In Chapters 5-7 of Zhao's book, I feel like the worst parts of China's education system are what America's would be if every bad part were turned up to 11. Chapter 5 talks about the hitting of arbitrary targets: Whatever the Emperor wants, the Emperor gets. If it is decreed that a big wall will be built, then damn the expenses, the wall will be built. If Chairman Mao wants to increase steel production, then steel production will be increased, even if it is to the detriment of every other activity in society. If professionals (academic and otherwise) need to publish in order to get promoted, and the only thing that matters is the number of publications (because bureaucracies need numerical metrics) then fake journals will be utilized. If k-12 schools are going to be rewarded for the number of patents filed by students (Zhao is apparently not joking) then k-12 students will file patents of zero quality, and if the system is going to reward this then the patent office will be obliged to accept and approve those patents.
I feel much the same way about the paperwork demands of the modern American higher ed bureaucracy. It has been decreed that reports on outcomes assessment are to be written, so those reports are written. However, thoughtful, meaningful data collection and analysis are non-trivial activities, and the System has no ability to fund the massive efforts that would be required to produce thoughtful evaluation of anything other than the most mass-produced course delivery. Mass production sounds good to some technocrats, but "Innovation! And! Transformation!" also sound good to them, so the system continues to tolerate the intellectual diversity that is anathema to standardized, mass-produced assessment. As a result, the system accepts meaningless reports to show that the requisite numbers of reports were filed.* Moreover, the only thing that The System values even more than the production of reports is ensuring that no boats are rocked, and a truly meaningful look under the hood might tell us...well, it might tell us that the phrase "Gentleman's C" refers to a problem that is timeless and universal rather than old, musty, and covered in ivy.
In chapter 7, Zhao notes that China's rulers are not and have not been oblivious to the problems of exclusive reliance on standardized testing. The Imperial Exams were abolished a bit more than a century ago, but the competitive test prep habits inspired by those exams have not easily faded. When the universities give weight to measures of creativity (an oxymoron if ever there was one) parents push this children to excel at those measures and bribe the evaluators. When the universities give weight to patents (!) the children produce the requisite numbers of junk patents. If they reward performance in artistic or athletic talent competitions, the parents prepare their children accordingly.
Some of this is surely a consequence of 1300 years of test prep habits not fading easily. Cultures do not change overnight, as evidenced by Marxism's utter failure to change Chinese culture. (I hasten to note that the Chinese people's refusal to replace their traditional social structures with Marxism is a very, very good thing!) However, Chapter 6 offers another point for why these hyper-competitive academic habits have not faded easily: In both the past and the present, the highest-status jobs in China have been and are government jobs with academic requirements, not private sector jobs. When there are few paths to advancement, people will do anything and everything that it takes to get on one of those paths.
In the US, we most definitely do NOT have a problem of assigning low status to private sector jobs. However, we may be seeing a narrowing and bifurcation of career paths. In the alleged "service economy" there will be the people paid well for jobs at desks and the people paid poorly for everything else. There are problems with the economic sustainability of this model (e.g. what, exactly, will we produce for sale to the rest of the world?) but if we leave that aside for now, and just focus on the social and educational elements, a bifurcation of opportunity will raise the stakes of elite education, and with those rising stakes we will see more intense competition, and more cutting of corners.
I want the reader to consider the hypothesis that the health of an education system relies on the economy more than the health of an economy relies on the education system. I do not simply mean that higher GDP means more money to inject into the education system; you can inject cash into good or bad schools and get good or bad results. Rather, I mean that a robust and sustainable economy with a breadth of desirable paths and opportunities will be conducive to a more robust and sustainable educational system, with more intellectual breadth and a wider variety of approaches and paths for a wider variety of students. On the other hand, an economy with bifurcated opportunities will see intense competition for the handful of pathways to the better opportunities. Competition can be a very good thing, but intense competition for the wrong sorts of things does not lead to better learning or better innovation.
*Let me reassure you that I am, needless to say, merely reporting unfortunate tales related to me by colleagues at other, less conscientious, institutions. My own institution is, of course, an exception, producing exemplary assessment reports of the highest caliber and most thoughtful analysis.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
First thoughts on "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon"
The first couple chapters set the stage by talking about the Western infatuation with Chinese education and the history of the Imperial exams. Apparently there is nothing new about Westerners proclaiming that we need to emulate Chinese education. Jesuit missionaries were impressed by the effort that went into the Imperial Exam system centuries ago. Zhao, born and raised in China before pursuing an academic career in the US, makes a historical case that our infatuation with China is misplaced, noting (among other things) that the Industrial Revolution passed China by because of an authoritarian education system that emphasized Confucian teachings over science and technology. This resulted in China's humiliations at the hands of foreign powers in the 19th century.
