g careers. How a student does in elementary school will undoubtedly make some difference in where he or she goes to college and, ultimately, in what kinds of jobs choices he or she can make. However, most Americans see the elementary school experience as being more important in developing an "educated" person, who can then make educated career choices.
Societies that think education is most important in providing a common body of knowledge, for instance, focus more on giving students certain specific skills. Harold W. Stevenson (1988) looked at students in three different parts of Peru. In the society where children were expected to help their parents bartering and selling, they tended to have better math skills than did students in farming communities where math proficiency was not valued as highly. In America, Stevenson notes, language skills are seen as more important than is math for elementary school students, so schools spend less time teaching math and students do not do as well on math tests as do their Asian counterparts (1990).
Jacqueline J. Goodnow also notes this different kind of emphasis. She sees deeper roots for cultural differences among Asian and American cultures; she writes that Americans place more emphasis on "being a well-rounded, well-adjusted, happy individual as compared with being a good student" (1998).
While Chinese and Japanese cultures see mathematics as being more important than it is in the West, cultures such as Malaysian society also consider things such as religion to be important. Goodnow (1998) notes that a firm understanding of Islam is important to an individual's ability to do well in many professions, so schools spend much time teaching religion in order to assure t
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