Education In A Form Of Madness (Part 3)

This is the 3rd part of the post. The 1st and 2nd part are here and here.

Insecurity And Not Belonging

For most of the Asian immigrant families, insecurity and not belonging is an overwhelming feeling. The parents of the families, usually the first generation immigrants, live in the enclave of their own communities and experience certain degree of unease when dealing with the outside world. It is paradoxical, isn’t it? They come to America to chase their American dream, which is represented by this outside world. When they are so close to it, they realize that they can’t really understand it, can’t really fit in, can’t speak without revealing their accent. They try to pretend that their sense of insecurity and not belonging doesn’t exist, but it does.

This insecurity is like an inexplicable siren that never stops sounding alarm in their mind. When people in Home Depot don’t understand their description of their window problem, they immediately think it is because of their Asian accent. When they are given a corner table in a steak house, they immediately think that it is because of their Asian looks, which is not good enough for more conspicuous seats in the restaurant. When the cute assistant at the front bakery at Cheesecake Factory is not friendly with their inquiry about the cheesecakes, their first thought is that they have encountered discrimination and “Asian hate”.

Actually it can be about anything, big or small, significant or insignificant. Most of these thoughts of insecurity are not expressed and often times they try very hard to perish the thoughts. However human mind is a tricky thing–the unexpressed thoughts can scream louder than any other thoughts inside their head, and the more effort they put in to perish certain thoughts, the more likely the thoughts pop up even often and refuse to die.

Well, it is not entirely accurate to say that the insecurity is not expressed. It is expressed in the name of the restaurants, which often have words like “royal”, “palace”, “king”, “court” or other phrases of splendor. This only happens to Asian restaurants in America. In Asia, the regal terms are not common for restaurants or any businesses.

And the insecurity is expressed in imagining that their children can fit in this outside world automatically. What they don’t understand themselves, their children should understand since they are born here; what they are afraid of dealing with, their children should deal with like an expert since they are born here; where they don’t feel they belong, their children should belong without a problem. These are all magical thinking or wishful thinking.

And finally the insecurity is expressed in pushing their children to get in a top college, which is the ultimate way to show that their children can deal with this incomprehensible outside world, can be accepted by this outside world that is reluctant to accept them, can be a member of an exclusive club which has excluded them. To this end, many fathers work like a savage–a happy and aspiring savage–to provide the fund, and many mothers sacrifice every minute of their spare time to chauffeur their kids to music, art, sports lessons.

In their unguarded moments, these parents would tell you that Ivy Leagues are overrated, clubs that don’t accept them are not worthy of their presence in the first place, and the education rat race is just a hype and nothing more. They even understand that their kids will very likely be looked down upon by snobby peers in elite schools, and good grades nowadays are obtained more by study drugs and extreme-tutoring than anything else. However such flashes of epiphany or cynicism are short lived. Soon after, they are back to their old self of making every effort to push their children to scale the impossible high wall of admission to elite colleges. The more difficult it is to get in, the more worthy is their fight to get in.

And I often wonder why people would try so hard to achieve something that they don’t really believe in wholeheartedly. I guess it is because people don’t think they have any other choices. We were all brought up to believe in “correct answers” in school and in life, and the few top universities are supposed to be the “correct answers” for high school students.

(To Be Continued Here)

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Image by Harish Sharma from Pixabay