{"id":6782,"date":"2025-04-02T19:35:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T23:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/?p=6782"},"modified":"2025-04-02T19:35:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T23:35:29","slug":"cultural-clash-and-academics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/2025\/04\/02\/cultural-clash-and-academics\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Clash and Academics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Academic competition is a key feature of elite secondary schools: between rigorous curricula and a pressure to achieve highly compared to peers for admission to higher education, competition can both motivate students to work hard and create unnecessary stress. But what happens when academic expectations in schools are different from family or cultural expectations? <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

This is the case for Lee, a 17-year-old student at Takau American School in Taiwan. Lee explains that at her school, teachers want the classroom to be an interactive space where students ask as many questions as possible. She feels that teachers and counselors at her school are more focused on learning, extracurriculars, and experiences rather than grades: for example, when she went to her counselor after having a hard time with chemistry, her counselor looked at her grade (a B-) and said \u201cthat\u2019s not bad, you know, you should be proud of yourself\u201d. To me, the culture surrounding grades and teacher\/student relationships at Takau American School demonstrate some aspects of American values and culture; specifically, the freedom of speech and expression. Lee also describes that her school emphasizes being an \u201cindependent learner\u201d, which reflects the American value of individualism in schooling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the contrary, Lee describes that she feels more pressure from her Taiwanese parents to perform well in school than from her teachers and counselors. She explains that \u201cI think Asian parents are always trying to be like \u201coh you got B, you better get B+. Oh you got A, you better get A+\u201d. They\u2019re always expecting more\u201d. From our class readings and discussions, I learned that in mainland China (PRC), public examinations are highly emphasized and are the main form of evaluation to move students to the next education level (secondary, university, etc). As a reflection of this, Chinese schools promote heavy study loads, significant memorization, and a focus on examination performance and grades. Although Taiwan is approaching a more democratic schooling environment, reflective of their government, Lee\u2019s accounts of her parents\u2019 perspectives about academics and her previous school still display these more traditional Chinese educational values. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before attending Takau, Lee attended a local Taiwanese school, where she asserts that the curriculum was \u201ctoo stiff and not applicable to life\u201d and that faculty are \u201cjust trying to stomp everything into the students\u2019 brains and then later they forget everything\u201d. Describing the differences between American-raised children at her school and their parents versus those born and raised in Taiwan, she explains that \u201csometimes I feel like the Western guys are more open-minded. They accept you no matter what you\u2019re like. The Asian guys–the Chinese speakers are more stereotypical. They like to, how do you say it, judge the book by its cover\u201d. The values of her old school, her parents\u2019 expectations for academic excellence, and the worldviews of Taiwanese students and families seem to be at odds with the academic culture at Takau, indicating a clash of cultures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s interesting to me about this cultural clash as it relates to academics is that Taiwanese parents still choose to send their children to international and American schools. It seems that despite pushing back against some American ideals such as individualism and complete freedom of speech, some Taiwanese parents believe that sending children to a globalized school where they will learn English and Western culture is very valuable. (In the case of Takau, parents pay significant tuition money for their children to attend school). Through the lens of Bourdieu, I imagine that parents send their children to these schools to accrue various forms of cultural capital that can be translated to economic capital through acquiring a \u201cgood\u201d job. In an American school, this cultural capital may include the ability to navigate the American college application system, as well as learning American norms, behaviors, and mannerisms. Several students at Takau American School also mentioned that the majority of graduates from Takau go off to attend universities outside of Taiwan, mostly in America or Europe, with some eventually returning to Taiwan to take over family businesses. Is the type of education received at an American school more conducive to success at an American university than at a Taiwanese university? Is it more the influence from parents or from faculty\/counselors that prompt these students to attend American universities? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further research and investigation into the dynamics of Taiwanese elite schools and higher education may be necessary to answer these questions. Although Taiwanese parents of students at American schools may be unfamiliar with or skeptical of Western attitudes toward academics, they clearly believe there is value in an elite American education. From examining several interviews from Takau students including Lee\u2019s testimony, my first impressions are that \u201cAmerican\u201d is somewhat synonymous with \u201cglobal\u201d to many students and families. In fact, when asked to define a global citizen, Lee responded \u201cto be Americanized\u201d. It seems that attending American schools and universities is often seen as a gateway to greater opportunities on a global scale, providing access to influential spaces where individuals can acquire power and capital. This perception of potential appears to transcend cultural differences between parents\/families and American institutions, further reinforcing Western values and ideologies within elite global education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Academic competition is a key feature of elite secondary schools: between rigorous curricula and a pressure to achieve highly compared to peers for admission to higher education, competition can both motivate students to work hard and create unnecessary stress. But what happens when academic expectations in schools are different from family or cultural expectations? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11797,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[551652,107301,551653,551654,551651],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6782"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11797"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6785,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6782\/revisions\/6785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}