Amy Chua, the infamous Asian American “Tiger Mother,” is back with a provocative new book, The Triple Package, that started generating monsoon-high waves even before its publication. Teaming up with her spouse, fellow Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld, Chua tackles what is considered a taboo subject – why certain “cultural groups” in the United States are “astonishingly successful” and perform particularly well in school.
Studying the more materialistic measures of success — income, occupational, status and test scores — Chua and Rubenfeld claim that top performers come disproportionately from certain cultural groups, most notably Chinese Americans and Mormons. While the controversial book focuses on American immigrant student success, it might well apply here in Canada where Asian Canadian students are now academically soaring in the major cities of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
The central thesis of Chua and Rubenfeld’s The Triple Package is not only plausible, but defensible, and that’s what’s driving the legion of critics crazy. According to the authors, three traits breed success: a superiority complex, insecurity, and impulse control. Only when this “Triple Package” comes together does it “generate drive, grit, and systematic disproportionate group success.” Lost in the largely hostile initial reviews in The New York Post, The Guardian, and Salon.com is any reference to Chua’s rather forthright analysis of the downsides of “The Triple Package” –the burden of carrying a family’s high expectations, and the deep insecurities instilled in children that may exact a psychological price later in life.
Since the early 2000s, Canadian educational leaders and researchers have begun to conduct demographic studies that yielded some unexpected and perhaps unwanted results. Driven by the Educational Equity research agenda, they have focused almost exclusively on the deficits, studying under-performing student groups and attempting to close what is known as the “learning gap.”
In the case of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Canada’s largest public school system, the first comprehensive “demographic snapshot” released in June of 2008 was presented as a wake-up call demonstrating how “the system was failing to help students overcome roadblocks of culture, poverty and family background.” Then Director of Education Gerry Connelly was quoted in The Toronto Star issuing a fateful pledge: “I am bringing an action plan to address the underachievement of marginalized students that will specify targets and actions to break the cycle over the next five years (2008-2013).” Those five years are now up, and the latest TDSB Demographic Profile for 2011-12 seems to accept the dictates of “socio-economic gravity” when it comes to school success.
Leading researchers like Dr. Bruce Garnett, Research Director in BC District 36 (Surrey), produces fine immigrant student studies, but is not entirely helpful in explaining why students from some “cultural groups” are far outperforming others. After just completing his PhD at UBC in 2008, he seemed to rule out the potential of looking at “the minefield” of demographics and student excellence. “This isn’t some kind of horse race, ” he told The Toronto Star, and “we do this kind of research in the interest of equity because we know know kids from different countries can come to school with different degrees of preparedness, depending upon the dominant values of the culture.” He then hastened to add that it was “dangerous to use this kind of data to make genetic assumptions.”
Mounting evidence is accumulating that Garnett cannot afford, any longer, to avoid turning over that stone. The latest TDSB Environmental Scan for 2010-11 and particularly the Census Portraits for demographic groups has rendered such blinkered approaches almost untenable. Toronto school board research specialist, Maria Yau, and OISE Graduate student Sangeetha Navaratnam, have blown a hole in earlier research assumptions. The most recent Census Portrait of Toronto’s East Asian Students actually confirms the “Triple Package” thesis, and so do the findings of the South Asian demographic analysis.
The TDSB research findings for the East Asian and South Asian students, now representing some 40% of the TDSB student population, are impossible to ignore. Taken together, they are now the majority group in the system, larger than the “White” population (31%), and clearly driving recent improvements academic achievement and graduation rates. What explains their recent success? The three East Asian sub-groups from China, Hong Kong, and Korea, according to Yau, share several “commonalities” (i.e., traits): they achieve well academically, spend far more time per week on homework and studying (14-15 hours, almost double that of”white” students); and have parents more likely to expect them to go to university.
Asian Canadian students in the TDSB are also setting the academic pace, even though they are not drawn from the most economically-favoured, high income communities. Their academic achievement levels of East Asian students are truly outstanding, especially when so many start as “E.S.L” students. Between 85% and 89% of East Asian students achieve Levels 3 and 4 on the provincial Grade 6 Math test, some 25 to 30 points higher than the TDSB average., and a higher percentage at Grade 10 (84% to 69%) are on track to earn a high school graduation diploma. South Asian students, originally from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Guyana, and Bangladesh, are also performing well, all (except the Guyanese) with Grade 6 Math scores 2% to 15% above the board average.
