GLC Report

Asian Smartness, decentness and science skills.

1 May 2015

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Inhoud
Key concepts.......................................................................................................... 2
Research question.................................................................................................. 2
Hypothesis.............................................................................................................. 2
Methodology........................................................................................................... 2
Results.................................................................................................................... 3
Personal thoughts................................................................................................... 5
Bibliografie............................................................................................................. 6

Key concepts
Asia, Theory, Factors, Decentness

Research question
Why are Asian people often more smart, decent, better in sciences and more
successful, or at least, why does it seem so?

Hypothesis
I think that Asian people are often more smart and decent due to a combination
of multiple factors. Those factors are for example, the way Asians get
taught, the discipline they receive from their parents and their genes.
Another explanation could be that Asians are not always smarter, we only think
they are because we just take in smart Asians. Asia is a large continent. A
Japanese man has very different genes and ancestors than his fellow Asian
from Burma.
The political system in some Asian countries are not stable. This also causes a lot
of differences between countries within Asian. We have to keep this in
mind while looking at the differences.
Within this research I am planning to learn some about writing reports. Thereby I
want to be able to give a solid argument for Asians to be smart. I think
that this will be very difficult to do, because I guess that there is no solid
argument for this.

Methodology
During the beginning of this research report I started thinking about the subject
myself, discuss it with friends, read some articles and watched some
documentaries about the subject. Most of my information will therefore
come from articles and documentaries, the sources will be mentioned.
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Before we start we with the results we should keep in mind that not all Asian
countries are the same, and the people from those countries definitely not.
Refugees from Cambodia differ a lot from Indian economic migrants.

Results
How smart is a Chinese? Well very smart if you look at their
school results, look around or go into universities. They are
almost everywhere.
According to a broadcast on CNN one of the most successful elementary school
of the US consists of 75% Asians. In 1980 the white percentage decreased from
95% to 20%, while the scores went through the roof. The school principal states
that this is caused by the way Asian people learn.
Not only on this school it is noticeable that a majority is Asian and the score
reach extensive lengths. Namely, the 5 top school in California al consist of
mainly Asians.
According to the provocative book Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise
High Achievers - and How You Can Too, it is due to parenting. If you want to
found out how to do it, read it!
Statistics from 2002 shows that Asian Americans make up only 4% of the U.S.
population, Asian-American students make up a much higher percentage of
student bodies in top universities around the country. The percentages are
astounding: 24% at Stanford, 18% at Harvard, and 25% at both Columbia and
Cornell. Also do Asian people earn 10000$ more annually as their native
American neighbours.
This statistics shows unreliability in the fact it has been published in 2002 , that
is already 13 years ago, so the numbers may have changed. Even though I think
that it is a good representation of the situation nowadays.
In the Netherlands two-third of the Asian population does do pre-university
education. This is outrageous more than the native Dutch inhabitants, from them
less than the half take part in pre-university education.
After pre-university education the Asian Dutch inhabitants remains very learn
curious, 85% of them go to university, while only 59% of the native Dutch
inhabitants do the same.

Joseph Wang stated that Asian people are not smarter, better or more decent.
Instead, it is thought that they are, because there live a lot of smart Asian
people in Western countries. This is not astonishing as there is a law that
provides that only certain people are allowed in, and as you would expect,
everybody chooses only the most intelligent Asian, with at least college
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graduation. As Joseph Wang states : there are a lot of stupid and

unmotivated Chinese people, but stupid and unmotivated Chinese don't end
up in the United States.
From this article can be assumed that the statements are not biased and true
because the writer is Joseph Wang, he is an chief in commission and bit quant
research, which means that he is a professor. He is no professor in the
studies of human behaviour so that might be a point to doubt on. However,
he is still a professor, he has a blog about all kind of world issues so I have
the feeling that this guy is smart enough to publish an estimable article.

