Week 2—Yiwen Bao

Yiwen Bao

ASA 002 A01

Week 2

I feel pleased reading “Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety: Ethnic Gender and Generational Differences in Asian American College Access and Choices”, by Poon and Byrd. Although I’m not an Asian American, I’m a Chinese whose culture reminds people more about “tiger mom”. I believe the article effectively debunks myths about high education and impression of “tiger mom” influencing Asian Americans students’ college pathways. Those data, research, statistics and charts could persuade audiences to change stereotypes of Asian American education well.

When people from other cultures hear about students from Asia, especially China, they would easily come up impressions of them studying hard everyday and listen to parents’ advices a lot. Someone with strong stereotypes would even regard Chinese and other Asians as study machines, who can get good grades but almost only good grades but nothing else so important and interesting in their lives. And the reason behind becoming those “study machines” are often parents. My father’s friend moved to San Francisco ten years ago and had birth to two children in America. So these two kids are Asian Americans. They study, play video games, going for barbecue and picnic, climbing the mountains and spend their time doing various activities just like native Americans. Their parents still leave some traditional education habits on these two children, looking at their homework twice a week and discuss with them about many decisions in school. But they already don’t be tigers in old society. And it’s the same thing in my Chinese family. The “tiger mom” is already not so common as in other cultures’ impression. My mom didn’t play much role in deciding my brother’s and mine college, first because she didn’t know much and also because she had trust in us. I believe she would feel bad being grouped as “tiger mom”. For maths and music skills mentioned in the beginning of article, I think it’s more due to the whole education style and environment in Asian society. Besides, “tiger mom” can have advantages of keeping touch with children and training them to learn more skills. I now wish I have learned more like painting, boxing, and writing poems in childhood even if my mom pushed me to take those courses.

This kind of article pleased me after reading because it’s consist of not only words but also data, tables, charts and pictures, which make reading more relaxing, entertaining, straightforward, understandable and persuasive. This way I believe is the most effective one to debunk myths about Asian Americans and high education.

Question: Why as the research shown, women are more open to acknowledge roles parents played in choosing their college than males? What do males think involving parents in college pathways represents and shows about themselves?

References:

1. Poon, O. & Byrd, A., (2013). Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety: Ethnic Gender and Generational Differences in Asian American College Access and Choices. Journal of College Admissions, 22-31, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2017.

2. Luis, A., (2012). Tiger Mother, The Musical: Is It What You Think It Is?. Retrieved October 1, 2017 from

https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2012/1/31/tiger-mother-musical-it-what-you-think-it