Week 6_Bryan_J_Magaline Section A02

As I read through the reading On Some College Campuses, A Focus on Asian American Mental Health, I found it not surprising that Asian Americans are facing mental illness that is related to education. Perhaps, the culture and the way of teaching of our parents make it more obvious that Asians are prone to a stressful life and peer pressures since we were always thought to be the best. The Model minority case worsen the situation since Asian Americans also have the stereotype of “the smart and obedient race” in front of other people. In fact, I feel that the model minority syndrome is not a problem that was created by the society that we live in, instead it was our own Asian culture that became the root cause of this problem. The Asian culture of “work hard” presumably was created when our ancestors were living in poor conditions during the war and only by working hard then they could still be alive. Model minority is indeed a part of Asian history. Unlike the USA, countries like Japan and South Korea are facing worse mental health rate among their students, despite the lack of racial diversity in the country. This proves that Model minority does come from the Asian culture in general and not the education system or a racist attempt. I believe that to solve this problem, we need to change how things work in our culture and deny the fact that “all Asians are smart” or “Asians are good at studying”. While we may not be able to change the mindset of the older generations, young Asian Americans should think that they are worth more than grades and that the culture that we have been living up to are not always the best.

Question: What are the problems in the Asian culture?
Reference:
https://clevelandclarion.com/6293/commentary/the-perils-of-the-model-minority-myth/
https://yr.media/news/on-some-college-campuses-a-focus-on-asian-american-mental-health/