I want to laugh every single time someone says this BS. Since when is being hand fed homework and test answers “hardworking”??? If you don’t you best believe mommy and daddy will call and complain their precious baby doesn’t “understand”. Or why did they get below a “B”?? Their kid is sooo hardworking! It’s worse when coteachers act like their helicopter patents too.
Meanwhile kids in other countries: have to legit study and some actually gasp go to work to support their family!
P.S.: it wouldn’t let me post my ranting in the temp forum.
I agree the Taiwanese system is not great but I don’t agree that other countries the kids actually have legit study. Most of the kids I know don’t really study and their parents don’t push them all that much in the west.
Yeah but if we don’t study and fail our parents weren’t likely to call and complain.
Plus I remember all the smart students/AP would 100000% actually study. It could depend on the school though.
Also, I definitely wasn’t hand fed homework answers lol.
There were no answers to be fed in my schooling. You had to use your brain and think critically. The answer wasn’t “B! Make sure you mark down that the answer to number 5 was not 豬 you idiot, it was B!” (Every junior high class in Taiwan). If the question on the Spanish test required us to conjugate verbs, we were conjugating verbs and writing them down by hand, not filling in letters of the English alphabet and competing with our friends to see who could guess more incorrect answers (also my experience in Taiwan). And by high school, I’d say 99% of assessments required us to do our own work. In math, we had to show our work or the answer was wrong, even if the number you wrote down was right. In world languages, we wrote dialogues in lower levels and speeches and essays in upper levels. In science, we wrote lab write ups using our own words and submitting to “turnitin.com” to check for plagiarism and we solved problems the way you do with math. We also wrote essays because common core was just being introduced, so essays all around!! Language Arts was all about writing about what we read, cuz that’s kind of the point, except for that one semester that was speech, then we wrote and gave speeches all semester. Gym class was still fitness (can’t really get answers handed to you when you’re running the pacer), arts and tech classes involved portfolios
Yeah, you can’t really finish American schools (if you’re in a good district) without doing your own work. I mean, someone else can do the work for you, to an extent, but at some point it’s going to be your own responsibility.
I’ve had Taiwanese adults think the best way to prepare for the TOEIC is to copy someone else’s essays 100s of times until they’re memorized instead of practicing composing an essay of their own. So, yeah. I whole heartedly disagree with the “Asians are so smart” and “work so hard” tropes
I don’t think there’s any question that East Asian kids study harder than Western kids, although they don’t necessarily “work” harder. These are two very different things. Also, the type of studying East-Asian kids typically do is incredibly inefficient and doesn’t produce adults who can think critically and use foreign languages. But in terms of how “hard” they study, there’s simply no question that East-Asian kids study harder, for good or ill.
If someone’s doing this, you can’t question their work ethic. You can certainly question their intelligence - or perhaps the test design - but they’re not being lazy about it.
Hand fed test answers and homework answers isn’t studying. My students openly admit they never study. They also don’t exercise but that’s a whole other issues lol.
Like the person above you stated they think “studying” is copying someone else’s work lmao.
But your original post wasn’t really about studying - it was about how much effort they put in. Hardworking, yeah, I’d say most students here are hardworking, but a lot of that effort is about getting adequate test scores rather than learning (which is also how the incentive structure is set up). Studying, eh … depends on definition. Learning or developing the same project-based skills @nz talks about above? Not much for that.
Yeah but also…I knew a lot of Asian kids (from Asia, not Asian Americans) who thought spending the entire night in the library sleeping at a table with one’s head in a book was much more of a display of hard work than studying in the library for two hours and then going to one’s own bed to sleep. I also had a CCP Chinese coteacher in the US who would tell EVERYONE about how she was there until 8:30 last night, yet she was running off to make copies two minutes after class was supposed to start and clearly hadn’t prepared ANYTHING for class.
So it’s cultural. In the US, you get the work done and show the work. In Asia, you show how much time you spent on the work and that’s all that matters, even if the work isn’t done.
I’m glad you mentioned this. I should have clarified. I do think first gen Asian Americans (and other first gen Americans) work incredibly hard and I feel bad for them. They actually have to earn their grades lol. Completely different than here.
Speaking of books: I have to tell my kids books lay on the desk otherwise they won’t read.
Also, worth noting that the OECD’s PISA testing which compares systems at scale (not subjective experiences of individuals) ranks Taiwanese education better than American on reading, math, and science literacy. So, in fact there is probably a variety of learners and schools in both countries.
I’m not saying the “asians work so hard” stereotype has any value, just trying to point out that crude generalizations either way aren’t very useful.
When I was in the US many parents don’t push their children at all, particularly latino… they treat their children like kings and queens. The stuff I see they buy for their children, my parents would laugh their ass off if I even suggested it.
But I think there should be a middle ground because asian parents push their children too hard.