The basic historical survey seems consistent with everything else I've seen, as far as the facts go, and well-argued as far as the analysis goes. Nonetheless, I want to quibble with the author on two points where I think he's not pushing as far as he could with the implications of certain assumptions.
First, in the introduction, Zhao argues that we are mistaken to emulate China's exultation of effort over all else. He says that it's an unrealistic expectation that carries the implication that if the poor fail it's their own fault for being lazy. Certainly that is one way to apply such an attitude, and we often see the poor in the US castigated for alleged laziness. However, I'm not convinced that the problem is our attitude towards effort, but rather a combination of (1) our attitude towards the poor and (2) elevating a theory of education to a theory of everything.
In the trenches of higher ed, the notion that failure comes from lack of effort has a brighter, shinier twin that says that anyone can succeed if they try. This brighter, shinier twin eschews many traditional metrics of success and ability in favor of concepts like "growth mindset" and "grit" and argues for democratizing access to advanced study and elite institutions. Maybe you share their perspective, or maybe you don't. (For my own part, I believe that success is mostly effort but not solely effort, so I'm in a mushy middle.) Regardless of your own view, the attitude that equates success with effort is one that can be harnessed in the service of progressive causes just as easily as it can be used to attack the poor. Indeed, in the modern American context, those who argue that academic success has a strong connection to innate abilities are seen as playing on a slippery slope that equates academic failure with biological traits, traits that the less savory in our society then argue are more common in certain groups.
My point is that if you have a theory of what causes academic success or failure, you can, if you wish, use that theory to argue that the poor are lazy, or genetically inferior, or less virtuous, or whatever other trait you correlate with failure. Likewise, you can use that theory to propose ways of uplifting the poor and disadvantaged, or at least ways of making their situation less bad than it currently is. Some of those proposals may be more patronizing than others, but the point is that once you have a theory of success and a theory of failure, how you apply it to the poor and disadvantaged depends on additional factors in how you view the poor and disadvantaged. The problem is not your theory of education, it's your theory of the poor.
Of course, elevating a theory of education to a social and economic "theory of everything" is not a new thing in American society, as Hofstadter noted. Our colonial predecessors wanted to use education to produce better Christians, the people of the Founding era saw education as the key to republican* virtue, social reformers from the 20th century to today have viewed education as the solution to social and economic inequality, and business and the defense establishment see it as the key to technological superiority. Education solves all ills, we believe. How you apply that notion to the poor depends on your attitude toward them, not your preferred educational theory.
Also, Zhao argues that the Chinese education system kept China from participating in the Industrial Revolution. To a large extent that's true--certainly they did little to train a class of scientists and engineers. However, all great technological advances ultimately require an enterprising business class with the flexibility, ambition, and fearless, stupid, naive over-confidence to go out and risk everything on that. Imperial China didn't have an MIT or even a Tsinghua, but Cambridge and Oxford were scientific backwaters during the Industrial Revolution. The UK nonetheless enjoyed the fruits of the Industrial Revolution because their society made room for entrepreneurship. Perhaps China's real weakness was not its schools but rather a rigid social structure that allowed less room for technological and economic innovation? Indeed, to this day, while America has some fine engineering schools that produce great entrepreneurs, most American entrepreneurship (at least outside the high-tech realm) does not come from universities. In fact, most entrepreneurship cannot and should not come from the academic world. The function of most academic disciplines is a conservative one, and the key to a healthy society is to maintain that important conservative function without building all of society around it.
*In the sense of a Republic, not a political party.
The basic historical survey seems consistent with everything else I've seen, as far as the facts go, and well-argued as far as the analysis goes. Nonetheless, I want to quibble with the author on two points where I think he's not pushing as far as he could with the implications of certain assumptions.
First, in the introduction, Zhao argues that we are mistaken to emulate China's exultation of effort over all else. He says that it's an unrealistic expectation that carries the implication that if the poor fail it's their own fault for being lazy. Certainly that is one way to apply such an attitude, and we often see the poor in the US castigated for alleged laziness. However, I'm not convinced that the problem is our attitude towards effort, but rather a combination of (1) our attitude towards the poor and (2) elevating a theory of education to a theory of everything.