Asian Canadian students in the TDSB are beating the socio-economic odds and performing very well in school. While it is true that more East Asian parents, except those from Hong Kong, have university degrees, parents from China are actually most likely to be in the two lowest income groups (i.e., with annual household incomes of less than $30,000 or between $30,000 and $49,000 per year). South Asian students tend to come from larger families and their parents , except for the Guyanese, are also mostly university educated. Once again, South Asian students have parents mostly in the lowest two income groups, earning under $50,000 per year.
American immigrant student research is proving to be closer to the mark than comparable work conducted by Canadian researchers. While Bruce Garnett and OISE researcher Jim Cummins focus on race and language as a disability affecting E.S.L. students, American scholars Grace Kao (University of Pennsylvania) and the late John Ogbu (UC Berkeley) saw great strengths in recently arrived immigrant students. Since 1995, Dr. Kao’s “model minorities” thesis has gained wide currency. She has made a compelling case that Chinese and Korean Americans are imbued with a strong sense of cultural values attaching great importance to achieving economic success through schooling and higher education.
Nigerian American Ogbu added credence to the “model minority” explanation by documenting the radically differing academic achievement levels achieved by children of “voluntary” immigrants compared to those from refugee or involuntary minority communities. In short, students from voluntary immigrant groups like the Chinese, Koreans, and East Asians, have higher hopes for school success and apply more effort than the so-called “colonized” and “conquered” immigrants such as Aftrican-American or First Nations children.
The ground-breaking American studies of Kao and Ogbu, buttressed by recent TDSB demographic research, strongly suggest that Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld’s controversial book The Triple Package should not be dismissed as completely off-base and might help to shed more light in the dark corner of North American education.
Why are Canadian Asian students performing so well in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal public schools? Do East Asian and South Asian students exhibit what Amy Chua terms “The Triple Package” of a superiority complex, insecurity, and impulse control? If not, then what else explains their “academic trajectories” and pace-setting achievement levels? And perhaps most significantly, where would Canadian schools (particularly in Toronto and Vancouver) rank in international student assessments without the presence of these high performing students?
Your commentary raises a question with regard to two of the three traits in the so-called “Triple Package.” I would be interested in knowing how superiority complex and insecurity are defined, especially as the terms could be defined as opposites.
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld’s The Triple Package will not be published until early February, but so much has already been written about the book that it’s possible to venture an educated guess. The superiority complex seems to be instilled in Asian children, particularly when it comes to a mastery of maths and sciences. Chua and Rubenfeld contend that four or five other “cultural groups” are also bred to develop an inner confidence (rarely openly expressed) that they are exceptional, chosen, destined to be successful. That’s consistent with the popular image of American Mormons and Jews, but the authors also apply that categorization to Lebanese-Americans, Cuban exiles, Nigerians, and Iranians.
Native-born Americans, the authors argue, are taught that self-esteem –feeling good about yourself– is the key to a successful life. In all of America’s most successful cultural groups, they contend, “people tend to feel insecure, inadequate, that they have to prove themselves.”
Surveying the TDSB Demographic Census Portraits of top performing East Asian Students, I was startled to see evidence of that “insecurity” or feeling that you can never really feel good about your successes because the expectations are so high. In the 2006 student census, East Asian students were found to be “less confident” than “White” students about “many of their skills, including their communication, reading and writing skills, social skills, problem-solving skills, and leadership skills.” Their academic achievement levels, even in Grade 6 Reading and Writing, in spite of such insecurities, were well above average in the school system (Maria Yau, Census Portrait: East Asians, Spring 2011.
A very well written commentary by that Educhatter character. Thoroughly researched and timely in its implications. Dr.Bennett has once again proven his superior command of Canadian education issues. Perhaps we can all learn from both his insights and commentary.
Much like The Bell Curve by Charles Murray when you start pulling race and educational results together you are on dangerous ground. It is very hard to separate race culture opportunity SES and do on.
Postponed gratification is a characteristic of all successful learners no matter the race.
