by Anh Nguyen
Being a part of the Asian community, I would like to speak on some of the views Asians have toward education, and how it is different from the Western world. This chapter will briefly cover how Asian education is different from Western education and various stereotypes; such as Asian students being particularly skillful in math.
The study pressure of Asian students:
Nowadays, Asian education is constructed in a very strict and dull manner for many teenagers. In Asian culture, education is thought of highly as it is something that can help students improve their reputation if they have sophisticated results. While I was in Vietnam, I saw many parents wanting their children to excel in school. This is something we also see in America. However, in Vietnam, some parents push their children to study more and enroll their children in extracurricular classes; while motivation is a good quality to have, too much pressure can become an issue. Parents also hire tutors, but not because their children are doing poorly in school. They do this because they want their children to be sophisticated in every way to become the finest students in the school. You could imagine the amount of stress that the majority of Asian children have gone through following this disciplined way of study.
Compared to Western education, I can see that most teenagers enjoy their time in high school as they can balance their studies and leisure time. Most Asian children literally have to use their leisure time for extra studies with their tutor. The main difference between Western and Asian education is the level of difficulties in school textbooks. Mathematics has grown in popularity as people can now see the purpose of math in everyday lives; whether it’s buying groceries, accounting work, or measuring things. When it comes to math for Asians, people expect them to be sophisticated because “they’re good at it”, but has anyone asked why Asians are so good at math? The same answer for this question is because of Asian education. We will discuss the topics of math stereotypes and comparisons between Asian and Western education in the upcoming chapters.
Disclaimer:
Even though we only briefly covered the topic of Asian education, we can still see that there are more issues about this. Both Asian and Western education have their own ways of managing students’ academic studies, and both have their own pros and cons. My point of addressing this issue is not to criticize Asian education, but to show people from different cultures a perspective they have not seen before. This will help people understand these issues. Being very driven in school is not a bad thing, but forcing children to become sophisticated for the sake of their parents could potentially cause a lot of issues in the future.
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