Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers—and How You Can Too. Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Y. Kim. New York: Berkley Books, 2006, Pp. 224. $13.00, paper. ISBN: 0-425-20561- 4. TEL: 212-366-2000
In many of life’s endeavors, if we want to improve our own performance, we look to those who excel. If our kids want to become accomplished cellists, we send them to Wolftrap or Interlochen. If we want to learn how to write fiction, we attend writing workshops conducted by accomplished authors. If we want to become a first rate golfer, we watch Tiger and hire the best teacher we can find.
This approach seems obvious enough, but it seems to be lost all too often when it comes to our schools. I’m thinking particularly now of efforts to close the infamous achievement gap. Study after study shows Asian American kids outperforming their white peers, and both of these groups outperforming Latino, and African American students.
Consider the following statistics: 47% of Asian Americans over 25 hold Bachelor’s degrees as compared with 27% of the overall population; 16% of Asian Americans hold advanced degrees as compared with 9% of the overall population. The percentage of Asian American students (keep in mind that Asian Americans make up only 4% of the U.S. population) at top universities: Harvard—18%, University of Pennsylvania— 23%, Stanford—24%, Columbia and Cornell—25%, and the University of California at Berkeley— 42%.
School districts across American have expended enormous amounts of energy, time, and money in attempts to improve the performance of underachieving students. Schools bring in consultants, conduct teacher in-service programs, run extended school days, and buy computer technology. These efforts, though, often produce less than stellar results.
Korean American sisters Soo Kim Abboud (a surgeon and clinical assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania) and Jane Kim (an attorney and immigration specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania) offer another approach for improving the performance— not just of underachieving students—but of all students. What happens at school is undeniably important, but the Kim sisters make the case that what happens in the home is of paramount importance. School is the place where the academic lessons occur, but it is the home where the attitudes about the significance of education are instilled.
In Top of the Class they discuss 17 “secrets” (principles, really) that Asian parents practice in order to turn their children into exemplary students. All 17 of these “secrets” require active participation on the part of the parents. Secret #1—which is the foundation upon which all of the others rest is for parents to “Instill [in your child] a Love and Need for Learning and Education.” The authors discuss how to do this and provide several examples of parents (including their own parents) working to foster this attitude in their children.
Secret #3 particularly caught my attention. “Instill a Respect and Desire for Delayed Gratification and Sacrifice.” This lesson runs counter to the life scripts we see every day in the popular culture—particularly in advertising. The Kim sisters describe how their parents taught them this lesson and how they sacrificed for their girls’ long-term success. Their mother even put off her own education until Soo and Jane had attained their educational goals.
Secret #9 is a tough one: “Teach Your Child the Art of Valuing Academic Success Over Social Status or Popularity.” Not only do advertising and the media work against this value, but school culture in America aids and abets the pursuit of popularity over academic success. As the authors say, in most cases “[If students] have to choose between being popular and underperforming, or doing well in school and being less popular, most kids will gladly see their grades drop.”
“In Asia,” the authors report, “popularity is largely based on school performance. By and large, the top students tend to be the most popular and well liked.”
School leaders who are serious about school improvement need to look beyond the confines of the classroom. The Kim sisters see their parents’ influence as being the most significant factor contributing to their academic success. Many parents could benefit from the lessons one finds in Top of the Class. The book would make an excellent text for parent workshops run by schools. If one family dedicated to the Kims’ “secrets” is powerful, a school full of such families could be revolutionary.
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© 2007 Prakken Publications, Inc.
