 42 today.
@QuantMech I don’t think any of my kids read the review books very carefully, but they did skim through them. It was an hour or two of their time at most.
Another attitude that differs among cultural groups is what it means if you need help with an academic subject.
I’ve noticed that among Asian kids, there seems to be no stigma about needing parental help or even formal tutoring. But among other groups, this might be considered a sign that the child is not academically talented.
We’re white. When my daughter was in 8th grade, she wanted to apply to a selective admissions IB program in our school district. My husband was very much against it because he thought she would not be able to succeed in such a program. Why? Because she had asked me for help with homework many times, and I had provided it. He felt that any child who ever needed help with homework did not belong in any type of advanced program. I don’t think an Asian father would have viewed this situation in the same way.
@Marian I have read that in studies of “growth mindset,” Asian cultures tend to encourage such beliefs/attitudes more than European cultures. That is, the attitude that you can improve in academic areas through hard work rather than the “fixed mindset” in which people believe you are either born with smarts or not.
The “fixed mindset” can tend to cause people to “hit the wall” when they are first challenged to do hard work. People with a “growth mindset” can tend to seek out help or work harder. Thus, the lack of stigma for seeking help.
I grew up with the “fixed mindset” culture but have tried to convey the “growth mindset” to my kids (even if I don’t always believe it inside).
There’s also the long history of neglect of the K-12 public school system because the governing elites and the wealthy tended to sent their kids to private schools…whether in Hawaii or on the US Mainland.
Since the public K-12 were viewed by the well-to-do as mainly serving working-class/low-income Native Hawaiians and Asian/Asian-Americans, they didn’t feel the need to prioritize them that much.
The effects of this are such that Hawaii has one of the highest rates of K-12 students attending private schools(~20%) and many upper/upper-middle class families like my Hawaii-based relatives’ neighbors would shudder at the mere notion of sending their kids to the local public K-12 or in-state public colleges…including the flagship.
I agree! That study harder comment was towards her 10 minutes of study!
Going by your post I agree smarter kids study less!
Forcing a kid to study APUSH a year ahead of the class sounds bizarre, but perhaps if the family is Asian, there was less natural familiarity with American history and they wanted her to have the same background kids in the US would have after elementary and middle school.
As a non-Asian parent from a heavily Asian area, I don’t find it bizarre at all. Some Asian kids start preparing for the SAT as early as 6th grade.
I am not Asian-American, and I like my children to begin to be aware of history courses in advance of the topic (and after).
There is so much to take in culturally and socially that I like to reinforce the moment. We see historical films, visit museums, and discuss contemporary politics in historical terms. Instead of just allowing free-range reading, my usual practice, I will buy historical novels, or take them out of the library. I actually think it is good to supplement the school, even if it is as limited as starting the course in advance.
My kids grew up going to old houses, mills and museums in general, but these certainly weren’t geared to a test or grades.
I wasn’t thinking of tests and grades either, but the fact is that an experience rich childhood makes a huge difference. Our kids grew up talking about black holes at the dinner table and visits to local museums and Shakespeare in the park.
Children have different innate talents as well as different personalities. Our oldest was a very early reader (e.g., tested 5th grade when he entered Kindergarten) and fascinated by numbers. We never had to push him, but we “fed” him books, tools (calculators, computer access), and he loved games. In school he never seemed to have any homework, b/c he finished it all in school – doing his Spanish during his English class, math in his chemistry class, etc. So when he was home he could spend time on his hobbies, as well as teach himself to do things on the computer. One thing he couldn’t do: art. He didn’t have the small motor skills or the ability to draw things from life. By middle school he placed second in a statewide math competition. We didn’t know he was prepping for it! He never prepped for standardized tests. Got superior scores. He was a champion debater. For college, he only asked that it be a “place where it’s safe to be a thinker.” He wasn’t looking for prestige and refused to look at rankings or guidebooks. He did not want to visit colleges before applying to them.
Then there is #2. Born 3 years later. Same parents. Her strong early talent was art. Give her colored markers or pencils, and she could design things. She could draw what she could see. She did very well in math, science, and other subjects, but wasn’t very interested in most of them. She was, however, a good, early reader. But she put in her extra time in middle and high school projects by doing art pieces (drawing, constructions) illustrating books that interested her. It was no surprise to us that she wanted to attend art school for college. That she did. Never looked at college guidebooks, rankings, discussion boards (like CC). Graduated with a BFA. Later went back to school for an MS and MBA (for which she studied hard and earned superior scores on the GMAT).
We learned from those kids that we couldn’t and shouldn’t impose a set of goals for achievements (EC’s) and test scores. We were far from indifferent about their activities and achievements. But our role was mainly to provide resources, pat them on the back, not to push them. They would do well enough without that. And they did.
Recreational reading is almost certainly better for a kid’s intellectual development than watching TV.