Success of Asian students: culture or genes?

Some commentators bemoan the fact that 46 percent of students at the University of California, Berkeley, are now Asian. But it certainly proves that Americans are so certain in our principles that we allow meritocracy to flourish, whatever the outcome. If Asians have the highest test scores, of course they should be the ones who are accepted. If this leads to racial imbalances at the university level, so be it.

But concerns linger.  Asians often seek a western PhD for its status value and for technical skills training, not because they are intellectually curious or desire to discover new science.  This misses the point of the Western educational system, which encourages you to challenge and ask “why” questions. The Asian style is often one of rote memorization, accepting what you are told (whether it makes sense or not), and thinking about it later.

Chinese students I’ve spoken with say that back home they were told what classes to take and what to study, so they didn't need to worry or question anything. They just studied what was put in front of them. It gave them a very comforting feeling.

To apply to western universities, you need a good score on the SAT and GRE tests.  A test prep industry in China, including companies like New Oriental, teach students how to do well on tests:

Jia Wen, a 25-year-old graduate student in finance at Boston College, recounted some odd New Oriental gimmicks she learned for the TOEFL's listening section. Her teacher told her to remember that if the answer choices involve food, for instance, hamburgers always taste better than pizza. And that girls in the passages are always more intelligent and harder-working than boys. "You don't need to understand," says Wen, who scored 110. "After many practices, you can recognize the correct answer just by looking at the choices."

Personally, I wouldn't benefit from such a class, because I don't have such raw mental powers of memorization and subtle pattern recognition. But this approach certainly doesn't encourage students to debate, exchange ideas, or think independently. Getting into - and surviving - a top school, for these students, is more about social status than intellectual contribution.

Asians don’t have a tradition of debate, asking questions, and doing critical analysis. Whereas there seems to be a practical desire to further one’s own happiness and wealth in Asia, there’s also a passive acquiescence toward authority. Questioning the teacher is considered impolite, and debate destroys group harmony.

According to Stanford professor Hazel R. Markus (in a recent NYT article):

[S]tudies have found that Asian students do approach academics differently. Whether educated in the United States or abroad, she says, they see professors as authority figures to be listened to, not challenged in the back-and-forth Socratic tradition. “You hear some teachers say that the Asian kids get great grades but just sit there and don’t participate,” she says. “Talking and thinking are not the same thing. Being a student to some Asians means that it’s not your place to question, and that flapping your gums [debating] all day is not the best thing.”

One study ... looked at Asian-American students in lab courses, and found they did better solving problems alone and without conversations with other students. “This can make for some big problems,” [says Markus], like misunderstandings between classmates. “But people are afraid to talk about these differences."

Curiosity and originality and invention are not prized in Asian culture, because innovation often involves conflict.  Americans often complain that Chinese simply copy or steal Western ideas and products instead of inventing their own.  

The Chinese are transforming from collectivist communism to materialist capitalism, without stopping to identify their core beliefs and values as a society. The collective instinct of the people is to bend and flow around obstacles, not confront them directly. There’s a lack of will—a lack of stubbornness to die for an abstract belief or idea. Yet Asians have a strong sense of dignity, and I hope they can transform that fiercely held subjective trait into a love of abstract principles.

Is it culture or genes that make Asians smart (or at least able to do well on tests)? A recent scientific publication reports that 25 percent of genes studied differ in their level of activity between Europeans and Asians. Does that prove a role for genetics? I’m not so sure.  Steven Chu, raised in America, is a Nobel Prize winner. So who knows? Asians may have some innate group differences in temperament (on average) from other groups in America. And that’s fine. As long as Asian immigrants assimilate and respect American values—and more importantly, that those values truly resonate with their character—our nation will survive and thrive.

Comments

[roname]

Well, genes might have something to say about it, but education is what forms an individual. Indeed, knowing some math is not true intelligence. That's more like obedience and repeating. Einstein was a mediocre student at maths and with all that, did what he did.

Creativity comes from not respecting the rules in general. Not being obedient and giving freedom to your thoughts as your brain probably is the only thing you own, without a clear material limit. Your thoughts and insights come from your mental freedom, so knowing or doing to much math, just for the sake of it, doesn't make you smarter. Math is a tool, not a science. Your brains does not judge by mathematical formula, but by spacetime sequencing. Yes sounds science fiction but is true, you do not perceive speed in numbers, you just observe relations between things, to perceive it. Did you know, that standing on this planet you move with a few hundreds of kilometers per second in relation with Mars ? But you are just sitting. So math, just helps you quantify and theorize some things, what gives you the answer is something else. That's your ability to be free and think further.

