美国亚裔孩子成绩优秀 并非因为有"虎妈"

网易教育讯 （来源：财新网旁观中国；整理：财新记者丁锋）在美国，如果你有一张亚裔脸，往往被自动归类成“学霸”，不管你乐不乐意。当然，这种归类不无道理，一般来说，亚裔美国人的学术成就的确要超出他们的美国同伴很多。

很多人都试着分析这个现象背后的原因是什么，迄今为止，最著名也是最简单粗暴的一个答案是：亚裔学生有“虎妈”（Tiger Moms）。

“虎妈”一词来自于2011年的一本书，在书中，美国耶鲁法学院教授蔡美儿（Amy Chua）描述了身为亚裔母亲的她如何通过种种严苛的手段逼迫孩子成长，并最终获得成功。一时间“虎妈”成为美国舆论争议的热点。

不过，两位同为亚裔的美国女学者发表了不同的论点。加州大学洛杉矶分校的Min Zhou和加州大学欧文分校的Jennifer Lee发表了一项研究，名为“成功框架与成就悖论：亚裔美国人的代价及影响”（The Success Frame and Achievement Paradox: The Costs and Consequences for Asian Americans）

《华盛顿邮报》引述了研究报告中的分析：“虎妈”蔡美儿是个百分百的精英人士。她和丈夫都是耶鲁法学院教授；父亲是加州大学伯克利分校教授，有个妹妹是斯坦福大学的教授。以这个家庭的情况，在“虎妈”理论之外：

她孩子的成功同样很可能是因为社会经济及文化上的优势，学者们也把这列为一些孩子比他人更为出色的主要原因。

Her children’s success is just as likely the result of socioeconomic and cultural advantages, generally cited by scholars as the main reason some children do better than others.

Zhou和Lee认为，要弄明白亚裔美国人为什么学术上更成功，要去研究的不应该是蔡美儿这样的精英家庭，而应该是那些缺乏资源仍然取得成功的亚裔孩子。

于是两人研究了洛杉矶华裔和越南裔社区内普通家庭的情况。她们发现了什么呢？

年轻的亚裔美国人有的是好榜样去模仿。他们的社区及家庭会确保他们在需要时得到额外的帮助。

Young Asian Americans have all kinds of good role models to emulate. Their communities and families make sure they get extra help when they need it.

他们的家庭，即使是资源有限，也会找出并搬去有好学校的社区。而且，他们对成功的渴望有明确的目标：医学、法律、工程、制药。他们的目标就是最好的学校。

Their families, even on limited resources, manage to seek out and move to neighborhoods with good schools. And they aspire to success with specific goals in mind: medicine, law, engineering and pharmacy. And they aim for the best schools.

研究报告中提到，加州的许多亚裔（特别是华裔）父母在给自己的孩子选学校时，会用到一本“华人黄页大全”——这本书每年出版，有2英尺厚、1500多页，内容除了南加州华裔经营的生意信息，还有该地区公立高校排名，和全国最优秀大学排名。

在两位学者看来，家庭给出明确的目标和极高的期望值，客观上推动着亚裔取得更出色的学习成绩。

如果他们拿着GPA 3.5的成绩回家，父母会因为没得到4分而感到失望，而且他们会（把这种态度）表现出来。如果孩子考入了加州州立大学，那么问题就是，他们为什么没考上斯坦福呢？

If kids come home with a 3.5 grade-point average, parents are disappointed that it’s not 4.0 — and they show it. If a child gets into, say, Cal State, the question is why they didn’t make it into Stanford.

如果儿子或女儿拿个学士学位回家就不打算再读了，父母会让他们感到，没有拿到博士学位就没那么成功。”

If a son or daughter comes home and settles for a bachelor’s degree, they’re made to feel less accomplished because they don’t have a PhD.”

这么高的期许，带来的结果有好有坏：

很多年轻人会努力去做到。他们会考入斯坦福大学，也会拿到博士学位。但消极的一面是，那些没有达到期望的 “次A级学生”会在他们自己的族群中感到被疏远。简而言之，他们会感到自己不太像亚裔，而更像是“美国裔”。

Many young people will try to meet them. They will get into Stanford and they will get that PhD. The downside is that those who fall short — the ‘A-minus’ student’ — wind up feeling alienated from their ethnicity. In short, they feel less Asian and more, well, American.”

Paul是两位学者的研究对象之一，他没有走亚裔人的寻常路，而是选择当一名艺术家。Paul说，自己是“你所见过的最像白人的华人”（the whitest Chinese guy you’ll ever meet）。

而另一位华裔女孩Sarah则被问到，与非华人的同辈相比，是否觉得自己成功？她一时说不出话来，看上去好像从来没有想过这个问题。在她成长的环境里，华人似乎只能和华人比成功，亚裔也只能和亚裔比。

两位研究者不希望这种情况持续下去，她们写道：

亚裔学生可能更愿意用更合理的标准来衡量自己的成功，这也可能会提升他们的自尊和“自我效能”。

Asian American students may be more willing to measure their success against a more reasonable barometer, which may result in a boost in self-esteem and self-efficacy.

