Author Topic: Secret to Asian American success was not education  (Read 11959 times)

attackgnome

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #50 on: December 07, 2016, 02:19:13 PM »
Holy Shit!

IQ is not a thing you are born with.

Holy Fucking Shit!

Your IQ will change related to a whole host of factors, not least of which is that the questions and tasks on the IQ test are not varied (or at least, not as of 2000 when I last researched it, and therefore not in any research that would have any statistical significance over any kind of timeframe like we're discussing) based on where you come from.  The smartest person in the world who just by accident of birth was born outside of a euro-centric or western culture will score vastly lower than someone from those cultures.

For instance, one common question has to do with being able to identify a renaissance era musician by name.  Someone who grew up without any access to the culture that would provide that information (like a good school or cable tv access) doesn't stand a chance, even if they're an expert in 9th century Indian culture.  Even if they are themselves a world renowned musician.

IQ measures a persons inquisitiveness against a metric of knowledge gained by a similarly inquisitive person, adjusted for age.  But as it was developed by...you know...white people, it can't be used to evaluate people outside that socioeconomic group because THERE IS NO BASELINE!

A person born into privilege who undergoes some trauma at age 20 that keeps them from learning much for a year isn't any stupider but will score lower on IQ tests.  Likewise, as you get older, you naturally score higher on an IQ test just because.

People who watched animaniacs will score higher on an IQ test than people who didn't.  Because the answers are built into the show, intentionally or coincidentally.

If you took German in high school you'll score 15 points higher than anyone else, because the test was originally developed by a german and most version have holdovers relative to german culture that you are just not going to be exposed to without studying the language (i mean, maybe).

The IQ measure, fundamentally, is probably the example of institutional racism you've been looking for.  Entrenched academia measured something about each other, obscure trivia about ancient European culture for example, and then foisted that on an unsuspecting public as a way of identifying if a person is a bit dim.  Likewise with geometric puzzles and sorting puzzles that have worked their way into the fabric of growing up in the west.  Kids toys that advertise increasing your kids IQ scores work, BECAUSE IT IS LITERALLY TEST PREP!  Comparing results to people that didn't grow up with that shit is like faulting someone for not using advanced strategies like guessing randomly in the last ten seconds on the rest of the questions on a multiple choice test when it was the first time they ever took a test in that format.

This has been a known problem with it as a metric for a long time, entire studies have been conducted on the lasting damage done by the misuse of this metric by overzealous social engineers convinced this gave them some basis for their horribly discriminatory policies based on perceived differences in mental acuity.

So yea, asians whose parents forced them to memorize the history book from their white school and paid for music lessons are going to score better on IQ tests than kids whose parents didn't because there actually isn't much inherent value from those acts (aside from history being interesting and music being fun).

IQ measures how well you've absorbed the context of white culture.

If you don't believe it, go have yourself fucking tested and think about the questions they are asking you.  Evaluate the test yourself.  The last time you were tested you were probably a kid.  Think about how you'd do if you hadn't grown up with western television and books.  Go ask the smartest non-western immigrant you know some of the questions you're suspicious about and watch as they have no clue.  And you only know because it was on an episode of G.I.Joe when you were nine.

If you still doubt it, go and study the topics you were asked about and take it again, watch your score go up 70 points.

Kids who grow up in houses where all the windows in the house are horizontal instead of vertical will score 20 points lower on some versions of the test, unless the person administering it notices the discrepancy, asks about it, and corrects the results.

Ah ha! So not only is it not great to begin with, but it relies on the administrator to adjust the values based on the subject!  Yea, this is good science we should base our theories on.

Holy Shit Guys!

Source:  I took an IQ test for a graduate student, scored 155 or so, clearly off the far end of genius scale (and clearly far smarter than apparently seemed to the student) and so did all of my friends.  He sat us all down and started rooting around for the source of our ability to do the tasks so quickly and accurately, and how we knew the answers to all the questions, and it was literally as simple as we all watched animaniacs and spent an inordinate amount of time as kids playing with legos.  He wrote his thesis on it.

He gave us about 2 dozen different versions of the test, designed for both kids and adults, and we scored in the genius range on all but 2.

I looked for the thesis to link it but I was 16 at the time and can't remember what his name or institution was.

Holy shit!

That being said, I think we can all agree on the genius that is embodied by the Animaniacs and derivative works such as Pinky and The Brain.

Left

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #51 on: December 08, 2016, 02:46:05 AM »
Seems more of the kind of population that immigrated... educated/wealthier asians can after the initial railroad workers came.