Successful US charter schools are laser-focused on culture, and that is often their only advantage. Same students, same parents, same funding, often even the same school buildings, but their students achieve vastly superior results.
Deborah Kenny, founder of Harlem Village Academies, stresses the critical importance of their ‘teachers-first’ culture in her book ‘Born to Rise’. KIPP schools have a very different culture, focused on behavior code, but still delivering excellence. Peter Drucker used to say that culture trumps everything else, and that seems to be true for schools.
It’s easy to imagine that the success of a school is correlated directly to the vibrancy of it’s culture, although I haven’t seen any research on this and wouldn’t know how to operationalize cultural success.
That’s bad news for the TDSB. It is clear that the TDSB has a distinctive culture, which is the politest euphemism I can think of.
The more interesting question is whether a culture of success and excellence can be introduced into the TDSB’s schools, which are hobbled by ministry edicts, ideological curriculums, and union rules. Probably not. The charter schools would claim that their cultures could only have been grown in soil that had been freed from those constraints.
If we care about the kids, we should be closing the worst-performing TDSB schools immediately, and handing over the buildings to publicly funded charter schools. Some charters will succeed, others will fail. Identify the failures as quickly as possible and close them too. Build a fertile ecosystem where excellence can emerge.
China has the largest number and percentage of illiterates on Earth. This is largely a factor of lack of opportunity.
Chinese students who do have the opportunity to attend good schools start earlier quit later and come back to school evenings for supervised homework like Pathways here. If you total the hours they attend school 50 days more per year. This is 2-3 years extra by grade 12. The Koreans use the Hagwons. The Japanese have known since the 1920s that human capital is all they have.
Are Phllipinos Asians? They and Vietnam, Thailand Burma, Laos are educational basketcases. Notice the poverty success relationship?
The book is largely talking about a middle class situation in the dispora and the more advanced Asian nations.
China is abuzz with discussion of the new generation of Fu are die the spoiled generation, the children of successful parents who will not work hard in school and are giving their parents fits. A nouveau riche situation has them rethinking the spoiled boy of the one child generation.
When we discuss Chinese Americans we need to take a little look at history. The Chinese revolution was a wrenching experience for 25% of the world’s people. Naturally the people who felt they would do better in capitalist America, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, UK got out as fast as they could. They are highly skewed towards 2 groups. The educated professionals and the business class. These groups are 2 of the most educationally successful groups and wildly overrepresented in the diaspora. When a group like that dominated the immigrant group they tend to help raise up the whole group.
The Chinese “believe in” education. Sadly they introduced the world’s first standardized tests largely to break the hold of nepotism on the civil service.
Chinese university students are famous for self organizing study groups to compensate for language gaps and to create synergistic results for the group. We all do as well as the most able.
I attended a talk by Amy Chua shortly after Tiger Mother caused such a controversy. Some of what I heard her say was that our school system has very low expectations of most students both in quality of standards and effort.
If one actually reads what she wrote and not what the media reported, combined with Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, particularly the chapter, Marita’s Bargain, you would understand the cultural reasons behind their theses.
FYI.Amy Chua’s book has more to do with China’s ancient Confucian history more than its dispora mentioned here. From Confucian times until now education has been given China’s highest priority. From the Confucian era onwards China has chosen its government mandarins by competitive merit based exams. These exams were written by anyone who aspired to improve both their economic and social status.We should consider China’s culture of merit based achievement in education as a historical process not geared to just one historical event (Read Henry Kissinger’s book ‘China’ for references)
Funny for a nation that made education its highest priority they have the highest number and more importantly the highest percentage of illiterates on Earth.
BTW she is talking about success IN AMERICA.
I don’t often agree with Doug, but his posts are dead on and accurate. However, the Triple Package is just another book disguised as what could be described in the Time article – “But isn’t this just the same old racism — barely wearing new clothes? Racism has always come in a variety of costumes and cloaks. Put another way: bigotry, intolerance, discrimination and violence can be as covert as they are overt; can owe a debt as much to the seemingly reasonable intellects of academies and legislatures as the Neanderthal ranting of the ugliest segregationists and supremacists.”
Read more: Tiger Mom Amy Chua’s New Racism Is Nothing New | TIME.com http://ideas.time.com/2014/01/24/theres-nothing-new-about-the-new-racism/#ixzz2rcivIOym
Ending – ““The Triple Package” is not evidence of a “new racism.” It’s the same old garbage, in a slightly different, Ivy League-endorsed disguise.”
