Why Asian parents are plain wrong about this.

I have to thank my reader ђҲ for bringing the tragic story of Jennifer Pan to my attention - for those of you who don't know the story, this seemingly brilliant Vietnamese-Canadian student has just been sentenced for the murder of her mother and the attempted murder of her father. As the story goes, Pan was pushed very hard by her parents who wanted her to be the perfect Asian student and when she couldn't deliver the straight As they demanded, she started falsifying her report cards just to keep up a facade to avoid disappointing her parents. Incredibly, the deception went on for years until it finally unraveled and in a tragic twist of fate, when her parents unleashed their wrath on Pan, she reacted by arranging for them to be killed. Yes it is a horrible story with tragic consequences, but there is a part of me that really wants to say, "watch out Asian parents - push your kids too hard and you'll turn them into Jennifer Pan."

Why are Asian parents obsessed with academic excellence? 

This follows up from the last post I did about the Singaporean family where the daughter killed herself over getting two Bs for her O level results - this was followed by the suicide of the mother who was responsible for her daughter's death for having pushed her daughter too hard.  This is certainly a topic I had blogged about before on my blog: it touches a sore spot for me as well as my Singaporean-Chinese parents are so guilty of this as well. It would have been easy for me to let sleeping dogs lie and tell myself that modern parents are more enlightened than my parents - but given these two stories with so many lives either ended prematurely or destroyed through this ridiculous quest for academic excellence, I would like to tell you why your Asian parents are wrong - let's look at the issue of academic excellence and how it relates to the real world. My reader Dakota summed up the system quite succinctly: 

Dakota28 July 2015 at 08:14

this is not really the case in SG. To get a PSC scholarship, one must be an "all-in-one package" kind of person. Consistent As from young, been a leader in school and good leadership qualities, care for society and all that. This can be particularly be very important for those who long to enter the civil service, etc, as a dipolmat as it is seen as a "fast-track" up the ladder.

Well, it is very interesting to hear this from the point of view of a young person in Singapore who feels that she is trapped in this system and really doesn't have a choice. Let me speak as a 39 year old working adult who has been in the vital position of a gatekeeper, deciding which candidate gets granted the interview and let me share a few pearls of wisdom for the clueless Asian parents out there, let's talk about this, okay? 

Firstly, there is a huge gulf between having a wish list of things for your child and what your child can actually achieve. Of course parents want their children to achieve great things, I don't think there are any parents who set out to deliberately sabotage their children in life. Sure it would be great if the child could be a straight A student all the way from primary school, to be a natural born leader, great in everything from music to sports to foreign languages - at what point do you admit to yourself that your child has already tried his very hardest and pushing him any harder simply isn't going to yield any better results? In the case of Jennifer Pan, she simply was not able to deliver the straight As that her parents demanded of her. The sensible thing to do was to allow her to be a well-adjusted, happy teenager with very average grades - instead, her parents stubbornness ultimately led to very tragic consequences. As sad as the Pan's family story is, I completely blame the parents for bringing this unto themselves by refusing to be reasonable: sadly Mrs Pan is now dead and so many lives are destroyed because they were Asian awful parents.

Let's have a reality check please: your child's achievements will be determined pretty much by what your child's abilities are, not how hard you push the child. Some children are clearly going to do better at school than others, the key thing is not to insist on straight-As but rather to identify an area of interest where your child is good at and has some kind of natural talent. At the end of day, the whole point of education is to help prepare your child for the working world, those straight A report cards do not necessarily guarantee you a well-paid job in the real world. Companies need specialists who are good at what they do - nobody needs generalists who know a bit about everything, heck you could be ignorant about most things, as long as you're very good at the one thing you're being paid to do.

Regardless of what the system may be like or what society's expectations may be, children are but human at the end of the day. Not every child is capable of being a straight A student - rather, in reality, you will find that some students are better at some subjects than others. Let me give you a simple example: I used to get straight As for both my English and Chinese at school - does that mean that I am equally gifted in both languages? Hardly. I never needed to make any effort with my English and in sharp contrast, it took so much effort and hard work just to memorize the thousands of characters in Chinese just so I could get the grades I wanted. I was clearly better at English than Chinese - the sensible thing to do in this case would have been to focus on the subjects where I would have gotten the best results rather than just blindly picked the subjects that everyone else studied at school. This is why I laughed when I saw my friend Andrea share the following meme on Facebook (think about it, when did you last use Algebra eh?):

Oh I had this argument with my mother all throughout my teenage years - I know the system has changed somewhat since the 1990s, but I have to tell you this story. I decided to go to VJC to do my A levels because I needed 4 A level subjects to qualify for the Humanities Scholarship and I really saw absolutely no point in subjecting myself to two more years of mathematics.VJC was the only JC then which offered TSD (theatre studies & drama) as an A level subject, which meant I could do English literature, economics, geography and TSD (thus avoiding maths). My mother went nuts, she thought no employer would touch me if I didn't do maths at A levels, that they would assume I couldn't handle numbers. I told her, "I have no intention of pursuing any kind of career which requires a lot of mathematics, so why the hell should I bother with any more maths? Give me one good reason please." She had no answer, the only reply she could come up with was, "if everyone else is doing it, then you should do it too." Did my mother set out to deliberately screw me up? No, she didn't - she was simply totally clueless and misguided, but the sad part was she had no idea just how clueless she was. My mother isn't nasty, she isn't malicious - she's guilty of no more than being plain stupid at times when it comes to things like why we have to do mathematics at school.

