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i'd recommend reading the whole article. i thought it was going to be all whining and moaning but he presents his point at the end.Originally Posted by 21 World B Free 21
I haven't read the article but I would agree with the premise. Obviously its not limited to just Asians, but a descent portion of them (think back to that WSJ article about about an Asian mom raising her kids highly disciplined, ie. no sleepovers no BFs etc.). The simple fact is in western civilization thesmartest, hardest working people aren't at the top. There are tons ofsmarthard working people out there who can do complex work (financial modeling, anything in technology and engineering etc) but the people that advance have social, managerial, leadership and politics skills in addition to intelligence, and/or work ethic. The people thatarejustsmart and workhard working but bring little else to the table are put in a corner and do there work and are left alone. There's obviously a good medium but too often this seems to be ignored in this type of strict upbringing (obviously they are all not as strict), practicing the piano daily and playing until you get it right does teach you discipline and persistence but hanging out with friends playing sports etc teaches valuable skills as well.
i agree with most of what you had to say, but had to change it up a bit. hard working =/= smart.
being just a hard worker isn't enough to make it, and that's one of the points the author's making. the old adage that "hard work pays off" doesn't capture the importance of the soft skills required to succeed in any form of life. unfortunately, that's one of the lessons many traditional parents seem to hammer into their children.
if you want to take the discussion further, this becomes an argument of entitlement. too many people are raised to believe that if they do X amount of work, they are ENTITLED to Y success. in reality, nobody cares how much effort you put into something, rather, it's the end product that people care about. if you put 1000 hours into a garbage product, it's still a garbage product. nobody's going to pay you when they don't want what you're selling, no matter how long you spent making it. this translates into arguments over into topics like the value of a degree, why people can't get jobs, why social welfare is unfair (for or against)