In the trenches of higher ed, the notion that failure comes from lack of effort has a brighter, shinier twin that says that anyone can succeed if they try. This brighter, shinier twin eschews many traditional metrics of success and ability in favor of concepts like "growth mindset" and "grit" and argues for democratizing access to advanced study and elite institutions. Maybe you share their perspective, or maybe you don't. (For my own part, I believe that success is mostly effort but not solely effort, so I'm in a mushy middle.) Regardless of your own view, the attitude that equates success with effort is one that can be harnessed in the service of progressive causes just as easily as it can be used to attack the poor. Indeed, in the modern American context, those who argue that academic success has a strong connection to innate abilities are seen as playing on a slippery slope that equates academic failure with biological traits, traits that the less savory in our society then argue are more common in certain groups.
My point is that if you have a theory of what causes academic success or failure, you can, if you wish, use that theory to argue that the poor are lazy, or genetically inferior, or less virtuous, or whatever other trait you correlate with failure. Likewise, you can use that theory to propose ways of uplifting the poor and disadvantaged, or at least ways of making their situation less bad than it currently is. Some of those proposals may be more patronizing than others, but the point is that once you have a theory of success and a theory of failure, how you apply it to the poor and disadvantaged depends on additional factors in how you view the poor and disadvantaged. The problem is not your theory of education, it's your theory of the poor.
Of course, elevating a theory of education to a social and economic "theory of everything" is not a new thing in American society, as Hofstadter noted. Our colonial predecessors wanted to use education to produce better Christians, the people of the Founding era saw education as the key to republican* virtue, social reformers from the 20th century to today have viewed education as the solution to social and economic inequality, and business and the defense establishment see it as the key to technological superiority. Education solves all ills, we believe. How you apply that notion to the poor depends on your attitude toward them, not your preferred educational theory.
Also, Zhao argues that the Chinese education system kept China from participating in the Industrial Revolution. To a large extent that's true--certainly they did little to train a class of scientists and engineers. However, all great technological advances ultimately require an enterprising business class with the flexibility, ambition, and fearless, stupid, naive over-confidence to go out and risk everything on that. Imperial China didn't have an MIT or even a Tsinghua, but Cambridge and Oxford were scientific backwaters during the Industrial Revolution. The UK nonetheless enjoyed the fruits of the Industrial Revolution because their society made room for entrepreneurship. Perhaps China's real weakness was not its schools but rather a rigid social structure that allowed less room for technological and economic innovation? Indeed, to this day, while America has some fine engineering schools that produce great entrepreneurs, most American entrepreneurship (at least outside the high-tech realm) does not come from universities. In fact, most entrepreneurship cannot and should not come from the academic world. The function of most academic disciplines is a conservative one, and the key to a healthy society is to maintain that important conservative function without building all of society around it.
*In the sense of a Republic, not a political party.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Next book: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?
My most stressful recent deadline has passed. I have many more to go, but the worst is over. In the near future I will start reading and blogging about Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China has the best (and worst) education system in the world. It should be interesting to examine Chinese education a mere century after the end of a system that lasted 1300 years.
Monday, April 6, 2015
Final Thoughts on Miyazaki
The strangest thing that jumped out at me in the second half of the book is that young men who passed the imperial exams felt more loyalty to the people who passed them than the people who taught them. The mindset seems to be that people who passed them recognized their merit* and gave them the ticket to success, whereas their teachers merely performed their duty in their job, as part of a transaction.
On the other hand, the concept of loyalty to the exam system, and identification with it, that is something that I get. These men felt loyal to the academic system that they came up in, and one result is a back-and-forth political battle between men who gained influence through the exam system and bureaucracy, and men who gained influence by other paths. The winners of the high-stakes exam system would struggle amongst themselves, but unit against external threats. We see similar things today, and one could argue that my defense of sages on stages and skepticism of educational reform is in part a psychological response to perceived attacks on the legitimacy of the academic system that I have succeeded in. Of course, I have tried to articulate my stance in other terms, and defend it by appeals to more factors than just "Well, it worked for me." Nonetheless, I acknowledge that a reasonable person might make that inference.
