Which particular “genetically distinct” group are you talking about when you say “Asian”? Slanty eyes? Yellowish tint to the skin? Are people from southern India the same group as the Koryaks from Siberia?
Koreans aren’t Fllipinos aren’t Cambodians aren’t Indians aren’t Mongolians. What makes them “genetically distinct”?
Are Asians inherently better at STEM? I don’t think so. But is more demanded of them (by parents, society, culture, etc.) than of other students, STEM-wise? Oftentimes, yes.
I was responding to a comment which seemed to imply that since Jews were once subject to admissions quota’s at elite US schools it couldn’t be related to genetics, since Jews aren’t a ‘race’, I guess was the implication. Nor is the whole Jewish people necessarily one distinct genetic group. But, there is a potential element of genetic distinctness of most Jewish people in the US, with roots in Europe. So the example doesn’t prove anything.
It was not a statement that everyone called ‘Asian’ in any context is from one single group (and hard to see how it could reasonably be interpreted that way). But there are various Asian groups and nationalities that are. Koreans as one example are. So, does the apparently higher performance of Koreans academically both among the diaspora in the US, and in the ROK, compared to the US average, have anything to do with group genetic differences, or is it all ‘cultural’? I don’t know. I’m just skeptical of simplistic and very sure statements it ‘couldn’t’ or ‘no reason to believe’ group genetics are a factor. Or, maybe no overwhelming evidence to believe group genetics are a factor, but no overwhelming evidence to believe they are not a factor, AFAICS.
The arguments that group genetic differences could not be a factor seem to often state obvious (but irrelevant) things like you just did. Or else state alternative possibilities: the best people emigrate*, there’s a culture of reverence for education**, a particular group takes more STEM classes*** and so forth. But none of those things, to the extent true, exclude that a portion of the explanation might also be group genetic differences.
*which could only apply to the diaspora, but doubtful IMO in any case.
**that’s true to a degree AFAIK, but there’s almost no human social phenomenon that has one simple cause; note I already said it’s fairly obvious IMO that group genetic differences aren’t the only cause of group differences in academic achievement in every case.
***but, on an individual basis, who is generally more likely to persevere in difficult and rigorous course work, people who have more of a natural inclination for it, or people who have less?
I can’t remember the title, and I never saw it, but I recall 20-25 years ago a well-reviewed independent film came out about a bunch of Asian-American high-schoolers who were lousy at math and science and battling the stereotype.
Ironically one reason many Asian countries do well academically (now), is because they de emphasize intelligence / aptitude in favor of hard work.
We still talk about things like “What IQ do you need to be a doctor?” in the West and it’s just such horseshit in my opinion: hard work and access to the right learning materials is far, far more important in my experience.
But more specifically, countries like China now put huge weight on the value of education in general and STEM subjects in particular.
Another factor is Americans may underestimate just how many rich people there are in places like China. As someone who lives in shanghai I see how important academic achievement is here, how much status a degree from the US or UK still has and the number of families that have the resources to give their children the best education in China and pay the tuition fees for elite universities overseas. It’s not at all surprising to me that Chinese applicants are reaching huge levels.
Asian-American born to immigrant parents here. And Korean-American at that, if it means anything.
The idea that there’s some innate talent among Koreans is pretty laughable to this one.
Anecdotes aren’t (adequate) data but…
I’m pretty good at science/tech. Easily well above the mean in my age group.
A good portion of that is natural aptitude, but a lot of it is hard work, which was emphasized by my parents. Neither is particularly good at science or tech though both are better than average compared to their American born peers at arithmetic and basic algebra, or at least the bits that involve memorization. Their own education emphasized loads of work, which included the attitude and expectation that poor results in any school subject were the result of lack of effort rather than a lack of skill or talent.
My brother, on the other hand, despite having the same background is just a bit above average in STEM. And that was the result of a ton of pressure on the part of my parents to put in the work involved. He’d otherwise be, at best, average. His natural talents lay elsewhere.
Likewise, my extended family shows a decent range for American immigrants. The parents aren’t great shakes at STEM but are quite intelligent (and yes, there’s a selection process in the people who are able to emigrate in the first place). Their American born children (my cousins) range from above average to well below average at STEM. And not strangely at all, the ones who were more personally monitored and pushed to put in the effort have done better on the whole than the ones who were not.
If anything, I’m the outlier in my family for being as good as I am in science/tech. That’s most likely the result of the natural aptitude. Otherwise, I’d have done the same as the majority of my cousins and gone into other fields.
Natural talent is a great thing, but it’s definitely not enough on its own.
More anecdotes here.
My wife is Chinese. She can do basic stuff like percentages and fractions. But other than that she’s terrible at math.
Our oldest daughter (half Chinese) barely passed algebra in high school. Math is just not her thing. She’s in college, majoring in art.
Was just reading my Chinese news feed and there is a story about a guy from a poor village who managed to get a doctorate after 20 years of trying, all the time while working a full time job. It talks about how he needed to work through the night and persist after getting several rejections. He’s now a lecturer at the same uni he previously worked as security guard for many years.
