patrick.net

http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/

She quotes a music teacher at Stuyvesant(one of the most competitive high schools in the country) describing the dominance of Asians: “They were mediocre kids, but they got in because they were coached.”

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intrinsic intelligence, of course, is precisely what Asians don’t believe in.

They believe—and have ­proved—that the constant practice of test-taking will improve the scores of whoever commits to it.

“Learning math is not about learning math,” an instructor at one called Ivy Prep was quoted in the New York Times as saying. “It’s about weightlifting. You are pumping the iron of math.”

Mao puts it more specifically: “You learn quite simply to nail any standardized test you take.”

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There is something salutary in that proud defiance. And though the debate she(Amy Chua, author of Tiger Mom) sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.