Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!joyce!gds
From: gds@spam.istc.sri.com (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Are Americans Intellectually Inferior?
Message-ID: <15993@joyce.istc.sri.com>
Date: 28 Jan 89 23:08:00 GMT
References: <1461@trantor.harris-atd.com> <19554@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <27541@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Sender: news@joyce.istc.sri.com
Reply-To: gds@spam.istc.sri.com (Greg Skinner)
Distribution: usa
Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park CA
Lines: 26

In article <27541@bu-cs.BU.EDU> cd@bu-cs.bu.edu (Clarence K. Din) writes:
>True, as Norm said, it has to do with culture.  But Asian-American culture
>enforces this thing that many other cultures do not enforce: DISCIPLINE.
>Many Asian kids are taught, since childhood, that getting low grades is
>shameful.  Therefore, to combat the idea of "losing face," the Asian
>child must continually strive to succeed throughout his/her school
>years. [...]

You really hit a sore spot here ...

Why are (such-and-such) people so obsessed with the idea of success
that they deem it shameful to fail?  As if failing made someone a bad
person!  A person is a good person because of *who* they are, not
*what* they are able to do.

Perhaps (some) Americans cannot compete with Asians because their
parents did not shame them into being straight A students.  I take my
hat off to those parents.  In my opinion, it's far better to provide a
child with care and nurture than to criticize them for failure.

If more people were encouraged to learn for learning's sake, as
opposed to for some reward (or punishment if they fail to learn), we
wouldn't have the situation where students jump off of bridges or hang
themselves because they failed to live up to expectations.

--gregbo