Academic Elitism: The Life of a Chinese-American Student
I remember my Chinese school class, back in the day. It was mostly a fun time, and certainly I learned a lot of Chinese language skills. Class was every Friday night, a group of fresh-scrubbed, Abercrombie-wearing Oriental clones who listened to pop music and drew anime. Needless to say, we also all played piano, got at least a 3.7 GPA (though whichever unfortunate schmuck was currently getting a B in one class or another would NEVER admit it), and took more AP classes than was ever healthy. While we sat in class and puzzled over Chinese texts, our parents were often sitting out in the lobby, chatting in that ever-polite and slightly smug Chinese way about their offspring. Oh, did Elizabeth just take ACT? Yes, very difficult test. When my daughter take it, she ONLY got 32… Oh, we all knew what was going on, because lectures would ensue once class was over and we were all packed back into our parents’ cars. Did you know Mrs. Lin daughter got 32 on ACT and study every day for three hours? Ai-yah, why you not study more? Spend too much time on internet and drawing. College need good score, you know!
Yes, yes, I know. I’ve only heard it twenty times a week since I was twelve and my parents heard of that thing called the ‘Midwest Talent Search’. Like the rest of them, I’d go home and take out one of many dog-eared ACT and SAT prep books and go at it as though the world were ending. Or play the piano. Or something.
And then there were the dinner parties. Oh, memorable events were those! The Chinese mother would go into a frenzy of cooking and cleaning starting the night before, often doing such while spending a lot of time on the phone with the guests. The offspring would remain in his or her room as all this was going on, likely studying or at least avoiding the mother in this state of excitement. And then at five or so the night of the party, various other Chinese parents and their children would arrive, a growing pile of shoes at the door, and an assorted potluck of dishes on the table. The children would remove themselves away from the scene absolutely as soon as possible, because otherwise, some poor soul will be roped into performing piano pieces for the group for the next half-hour or so. Of course, the child of the host is required for this purpose by default, but a little healthy competition is encouraged.
Dinner and small talk about work, weather and other innocuous things. And then the formidable group of parents would remove to the living room with tea and sunflower seeds and vicious thoughts intent. Cue another discussion of offspring, focusing on but not limited to academic achievement, test scores, and ideas for yet more extracurriculars that would be beneficial for the children to participate in. Such things as electric guitar lessons are frowned upon, but every last child will be signed up for the uber-difficult extracurricular math class. In the background, the hostess’ piano will be covered with trophies gleaming balefully, and several framed certificates. Only the distasteful ones will have actual report cards on display.
Of course, there is an actual purpose to this, and the motives are pure. Like all parents, Chinese parents want their children to succeed and have a good life, and as first-generation immigrants in America, it was their experience that they may have had to out-perform their American counterparts in a variety of aspects in order to reach a desired goal, be it job security or a graduate degree. Many work in highly technical fields which require expertise on subject matter and a great deal of study. Many faced a lot of difficulty overcoming the language barrier and adapting to the foreign environment. So… it’s the least a kid can do to get perfect grades and make a great deal out of him or herself in such felicitous conditions of not-having-to-work-butt-off-to-finance-education and not-having-to-speak-with-an-accent, right?
These are, of course, all valid concerns. I know, as do all of the other children, that this is done out of love and the best intentions. But there’s still the fact that not all of us are geniuses either, nor do we all fit well into tightly constrained boxes. Surely even amongst these academic elitist Chinese-American children there’s got to be one with dreadlocks and a tattoo, whose dream is to form a metal band. Or, in the very least, someone who wants to live la vie boheme and go into an inherently non-secure sort of field as opposed to the well-trodden path of four-year-degree, graduate school, and technical/scientific field. It isn’t fun to be stifled, especially when surrounded by a group of opinionated peers in school whose focus seems to be on having fun and doing precisely what they want. Land of freedom and all that jazz – and really, does it matter whether someone got a 94 or a 98 on a science project?
There’s got to be some happy medium. Academics are important, but life isn’t just about test scores and class placements. There are people who were successful in school and go on to be successful in life, but there are also people who are self-made men and women and people whose high scholastic achievement translates to nothing more than pedantic eccentricity.
Maybe someday, there won’t be such a hard push to succeed in school like there is nowadays. Maybe someday, it wouldn’t be so competitive. Maybe someday, dinner parties can just be dinner parties.
Until then, I suppose I had better brush up on my math skills. After all, there are twelve-year-olds taking pre-calculus.