One could call it cultural racism – the new threat of the 21st century in the developed countries, to firmly embedded in the structures of governance and social institutes to openly discriminate based on ethnic, income and social status. Formulating policy based on ethnic, income and social status, between groups, within groups and between countries. Some of the intellectuals in the ivy towers are calling the purveyors who are ensconced within the ivy towers of government and the social institutes peddling such racist garbage one of the biggest threats. Doug is correct, “The Chinese revolution was a wrenching experience for 25% of the world’s people. Naturally the people who felt they would do better in capitalist America, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, UK got out as fast as they could. They are highly skewed towards 2 groups. The educated professionals and the business class. These groups are 2 of the most educationally successful groups and wildly overrepresented in the diaspora. When a group like that dominated the immigrant group they tend to help raise up the whole group.” The author, Amy Chua, hails from the upper middle class of America,, whose own parents escaped the Chinese Red Revolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Chua
As noted in history, the first to leave one’s country are the highly educated professionals and the business class. It is no different in the 21st century, than it was in the historical past. As for the little fairy tale of Chinese students that Edubeat points out, “. These exams were written by anyone who aspired to improve both their economic and social status.” In China, the reality is 60 % of the student population do not have access to high school because the parents do not have the money to pay for the high school fees and exams, and as such most students finished grade 8, in and around the age of 14 or so and sent off into the work force. Only a wee percentage of the lower classes in China, will have the government pay for their education if the students are considered exceptional. Noted in the Time, and by other writers the other ‘ism’ shows its face – Exceptionalism – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceptionalism And in the Time article – “But even calling this slightly new shade, this culture-based argument for achievement, this soft bigotry of the myth of group Exceptionalism, “new” obscures the realities of injustice in America. It assigns to publicity-hungry individuals and pseudoscientists responsibility for a narrow-mindedness that is, in fact, long-established and structural — as political as it is personal.”
That said, Doug writes – “Chinese university students are famous for self organizing study groups to compensate for language gaps and to create synergistic results for the group. We all do as well as the most able.” My own child, the dyslexic one is now part of the Asian study groups, to my child’s surprise of my child. The Asian students invited her in, because she solves math problems in the same fashion as the Asian students using standard algorithms. The Asian students also informed her, she is not the only one studying 3 hours a night in practicing and doing math. My child is getting some of the best tutoring and learning on the go, because the Asian students in her class, respects her ability and skills. I wonder what they would think, if they found out she was at the bottom of the class at the end of the grade 3. But I digress, the point is Asian students, and not necessarily Chinese students organized study groups to compensate for language gaps to create synergistic results for the group.
It is all about the skills of students, to which Asian students are likely to learn the skills of studying, writing notes and other skills to aid learning, compared as a group, rather than leaving the skills up to the individual students in Canadian and American schools. One of the keys for my child’s successfully passing high school and gain admittance to post secondary, she had no choice but to developed excellent studying skills. Being dyslexia, my child had no choice but to developed her studying skills, if she wanted to maintain a 80 something average. I have observed, in the Canadian schools, the K to 12 education does very little in teaching of the studying skills, nor even understand why 20 minutes of homework may translate to 3 hours of work for the LD child.
All children can do as well as the most able, but according to Chau its about culture. So who are the losers, every group across the globe except for the exceptional groups (where exceptionalism comes in) and in no particular order – 1. Chinese 2. Indian 3. Iranian 4. Lebanese-Americans 5. Nigerians
6. Cuban exiles 7. Mormons 8. Jewish. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2534257/Tiger-Mom-roars-time-book-naming-eight-superior-groups-people.html
Amy Chua is about a centimeter from being a racist.
In Toronto Latin American students from El Salvador Honduras Guatamala do very badly in school. Chileans however do very well. The first were peasants driven out by war and lack of opportunity. The Chileans were teachers, journalists, prof, artists. It is the SES of the immigrating group that is critical, not the culture. You can see the same with anti-Castro Cubans.
SES not culture.
I don’t know how you can continue to say it’s SES when the TDSB’s own report above says there is NO link between income and improvement for immigrant students.