Chinese love stories like this – just two days ago the viral story was a young guy who got his master’s degree from a prestigious uni and has registered many patents, despite needing dialysis several times a day.
It’s a society that emphasizes hard work over ability, and that education is the only way you can climb social rank.
Dang RaceMixer. Couldn’t resist…
I think you could have.
I was just joking. Hope I didn’t offend. For the record, I have no issues with that.
I’m not sure about that and please spare me the ad hominem reply as I am speaking from what I see and test scores. This is an observation, not a personal opinion.
Jewish and Asian American do very well and none of their families when they emigrated had riches for the most part.
While IQ tests are somewhat controversial, they have a strong correlation for academic success. Those who do well academically tend to be more successful. The Average Jewish American scores 115, and the Average Asian 110.
The USA seems very high on creative, ingenuity and imagination for technology. We pretty much invented the modern world. Asians don’t achieve as much in this department scientifically speaking, but they are very good about learning how to understand another person’s success. The Jewish people seem to have an innate ability for business. For such a small population, the stand out in academics and business.
You could argue culture as Asian families teach their children to work harder in general and be correct.
But the key point is they inherited the culture. And specially in the case of Asian Americans a large proportion of them are children of parents who either had a higher degree when they came to the US, or obtaining a higher degree was the purpose of coming.
It’s not a representative sample.
Among individuals there is some correlation but its very misleading to use IQ results across populations.
For example, there is the Flynn effect and the fact that developing countries get a particularly big bump in IQ test scores as GDP and education levels improve.
We cannot reliably say group A is inherently smarter than group B because of such factors.
Even if I agreed with this summary, doesn’t it run counter to your other premises? If Asians are teh smart why didn’t they “invent the modern world” as you put it?
Next time, resist. Even in jest this is not acceptable.
[/moderating]
Many of those Asian American immigrants may not have been rich but did benefit from the heavily government subsidized education and cultural attitudes (in their original countries) that promoted hard work and education as viable paths for upward mobility.
We happen to have something of a natural experiment, actually - the case of Vietnamese Americans. Many immigrated in a more traditional way and they tend to track other Asian American populations in terms of education and social status. They were more likely to be raised with cultural expectations about education.
We also have a large number of refugees from the war who were often less educated and without this background. Consequently and unsurprisingly, the children of refugees have lower educational attainment than the children of non-refugees.
In other words, it happens that the generally middle to upper class (in their home countries) Asian immigrants have done better than refugee populations who did not immigrate in a more traditional way.
As noted above, there’s a selection process involved in immigrants. People who emigrate tend to be better educated and have more resources available, even if they start out low on the socioeconomic ladder when they reach the US.
Arguing some kind of ‘natural’ ability based on an already skewed sample is patently bad science. That we also happen to have evidence in the form of a less skewed sample (refugees vs traditional immigrants) makes it worse science and really a ‘just-so’ story to use race as a cover to ignore the social and cultural factors as well as the inherent selection bias.
I agree that the values of society likely play a big role. IIRC we’ve had threads on this board debating the value of higher education. Some posters in those threads argued that higher education is basically not worth it. I’m sure that of you consider the US as a whole that attitude is probably present in many families.
Yes, but American higher education is often horrifically expensive. There are rational reasons to say “It doesn’t make financial sense.”
Pretty much. The argument I’ve heard is that in the early middle ages, Christians started forcing ashkenazi jews into cognitively demanding vocations because those vocations were sinful to christians. These careers created selection pressure for higher cognitive abilities, and now we have a world where 10 million Ashkenazi Jews make up a disproportionate % of the world’s elite scientists, politicians, business leaders, artists, innovators, physicians, etc.
Supposedly east asians have a higher IQ also, but they aren’t over-represented in things like politics or art. I’m not sure what that is about.
Anyway, as far as immigration there is also the cream of hte crop effect (or whatever it is called). India has a billion people, so does China. Some people shit on the street and can barely read, and some people are geniuses. The top 2% of Indians is still 27 million people. Thats a lot of talent that can immigrate to nations with higher wages and better infrastructure.
I worked in Silicon Valley, and 80% of my colleagues came from India or China to get advanced degrees in the US, and then stayed here. All of them worked at high levels, no mass H1B companies doing grunt programming here. And theirpay was competitive.
Based on this sample, a very large percentage of Indians went to IIT.
Their kids get pushed also. I was on the GATE parent support organization for my district, and I saw this first hand. There was incredible pressure on their kids to get into Berkeley.
I don’t know what percentage of my MIT class was Jewish, but it was pretty damn high. Maybe 40% in my living area which was randomly selected.
All culture, I’m sure. Jewish and Asian parents often want to send their kids to the best school they can get into. White parents (like those of my daughter’s ex-boyfriend) want to save money, and think community college is just as good as the first two years of Harvard. (One of my daughter’s teachers said exactly that.) And it is not from affordability - California state schools are are not all that expensive.
I was on the high school site council and I can say most white parents didn’t give a shit about academics.
What will be interesting would be to revisit this in a generation or two when reversion to the mean has happened.
Asian-American students had Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores that were virtually identical to white American students as of 2015, but they’re outpacing whites on the ACTs: