You’re Asian, How Could You Fail Math? -Benji Chang and Wayne Au
The big elephant in the room today is stereotyping in its purist form. Why do we attempt to categorize our world into a handful of columns on a statistical spreadsheet? There are hundreds of cultures and languages each with their own nuisances and ideologies. Yes, there are many people from Asia that are good at math, but the Greeks and the Egyptians were the founders of modern algebra and geometry. Why do the people of Greece and Africa not carry the same stereotype as the Japanese? There is an agenda. Now, I am not one of those alarmist conspiracy theorist, but I can be the devils advocate from time to time. At the time when this article claims the stereotype of Asians being great at math emerges, it is a point in our history, the eighties, when the Japanese/ Asian culture becomes infused without the pop culture. I bet you can remember the clothes, songs, and cars. It wasn’t but two generations before that the federal government and Hollywood were pumping out anti-Japanese propaganda during WWII putting down the culture and putting them in a light of ignorant, buck-toothed robots, and we dropped two nukes on their island country just for good measure. Forty years after all this transgressed, the only thing that changed was that Japan and China became economic superpowers, and we needed to make nice with positive propaganda and pandering to save the bottom line.
Our federal government, through census and convenient statistics, create scenarios of falsehood all the time that are detrimental to populations because they have a self-absorbed agenda. I think it comes down to a blame game. If the Asians as a culture are a successful group of immigrants and have been given the same opportunities as all other immigration groups, then it is not the fault of the federal government for the failure of the minority group; it is the fault of minority groups and their culture in question that is not succeeding. In other words, if your culture is not succeeding in America, it is because you need to be more American or more Asian- more like us, less like you. How confusing is that? But there are all lies with a hidden agenda.
The truth is that it is poverty that is to blame. It is hard for a kid that is economically disadvantaged to get a break in this country. Our educational system claims that you can get by alone on merit, but that is only a myth. I wish census bureaus would spend more time telling us what we have in common with one another than telling us how we are different- tearing down walls, not building new ones.
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/22_02/math222.shtml
January 21st, 2008 at 10:28 am
Your comments are exactly right proverty is to blame for the large number of minority populations that are failing in our schools. The poverty in our county was founded on racial discrimation written right into our bill of rights and racial catagories have existed in our government for solely economic reason ever since. I question why we still use them to describe people. NCLB only uses them justify that certain groups continue to do poorly while laying the blame for that soley at the feet of those who fight for it to change.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Jon,
I totally agree with you that poverty is to blame. Every culture experiences poverty! One of my favorite quotes so far with our readings is this one, “As the Congressional Black Caucus pointed out, if we want to expect “world-class” academic standards from all children, then we will have to provide “world-class” social and economic resources for all children.” (Truscott, p129). But unfortunately, I don’t believe the “majority” in our society believes this fact, otherwise, steps would be taken to correct the systemic problem. I have seen severe poverty firsthand and it isn’t pretty…in fact it is very degrading and to think people can break that cycle if they so choose is indeed a myth!