So in essence the Chinese actually have been studying and testing for over 2000 years, it’s no wonder they are damn good at school in general, it’s part of the cultural heritage after all. In fact if you go to many schools in h.k, china and taiwan they still use the same studying/cramming rote learning methods of 2000 years ago, which according to Americans is better suited for exams taking than for pro-active learning according to Americans who of course score poorly when taking these exams against the rest of the world.

Of course there is, east Asians have had this in cultural history for over 1000 years I mean the Chinese have been studying and taking standardized tests since Sui Dynasty in 605, in fact they are first to use standardized tests based on merit to determine who would become government officials. At the time this was the best and most prestigious jobs in the land and more importantly guaranteed family well being for many generations. This influenced even Korea, Japan with a similar systems.

So it is not surprising that Asian Americans parents value education since this system was in place until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 well within the range of our grandparents age.

The job types in America many have changed but education none the less creates better opportunities in recent immigrants minds based on historical content. Sometimes I even feel bad for other cultures that don’t value education, i mean it seems like they are competing against a stacked deck with over 1000 year of tradition and experience..
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I don’t know too much about other people but the reason my mom really pushed the education thing for me and excelling in school had a pragmatic base and went like this, and keep in mind that this was her kind of a raw, blunt, overgeneralized sort of thinking:

— in order for her son (Asian male here) to be successful in America, we pretty much have to create some sort of niche for ourselves in American society. High-end careers that arguably rely more on buddy-networks and connections are out of the question, so entertainment and politics for example, are out of the question. She told me that America is mostly white and they don’t want some funny looking Asian kid on the cover of a magazine, or in office as a politician.

So given that we can’t compete on equal grounds in those areas, being brainy is the way to go. Getting a perfect score on your SAT doesn’t require those connections or anybody to know what you look like, and we can pretty much become an asset to American society in general and out-compete people of other races by being brainy.

Now that I’m older it sounds sort of dumb, but it kind of makes sense, no?