One important thing to note about China's exam system is that it emerged from the efforts of Sui and Tang emperors to fight back against the aristocracy. They wanted public servants drawn more broadly from the population, with loyalty to the national good rather than their own families, and they wanted the best talents that they could find. It was a noble idea, and it had some noble features, being nominally open to almost anyone irrespective of birth (with a few narrow exceptions for men whose fathers or grandfathers had been involved in certain disreputable lines of business, e.g. brothels). Also, they made a genuine and energetic effort to keep the system honest, working hard to fight cheating rather than accept it as something to be expected and forgiven in the sons of privilege, and the public outcries against cheating scandals (centuries before modern electronic media made public outcry easy to arouse) testify to the wider population's perception that the system could be a valid one if conducted fairly.
Of course, the emperors failed utterly in their effort to eradicate elite families from the social and political landscape of China. There was turnover when the exam system first started, with some new elite families rising and old elites falling. Nonetheless, the winners were able to pass on advantages to their children, and in time the system became as stratified as any openly aristocratic system. Perhaps the most important lesson is that you cannot select your way out of inequality. Other authors that I've critiqued on this blog have argued that you can't teach your way out of inequality, but I would go farther and say that you cannot select your way out of it either. If you want to advance people from disadvantaged backgrounds you have to explicitly select them and promote them. You cannot simply pick some other criterion, nominally neutral or perhaps even favorable, and trust that competition will not emerge to reinforce the advantages of having advantages.
I mean, even a Communist revolution failed to eradicate class distinctions in a nominally meritocratic society! How could we expect better interview questions or admissions essays to accomplish that goal in a capitalist society? If we want to address disadvantage we should look squarely at disadvantage and explicitly make allowances, not look at education as a proxy for whatever it is that we actually want (or claim to want).
*Yes, say what you will about merit and meritocracy, but that's how they saw it, and I'm trying to describe the mindset.
On the other hand, the concept of loyalty to the exam system, and identification with it, that is something that I get. These men felt loyal to the academic system that they came up in, and one result is a back-and-forth political battle between men who gained influence through the exam system and bureaucracy, and men who gained influence by other paths. The winners of the high-stakes exam system would struggle amongst themselves, but unit against external threats. We see similar things today, and one could argue that my defense of sages on stages and skepticism of educational reform is in part a psychological response to perceived attacks on the legitimacy of the academic system that I have succeeded in. Of course, I have tried to articulate my stance in other terms, and defend it by appeals to more factors than just "Well, it worked for me." Nonetheless, I acknowledge that a reasonable person might make that inference.
One important thing to note about China's exam system is that it emerged from the efforts of Sui and Tang emperors to fight back against the aristocracy. They wanted public servants drawn more broadly from the population, with loyalty to the national good rather than their own families, and they wanted the best talents that they could find. It was a noble idea, and it had some noble features, being nominally open to almost anyone irrespective of birth (with a few narrow exceptions for men whose fathers or grandfathers had been involved in certain disreputable lines of business, e.g. brothels). Also, they made a genuine and energetic effort to keep the system honest, working hard to fight cheating rather than accept it as something to be expected and forgiven in the sons of privilege, and the public outcries against cheating scandals (centuries before modern electronic media made public outcry easy to arouse) testify to the wider population's perception that the system could be a valid one if conducted fairly.
Of course, the emperors failed utterly in their effort to eradicate elite families from the social and political landscape of China. There was turnover when the exam system first started, with some new elite families rising and old elites falling. Nonetheless, the winners were able to pass on advantages to their children, and in time the system became as stratified as any openly aristocratic system. Perhaps the most important lesson is that you cannot select your way out of inequality. Other authors that I've critiqued on this blog have argued that you can't teach your way out of inequality, but I would go farther and say that you cannot select your way out of it either. If you want to advance people from disadvantaged backgrounds you have to explicitly select them and promote them. You cannot simply pick some other criterion, nominally neutral or perhaps even favorable, and trust that competition will not emerge to reinforce the advantages of having advantages.
I mean, even a Communist revolution failed to eradicate class distinctions in a nominally meritocratic society! How could we expect better interview questions or admissions essays to accomplish that goal in a capitalist society? If we want to address disadvantage we should look squarely at disadvantage and explicitly make allowances, not look at education as a proxy for whatever it is that we actually want (or claim to want).
*Yes, say what you will about merit and meritocracy, but that's how they saw it, and I'm trying to describe the mindset.