You dont see educated/weathy africans/mexicans coming to the US at such a high frequency to set tone for the racial stereotypes. We do see the same with Cubans though... and they are seen as successful as well

projekt

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #52 on: December 09, 2016, 12:01:38 PM »
Disclaimer: I don't make personal opinions about groups of people, but I do like to read about these things and knowing people's biases makes me understand references in their literature. Where I put things in quotes, I am referring to stereotypes other people use.

It is very hard to call Asians a monolithic group. Watch Hong Kong movies from the 80s and 90s and you'll see that they think of mainlanders as moronic half-wits.  People from Hong Kong and Guangdong are literally the same population group with different recent history. The Chinese have long had superiority complexes about their neighbors and varous subgroups of Han Chinese have discriminated against others from time to time. Koreans and Japanese have often treated each other poorly in their own region, and there has been discrimination in Japan toward Korean immigrants. (I'm not sure about the other way in Korea, I haven't studied it at all.) There are big differences in history and lifestyle between coastal China and Southeast Asia. Thailand, for example, has a reputation of its people being "easy-going" and "unambitious", and they have in the past cracked down on Chinese immigrants because they were, perhaps, too successful and not willing to integrate themselves. (They integrated in a jiffy, cf. "World On Fire" by Amy Chua). There are lots of places in the subcontinent where people are "backwards" and "uneducated" because they live a more tribal life. For example, the Hmong, who enjoyed a good existence until their support of the US during the Vietnam war made them targets afterward, and a large number were shipped to the US. Unlike the "model minority" of the Hong Kong/Taiwan Chinese with their "tiger moms" etc, the Hmong community suffers from crime and unemployment. Refugee resettlement is perhaps the most interesting laboratory of immigration because it is not really self-selected. Refugees are usually people who would have stayed in their own country were it not for unfortunate events.

Meanwhile, there are lots of minorities that have the same sort of results in various parts of the world as Asians and Jews have had in the US. For example, Palestinians. They resettle throughout northern Africa, Europe and the US and are usually found operating small businesses. Guyanans, many of whom fled the dictatorship of the 70s, have resettled in the US, Africa and the far East. They also often are running small businesses. Iranians have resettled all around the world, especially in the US and France, and have been very successful.

Focusing on IQ is lame, because there are cultural things that make it work. The ability to quickly form a community of support and to really help each other out is big. How do penniless immigrants manage to open so many businesses? They share the knowledge, encourage each other, and help each other out when they are having trouble. I'm not sure what the average IQ of a Palestinian convenience store owner is. Is it relevant? If it's all IQ, why are immigrants running these businesses and not high-IQ natives? If IQ should get you a job on Wall Street, why aren't these high IQ immigrants getting those jobs instead of running convenience stores? Oh, perhaps there are other obstacles, and many cultural inputs.

TheOldestYoungMan

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #53 on: December 09, 2016, 01:15:00 PM »
I've got to know - why are the two different window designs going to make any difference?

Part of the IQ test administered to children under a certain age (12 I think) has them assemble puzzle pieces into a whole, the pieces are different shapes, the finished puzzle has no clear boundary (it isn't a square or something like that) and the pieces all have straight edges.  You can't tell from any one piece what the overall image is.  So for example, there's a butterfly with a head, body, and two wings, the wings are each two pieces.  There's a bunch of versions of the puzzles, one of which is a house.

The kids are timed on how quickly they assemble the image, and points are deducted for not getting the image correct.

If you grew up with windows that were wider than they are tall, you would get one example of the puzzle correct.  If you grew up with windows that were taller than they were wide, you would get it almost correct, except the windows would be turned the wrong way.  In particular, if the confusion you experienced over the overall shape of the puzzle caused a delay in putting it together, you could see a huge deduction.

So two kids who both assemble a picture of a house in the exact same amount of time, one gets scored higher than the other, for no reason.

If you imagine fixing this particular puzzle, you begin to understand exactly what the problem with the test is.  You could replace the rectangular windows with square ones.  Well now the blue square doesn't really look like a window if you didn't grow up looking at books where windows were colored blue.  If in your culture it was more common to color them purple or orange, which you do see, you might mistake them for meaning some sort of water feature.  Likewise, if you didn't grow up in a home with a peaked roof, you might not have orientated the roof of the house diagonally, as the right answer expects.

It becomes a problem of expectation, is the issue.  The IQ test measures how closely you can express your intelligence relative to what the IQ test is looking for.  But the reason why it tends to show western-centric peoples as smarter is evidence of bias within the test, not in intelligence distribution among the peoples/cultures.

A great way to think of it is as an Integration Quotient.  How well has a person integrated into western culture?  It probably measures that almost as well as a record of Taylor Swift album purchases.

mtnrider

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #54 on: December 19, 2016, 11:21:40 AM »
To cut CarrieWillard some slack, there was a popular book, The Bell Curve, published in the 1990s that gave some statistical "science" to racism.  It's unfortunate, but the book was spread widely in the media, and since it (amazingly!) aligned closely with existing stereotypes, well educated people referenced it as a way to "scientifically" explain their views. 

