I am an Asian parent, yet I am not a fan of typical Asian parents pushing their kids. Asian education system is too much goal orientated — good test score means going to good school which in turn would land a person with good job. The education materials have too many short cuts and mainly memorization, instead of opportunity of researching, debating, analyzing, and cultivate independent thinking. For example, history books would be have information about such, such year, name of the war, name of the king won the war… but not much the background story on who, why, where, how cause the war, and what the result, and could have the war been prevented… Even math was about memorization… the formula and tons of practice until you recognize the question and basically put down the answer sleepwalking.
We live in an area where lots of Asian parents would send their kids to preparatory classes to prepare for entrance exams of magnet programs (Gifted and Talent). I deem this culture unhealthy, an even though daughter had passed (without preparation) the exams and was admitted in her elementary (got in), middle (just in waiting pool), and high school (got in) to magnet schools, each time we did not allow her to go (many of her friends did), but instead let her stay at her regular/home public school. The peer pressure is real, for other parents would give us a weird look for not letting her go to GTs, and our daughter did complain a few times that we were killing her future and just wanted her to be mediocre. Throughout her high school, she really pushed herself hard, taking challenge classes, so she would not be falling behind from her GT peers due to her hand-off approach Asian parents. We only monitored her grade report cards, and made sure she did her homework and had enough sleep most of the nights through HS.
Here comes the connection to the OP. Similar to the OP and her Asian friend having the same score, my daughter ended up going to one of the top schools, as good as (or even better than) those peers at the GT got in. The difference is the motivation was her self-driven rather than the parents’. She has since recognized our hand-off approach and appreciated the less tense four years of high school comparing her peers at the GTs.
@mackinaw Totally agree! Forrest Gump says “My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” I would say kids are like a box of chocolates and you never know what you’re gonna get until you discover their trait and talents as they grow.