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Thoughts on Miyazaki
I am about a third of the way through China's Examination Hell. The first thing that jumps out at the modern reader is how familiar some of this is. Miyazaki was writing in Japan in 1963, but much of chapter 1 could be published unedited in the NYT and people would assume that it is about rich Manhattanites selecting preschools, test prep services, and even prenatal care with the goal of maximizing a kid's odds of acing standardized tests. I just hope that we don't go down the same road to ruin that Imperial China followed. All of this has happened before and will happen again.
Second, the mixture of official solemnity and public spectacle around the exams in China helps us understand how modern Chinese immigrants in the US, most of them descended from merchants and farmers rather than officials, could nonetheless include a substantial number of parents who send their children to test prep services and try to inculcate in their children an academic mindset that their own ancestors probably had not been able to profit from: Standardized tests were not merely a matter of personal advancement but rather a public occasion that the whole community was encouraged to celebrate.
Third, while many in the US worry about what standardized tests will do to our elite class, I worry about what a focus on narrow targets will do to education. On pages 35-36 Miyzaki notes that originally one could enter officialdom via either success on tests or overall performance at university. However, over time tests became the sole route to officialdom and so universities declined in prestige and quality. I believe that this cautionary tale should be read more broadly than just as a tale of testing or even vocational emphasis in universities. Rather, it is a tale of narrow targets. When the only purpose of an educational program is to prepare students to hit one narrow target they will aim for that target and neglect all else. The breadth, depth, and intellectual playfulness of the institution will decline, and how could they not? I am in the middle of some bureaucratic tasks involving curriculum design, and if we ever start treating narrow, targeted learning objectives as the real purpose of a class we will be in big, big trouble. Fortunately, that sort of paperwork is ignored once it has been approved.
Finally, this book shows us the timelessness of issues of exam security and test prep industries. That should give pause to anybody who says "Well, clearly we could fix everything if elite institutions just selected their students by <INSERT METHOD HERE>." As long as the stakes are high, people will game whatever process you put in place.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Recommended post: Cheating scandals
Regular reader Phil Ebersole has a good post up that says more succinctly what I have often tried to say about tests, measures, and selection criteria. The only thing I would add is that many of the problems of standardized tests probably also apply to a lot of other high-stakes selection processes or criteria.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Prelude to the next book: China's Examination Hell
The next book that I'll blog about is China's Examination Hell by Miyazaki.
Americans tend to act as if the concept of high-stakes standardized testing was invented in the 20th century. Obviously the most famous and significant high-stakes standardized testing practices in the US are only a little over 100 years old, but if we want a broader view of the phenomenon, we would do well to remember that China has been at this for a very, very long time. Standardized testing has certainly not been the only player in Chinese history, culture, and government, but it has undeniably been significant in shaping the Chinese elite class, and also in shaping the aspirations of parents who seek to lift their children into the elite class. Moreover, 1300+ years of human experience with a subject is not something that we should just ignore.
Additionally, I see the legacy of China's experience with high-stakes testing literally every time that I run errands. I live in a neighborhood with a very large concentration of ethnic Chinese families, and there are numerous tutoring and test prep centers in the local strip malls. The Chinese practice of high-stakes testing led to the rise of a test prep industry long before Kaplan, and elements of that industry have come here with Chinese immigration. If Americans wish to analyze and debate the proper role of standardized test in an educational system, ignoring Chinese experience with these tests (as well as the experience of countries adjacent to China) means ignoring a historical and cultural legacy that continues to influence the experiences of my neighbors and my students.
Before I delve into the book, I should also say something about the stereotypes that often come up when one mentions test prep and East Asians. I know people who work in the local tutoring industry, and I socialize with families that send their children to tutors. While the motivation for this forthcoming series of posts is the very real legacy of high-stakes testing in China, it would be a grave mistake to view Asian Americans solely through that lens. For starters, not all Asian Americans are of Chinese descent, and educational achievement actually varies quite a bit among Asian Americans from different ethnic groups.
Moreover, even within a particular ethnic group, you will find tremendous variation. Yes, certain academic practices are undeniably more common in Asian American neighborhoods, but that's only one piece of a much bigger story. Go and socialize in an Asian neighborhood some time. You will find parents that range from near-perfect confirmation of stereotypes to surprisingly (even dismayingly) lackadaisical. You will find well-balanced parents with high but realistic expectations, and parents with all of the usual pathologies that can plague a family. You will find drug abuse and mental illness and learning disabilities and criminal behavior and child abuse. You will meet affluent parents and parents who are one paycheck away from defaulting on the mortgage. You will meet surgeons and fast food workers and everything in between. In short, they're as mixed as any other group of people.