A nation the size of China has 2 universities in the top 100 #45 and 46.
Little Canada has 3 and all are much higher with UT at # 16. The flow of university students is Asia to west, not west to Asia. Most Asian nations only dream of mass public education success like Canada. Only Japan and Korea are at the level.
Doug, the same can be said about the First Settlers of Canada. My father’s people, the fellow from Ireland, whose family was a very large land owner who happened to be Protestant, fled Ireland because he married a Catholic girl. Otherwise, he probably would have been hung by his peers if he stayed in Ireland. So the family sent them packing to the wilds of Canada with a pocketful of gold for their new start in Canada. On my mother’s side of the family, approximately 50 years later, three brothers highly skilled in shipbuilding and masonry decided to leave for a new life in Canada with a pocketful of gold. Both sides of the family were of the higher social-income status, who had the skills of reading and writing, as well as skills that came in handy for the new world.
It has been shown in history, the first to leave are the people with money and skills, and it holds true to ancient historical times. My father’s people were the first ones to operate a school house, to teach the locals including natives simple arithmetic, reading and other useful bits of knowledge. As the family story goes, nothing better to do in the middle of winter……….So SES is not culture – it never has been and never will be. But this type of thinking does reflect a few political ‘isms’ such as nationalism, ethnocultural nationalism and exceptionalism that has started a few wars in history.
I actually think we agree for once.
Chinese Americans (and Canadians) are VERY different from the Chinese in China. They have certain cultural traits and habits in common but usually the minor ones.
Same with Italians, Greeks, Indians. One reason they are here is their social class and personal motivations.
Yes Doug, what we have in common is the belief that all people no matter who and where they come from are human beings. Sure culture shapes but it should never define such as one group being superior over another. group of people. We may argued a lot of the how-tos’, but what we won’t argue or even bother to defend is the crap in the Triple Package posing as intellectual thoughts of the ivy towers of academia.
That said, in two articles – British and an American – each point out what is so wrong with the Triple Package – 1. Paradoxically, in modern America, a group has an edge if it doesn’t buy into — or hasn’t yet bought into — mainstream, post-1960s, liberal American principles.’
Straying into controversial territory, Chau and her husband say that African-Americans don’t make the list because the Civil Rights Movement destroyed their chance of any superiority.
‘In this paradoxical sense, equality isn’t fair to African-Americans,’ they write.
‘Superiority is the one narrative that America has relentlessly denied or ground out of its black population.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2534257/Tiger-Mom-roars-time-book-naming-eight-superior-groups-people.html#ixzz2rjIzMPKV
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And here 2. “The real story here — the less controversial one, the more interesting and possibly instructive one — is that historically, immigrant groups tend to experience upward mobility in America until the third generation, and then, for reasons unknown, tend to level off. It’s interesting, too, that the authors either dismiss or outright ignore the large swaths of immigrant groups who built up this country — the English, Irish, Italians, Germans, Eastern Europeans. They ignore two very basic explanations for the success of immigrant groups in America: Anyone who leaves their homeland for parts unknown, no matter how desperate, is, by definition, bold; America’s uniqueness as a nation founded by immigrants.”
http://nypost.com/2014/01/04/tiger-mom-some-groups-are-just-better-than-others/
As for education, the diversity of the student population is the greatest strength that the Canadian and American K to 12 education system has. It is too bad, the K to 12 education establishment foolishly pits one group of students against another. The Canadian Supreme Court ruling on the Moore case is an example of pitting LD students against the other students with disabilities, while denying LD students the keys to the access gates of educational opportunities and offerings. Or as in Paul’s blog post – “American immigrant student research is proving to be closer to the mark than comparable work conducted by Canadian researchers. While Bruce Garnett and OISE researcher Jim Cummins focus on race and language as a disability affecting E.S.L. students, American scholars Grace Kao (University of Pennsylvania) and the late John Ogbu (UC Berkeley) saw great strengths in recently arrived immigrant students. Since 1995, Dr. Kao’s “model minorities” thesis has gained wide currency. She has made a compelling case that Chinese and Korean Americans are imbued with a strong sense of cultural values attaching great importance to achieving economic success through schooling and higher education.”
