you took what i DID write – a defense of hard-working kids; and an excoriation of lazy little pukes who whine ‘it’s too hard to keep up with them other guys!!’ and turned it into an informal pop-psychoanalysis session. with a few uncomplimentary suppositions about me thrown in.

super! can i play too? by MY guess, your hatred of standardized resting indicates to me that you’re either A) a teacher, unhappy that the hardworking asians have made it hard for you to give the whole class A-plusses and smiley faces; or B) a student unable to keep up with your harder-working classmates. no matter which, you DO try your best to end the argument you’re losing by calling the other guy bad names, which is telling. there’s an old saying in the field of the law: “when you have no case, abuse the plaintiff.” small children and intellectual midgets do this as well: “oh yeah? well you’re just *stupid!* and *racist!*”

lastly, your silly notion that “standardized tests are not to be used to determine one’s path in life” was just so…so…so *sensitive* and new-age, it made me sit down and have a good cry. riddle me this: since everyone wants the glamor jobs in life – supermodel; porn star; pro athlete, captain of a starship… – and since there are only a very few openings for these jobs, how do we determine who makes the cut?

why, they have to *pass a TEST*, don’t they? look good on camera; run a 4.3 40; demonstrate an intimate knowledge of engineering and leadership and tactics….they don’t let just anybody get those jobs. just the people who PASS THE TEST. your foolish “standardized tests are not to be used to determine one’s path” notion is just plain ridiculous. is that what they taught you when you became a teacher? is this why each successive year, high-school grads seem to be dumber and dumber than the year before? can there be any wonder why the number of kids being home-schooled rises each & every year?

one last time: hard work is NOT a bad thing. whining that other people ‘work too hard’ is NOT the way to win a competition with them. especially with children, you get what you accept. if you accept dumb kids with excessive self-esteem, all based on phony praise, (“great job tying your shoe there, nevaeh!”), what you get are today’s soft, surly, cupcake-spined teenagers. what you get are kids that – in the real world – are just ‘easy meat’.

do you think you’re doing those kids any favors?

While a standardized test gives division lines on a numerical basis, they are not to be used to determine one’s path in life.

you try hard to disguise this with ‘concerns for their well-being’; and to disparage it by assigning them a pseudopsychological ailment resulting from all that hard work (“they’re automatons”). who says they work too hard? their parents – the people who love them the most and want the best for them – don’t. who says lots of study makes them “automatons”? you? what makes you an expert on this?

one guy who WAS an expert, noted hypercompetitive navy admiral hyman rickover – the guy who worked insanely too hard, and single-handedly created, automatonlike, the entire US navy nuclear submarine program, the *whole thing* – thought differently. he said this: “the only way to get ahead and succeed is to put in 10 times more effort than another person would deem to be adequate.” observation of the human nature/the world and their inherent iron laws seems to bear this out. observation of fat, lazy, stupid kids, coddled and protected all their lives from the evils of hard work and competition, working (by which i mean slouching, standing around looking cool & tough & bored and ignoring the paying customers) at burger king, unable to even make change seems to bear it out, too.

lastly, your last line interests me. “their lack of knowledge resulting from hypercompetitiveness …”. the stuff they teach at school is not finite, and it doesn’t have a shelf life. history, or basic arithmetic, or spelling skills don’t suddenly stop getting taught after the 3 smartest kids in the class demonstrate proficiency with them, do they? if it kid ends up “on the wrong end of the test”, its *that kids* fault (and his parents). it AIN’T the fault of the kid who worked his butt off to master it, or even just to pass the test. life **is** competition, last time i checked. the good job, or the big promotion, or the dazzling hottie aren’t going to end up with a sloppy fat schlub who can’t be bothered to exert him/herself beyond the bare minimum. (I.E., “showing up”.)(sometimes.)(of course, they will need to have a lot of days off, you understand: they’re not *automatons*! they need to recharge their batteries!!)

no time better to learn that than in school, while there’s still time to change.

That is why I have empathy for those who are cheated in school and work by your kind. That is, marginal cases whom are cast aside – even in guaranteed state universities – for automatons.

