Asian-American students work hard: Is that a problem?

American culture prizes mediocrity over excellence, charged Vivek Ramaswamy, the American-born child of Indian parents, in a tweet. "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers," he wrote, calling for "more math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. . . . More books, less TV. . . . More extracurriculars, less hanging out at the mall.”

Photo: Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels

Asian immigrants are introducing a high-stress "grind culture" in U.S. schools, writes Helen Andrews in Compact. "Actually, American education is traditionally quite demanding, it just tells you to find your passion first and then push yourself to the limit of your talents, as opposed to indiscriminately maximizing test scores and then picking a high-status career."

We should celebrate serious students and "create spaces where more students can experience that," responds Ankit Gupta, one of the the founders of the start-up investor Y Combinator. "The American focus on creativity and innovation is great and I would argue superior" to educational norms in India and China, he tweets. But he argues that "Asian-Americans excel because they in fact are very good at that creativity and innovation and passion. And yeah they can take tests too."

Asian Americans are resented for "unfairly" working too hard, writes co-founder Garry Tan in The New War Against Asian-American Excellence. Advocate of meritocracy move the goal posts when they don't like who's winning the game.

"Asian Americans founded or co-founded companies that created millions of jobs: Nvidia, AMD, Yahoo, YouTube, Zoom," Tan writes. Entrepreneurs are not "automatons."

We work hard because we believe in building things. The immigrant story IS the American story — sacrificing for the next generation. Excellence is not a threat. Hard work is not unfair.

"People who should be celebrated as models of the American Dream" are being reframed as threats, Tan writes. "Asian Americans aren’t trespassers. We’re founders, investors, teachers, doctors, engineers, artists, and athletes. We create jobs. We build companies. We strengthen communities. And we will not apologize for existing, for succeeding, or for teaching our children that hard work matters."

By the way, it's not true that Asian-American students do nothing but cram for tests, points out Neetu Arnold of the Manhattan Institute. Sixty-three percent participate in sports, higher than the national average of 59 percent, according to a 50CAN survey. Fifty-nine percent are active in arts, dance and music, again higher than the national average of 51 percent.

For students in all racial groups, those with the best grades were the most likely to participate in sports, arts, music, dance, community service and other extracurriculars. Students with poor grades were the least likely to participate in anything.

I live in Silicon Valley, a magnet for high-achieving, high-tech immigrants from Asia. They tend to have hard-working, high-achieving children. Some are students of average ability who do well because they work so hard. Some are very smart students who do very, very well because they work so hard. I have a hard time seeing this as a problem.