Plain foolishness to have ESL students labeled as a disability. Last time I check ESL students or other people learning English as their second language are not protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights nor in the U.S. are they legally protected. The pitting of the ESL students against other groups of students when educational funding is transfer to the ESL students to meet their needs, while the other student groups are made to do with less funding and never have their learning needs met. The educationalists in the ivory towers of the OISE are part and parcel of creating and forming some of the biggest holes and cracks, due to its crackpot theories of superiority and literally turning equality theories upon itself, by declaring some groups of students are superior to other groups of students. Where the K to 12 students born in Canada and their education needs are secondary to meeting the needs of immigrant students. The minority is ruling the roost, while the majority of diverse needs are asked to model their behaviour after the immigrant students. It clearly shows in remediation programs for the LD students, who are sitting in the classrooms working along side other ESL student learning English. The K to 12 version of providing education services for the LD population on the cheap. In the Moore case ruling, the above was also cited in the factums by the many organizations who had standing.
So yes, Doug is correct and I bet the few immigrant families living in my corner of the world would agree with Doug and myself. “Chinese Americans (and Canadians) are VERY different from the Chinese in China. They have certain cultural traits and habits in common but usually the minor ones.
Same with Italians, Greeks, Indians. One reason they are here is their social class and personal motivations.”
I attended a talk given by Ms. Chua in Toronto and found what she had to actually say more illuminating than the sensationalist drivel reported by media. Her thesis concurs with Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers chapter on this very topic. It is a cultural expectation to work hard, persevere and aim high for success. Ms. Chua also went further to say that western schooling generally espouses none of these things.
Ever since John Goodlad did his study of schooling in the early 1980s it has been clear that we (North America) want it all
1 academics
2 vocational training and general workplace skills
3 happy fulfilled individuals
and
4 civic and social responsibility
not to mention
5 good physical and mental health
it may be possible to do all these things but
– not easy
– hard choices have to be made on questions of timing and balance
There is a growing body of research on the merits of working on several of these at once, but the demands have outgrown the ability (or willingness) of
education systems to meet all of the divergent and sometimes contradictory needs.
It would be nice to have informed, involved parents, but this is hard in many households, such as the one I grew up in.
At least we were expected to work hard in school, even if my parents had no time to help us.
It really does take a village or community to raise a child, especially in 2014.
I agree with John but if it so much Chinrse culture it is not working so well. Their system is very ridged streamed something OECD decries. The Gow Cow exam kills the futures if millions every year as 2/3 pass. They Have only 2 universities in top 100. Canada has 3 placed higher.
What Amy Chua has observed is the behaviour of Chinese Americans. This is a totally different group of people with a much higher SES on average.
I disagree on the statement that the Chinese Americans are different group than the Chinese in China. I was born and raised in China. The common cultural mentality in all families in China is to strive to be successful, measured by income and status. The difference is, the grounds in North America are more leveled than in China. If people are given the opportunities and they also have the drive and ambition, they can get to a higher place than in an environment that is highly restricted in resources and restricted politically.
http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/news/nclb-co-author-says-he-never-anticipated-federal-law-would-force-testing-obsession-edsource-today/
Last night on CNN Amy was on a discussion panel for her book. Charles Blow called it ” the revival of old racist tropes poorly hidden behind culture.’
This is from Margaret Wente’s column in the Globe today (she gives Paul a nice salute) where she cites the Toronto School board’s own demographic data:
“The second surprise is that there is almost no link between academic success and family income among immigrant groups. More than half of all East Asian students (Chinese, Hong Kong and Korean) come from families that make less than $50,000 a year. But they blow the other kids away. Between 85 per cent and 89 per cent of them score at levels 3 and 4 in Grade 6 math. The school board average is just 60 per cent. Most South Asian students do well too, even though 70 per cent of them come from homes with incomes of less than $50,000 a year.”
Immigrant groups are totally different from groips left behind. There is a serious flaw in Doretta’s response. SES is only half a measure of income. The S in SES is there for a reason. Many groups arrive “with nothing” but antiCastro Cubans, anti Communist Vietnamese, and similar arrive with the critical knowledge of how to run a business. These are not peasants or workers.
Chileans are far more successful than other LA immigrants and refugees. In fact Chua’s examples prove once again in no uncertain terms, the Iron Law of SES and school success.
