Influence of Culture on Academic Achievement INTRODUCTION -- The Influence of culture

Formal education can serve a number of purposes. 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. Whichever of these purposes a particular culture finds most valuable will determine how that culture sets up its schools and measures individual progress.

Many Asian societies, for instance, see schools as critical in deciding their chil

. . .
ure careers. In America, tests start as a way of measuring effectiveness. Tests are used to see what students have learned and how well the schools are working. Stevenson has done considerable research comparing Asian and American views of the educational process. He found, for example, that Japanese parents value effort more than innate ability. In cultures steeped in Asian philosophies, the individual can work hard to achieve a particular job. In American culture, by contrast, a lot of schooling is aimed toward helping students find out what they have talents for. An Asian mother might decide that her son should be a doctor and encourage him to work hard enough to attain a medical degree. An American mother might hope her son had medical talents but would not expect the schools to force him to go against his natural abilities. Americans are also used to the idea of tradeoffs, which is a foreign concept to the Asian mind. Football scholarships are a good example of this kind of tradeoff. Asian schools do not think of nonacademic skills as compensation for work in the classroom, yet the idea is common in America. Another cultural gap lies in the varying complexity of languages. Goodnow notes that, in English,
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Accepting American, Asian American, Chinese Japanese, Jerome Bruner, , Thomas Rohlen, John Ogbu, Harold Stevenson, Chicago Stevenson, America Stevenson, elementary school, chinese students, involuntary minorities, cultural differences, asian schools, child development, asian societies, schools spend teaching, math tests, erlbaum associates, hillsdale nj lawrence, american culture, nj lawrence erlbaum, students math tests, lawrence erlbaum associates,
Approximate Word count = 1939
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Influence of Culture on Academic Achievement INTRODUCTION -- The Influence of culture