On Asians in the US

In my previous post I made an observation that since Asian immigrants in the US expect so much more of their children, and their children are pushed so hard that they actually meet their parents' expectations and vastly outperform their American peers, the US has not chance to win the competition with Asia. I wanted to expand on the topic.

I recently participated in a discussion on that same topic on one of the online forums. One of the participants noted that the number of Chinese and Korean students among the top high school and university graduates, as well as the best graduate students and postdocs is disproportionately high. However, that rich crop of hardworking mid-range scientists rarely produces any truly outstanding minds who become leaders in their scholarly fields. In other words, they are diligent followers, but not visionaries. And the reason for that may lie in their culture of implicit obedience to the elders. Growing up, they follow their parents' and teachers' demands to the t without questioning them whatsoever. They are extremely diligent in learning by heart the knowledge which is given to them by the authority. Yet, when it comes to creativity and the need to take the untrodden road, they feel lost.

This may be very true. Consider the economic miracles of Japan, Korea, and lately China. They may be great copying what the Western civilization has designed - they may be making better cars, computers, electronics than us. But what have they invented? Chinese dry wall, adding melamine to milk for babies and the like come to mind. But those are hardly inventions which propel the humankind forward. So the hope for the Westerners lies in their irreverence to the authority, in their creative free mind. Our niche will be to become inventors, designers, and intellectual leaders.

Interestingly, a few days ago I also had an encounter with an Oriental family of mixed heritage where both spouses are Ivy League educated professionals. They live in an area with a high concentration of Asian population. Even though they like to be able to expose their children to their ethnic culture in that community, they are worried that their American-born and American-raised children won't be able to compete with their first-generation peers from other Asian families. The wife told me: "I am not going to push my kids as hard as our parents had pushed us. And that may make them lose in the intense competition with other Chinese and Korean children." I suppose, here lies the second hope for America: that once the extremely hard working first generation of Asians partake of our culture, it will assume our more relaxed ways, and in turn will loosen the standards for their prodigy. And maybe then we will have a larger number of top scholars and inventors of Asian origin.