We all might look different but what differentiate most is our characters. Asians were told to just follow. You don't know to many Asian artists, do you ? Me neither. That's the problem, for math, there is computers........for creativity, we are fully responsible and who can do that might be called a smart individual. No matter the color or race.

[Jessica]

This is absurd.I don't know where you got this idea of Asians being smarter than others because of their genes,culture,whatever.Get your facts straight.The "model minority" stereotype is utterly wrong.

Remember,Asians built the railroads.They've been here for a couple of generation at least.And yes,I'm an Asian American,and my ancestors came here from Japan in the middle of the 19th century or so.So of course,a lot of us have lost a huge part of our Asian heritage and adopted the mainstream culture.Confucianism?I didn't even know what that was until I learned about it in 6th grade.I don't know where you got that idea of Asian parents telling their kids that getting education is the most honorable thing they can do.I grew up in an area where 70% of the population was Asian.And I've never seen an Asian American parent pressuring their child into getting the best education so that they can "honor" the family.And Asians being shy in classes is just another stupid type of stereotype.What makes you think that a certain ethnic group of people have the same personality and act the same way?Culture?Please,I've been to Asian countries and actually have lived in East/SE Asia for couple of years,and they,actually,kind of look down on shy people there.

[Chevo]

I find your views of biology and philosophy to be extremely naive, outlandish and sometimes patently false. Much of this post is not even stupid, it is something philosophical worse than stupid, it's both largely vacuous and flippant. Where there is substance, it is simply factually wrong. I'd like to mention that I have an interest in the philosophy of biology and especially in genetic reductionism and philosophy. But unlike the you, apparently, I have at least some knowledge of both philosophy and genetics. Now one to the post.

[Some commentators are bemoaning the fact that 46% of students at the University of California, Berkeley, are now Asian. But I think it's great. It proves that Americans are so certain in our principles, that we allow meritocracy to flourish, whatever the outcome.]

How one can conclude from the fact that 46% of students at Berkeley being Asian "proves" anything about America's attitudes toward meritocracy over steps the boundaries of sound reasoning.

[Jews have a culture and tradition of debate, law, and analysis. Asians don't.]

This quote speaks of flagrant ignorance of both Asian and Jewish traditions. One can also construe the Jewish religious tradition as orthodox, rigid, dogmatic and unquestioning while the Confucian tradition of meritocracy and philosophical dialogue as a tradition of debate and analysis. (Hundred Schools period of the Waring States?, The Mandarin system of hiring government officials?). The list below the quote is simply a list of slogans and stereotypes of American values that lack all content. I'm very wary of these kinds of cultural simplifications as they are not only grossly simplicity and unilluminating but almost always wrong.

[In my opinion, every selection activity (whether of students, or of leaders in a corporation) is always a form of genetic selection. ]

How you reached this claim is beyond comprehension. But one only needs to look at the ridiculous byline of his blog to see how sophomoric your understanding of genetics and your naive genetic determinism is when you say: "We are free to choose what we want, but we are not free in our wants themselves (desires and motivations), which are innate and vary across the population". And this part of his post suggests likewise: "You can't have talent without genes, because talent emanates from motivation and desire, which is always innate."

Of course we are free to choose many of our wants and desires. Also, many of our desires and motivations are clearly *not* "innate". That's obvious. Corporations spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year creating desires for things or services no one had an innate desire for or innate motivation for doing. This is shockingly simplistic thinking even by American standards.

[You can't have talent without genes, because talent emanates from motivation and desire, which is always innate. And a recent scientific publication reports that 25% of genes studied differ in their level of activity between Europeans and Asians.]

