Amy Chua: Defining Success

Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift.
--Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"

Amy Chua writing with Jed Rubenfeld in a new book, The Triple Package, explores some the same questions The Phantom raised in last week's blog: What is success, how do we measure it and how do we get it?

She looks at what happens to groups, and concludes success does not occur because one group has genetically superior gifts or higher intelligence--if success emanated from superior genes, then those genetically blessed groups would, generation after generation be at the top, like some master race--but  what sociologists and economists have documented is not that pattern: groups tend to rise to success in one generation but then fall back toward the mean in the next.  Some groups which have succeeded over several generations  are not as genetically connected as Jews (or at least as Jews were before they moved to America and started marrying non Jews.) , The Mormons, have achieved success relentlessly, as defined by the number of CEO's who are Mormons and they are more of an interbred group.

But what are the measures of success?  Income is one. Indian Americas have a median income of $90,000 (whereas all Americans have a median of $50,000.)
Jews are said to be successful because 3 of the 9 members of the Supreme Court are Jews and 1/3 of American Nobel Laureates are Jews. 

Chua looks at some of the usual assumptions which conventional wisdom suggest explains the success of certain groups: e.g., certain groups arrive in this country well educated and poised to succeed. Indians often come on work visas, having been trained in computers in India, so their success is predictable.  But Chua shows groups who arrive with minimal education (Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean) who, within a generation have risen,  as measured by income and by admissions to Ivy League schools.

When an elite New York City school (Stuyvesant) changed its  admissions policy  to simply admit those students with the highest test scores, 620 Asians, 177 whites 24 Hispanics and 9 blacks comprised its entering class. The same happened at Berkeley, when California went to a formula for admissions:  grades plus test scores were all that counted. The campus went 90% Asian.

There has always been that underground, non politically correct belief that Asians are good at math, genetically, and blacks simply "don't have the head for it."  This is the racial bias. The Phantom saw evidence to the contrary among his Nigerian, Kenyan and Ethiopian patients in Washington, D.C.

Does this mean Stuyvesant and Berkeley got the brightest, most talented kids? Or did they get the kids who had figured out how to play the game best, the kids whose parents could pay for the Kaplan test prep course? Were these kids really bright, or just shrewd?

The Phantom's son learned how to grub grades from a girlfriend, who instructed him: Don't get all interested in this subject. Just do what you need to do to get the "A" and move on.  He had become interested in Benjamin Franklin, for a report, and he was checking out more books from the library to learn more.  No, wasted time. You are getting distracted.  Don't get seduced by getting interested and wanting to learn more than you need to learn. The idea is not to learn about Franklin. The idea is get an "A" in the course. 

 Chua points to the interesting phenomenon of Nigerian students. Although Nigerians make up less than 1% of American blacks, they comprise 25% of the Black students at Harvard Business school.  This certainly comports with observations the Phantom made in Washington, DC, where he met many Nigerians who were erudite, driven and successful. So were many Ethiopians. Nigerians also sent wonderful surgeons to the United States during the 1970's but then something happened in Nigeria and those doctors stopped coming.

Ms. Chua observes that across groups, success comes to those who: 1. Believe they are endowed with superior brainpower  2. Are insecure about their own personal worthiness 3. Have admirable impulse control.

In other words, certain groups foster a child rearing environment in which the children feel they have something to prove, but are only likely to succeed if they focus on what they need to succeed and forsake all other temptations.

Ms. Chua, who wrote Tiger Mom, returns to the whole notion of rearing and how Chinese Americans are often less concerned about their children suffering, or struggling with self esteem, but more with instilling a sense of urgency and a will to succeed. 

She points to the changing economy, which rewards  higher education as the environment in which these driven children are likely to succeed where the indulged American kid who watches TV and plays video games will wind up driving a cab.

Of course, she has to concede a substantial number of college grads wind up driving cabs, because their college education, while stimulating or edifying or simply a four year debauchery, did not lead to a career.

Which brings the Phantom back to the issue of whether or not going to college is actually a ticket to economic success. Do students at the Ivy League actually learn things which make them more successful than students at state schools, or are those students at the Ivy League because they are driven toward success and pursue it? Would those ambitious students have failed , had admissions to the Ivies been by lottery and rejections been their fate? Or would they have succeeded because they were ambitious to begin with?

The Phantom can certainly think of classmates he knew growing up who fit the profile Ms. Chua describes: In particular, his high school prom date, a friend he knew since 4th grade. She was clearly wonderfully bright, verbal, analytical and insightful and the Phantom spent hours talking to her and knew her far better than any of her teachers. The daughter of an ophthalmologist, she applied to Ivy League schools and Seven Sisters schools but was rejected by every one, and wound up at Carnegie Tech. After a year, she transferred to Barnard, went on to Columbia Law and became a lawyer for a big Hollywood studio, and ultimately  she became general counsel and partner in a  brand name financial institution which most people know,  and she now lives on Russian Hill, San Francisco with a monster beach house up the coast. 

The Phantom knows about the beach house because she emailed him a picture, saying come out and visit sometime; we've got room. Whenever she returned to Bethesda, she takes out  a dozen of her old high school chums to dinner and covers the bill. She probably makes more than all 12 put together. And eight of those 12 went to Ivy League schools, straight out of high school.  Her generosity is genuine, but she has, clearly, never gotten over what happened at the end of high school. That emailed photo of her home reveals the pain. You may have gone directly to the Ivy League, but I'm no failure. Look at me know. She had something to prove. And she did. 

In the Phantom's case, he wound up spending 16 years in Ivy League institutions, after high school, through medical school and the end of medical training, but when he returned home to Bethesda, to open his practice, none of those names mattered. He would have been better off had he gone to medical school at Georgetown or George Washington, where he'd have made connections which would have helped when he started practice. People would have referred him patients right away. As it was, it took years to create a network of local doctors and until then, his practice languished, as he sat in his office under some very expensive diplomas which didn't mean much to either his patients or the doctors who would have to refer them.

And what of the value of that education?  The first four years, studying calculus, physics, even organic and inorganic chemistry were largely wasted. These, we are and were told were necessary as "fundamental' to what you learn later in medical school. Hogwash. Even in medical school, much of the first two years of "basic science," a waste of time, effort and emotion. Only after 6 years, during the 3rd year of medical school,  was any of what the professors taught useful, meaningful or even interesting.  

Yes, you can get into Harvard, but apart from getting you into the wedding announcements in the New York Times, will that translate into dollars, down the road?

Intriguingly, when Andrew Hacker, a professor who taught at Cornell for years, whose own PhD is from Princeton, tried to discover what actually happened to the graduates of Princeton, Cornell, Harvard, he got stonewalled. The universities would not share such private information, even if no names were involved.  They track their graduates, for purposes of knowing who to ask for big donations, but they would not share any numbers with anyone. 

Hacker suggested the reason these elite institutions don't want to share that information is they would have to reveal how many of their illustrious graduates are driving cabs twenty years out. He did remark the Princeton class of 1962, one he  taught, struck him as a collection of mediocrities. 

There is always faith required by students. You have to believe what the teacher is teaching has some intrinsic value.  Many times, especially in the sciences, where you have to begin with the basics and build up, the time spent seems wasted, and it is only as you accumulate knowledge, you discover its value. But, too often, in science courses, there is no value at the end of the rainbow, and the faith has been unjustified.

What we really need to do, in this country, is to go back to the details: What is on those exams?  Were the kids who got into Stuyvesant, the kids who aced that exam, the best and the brightest, or simply the shrewdest?