Ironically, I did work in finance for many years and during which time, I only used my mathematics to calculate how much I was getting paid. It was the kind of sums a 9 year old could figure out - addition and subtraction, occasionally some multiplication when I had to calculate my taxes. Why? Because I had worked either on the sales team or on the marketing/PR team, none of which required any mathematics whatsoever. But here's the one statement that made me look at my mother as if she was really stupid (well, you be the judge). She once mentioned that I was able to get good jobs in banking because I did an S paper in economics back in JC. That was a major face palm moment. You know, there are times when I speak to my mother as if I am explaining something really complex to a very young child...

Do you need maths to get ahead in life?

I had to tell her that I honestly cannot remember much of the stuff I learnt back in JC - sure I must have memorized loads of theories and case studies to pass those exams, but I really cannot recall any of them so many years later. So even if I have passed some exams back in 1994, it is really irrelevant to my working life today because firstly nobody gives a flying f*ck what the hell I studied as a student back then and secondly, that wasn't even a degree for crying out aloud, so really, who gives a shit even if I did? My boss then didn't even look at my qualifications -  I didn't have to show him a copy of my degree, I don't think he even asked me what university I went to: he just assumed that I was reasonably educated because of the kind of work I was already doing and it was my work experience that mattered, not what subjects I did in school all those years ago. Frankly, if some employer asked me for details of my results from my JC or secondary school, I'd just say, "you're mad, I don't wanna work for someone like you." Is your self-confidence so low that you don't even know when to walk away from an unreasonable request?

Which brings me neatly to my next point: yes there are people who are going to judge you by your academic grades, but what if I told you that an employer wanted you to bring in every report card you had from your primary school and start bitching about why you didn't do well for this maths test in primary 2? What are you going to do then? Start begging for forgiveness for not having studied hard enough for that test or wonder why any of is possibly relevant to the work you are going to do for them? Here's the point I don't understand about Singaporeans - you guys seem so worried about your job prospects in Singapore that you're willing to put up with extremely nasty and unreasonable employers yet the unemployment rate in Singapore is actually pretty low at just 2% - compared to many European countries, that makes Singapore's economy actually pretty darn strong. It means that compared to the recession stricken countries like Greece or Spain, Singaporeans are finding jobs and that there are ample opportunities locally.

Is the unemployment rate this low only because Singaporeans willingly allow themselves to be treated like crap, such as in the Encore eServices case?  I am somewhat surprised to see young people lacking in confidence in Singapore - they simply don't have the guts to say, "okay so my grades are not that perfect but so what? I have plenty to offer and if an employer can't get pass the Bs on my report cards, then screw them - they are stupid and it is their loss, I'd rather go work for an employer who is capable of focusing on what is more important." And the fact is, there are plenty of gatekeepers out there who do look at the bigger picture - heck, what is the point of having gatekeepers and job interviews if you are not going to look at the big picture? Just get the candidates to send in their exam results and give the jobs to the students with the best results - but of course, that clearly does not guarantee that the company gets the best candidates for the jobs. We all know how complex this process is - companies do not want to hire the wrong person for the job as they can waste a lot of time and money training someone unsuitable for the position. I've seen this happen before, trust me and that is why the gatekeeper has a very important job to do!

You know, parents and students in Europe are a lot more relaxed about academic achievements and if you were to look around some Northern European countries like Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland and the UK - we're not suffering as a result of this attitude. I wonder how many students in Singapore actually know what the process of looking for a job is like - certainly, when I was a student back in the day, I had no idea. My parents frowned upon me getting any kind of work experience as that would have been a distraction from my studies - my mother said, "you have the rest of your life to work, what kind of work can they give a student? Don't waste your time lah. Who is going to care if you spent a few weeks getting some work experience? "  So many students lose sight of what the real aim of their education is actually for - education becomes a means to an end with this obsession for straight As. This reminds me of the instinct of lemmings to mindlessly follow what the others are doing, even if that means jumping off a cliff.

Do they teach you about the working world at school?

Allow me to make a point that may be rather obvious (or not): unless you have a scholarship which comes with a bond to serve, you really don't know what job you are going to do until you graduate. Thus some parts of my education turned out to be useful, other parts were a total waste of time. From the point of view of a gatekeeper, I would be looking for candidates who do have relevant skills for the job. Asian parents use their children's grades as an indication of good character - straight As mean that the child had dedicated himself to hours of studying diligently instead of hanging out at the mall with the wrong company. Well I'm not an Asian parent - I'm a gatekeeper, so even if someone presented me with a brilliant, flawless academic record - unless it is relevant to the job you're applying for, it is not going to influence my decision when it comes to picking you over another candidate. As a gatekeeper, I'm not your parent - sorry to have to point out the obvious, but so many Asian kids forget that.

So young people, listen to me please: you have a choice. Yes you need to study hard but the most important aspect of your education is to learn about making this difficult transition from being a student to getting your first job. Invest the time and energy to find out a lot more about what it takes to make this transition successful: don't be in a state of shock when you graduate and realize you have no clue what it takes to find a good job. The more to research and learn about the working world, the more perspective it will give you about the purpose of your education and if your Asian parents are too stupid to help you through this process, then tough shit you have to do this for yourself (the way I had to for myself). You have a wealth of information at your fingertips through the internet, so start getting the information you need to gain a long term perspective on the issue. That's it from me for now, please let me know what you think about the issue, in particular, let me know your thoughts on the Jennifer Pan story. Many thanks for reading!