第二页：原文参考（作者FRED BARBASH 《华盛顿邮报》）

Why do Asian American students outpace everyone else academically?

The most publicized attempt to answer that question — a few years ago, by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua — set off a controversy that rages to this day.

Chua’s answer, originally set out in a 2011 Wall Street Journal opinion article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” was that “tiger mothers” were prepared to coerce kids into doing homework and practicing the piano, in part by calling them names. Chua (who’s latest book is “The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America) held herself and her academically successful children out as examples.

But a new study published in the journal “Race and Social Problems” by two California scholars takes on Chua, suggesting that with all the economic resources at her disposal — she and her husband are Yale professors with highly-educated parents — her children’s success is just as likely the result of socioeconomic and cultural advantages, generally cited by scholars as the main reason some children do better than others.

The authors of “The Success Frame and Achievement Paradox: The Costs and Consequences for Asian Americans” are Min Zhou, professor of sociology and Asian American Studies at the Univ. of California at Los Angeles, currently on leave at Nanyang Technological University, and Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology at the Univ. of California at Irvine.

A better way to understand Asian American academic success, they write, is to look at families who don’t have resources and succeed nonetheless.

That is exactly what they’ve done. And their findings are pretty straightforward: Young Asian Americans have all kinds of good role models to emulate. Their communities and families make sure they get extra help when they need it. Their families, even on limited resources, manage to seek out and move to neighborhoods with good schools. And they aspire to success with specific goals in mind: medicine, law, engineering and pharmacy. And they aim for the best schools.

It’s not about coercion or some mysterious ethnic gift, they write. It’s about the way they view their horizons, with extraordinarily high expectations — so high that kids who don’t rise to the occasion feel like “black sheep” and “outliers.”

Zhou and Lee studied Chinese American and Vietnamese American communities in Los Angeles without a lot of financial resources or parental higher education — factors that tend to skew other academic studies of success. They focused on two groups: the so-called “1.5 generation” — foreign-born immigrants who came to the United States prior to age 13 — and second-generation families. They conducted 82 face-to-face interviews to get a picture of why these communities are doing so well in advancing their children through high school and college.

Here’s what they found: Although their means are limited, Asian families in the study choose neighborhoods carefully to make sure schools offer honors and advanced-placement courses. To do this, parents use the “Chinese Yellow Pages,” which the researchers describe as “a two-inch thick, 1,500-page long telephone directory that is published annually and lists ethnic businesses in Southern California, as well as the rankings of the region’s public high schools and the nation’s best universities.” They also make sure their kids get plenty of supplementary help such as tutoring.

These families have incredibly high standards, according to the study. If kids come home with a 3.5 grade-point average, parents are disappointed that it’s not 4.0 — and they show it.

If a child gets into, say, Cal State, the question is why they didn’t make it into Stanford.

If a son or daughter comes home and settles for a bachelor’s degree, they’re made to feel less accomplished because they don’t have a PhD.

Both groups in the study, Zhou and Lee reported, adopt a similar “frame for what ‘doing well in school’ means: getting straight A’s, graduating as valedictorian or salutatorian, getting into one of the top UC (University of California) schools or an Ivy, and pursuing some type of graduate education in order [to] work in one of the ‘four professions’: doctor, lawyer, pharmacist, or engineer. So exacting is the frame for ‘doing well in school’ that our Asian respondents described the value of grades on an Asian scale as ‘A is for average, and B is an Asian fail.’’’

Such high standards have positive and negative impacts, the researchers found.

If expectations are that high, many young people will try to meet them. They will get into Stanford and they will get that PhD.

The downside is that those who fall short — the ‘A-minus’ student’ — wind up feeling alienated from their ethnicity. In short, they feel less Asian and more, well, American.

They describe a young man named Paul who chose to be an artist instead of following the path prescribed by his parents. He called himself “the whitest Chinese guy you’ll ever meet.”

They tell of one young woman they interviewed, Sarah, who when asked whether she feels successful compared to her friends who are not Chinese, pauses “as if she had never considered that comparison before and finally replied, ‘If I were to look at my white friends of that same age range, yes I’m more successful. If I were to look at all of my friends, yes, I would say so.’”

They write:

Sarah is not unique in this regard; none of the 1.5- and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese respondents considered measuring their success against native-born whites (or native-born blacks for that matter). Rather, they turn to high-achieving coethnics as their reference group — a finding that highlights that native-born whites are not the standard by which today’s 1.5- and second-generation Asians measure their success and achievements.

…So strong is the perception that the success frame is the norm among Asian Americans that the 1.5- and second-generation Chinese and Vietnamese who cannot attain it or choose to buck it find themselves at odds with their immigrant parents and with their ethnic identities.

While acknowledging the benefits of this “success frame,” Zhou and Lee are not entirely happy with it. They say they would prefer that academic prowess no longer be “coded as an ‘Asian thing.’”

Then, they write, “Asian American students may be more willing to measure their success against a more reasonable barometer, which may result in a boost in self-esteem and self-efficacy.”