ARGH!

[semiramis]

Worry not, my friend, for you are Not Alone. Asian Mothers... ack....

I am Lionfish. HEAR ME ROA-- ....um, bubble. Blub, blub. *sweatdrop*

If you can't spell my name, go ahead and call me semi or S-chan. I don't mind, really.

Visit my deviantart site at semiramis.deviantart.com ^.^v!

[Aurora]

Oh... yeah... you notice? We have REALLY high standards.

By Canadian standards, I'm running straight As, even in Art class. A lot of people would kill for my grades, and I'm told I can get into almost any university I want.

Even so, I'm not happy... Even a few people higher than me makes me few bad... ^^ You know, in Asia, all the competition...
I mean, I got my Geography exam, and it said "96%." I was all "Oh. Crap. I was aiming for perfect!" And yeah... stuff like that.

Kitsune Rei ~kisses taste nice~

[Zgirl]

Yeah! It was so funny in the fourth grade when we all got a really hard test. And this asian kid got a B+ and started crying. I got a C+. Some of my brothers friends are asian and they're like "Okay I can come over right after I finish my math DRILLS!" I always start lol like "Math drills!"

The monkey made me do it!
~Z~

[FireWitch]

haha...your bro's friend had to take Kumon.....fun memories.....

A Jedi Ewok
And proud of it...

Loyal reader and Young Wizards books, great lover of Moon Cakes, and *almost* a new driver...

[papercrane]

hehe. You have no idea how Not Alone that makes me feel. All my non-Asian friends IRL (er, that translates to 'all my friends') think I'm Completely Nuts...but my relatives think Americans (including me) are Just Too Lazy.
Z: ...it isn't funny if that Asian kid is you. Though I wouldn't cry over a B+...it'd take a B- to get me upset...

The important thing about adventures, thought Mr Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents)

[Birdhead]

The only thing noticeable about the Asian students at my school is that they are almost all REALLY REALLY GOOD at maths- or anyway, the ones who were born outside New Zealand are. Like Janie, a mate of mine, who is SO FREAKING GOOD. She did Calculus a year before, last year, and got 87% in Bursary which is a Scholarship and that is a HUGE mark in Bursary, because an A is only 65%. I guess they just do maths to a higher standard in Asia than in New Zealand (though actually, Janie's Dad moves around a lot, she hasn't spent all that much time in Taiwan... possibly it's a natural talent.) The others, though, I don't think so... *is thoughtful* Naaah, not really. I guess they're a little more hard-working, but half of them are ESOL so it's HARD (YOU try school in a completely different language sometime, see how you like it) and for the others I think they're just that sort of people. Jade, for example, who can draw a straight line without a ruler. When I was ten I sat next to Jade and, man, that was just the bIGGEST DEAL EVER.

This is partly because I can't draw a straight line even when I have a ruler. Striaght lines (or, ofr that matter, wonky lines) were not ever meant to mix with me, uh-uh.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah, Asian students. Apart from language barriers, I'm not convinced there's much difference, personally.

"We are philosophical geniuses [sic] who will one day rule the world!"
--Agent M
Ahahahaha, Ahahahaha, Ahahahaha!
Still the Typo Queen

[Agent M]

[Wilf]

I'm so gald I never had pushy parents... knowing me, it would probably have re****ed in me not doing the exact oposite. They were more interested in how much effort I put into my work, and whether I was doing as well as I know I can.
British schools tend to go in far less for the grading of each and every single piece of work. I think it is felt that teachers are able to award an aproriate grade to their pupils for the year's work without taking an average of all grades.
On what grades I tend to get... I always aim for top marks/grades, because I know if I aim lower, then I don't work hard enough.

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hadrin, in Isaac Asimov's Foundation

[semiramis]

Actually, I think the Smart Asian stereotype is based on two things--one, for the longest time only intellectuals could immigrate out of Asia because, as I understand it, a scholarship-visa or whatever it was was the easiest to obtain. Two, there's a huge cultural thing about being smart--okay, you know how in all of the western fairy tales, it's "then he married the princess and they lived happily ever after?" Well, in a lot of Asian folktales, it's "then he became the Emperor's cheif advisor, reknowned throughout the world for his wisdom, and thus lived happily ever after. Oh, and he wound up marrying that girl watsername in the end, too." Or, if the main character happens to be a girl, "And she married the prince and her wisdom shone throughout the land as a beacon of hope and peace and guided him like a yadda yadda yadda whatever-type thingy." And then teachers are supposed to be the fifth most important thing to honor--after heaven, earth, thy nation, and thy ancestry. And I know that China, at least, was largely based on an ancestor-worship type religion... so yeah.

Although these conclusions are largely based on China and what my parents tell me, and Korea and what my Korean friends tell me, so I may be wrong.

I am Lionfish. HEAR ME ROA-- ....um, bubble. Blub, blub. *sweatdrop*

If you can't spell my name, go ahead and call me semi or S-chan. I don't mind, really.

Visit my deviantart site at semiramis.deviantart.com ^.^v!

[Rysade]

hainterj. [echoic] an exclamation variously expressing wonder, surprise, anger, triumph, etc.: repeated (ha-han. the sound of this exclamation or of a laugh
-Webster's Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition

[Wilf]

Something I feel to be a common mis-onception is that to be good at maths, you have to the sort of person who is very structutured and orderly. I have always felt that maths is a subject where you actually need a hefty dose of creativity. A lot of the people I know who have been very good at maths have been musical - which adds some weight to my arguyment, I think.

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hadrin, in Isaac Asimov's Foundation

[Aurora]

And then you have people like me who is very good at math, and I can't play an instrument to save my life. However, I am not bad at Art, so yeah... ^^

Kitsune Rei ~kisses taste nice~

[papercrane]

I've always had a hypothesis that different areas of math are associated with other subjects...for instance, trig with language. Thus if one has an orderly brain, one could be good at a certain type of math, while if one has a more creative side, one could excel in another area. Never really thought about it beyond that point, though...

The important thing about adventures, thought Mr Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents)

[semiramis]

My parents have always maintained that, the higher you learn in math, the more creative your mind has to be, and you have to be pretty durn creative to be on cutting edge....

Playing a musical instrument doesn't take much creativity (but it will often enhance it... see below), although playing it well often does, and composing nearly always does. You could play, say, the piano for your entire life and never use a drop of creativity... or you could put your heart into the tone and the sound... or you could just have a natural musical sense, if you're lucky. I've read (in one of my parent's science journals again, surprise surprise) that the reason playing a musical instrument helps in math and language and suchlike is that it makes you coordinate both hands--and sometimes feet, mouth, and/or entire body, too--in such a way that the connections between the two parts of your brain--the right side, which controls creativite thought, and the left side, which controls logical thought--are inhanced, thus improving both creative and reasoning capacity. This seems to make sense to me; quite a few of the very intellegent people I know have been taking an instrument since about seven--some of them as young as three or four. Although this may or may not be an accurate representation, since most people who are pushed into that at an early age have intellectuals and overachievers as parents...

I am Lionfish. HEAR ME ROA-- ....um, bubble. Blub, blub. *sweatdrop*

If you can't spell my name, go ahead and call me semi or S-chan. I don't mind, really.

Visit my deviantart site at semiramis.deviantart.com ^.^v!

[Wilf]

So: different types of maths use different parts of the brain. Therefore, to be all round good at maths, you have to be talented in a wide variety of things.... this is leading to the uncomftable conclusion that to be good at maths, you have to be all-round brilliant.