Influences of Culture on Academic Achievement

Formal education can serve a number of purposes. Different cultures see education as having different goals. It can help create a pool of informed citizens with a developed ability to think and reason. It can be used to establish students who share a common body of knowledge and who share socialization into the way things are done in a particular society. It can also be used to prepare individuals for good jobs and a place in society. Some societies see school as the beginning of the child's lifelong quest to get the best job possible and do well in society and the formal start of a process of socialization that began with birth, others consider education to be a necessary evil that fights against the child's individuality and specific cultural heritage. These different views influence how the society as a whole goes about educating its children and how particular children within a society react to school. Whichever of these purposes a particular culture finds most valuable will determine how that culture sets up its schools and measures individual progress.

The interest in the cross-cultural comparison of education stems from the fact that Asian students have consistently outperformed American students in science and math tests. Based on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) held in 2000, students from Asian nations such as Singapore and Taiwan have continued to outperform their counterparts from all the other 38 countries including th

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ghborhood, some born thousands of miles away. They included what John U. Ogbu (1994) calls both voluntary and involuntary, groups almost completely absent from the classroom of almost every other society in the world. Therefore, in order to provide a comprehensive comparison of Asian students with American students, the following paragraphs will highlight the educational perspectives and experiences of the minority groups in the U.S. and analyze them within the context of this discussion. Ogbu (1994) differentiates minorities who have come to the United States voluntarily from those who have been forced to leave their native cultures and join the American melting pot. According to Ogbu (1994), Asians are representative of those who chose to come to the United States. Their choice was motivated by the opportunities they saw in this new society. American schools were one of the most attractive opportunities. These voluntary minorities tend to do well in school. For example, Asians bring over their values of hard work and thus succeed in their new environment. In a 2000 report titled "Reaching the Top," the College Board National Task Force on Minority High Achievement highlights the cultural strengths of Asian American

Category: Psychology - I