There are a number of flaws in the book.

Anyway, it's quite possible that CarrieWillard heard or read someone who had read this book.  Referencing math makes things more believable.

projekt

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #55 on: December 21, 2016, 05:21:37 AM »
Likewise, if you didn't grow up in a home with a peaked roof, you might not have orientated the roof of the house diagonally, as the right answer expects.

I remember a question on the WAIS where you're supposed to say what's missing from a picture. This one had a relatively abstract drawing of a 2-story house as you'd normally see in a Northeastern city like Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. I racked my brain for what could be missing, perhaps a mailbox? The answer was a peaked roof.

Rimu05

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #56 on: January 06, 2017, 12:25:08 PM »
I'm Kenyan and I used to laugh at my Asian friends who think their parents are tough on them.

Although, I'm not sure why this system is praised. There is very little good about being raised in a strict house hold. You spend way too much time chasing education and acceptance. Trying to get approval. Feeling average even though you are doing better than your peers. And it may take you a very long time to stop and ask who the hell you are doing that for. You can't even choose your major.

Also having to hear the success story of every other child your age. "So and so graduated with honors and was hired by ..., so and so got into MIT...)




Rimu05

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #57 on: January 06, 2017, 12:34:04 PM »
Ok I'll bite.

The elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge because it's impolite to suggest that people are different and have different strengths, talents and abilities is this:

IQ

There. I said it.

Why are Jews successful despite being hated and persecuted everywhere they've lived?
IQ.

Racism didn't keep them down. They achieved despite it.

Ditto for Asians.

I'm not saying IQ is everything, nor is it the ultimate measure of a person. Kindness is more important, IMO, and high IQ is also associated with more neuroticism.

However, it's pretty constant: high IQ is associated with higher achievement and lower criminality.

Speaking as an African here but I've heard we are actually one of the most educated groups in America even though we come from shit holes. Who knows if this data is reliable. However, since you mentioned IQ, I had to wonder, does that not mean we have the highest IQ? Either that or we have lower IQs because of our race but somehow manage to be more educated than other groups?

"According to Census data, more than 43 percent of African immigrants hold a bachelor’s degree or higher -- slightly more than immigrants from East Asia. Nigerian immigrants are especially educated, with almost two-thirds holding college degrees -- a significantly higher percentage even than Chinese or South Korean immigrants. African immigrants are also very likely to hold advanced degrees, many of which are earned at U.S. universities. By many measures, African immigrants are as far ahead of American whites in the educational achievement as whites are ahead of African-Americans."

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-10-13/it-isn-t-just-asian-immigrants-who-excel-in-the-u-s-#

bacchi

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #58 on: January 06, 2017, 12:54:50 PM »
Likewise, if you didn't grow up in a home with a peaked roof, you might not have orientated the roof of the house diagonally, as the right answer expects.

I remember a question on the WAIS where you're supposed to say what's missing from a picture. This one had a relatively abstract drawing of a 2-story house as you'd normally see in a Northeastern city like Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. I racked my brain for what could be missing, perhaps a mailbox? The answer was a peaked roof.

The question I remember is about lacrosse. I think it was a relational question, "A is to B as C is to ?". Being in the south, I didn't know wtf this "lacrosse" was or how it was played.

RangerOne

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #59 on: January 06, 2017, 03:23:12 PM »
I don't know many solid statistics outside of college, but UCSD's pop was around 50% Asian back in 2003. And the overwhelming majority of them were focusing on Biology with the goal of going into medicine. I saw little evidence they were on average better qualified or position to achieve that goal. It was more a matter of that is simply what was popular among that demographic to go after because they thought the degree was worthwhile.

Those kids didn't get into those schools because administrators expected Asians to be better students than blacks. Their acceptance criteria where very simply. Have a high GPA and have good SAT scores.

If you start from that bases you just have to run back the clock and look at what allowed those kids to get the scores they needed and then apply to those schools. In my humble experience beyond aptitude the major determinant on how well a kid will do in testing is whether anyone cares what kind of scores they are getting at home is pushing them to do better and giving them goals they may not naturally come to on their own.

Abe

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Re: Secret to Asian American success was not education
« Reply #60 on: January 06, 2017, 07:54:00 PM »
That push from parents and others is a huge factor in most of my family and friends' success. It also was good for us to go back to the old country and see how much easier we have it here; kind of a "work hard or you may lose all of this" warning. If all you've seen is relative prosperity, you begin to think that $5 coffee and shopping for clothes every weekend is the baseline of human existence. That is way way above baseline, yet so many people in our society aren't exposed to that beyond some Save the Children TV ads.