Doug Little, you repeatedly claim that “China has the largest number and percentage of illiterates on Earth. This is largely a factor of lack of opportunity.”
Do you have any reputable references to back up this preposterous claim?
I suspect that there are larger numbers and percentages of illiterates in several other countries including India, Congo, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, Peru…
Chua and husband were on Farid Zakaria today and admit these characteristics are not present in India or China or other countries that produce “high achieving immigrants”. They also admit almost all of these traits are lost b the 3rd generation.
It is an SES question in the first place unique to the immigant insecurity situation.
Is postponed gratification important? Of course but this is hardly a braekthrough.
This is what matters, not racial stereotypes.
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/03/instead_of_a_war_on_teachers_how_about_one_on_poverty/
The “magical thinking” when it comes to proposed “solutions” to education “problems” makes it easy to cross the line into stereotyping and faulty generalizations. The Triple Package, or the lenses we use to interpret it, reinforce our faulty biases.
While the evidence that SES is the ONLY factor that counts- an IRON LAW- is not supported by evidence, SES is a serious factor.
And to be fair, it is often much more serious than some of the magic bullets proposed in many blogs.
At least Nancy picked up on this one. Amy Chua is bkaming the parents, not the system.
As incomes polarize in the USA and to a lesser extent in Canada the achievement gap is actually widening.Race has less and less to do with the issue except in as much as some groups track on income data.
The evidence is pouring in from all sources that SES is the overwhelming and INCREASING factor in the achievement gap. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
http://www.citytowninfo.com/career-and-education-news/articles/study-shows-education-gap-between-rich-and-poor-is-growing-12021302
No Doug, I saw it for what it is – Chua’s attempt to ducked the issues of governments and the social institutes and agencies and the embedded practices and cultural beliefs within the structures, processes and operations of the government and the social/agencies. Instead placed the focus on parents, implying cultural values are driving the achievement of students. I don’t buy it, because historically speaking, tells us the opposite.
Won’t go further for lack of space, but it is sufficient to say progress and achievement of human beings goes hand in hand with the ability of people having access to the opportunities and the right to the opportunities. Chua’s book is just another version based on race theories, and instead of using race, the word is culture. Cultural based theories – in Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_theory
And here – for some reason, the bulk of papers are hailing from the ivory towers of the education system – http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~simoncu/269/culture.htm
As John has stated – ” The Triple Package, or the lenses we use to interpret it, reinforce our faulty biases.” One negative outcome – it happens daily in the K to 12 education system – denial of education services based on the social-income status of parents. Parents abilities and skills is the opportunity for the school, to download education services to the parents on the things that the public education system is no longer willing to teach. Most parents, no matter the culture will picked up the costs, instead of waiting for the school to do something or accepting a poor version being offered by the school, and it goes according to the social-income status of parents.
I am back to square 1, and in the same position as I was in 2001. Being judge by education levels, income, ability and skills and now cultural. According to Chua, who was raised in the high rent district of American professional communities, as a parent I need to shape up. My culture doesn’t have what it will take. Pray tell? In 2001, I was accused by an educationalist at the school board, I did not have what it takes to teach my child nor the education levels to do so. In 2014, I have another set of professionals with high levels of education telling the world, only certain parents from cultural are likely to be parents – ” sharing several “commonalities” (i.e., traits): they achieve well academically, spend far more time per week on homework and studying (14-15 hours, almost double that of”white” students); and have parents more likely to expect them to go to university.” Rather odd, as a parent I had to fight tooth and nail, to obtained the education services and accommodations that enable my child to achieve well academically while the educrats belief values did everything in their power not to have my child achieved well academically.
There is a name for it – “Cultural Racism Cultural racial discrimination, a variation of structural racism, occurs when the assumption of inferiority of one or more races is built into the a society’s cultural norms.” https://www.boundless.com/sociology/definition/cultural-racism/
When educators signals out SES as being the ONLY factor, it is a partial truth, as it is when educators signals out poverty as being the ONLY factor. It is far more complex where magic bullets are not the answers nor blaming the parents. What Chau is advocating for, is a form of cultural institutionalized discrimination, where it will be up to the parents to provide and ensure an education for their children, while the governments and the social institutes/agencies are given a free pass to discriminate to deliver education services to the masses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination
By Design Or Default – America The Melting Pot – Good Or Bad?
