Why are Indian & Chinese kids attaining much higher than white/black/Pakistani children?

[Widilo]

I’ve been thinking this over today. DS recently went to a Kumon class (if you trawl through Mn threads over the years this is generally much hated on MN). All the kids coming out were Indian or Chinese, all the kids in her group Indian or Chinese. A smattering of black children and 1 white child (DS). DS won’t be going back (it was a trial class) because it just seemed to be repetitive rote learning of hundreds of sums, but clearly this is working somewhere along the line?

stats linked here www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/11-to-16-years-old/gcse-results-attainment-8-for-children-aged-14-to-16-key-stage-4/latest

Haven't you answered your own question?

You've answered your own question. Different set of priorities and mindset. Also different ideas of success and how to get there.

Well no because I was of the belief (from her and teachers) that rote learning only goes so far and doesn’t teach lateral thinking skills, how to solve word problems etc etc

ie 2+2= 4 as a fact instead of WHY 2+2=4

Clearly it does work?!

How did you know the children were of Indian decent and not Pakistani or Bangladesh?

Repetitive rote learning of hundreds of sums teaches kids several things.

One - that knowing those answers will provide handy shortcuts when answering maths questions.

Two - it teaches the brain how to memorise things.

Three - it teaches children that perseverance pays off.

What's not to like?

I'd say rote learning is just one aspect. It's a good basis to build speed and accuracy. My mother was a tiger parent. Refugee family. Being top in Education was EVERTHING. Have you heard of the Asian grade B? It stands for Below A or Below Average. My parents put huge store and pressure to be the best as they didn't want their children working in takeaways or menial jobs like they did.

It’s not just one thing - it’s cultural differences relating to parenting, values, attitude to success…
It’s consistently the same cultures too - in the US the most successful diasporas are Chinese, Indian, Jewish and Nigerian.

i don't think i was ever encouraged to think why sums added up.
you just learn that they do and learn how to calculate from basic principles.
anything else and you're going into the realms of philosophy, or physics maybe.
not needed for arithmetic, nor probably geometry.
i learnt to do trigonometry using log tables;
sad old harry caught a herring travelling over america.
i didn't ask why.
it worked. i passed. fini.

What on earth makes you think Kumon is the only thing they do. Very often kids in those cultures are expected to have examplary behaviour, high respect for authority and a work before play attitude. They do lots of extra work, not just Kumon.
Doing repetitive sums for years on end is actually a perfect example of that mind set. So what if it's painfully boring, if it could help. It takes incredible discipline that they learn from a very young age. You didn't even make it past the trial, hence me saying you answered your own question.

Learning how to memorise and understanding concepts and lateral thinking all help I think. I think British education discounts the benefits of memorisation. The children doing Kumon maths will also be doing maths at school. It is not one or the other but both together.

I think teaching young kids to think about why 2+2=4 is unhelpful and unproductive.

Learning can include rote learning as well as (age-appropriate) critical thinking.
Kids need to get the basics right to have a solid foundation.
Putting in the (sometimes boring) legwork is integral to academic success, and academic success opens some doors. That’s a useful lesson.

Sincerely, a Jew and first gen immigrant

What on earth makes you think Kumon is the only thing they do. this in spades.

I've had clients who have come from such backgrounds. In their thirties they seek help for imposter syndrome, not having any boundaries, a desperate need to please. I'm sticking to building resilience and a learning culture for my own child.

I wish white-British parents were as fanatical about education as Asian parents. My god, we really could learn something from them. I remember working with some Nepalese and Indian children a few years ago. They were SO polite, and SO hard-working. If the U.K. is going to survive in the 21st-century (assuming there’s is a U.K.), we need to copy the ferocious work ethic and self-discipline of such people.

The best thing I have heard a British Prime Minister say in my lifetime was Tony Blair, when he said “I have three priorities: education, education, education.” Education and training ought to be the number one priority of our government. The better educated a society is, the more civilised and economically advanced it will be. And it’s often immigrant parents who provide the best example.

I think expectations for children from parents in Britain can be quite low.

When my child was in Y3, a teacher friend told me that this was the year to nail times tables. And my child did. No Kumon, but if we were driving somewhere, we’d do rote learning chanting, then I’d just them at her. I was one of the few parents in the class to treat the weekly “times table challenge” sheet as compulsory.

A lot of rote learning, yes - but it freed her mind up in future years to think and explore, when her friends were (literally) still counting basics on their fingers.

Nothing wrong with rote learning!

Well maybe rote learning is valuable, the methods employed at the moment don't seem to be doing so well.

i've lived in a few multicultural area's and in my experience the indian and chinese families are weathlier then the pakistani or black families. partially due to how families pool their income and network.

@ehb102 such a narrow minded perspective.

You will find a lot of immigrants that are extremely resilient and have a huge appetite for learning, especially if you consider that they are doing this in the face of extreme white privilege and racism ----and attitudes like yours

I'm 43.

I had a wonderful primary school teacher who encouraged us to learn and recite vast screeds of information (poetry, monologues from plays, times tables, lists of country capitals etc).

It taught me speed reading and retention and was a very useful skill at university.

More than 30 years later, I can still recite huge swathes of poetry by heart and, more importantly, I can consume a large amount of info quickly and reproduce it at will, which is very useful for presentations at work.

Rote learning, alongside critical thinking skills, has its part.

My (white) kids attend academically selective state schools where the majority of students are Chinese or Indian. I find one of the biggest misconceptions is that children from these backgrounds are not genuinely intelligent and they only achieve well because of the tutoring that they do. The reality is that most of them are seriously bright AND hard working and that’s a winning combo.

I was talking to my DD recently about the racism that her friends experience. People look at her and say oh wow you go to that school you must be really smart. And they ask her Chinese friends which tutoring college they go to. Her friends who have one Chinese and one white parent are treated differently depending on whether they look Asian or not.

Narrow minded? To say that ways of producing excellence in one direction can leave a person lacking in others? I don't think so, any more than it is narrow minded to criticise any other style of parenting.

People forget that in order to read English (and probably most other languages), you effectively need to rote-learn.

personally I see knowing 2+2=4 is equivalent to knowing abcs. I think this attitude contributes to why people don’t like maths.

It may be a bit like learning set pieces for the football field.

For years, I didn't think that England were very accurate as a team, when passing; other national teams seemed to be more precise, and it freed them to be creative.

England seem to have improved, in recent years, and I think being able to carry out standard techniques is essential for football and for reasoning your way through maths problems.

Rote learning frees up brain space for more complex problems. Those parents have high expectations and are willing toinvest time, money and energy into helping their kids. Also don’t forget many of those kids will have parents who were born in the UK/grew up in the UK so there is a softer attitude these days, it’s not all tiger parenting.

It’s easy to be dismissive about how much Indian and Chinese parents push their kids but you have to understand that many of them will have experienced racism or found obstacles in their paths when it comes to work opportunities because of their race. They are preparing their children to compete in an environment which may be more hostile than it should be.