Fortune in the Book from Pacific Legal Foundation on Vimeo.
by James A. Bacon
A new Pacific Legal Foundation video tells the story of parents who fought changes to the meritocratic admissions policy at Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, rated the best public high school in the country, in the name of “equity.”
Bacon’s Rebellion readers will find most of this tale familiar, for we have chronicled it on this blog. But the interviews of TJ parents yield new nuggets of insight. The video demolishes the canard that the high school’s rigorous entry exam privileged affluent Asian families that could afford tutors and other educational assistance unavailable to lower-income minority students.
The parents in the video don’t see themselves as privileged. Many, if not most, TJ parents are Asian immigrants, and the emphasis on education is part of their culture.
The Chinese have a saying “There is fortune in the book.” If you want a better life in the future, study, says Julia McCaskill, an Asian-American. “The importance of education … it’s built in our culture.”
“These are families that used their money to maybe go home to India or China, but rarely will take a cruise through the Bahamas,” elaborates Asra Nomani (whose columns we have republished on this blog). “These are families that have potluck dinners with their friends, not cocktail parties at the country club.”
McCaskill says she bought Singapore Math for her children. A Level 2 textbook and workbooks costs $65 on Amazon. “Khan’s Academy is the best,” she said. “It’s free. Just sign up an account for your kids, and you can learn.”
The whole family invests in education, says Yuan Zhou. “I think that’s produced the difference.”
Maybe that’s just self-serving rhetoric, you say. TJ’s Asian students come from affluent backgrounds, you say. Their superior academic performance reflects their economic privilege, you say.
I don’t buy it. There’s abundant evidence that culture makes a difference. A few days ago Fairfax County Public Schools published an evaluation of a $488,000 partnership with Tutor.com to provide free online tutoring to help students overcome “unfinished learning” resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Only 1.6% of Fairfax County students accessed the platform for learning support, the study found.
Here’s the kicker: “Asian students and AAP students were disproportionately overrepresented in participation data…. Students who were not identified as needing academic intervention accessed the resource to a greater extent than those who were identified.”
Any Fairfax student can access the Tutor.com program. Any Fairfax resident can enroll in the free Kahn Academy. Almost any parent can afford $65 for Singapore Math. The economic barriers are trivial. What is lacking is the desire to take advantage of the abundant opportunities that American society offers.
Culture matters. Values matter. Priorities matter. Immigrant Asian families come to this country burning with a desire to succeed and a willingness to make personal sacrifices in order to achieve what they want. Less concerned than affluent Americans with their children’s current “happiness,” they understand that deferring gratification can yield rich future rewards. Ironically, judged by their lower rates of mental illness, the children of Asian immigrants are better adjusted — happier — than their peers of other races.
Comically, social-justice theorists label Asian cultural traits as “whiteness.” Such classical virtues might have been common among Whites at one time, but today they are more characteristic of Asians than anyone else.
I am thankful for the influx of (legal) Asian immigrants into Virginia. They reinvigorate our self-indulgent society with their quest for excellence. They believe in the American Dream more than most Americans do. They look to themselves, not to government, to make the American Dream come true. Those are my kind of people.
