In reply to the article by the pompous professor at Babson College: http://tumblr.com/x644wne65
My lazy American students
61–70 of 71 posts
Re: My lazy American students
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure it does explain the difference, or at least it is easy to see how it could. From my experience interacting with foreign high school students from across the globe, they generally do not understand the hierarchy of higher ed in the US. At least, the ones I interact with have little knowledge of the reputations of colleges outside of Ivies + Stanford + MIT. (Clearly, you could argue that college rep != college qua…
I know a number of foreign students who came to the US as undergrads and essentially threw a dart at a map of the US. For some reason I have met a number of Japanese students that spent 4 years at schools I had never heard of (like X+State+University+Branch Campus in a tiny town). And they usually were very good students who went on to good grad programs, employment, etc. The point being that the quality/reputation o…
Actually, many people think of the Rhodes as tainted (because it includes an athletic component) and rate the Marshall Scholarship more highly. (If we're ranking go-to-England scholarships, at least...)
Re: My lazy American students
#63This seems partially explained by selection bias -- the slackers from "India, China, and Latin America" don't come to America for college at the same rates as American slackers do. However, this doesn't explain the actual statistics she gives.
I grew up in Taiwan, so I think I can shed some light on this. IMHO "the average" Taiwanese student will work harder than the average American student, but not by a supremely gross margin as this article would imply. The bottom-barrel students never end up in American colleges, after all. The chief difference is cultural - in Asia intellectualism is celebrated and demanded. Parents don't push their kids to football,…
I agree that the work ethic is higher here and that smarts are cool. However, I don't really agree about appreciation for the arts. I hear children practicing the piano or violin every day here in Taiwan and there's also a shop or two for classical instruments and sheet music near most elementary schools in Taipei. Children who can't draw also seem to be quite a bit more common in America than here.
Yes on the social integration, though. People don't really have the time for much socializing until college.
Re: My lazy American students
#64So why hasn't this professor just been honest with her students and told them they are wasting their money? Oh! yeah, that would mean should would be out of a job. Better to just let the students get deeper and deeper into debt.
Hint to her, she's part of the problem.
Re: My lazy American students
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I grew up in Taiwan, so I think I can shed some light on this. IMHO "the average" Taiwanese student will work harder than the average American student, but not by a supremely gross margin as this article would imply. The bottom-barrel students never end up in American colleges, after all. The chief difference is cultural - in Asia intellectualism is celebrated and demanded. Parents don't push their kids to football,…
Great post, I'd also mention... It take a certain to 'laziness' to solve a problem elegantly rather than through grinding effort. This kind of laziness, the kind of laziness that great programmers laud, can require a bit of effort. It's the kind of effort mathematicians go through when they look at problem for five minutes before saying "it's trivial". The America that built Silicone Valley sometimes had this right b…
You know what they say, "All good planning eventually degenerates into work."
Re: My lazy American students
#66Counterpoint: In my experience as a CS TA, international students are far more likely to cheat on problem sets than American students.
I was a TA at a medium-sized US university 25 years ago. I had a lot of (20 or so) Malaysian students in a class of mine and it was very simple: if they were Chinese Malaysian they worked their butts off. If they were ethnic Malay they were lazy as hell. I caught several of the latter cheating as well.
Re: My lazy American students
#67UK students are worried of working hard. Western figureheads are often the child protegy, the uneducated polymath. 'Hard workers' are failures -- not geniune. We all strive (the right term?) to be the drop-out who can turn up on the exam morning and pull 100%.
'Hard worker' is an offensive term.
It's a cultural problem.
Re: My lazy American students
#68Counterpoint: In my experience as a CS TA, international students are far more likely to cheat on problem sets than American students.
Cheating in school is a cultural thing, far more accepted and normal in for example Eastern Europe than US.
Re: My lazy American students
#69To offer a contrarian view, I have two friends from India this semester who got caught for plagiarizing in their English class. This is just this semester. I won't make any big judgement calls about international students based on observing my few friends. But hey, it does make me believe that international students are less aware of the consequences of things like plagiarizing. I think they are a little behind on it…
Plagiarizing and cheating are fairly normal and culturally accepted in some parts of the world. For example, if caught cheating in a college in Bosnia, the absolutely worst thing that could happen is that you're not allowed to take that class for 6 months, but it is more likely they would just kick you out and made you retake it.
Re: My lazy American students
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I grew up in Taiwan, so I think I can shed some light on this. IMHO "the average" Taiwanese student will work harder than the average American student, but not by a supremely gross margin as this article would imply. The bottom-barrel students never end up in American colleges, after all. The chief difference is cultural - in Asia intellectualism is celebrated and demanded. Parents don't push their kids to football,…
Thanks for sharing your account of student life in Taiwan. It's always nice to hear firsthand about life in other cultures so that we don't hang onto our misconceptions. On that note, let me suggest that your caricature of American student life is a little cartoonish. Yeah it's like that in a lot of schools, but if your son or daughter goes to one of those schools then you live in a shitty neighborhood and should mov…
For those folks who live in a large enough urban centre, I think you're right. When I was in high school (public HS in Converse, Texas, just outside of San Antonio), I was fortunate enough that most of my classes were AP or honours classes and we were highly intellectually competitive. Those classes that I didn't have AP for were, on the other hand, sheer torture (on many levels).
The introduction of AP and other advanced classes was a godsend for intelligent kids being able to be reaffirmed by their peers. But a lot of kids don't really want to be in school, and like to pick on kids who do. (Which was my experience as one of the "smart kids" at a private school in Charleston, South Carolina.)