I just read the abstract of that study and no where does it say anything about Asian's and student academic success and alleged genetic relata. It simply says that gene expression is statistically different for different populations in many of the genes (about 25%) they studied. No surprise there. You don't need to be a geneticist to know that many diseases and superficial traits like hair color, skin color, eye color etc, differs across ethnicities and that the differences are attributable largely to genes. But the question you beg is (the sixty four thousand $ question), is there a difference in Asian temperament and/or academic success due to genes? No evidence has ever been adduced from any published study I'm aware of which suggested that for any social trait that differs across ethnic groups has a genetic component. Mightn’t there be these differences genetically across ethnicities? Mightn’t Asians be more genetically predisposed for academic motivation, social shame, fear of standing out, difference to authority, reserved, adept at memorizing, defer gratification? Sure, but they could also be *less* inclined to these traits for all we know or there might not be any genetic dispositional directions either way. Which ethnicity is more "predisposed" to be more studious, e.g.,? In which environments are they more studious? Are there some environments they are disposed to be more but in other less so? These questions have never been answered for any quantitative social trait such as "respect for authority, calmness of disposition, greater willingness to defer gratification and work hard," etc. In fact, I'm not even aware that there is any evidence for differences between Asians (esp. Asian Americans) and others in some of the traits you mentioned never mind evidence supporting a far stronger claim that the differences are genetic in origin.

In conclusion, how is this post any more than a rehashing of old (model minority) stereotypes without any further analysis? The real question is, like it always has been, are these claims true and what reasons may we have in believing them?

[John Barth]

Very interesting! I've spent lots of time in Asian cultures and thought a lot about certain pretty distinctive features of Asian culture and have wondered if perhaps there is not at least some genetic basis for all this. It really doesn't make sense otherwise. The interaction between culture and genes can be reciprocal as well. But it is merely a question of distribution of a particular gene - even if most Asians, say, are acquiescent, it does not mean all are. There are no doubt many Asians who possess, genetically, a more "Western" personality profile. They may form a minority amongst Asians, but they surely exist in numbers. Certain aspects of Asian culture seem puzzling to me without a genetic basis - for instance, anyone who has been to Asia is struck by the introversion and shyness of the people, which in extreme but not at all rare cases verges on fear of foreigners (actual fear, not dislike), and anyone who knows Asian history knows that nearly all Asian societies at one point or another in their history closed their door to outsiders (even other Asians) and were "Hermit Kingdoms" of one form or another. Now of course ALL human societies have xenophobic tendencies which wax and wane but no human society seems to have this tendency developed to quite such a degree, so consistently throughout their history. Contrast cosmopolitan ancient Rome, etc, etc. Is there a genetic basis for this? Who knows? It seems likely to me that the genes for a kind of introverted timidity might be more widespread amongst the Asian population than amongst the Western one. In the West, moreover, xenophobia took the form of hatred and violence towards foreigners (obviously the Asian approach is more attractive), and not fear and timidity. So even though xenophobia is common to all human societies, perhaps the form it takes is genetically modified? Take take the historical lack of Asian interest in the world outside their borders, lack of curiosity, the fact that even today Asians are rarely trailblazers or innovators or top experts even though so well represented at the top universities, etc, etc, and a particular picture begins to emerge of a kind of introverted timidity and calm quiescence . The question is complex and the information incomplete at this time, and it is very interesting! But who knows what the answere are, anywyas?

[Luka]

I'm an international student and I've found that I have learned most of the school materials (lower division) in high school, especially the science and math--our high school math was fairly equivalent (probably a lil less detailed) to Calculus III in my current college. I may look smart to my American friends but really I don't think I am because it's just simply a repetition of what I learned or been exposed to some extent. I've asked most of my Asian international friends and they said they felt the same.

The only thing we were bad at when we just arrived was writing papers, due to the lack of English proficiency. Social sciences, philosophy and English classes can be hard for me. In my high school, I didn't even have psychology and philosophy courses, and only those who majored in social sciences would have the chance to take anthropology. There were sociology, business and accounting for both majors (natural and social sciences) though.

I don't think it's the gene; I think it's more because of the culture, including the educational system and people's expectation. I did fairly bad in biology (50 out of 100) in high school, but in the US I have scored the top in my biology class and have decided to major in it. For my high math, just FYI, I remember I needed to memorize all the trigonometric identities, including the derivations/integrations for calculus. In here, we use handouts during the test. For chemistry, we need to memorize the atomic names, groups (like atoms belonging to halogen are...), and no chart is given during the test. Atomic number is given, but all units and formulae have to be memorized. Except for accounting exams, no calculator may be used in the test. Doing math homework with a calculator is discouraged.

Family teachings, such as prioritizing hard work, may also play a role in our "smartness", but I think it really is the fact that we, international Asians, had been exposed to the materials (and trained very hard) in fairly young age. At the end, the school here is just repetition. I'm flattered that the Asians "genes" are highly thought of by some people. But honestly, I think we're merely overrated for our "smartness".