I don’t yet know what is the bottom line, the conclusion, the summation of this book — The Triple Package.
I’ve ordered the book, meanwhile have read the reviews. One review jumped out at me and caused both alarm and unease about these researchers. Are they disinterested and follow the research where it leads, or are they academics with an agenda in mind?
One reviewer provided this quote from their book— saying this was the hoped for outcome of their book:
“The real promise of a Triple Package America is the promise of a day when there are no longer any successful groups in the United States — only successful individuals.”
This conclusion shocks me because I have been closely monitoring the US project called Common Core Standards — a federal program that induces states to homogenize school curricula to common standards. I do not see any resulting “successful individuals” emerging from this common core program — just groupthink collectivist masses.
I would have thought these authors would have valued diversity. That independence and resistance to the “dumbing-down” general direction of schooling would be applauded. That distinct cultural groups showing the way to success and high achievement would be celebrated.
A recent report in the UK showed that striving parents eagerly moved residences to better schools and bought extra tutoring for their kids when needed. Unfortunately, this behavior was broadly condemned in the general press as “cheating”. I hope this book, which sensationalizes the high aspirations of subgroups, does not cause them to be labeled as pushy or cheating. Instead, they should be praised for illustrating the human traits that propel success and counteract the overbearing forces that homogenize and mediocritize.
I’m kinda pleased that Nancy caught on right away ” Amy Chua is blaming the parents” If you were Tiger Mothers your kids would be ok.
The real story.
Sociologist on CBC this morning calls Chua book a new form or racism using cherry picked data in an amateurish fashion.
The revealing issue is not how much money people arrived with but what was their occupation before they left. Entrepreneurs will do well. Professionals obviously peasants and construction not so much.
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/02/how-amy-chua-gets-race-wrong.html
Chua amateurish
[…] There are studies that actually show that children of grade-school educated immigrants of certain communities, like Chinese or Korean, […]
That Maclean’s Interview (February 16, 2014) with Amy Chua and her spouse cuts right to the heart of the ,matter:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/02/16/is-the-cultural-edge-merely-a-paper-tiger/
It’s also great to see Educhatter research contributing to the larger public conversation.
Chua bad contributed zero to the debate. She and het husband should stick to law. Real sociologists label their work amateurish cherry picking.
The Phillipine Chinese minority were business like the Cubans who ran from communism same with the Vietnamese. It all comes Back to what occupation did you have before you left. Not money or even education. Some call it merchant mentality. The ability to run a business.
At the end of the day, it is a poorly informed, cherry picked, piece of elitist nonsense with no contribution to make to the debate.
http://m.thestar.com/#!/news/china-rethinking-tiger-parent-approach/7a60f5dbfa2759a0091adf3bd579addc
Rather than wasting time sifting the tea leaves or track cultural DNA in a shifting wind, we might be better working on helping schools and teachers do the best they can over those factors they are some element of control.
Public schools in Canada are our “Statues of Liberty” making promises to all who enter, regardless of background.
Engaging in the wider policy debate is fine as Tanya and Doug are eager to do.
As I sit here marking papers, correspond with teacher colleagues across the country, and answer emails from students, their big question- and it is always my big question- is how do improve my teaching and the learning by those in my class?
Whatever the merits of the work of Chua and Rubenfeld on a long-term policy level, it’s value in my classroom is to remind me of the importance of those non cognitive factors that influence learning for ALL- Mormon, Nigerian, etc.
Earlier posts have looked a bit at these factors prompted by Paul Tough’s Grit.
“It’s” should read “its”
“Tanya” should read “Tunya”
[…] There are studies that actually show that children of grade-school educated immigrants of certain communities, like Chinese or Korean, […]
Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd’s feature article (February 22, 2014) makes good use of insights gleaned from, of all places, Educhatter’s Blog:.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2014/02/22/why-immigrant-students-prevail-at-canadian-universities/
The modest influence of this humble blog now extends from coast to coast. I’m told that the odd policy maker takes a look, now and then.
[…] There are studies that indeed show that children of grade-school prepared immigrants of certain communities, like Chinese or Korean, […]