Alan Reilly is an SYLP student who is from an Asian country himself. Differences
in smartness are caused, according to him, by a combination of a few factors.
Namely: the way Asian parents raise their children, the way Asians get taught
and the discipline they get from home. Of course when your parents and
teachers always get mad at you when you did not finish your work or fail, you
are going to try harder. But becoming mad is not a normal thing Asian parents
do, at first they try to help you with school, when that does not work they often
say that you did your best, you cannot really do more than that. Also the parents
often have good connections with the teachers, so that they can get extra work
to do at home, and to receive extra help where possible. So when you have had
that kind of classes until the age of 10 and then move to America, you have a
considerable advantage in comparison to your fellow native American classmates.
This method of teaching is way more harsh than western methods, so it might
create ethical questions. Is this way of teaching ethical? I think it is. Of course,
children deserve time to play, that is their nature. Nevertheless, playing can be
combined with learning. In this way we create an environment for small kids
where it fun to learn, this should be applied to children at a young age.
The article Alan Reilly is completely true, it are all facts because he tells about his
own live, so he has seen it himself. However, the theories he gave are made up
by himself, so you dont know whether this way of teaching really works, but
there is a good chance that this in combination with some other factors this
causes Asian people to be more successful.

Hazel Manford from Stanford university states that all these arguments are not
true because there is no real evidence on the table that we can prove Asian
smartness with. Instead he thinks that their intelligent is not higher, but their
academic levels are. The way Asian people learn differs a lot from western
people. They relax at first, absorb important information and ignore side
subjects, this factors combined with their discipline and obligation from their
parents, increases their academic level, which causes them to achieve their
goals.

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In the video about the education system, Bob states that the American
education systems have failed, due to a speedy shift in better Asian
employees. Inside the classrooms of Indian students he talked to them and
found out that Hesperian people should learn from their behaviour and take
over some of their teaching skills.

Bob, a leader of an IT company, is not able to find the right employee in the
US. Someone who might disagree with Bob immediately says that he does
not, because Americans are too expensive. However, this is not true because
he is willing to pay 100.000$-120.000$ for an IT specialist, but he is not able
to find the right quality in his own country, so he has to go overseas.
Another one might say that this Asians do work hard, so with our leadership
we are able to employee them, and earn a lot of money. But those who say
that are going to find out that those large Asian countries are going to have
millions of highly educated people, whereby we will have ten dozens of
worthless, twerking, twitter whiteys. (reference to poetry)
Another Theory is that Asians have been growing rice for thousands of years,
rice requires 6000 hours of labour a year while mice, corn and wheat only
require 2000 hours. The point I want to make is that our fellow Asian
humanitarian had to work while our ancestors were relaxing with a cold beer
or a pleasant white wine.

However, this is all in theory, and still, they cannot be proven. Still, the statistics
do not lie.

Personal thoughts
After all I think that Asian glory is going to create a big problems for western
countries. Not stepping in will cause unemployment, Asian companies to grow
larger than ours and western people to become even more lazy.
During this report I became more interested in and concerned about the fact
that our education system is failing and I completely agree with that. So I made
a list of things which have to be changed.
At first school systems have to become a little bit more harsh, rough and
difficult, from a younger age, so that children become more used to it. When this
happens the children do not even know what is happening to them, while later,
when they have successful jobs, they thank you for sending them to school.
Secondly, the parents have to play a big role in the education of the child.
Parents should be able to assist, check and motivate the child. To do this I would
recommend watching documentaries about raising your child and read books as

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Teach, Baby, Teach! and Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High
Achievers
Thirdly, we should take over some of the features of the American system. I
think it is strange that if you want to participate in pre-university education, you
should be able to speak another language, a part from Dutch and English. Also
you have to be able to do math at a certain level. This is abnormal if the
government states that they want to get the maximum out of children.
Therefore, it should be possible to take certain classes at a certain level, the way
you want it. No boundary, no lengths.

Bibliografie
Joseph Wang, C. S. (2014). Why are people of Asian descent (Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Indians) so smart? http://www.quora.com/Why-arepeople-of-Asian-descent-Chinese-Japanese-Korean-Indians-so-smart.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/asia.html
NRI Contact Channel (2008). Education Systems - US vs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zAFq-hwfbA

India.

Kim (2011). http://www.scholieren.com/blog/1601/

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