Creativity is what you will never have by memorizing to the test. You might be the best Xerox machine in terms of existing academic concepts, but your brain will be too burned out for original thought. The only time you might show anything close is when you cheat to get a perfect score.

I only hope for your sake that those children on the wrong end of the test don’t make Ebens and Nitz look saintly. Their lack of knowledge resulting from hypercompetitiveness may result in them exacting revenge that you may not be able to stop.

and – at least in schools – they succeed spectacularly because they work the hardest. the kids they beat know all about this week’s american idol; they can tell you all about the ross & rachel saga; and they totally kick ass at the new version of ‘halo’. all that takes a LOT of time – time the asians put to use studying. but american parents have all somehow bought into the notion that letting their kids OD on tv and video games makes them “well rounded”. i’ve personally seen one of those plump, surly, vacant-eyed ‘well-rounded’ teens burst into tears at the burger king when i added 3 pennies to the $5 bill she rang up on a $4.78 order because i wanted the quarter back *and she couldn’t figure out what to do*. she *couldn’t do the 3rd grade arithmetic problem in her head*, and she crumbled like the soft little cupcake she was. if ‘well-rounded’ now means soft, weak, ill-mannered, and ignorant, then heck yeah: avoiding hypercompetitiveness is working out just fine for her, ain’t it? wonder how she’ll do in 10 years when her marriage is in trouble. or if her kid – god forbid – gets gravely ill and needs mommy to be strong. but she can text, like, TOtally fast! and she’s got, like, the most *bitchin* tattoo! and even though she was willing to take burger king’s money for being there, there was, like, no *waaay* she would lower herself by offering the customer a pleasant smile or anything approaching good service, because all the gangstas on MTV have taught her that’s just not cool. smiling is for nerds. math is for dorks.

school and standardized testing is pretty much the fairest thing in an unfair world: you either know the answer or you don’t. the above 2 commenters above just don’t want to admit it. “hypercompetitiveness” used to be how american kids operated. “hypercompetitiveness” won us 2 world wars, and the cold war. “hypercompetitiveness” is how americans invented the modern world: electric light, radio, movies, airplanes, cheap autos, etc etc. the fact the guy above is using it as a pejorative is a bad bad sign indeed. americans still have a big head start over the rest of the world, but they’re working hard to catch up, as human nature demands. they want 3 cars and 5 TV’s and a mcmansion – or what the rest of the world calls “a really really nice house” – *too*. the world changes – so deal with it and work harder; or do what you have to do. whining is not a viable option.

We should be ecstatic that…

Our citizens are bright enough, thank you very much. Third Worlders need not apply.

Its actually fairly true. Asian immigrant parents, especially Chinese and Indian, value education, and come from places where educational achievement is very competitive, with too many people applying for each university position or job. You have to be at the top to succeed, even when it comes to getting fairly basic jobs. That type of competitiveness is a good thing for the rest of us in the long run, as it helps combat the complacency of our education systems.

It only generates a problem of class division.

Exclusionism via hypercompetitiveness only educates the few and not the masses.

“They’re taking all the top spots in the schools! My kid can’t compete, they are drones that work all the time!”

Then make a criteria that excludes them and includes the US citizens not of that particular type that is also compliant with nondiscriminatory regulations.

Plain and simple.

I for one see them as a threat and do not care what pejoratives come my way for doing so.

My two oldest boys both played basketball (and I am proud to say made the honor roll). Of the 12 kids on the team, five were Indian-American, two were from the Middle East, and two were Chinese-American. They weren’t a great team, but they all had fun.

Several of my boy’s friends from their old school are Jewish. Based on the prevailing stereotype from my day, I expected their parents would jump at the chance to enroll the boys in Basis. To my surprise, both sets of parents said essentially the same thing: “We want our boys to get a more well-rounded school experience, including the social and extracurricular activities at the public middle school. We don’t want them to be grinds.”

The problem with modern suburban WASPs is that they are the children of Baby Boomers, given everything they ever wanted, never disciplined, and great “friends” with their self-absorbed botoxed parents. That is why so many rich white kids are into nihilism, Emo culture, and post-modern gobbledigook. They were never given reason to be motivated in school or work growing up, so they find no motivation in life itself as adults.