AsianWeek » Business School: The New Stereotype?

Business School: The New Stereotype?

We know there are a lot of Asians at engineering schools and medical schools. But check out these top undergraduate business school numbers from BusinessWeek: UC Berkeley, 54 percent Asian to 23 percent white; MIT, 37 percent Asian to 25 percent white. Even Mormon Brigham Young University has 8 percent Asians (versus 78 whites) — which is more than MIT had in 1976. I have no idea why this is happening. If you do, let us know.

Indian Education
Indian Americans are making their mark around Microsoft’s campus. They are the only ethnic group I’ve tracked with proportionally more awards than Jewish or Chinese Americans. The New York Times reported on Jan. 2 that the latest education fad in Japan is Indian-style schools where kids learn to multiply in kindergarten. Yet, in the Jan. 17 issue, The Times reported that although more Indian children are going to school than ever, four out of 10 fifth graders could not read at second grade level, and seven out of 10 could not subtract. Remember that when your local educracy is rallying for “world class standards.”

Those !@#$% Finns
The Feb. 29 Wall Street Journal revealed that Finland’s world-topping testing performance comes from the very “back to basics” approach spurned by “standards-based” education mania. Finnish students get just a half hour of homework for high schools and use chalkboards — with chalk. They concentrate on students who are behind instead of offering quadruple honors. Instead of cram preschools, school doesn’t start until age 7. There’s no “high standards for all” since tests rank the top college-bound half from the others who will finish with vocational courses.

The Emperor’s New Textbooks
The Finns aren’t hobbled by my sixth grader’s Connected Mathematics. Math is now a Blue’s Clues game which asks, “What do you think?”, and then asks students to “Create your own algorithm, and make sure it covers all these examples.” I never had to create and write down a method because that used to be what the book was for. The new “reform” instruction method simply cuts instruction out of the book. Only the teacher’s manual and letter to the parents hide the forbidden secret that “one possible answer is to convert to common denominators.” Every physics book states Newton’s three laws, yet students can’t find the “pi r squared” they’re supposed to learn anywhere in their books. People like Michael Paul Goldenberg of rationalmathed.blogspot.com are offended that we think something is dreadfully wrong when students have to figure out and write in all of the math they’ve deliberately left out of the textbook. I hate to sound like Barack Obama’s Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., but if most other Americans are stupid enough to buy into this, Asian parents should know better and raise a stink.

Comments

Comment on “The Emperor’s New Textbooks”

Though i have never seen a copy of a sixth grader’s CONNECTED MATHEMATICS, I think more interactive approaches to teaching kids math is a great idea. Kids would do so much better in math if they found it fun and interesting, and something challenging, but duable. That does not mean rules, algorithms and formulas should be like some sort of interpretive dance–kids shouldn’t think that they can make up their own rules for math–but math really is about imagination that expands upon foundations of logic!

–Esther Oh on Mar 25, 2008
I posted a more complete review here:
http://hu1st.blogspot.com/2008/02/cmp2-notes-1252008-by-arthur-hu-grade.html
Esther, I wouldn’t mind adding some fun and games for the kids who don’t get it after being shown how to do it, but to deliberately leave out the content is the sign of a religious constructivist whacko at work.

–ArthurHu on Mar 25, 2008
Asians in business schools? Why not? They now have the language skills, the social skills, the drive, the acceptance of the society and the supportive parents to make it in the business world. I’m all for it. If the two-tier income society is shaping to be the reality of tomorrow, or today, and the business world provides the path to the “upper-tier” wealth, why not? Maybe a lot of the Asian value such as “middle of the way”, “be modest” and “be humble” can help shape a new corporate culture in this country.

–Grace on Mar 25, 2008
looks like they edited out my point - Asians actually OUTNUMBER whites at some top schools, something that Asians have not done in non-UC engineeering or med schools last time I checked.

–arthurhu on Mar 26, 2008
Mr.(Dr.?) Hu, your numbers are not adding up. 37% Asian + 25% white is 52%. Im actually at MIT, and though don’t know the actual figures there are way more caucasians than 25%. There are also maybe 7-8% black 5% hispanic, as far as undergraduates go. Are you not counting Jewish kids as ‘white’?

–jstar23 on Apr 14, 2008
“jstar23″
It’s so late in this little game of one-upmanship, in this particular corner of Academe, and, in truth, I am not at all proud of “stalking” my betters such as Arthur Hu, he’s “published” and, sob, it’s heen more than a half-century for me, but one plus one still equals two?
Or does it?
If you try to follow, as have I of late, Mr. or Dr. Hu’s contributions to the press and the media and the conundrums of our time, such as they are, you may well be as flummoxed as moi.
That said, Hu’s on “first,” may well be last, insofar as he seems, to me at least, to make about as much sense as does our “western,” “Beltway”?, arbiters of “human rights,” who loudly denounce those cadres in Tibet, but have you?, I never have, heard a single word out of them on the “rights” of Iraqis, never mind Palesstinians, all of whom may actually qualify as “human”? Oh, and let’s not forget our “blacks” and “reds,” the commonly accepted skin colorings, that is.
So what’s a school or a degree or a ” living” got to do with it, other than the fact that whomsoever is asking such a silly question is still “alive”?
Frank Eng
P.S.: Art, please, please come to the point about ANYthing you profess. We all await, with bated, no, not “baited,” breath.
P.P.S.: And, speaking of “numbers,” do one million Iraqis equal or come close to TWO million Vietnamese civilianms, OR, for that matter, SIX million Jews?, some of whose descendants, alas, appear to be invoking the IRONY of all time in their current observance of THEIR holocaust in incepting another?

–Frank Eng on Apr 14, 2008
>>Mr.(Dr.?) Hu, your numbers are not adding up. 37% Asian + 25% white is 52%. Im actually at MIT, and though don’t know the actual figures there are way more caucasians than 25%.
>> I’m talking about the Sloan business school, which in my days had fewer Asians than the general undergrads, evidently there are more Asians in the biz school than in engineering, the numbers I last looked at 5-10 yrs ago Asians had peaked at around 30%, what is it these days?

–awarthurhu on Apr 15, 2008

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