I’ll tell you what I found interesting…..When I was in high school (a long long time ago, in a galaxy not far away)….I recall the irony of my Senior Advanced Placement English class….70% of the class were Asians…The overall Asian population in the school was 25%….The second irony was that I was actually in the AP English class. My engrish is horrific, and yet somehow I did ok in that class…
I won’t even talk about the Calc and Physics classes…
Actually in college, my engineering classes consisted mostly of (1)really smart immigrants (asians/indians/russians) or (2) intellectually smart 2nd gen asians but practically stupid..because…the “really smart” 2nd generation asians figured out that is was much better to spend the same time working to be a lawyer or investment banker. Yeah, I fell into the #2 category….
The thing I noticed growing up is that several Americans simply didn’t seem to care too much about education, which I thought was “odd”.
And the thing that drives me up the wall is how bad some people are at math.. I recall being at a store, and the cash register was down. The clerk couldn’t figure out how much 10% off something was, and went searching for a calculator….And when I told that person, the clerk asked me how I figured it out so quickly…..Ok, I can’t figure out sqrt’s in my head like my wife from overseas can. But come on, 10%????? Don’t believe me? Watch that TV show “Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?” and see at some of the ridiculously simple math questions that are asked, and see how people can’t answer those questions….
