Do Asians make better students?

Being a teacher of international students at a private college in Vancouver, a Vancouver Sun article last week about differences in scholastic achievement amongst cultural groups in the public system (sadly, I can't seem to find the link to the original article I read, but I did find a related article in the Burnaby NOW) sparked my interest - in part, because it seemed so newsworthy to a daily paper that they would plunk it on their front page.

To summarize, Burnaby School Trustee Richard Lee noted that 40 of 53 surnames on the list of top scholars in Burnaby were obviously Asian. He congratulated them for setting such a good example for all families with kids in the Burnaby school system.

Fellow trustee Kathy Corrigan argued that highlighting one ethnic group in either a positive or negative way "could be hurtful to another racial group."

Kathy Corrigan's hostile knee-jerk reaction to what is simply a logical deduction from plain facts is a little disappointing. I wonder how someone dedicated to improving the minds of future generations as a trustee for education can make such a blockheaded argument.

Lee's comment did not suggest that other racial groups were genetically inferior to Asians or physiologically incapable of matching the high achievements of the Asian students. There are no claims of racial superiority through biology.

The only implication one can draw from Lee's comments is that many Asians (or, to be technically precise, students with Asian names) have developed superior scholastic habits. In other words, they do their coursework without complaint and participate fully in their classes, complete their homework and study as required for tests and exams. Education is not merely seen as some rite of passage to be endured; it is a time of growth and challenges that will ultimately prepare them for success as adults.

This is not to say that people from other cultural backgrounds do not succeed; of course they do, partly as a simple matter of demographics. In my own high school in Winnipeg that had a much smaller proportion of Asians than in a typical Vancouver school, achievement awards and scholarships went in much higher numbers to those with European last names. And there are no doubt still a large number of students with Jewish backgrounds enrolled in law schools or medical schools across Canada all out of proportion to our percentage of the population. Thankfully, there is little public talk of this causing 'hurt feelings' amongst other ethnic groups.

I see the record of the public school anecdote reflected a little bit in my own students studying English-as-a-Second Language. Instead of grades given over several years, the practical measure of my students' improvement in fluency, comprehension and literacy over a far shorter period (a student attending my school might be expected to go from near-zero ability to fluency in ten months or less).

The Asian students in my classroom must overcome cultural differences that tend to blunt communicative techniques (eg. crippling shyness amongst Koreans and Japanese that can make joining a conversation akin to psychological torture). In addition, their vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar systems are essentially alien to English when compared with Spanish, German, French or Portuguese.

To overcome these disadvantages and progress at the same rate as their non-Asian classmates, many of the Asian students tend to overcompensate by reverting to their seemingly insane university-entrance exams-preparation study habits: adopting the library cubicles as their home away from home and studying long into the night, often showing up for class with bloodshot eyes and strung out on caffeine.

Of course, those habits the students fall back on to overcome their seemingly insurmountable hurdles can be their downfall; when some of these students fail, they do so spectacularly, cutting classes (which they've paid a princely, non-refundable tuition for) indefinitely and often replacing caffeine with increasing proportions of alcohol. Burnout amongst my Asian contingent, while not common, is not entirely rare.

That said, despite the vast linguistic gulfs separating Asian languages and English as compared to those with Euro-linguistic roots, the Asians do tend to advance at precisely the same rate as their European and Latin American counterparts. This leads me to believe that their comparatively excessive academic zeal does have its advantages.

Public school students who noticed the Vancouver Sun article are surely able to deduce what the numbers trustee Richard Lee cited might mean for them. If some students or their parents feel hurt by his comments or fear getting left behind, here is one idea - find out what those high-achieving students are doing and start doing it.