<i>I assert that Asian parents' obsessive emphasis on grades, test scores, and college rankings originate from their upbringing in a poor, oppressive, and politically-unstable third-world society.</i><p>Asia is not China and China is not Asia.
Were there similar phenomena during earlier waves of immigration?<p>For example, the majority of my ancestors immigrated to America from Prussia in the mid to late 1800s. In general, they were professionals or businessmen, a tendency which has survived through the generations to me. I've always been encouraged in my intellectual and business pursuits, though not to the exclusion of more frivolous activities. Perhaps the German work ethic was/is in play?
He has described symptoms well, but his explanations only make sense if you ignore other immigrant groups. Latin American immigrants come from similar range of poor, politically unstable backgrounds, yet their children aren't being driven to academic excellence by their parents. In fact, instead of outperforming the white American natives, they substantially underperform them. Why the difference?<p>Let me give an answer: it appears to be genetics. Why else are the very different experiences of mainland Chinese, Chinese Hong Kongers, Chinese people from Taiwan, Chinese people from Singapore, Chinese people from Indonesian and Malaysia resulting in only minor differences in average outcomes in the USA?
uhhh, ok guys, i seriously don't think this is relevant to HN at all. it's not even remotely about hacking to any degree!<p>i don't have enough karma to kill submissions; could somebody kill this?<p>(i'm the author of this article, btw)