But now that I've given the "Really, they're just people like the rest of us" speech, let me note another facet that sometimes goes unnoticed when white people offer up stereotypes about Asian American parents. Hiring tutors isn't solely about the cultural legacy of imperial exams, or about pushing kids as far as possible. Sometimes it's just about making up for deficits. The white people who have made snide comments about Asians hiring tutors in my presence are all fluent English speakers. They can help their kids with homework. They can critique their kids' grammar. They can introduce their kids to books and other media with English words that are challenging but developmentally appropriate. While plenty of Asian Americans are either native English speakers or fluent speakers of English as a second language, the parents who patronize tutors around here are usually limited in their English ability. Hiring a tutor is something that they do to make up for their own deficits, to make sure that their kids get help that kids from other homes could take for granted. Hiring a tutor can the act of a loving parent who is trying to help a struggling kid. Of course, it can also be the act of a pushy parent with unrealistic expectations. Like anything involving parents and children, it's complicated.
OK, with all of that said, let's talk about the book.
Americans tend to act as if the concept of high-stakes standardized testing was invented in the 20th century. Obviously the most famous and significant high-stakes standardized testing practices in the US are only a little over 100 years old, but if we want a broader view of the phenomenon, we would do well to remember that China has been at this for a very, very long time. Standardized testing has certainly not been the only player in Chinese history, culture, and government, but it has undeniably been significant in shaping the Chinese elite class, and also in shaping the aspirations of parents who seek to lift their children into the elite class. Moreover, 1300+ years of human experience with a subject is not something that we should just ignore.
Additionally, I see the legacy of China's experience with high-stakes testing literally every time that I run errands. I live in a neighborhood with a very large concentration of ethnic Chinese families, and there are numerous tutoring and test prep centers in the local strip malls. The Chinese practice of high-stakes testing led to the rise of a test prep industry long before Kaplan, and elements of that industry have come here with Chinese immigration. If Americans wish to analyze and debate the proper role of standardized test in an educational system, ignoring Chinese experience with these tests (as well as the experience of countries adjacent to China) means ignoring a historical and cultural legacy that continues to influence the experiences of my neighbors and my students.
Before I delve into the book, I should also say something about the stereotypes that often come up when one mentions test prep and East Asians. I know people who work in the local tutoring industry, and I socialize with families that send their children to tutors. While the motivation for this forthcoming series of posts is the very real legacy of high-stakes testing in China, it would be a grave mistake to view Asian Americans solely through that lens. For starters, not all Asian Americans are of Chinese descent, and educational achievement actually varies quite a bit among Asian Americans from different ethnic groups.
Moreover, even within a particular ethnic group, you will find tremendous variation. Yes, certain academic practices are undeniably more common in Asian American neighborhoods, but that's only one piece of a much bigger story. Go and socialize in an Asian neighborhood some time. You will find parents that range from near-perfect confirmation of stereotypes to surprisingly (even dismayingly) lackadaisical. You will find well-balanced parents with high but realistic expectations, and parents with all of the usual pathologies that can plague a family. You will find drug abuse and mental illness and learning disabilities and criminal behavior and child abuse. You will meet affluent parents and parents who are one paycheck away from defaulting on the mortgage. You will meet surgeons and fast food workers and everything in between. In short, they're as mixed as any other group of people.
But now that I've given the "Really, they're just people like the rest of us" speech, let me note another facet that sometimes goes unnoticed when white people offer up stereotypes about Asian American parents. Hiring tutors isn't solely about the cultural legacy of imperial exams, or about pushing kids as far as possible. Sometimes it's just about making up for deficits. The white people who have made snide comments about Asians hiring tutors in my presence are all fluent English speakers. They can help their kids with homework. They can critique their kids' grammar. They can introduce their kids to books and other media with English words that are challenging but developmentally appropriate. While plenty of Asian Americans are either native English speakers or fluent speakers of English as a second language, the parents who patronize tutors around here are usually limited in their English ability. Hiring a tutor is something that they do to make up for their own deficits, to make sure that their kids get help that kids from other homes could take for granted. Hiring a tutor can the act of a loving parent who is trying to help a struggling kid. Of course, it can also be the act of a pushy parent with unrealistic expectations. Like anything involving parents and children, it's complicated.
OK, with all of that said, let's talk about the book.
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