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The Asian culture of suppressing ego not helpful
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A professor friend of mine teaches Asian American studies in San Francisco.
Every semester she catches her students cheating, mostly in the form of plagiarism. Most of those, given the subject matter and the growing population, are Asians.
“I said to the class, three of you plagiarized. I’ll be nice. Just rewrite and slide the new essay under my office and I won’t flunk you.” Three days later, she found 11 new essays had been slid under her door upon the deadline.
Kishore Mahbubani, a career diplomat from Singapore, is the author of “Can Asians Think? Understanding the Divide Between East and West.”
The book’s title is misleading, because the author, an Asian, can and does think brilliantly. But Mahbubani points out that, in general, Asians tend to fall into complacency and conformity. Although a few are winning prestigious literary and artistic awards, the vast majority rush toward economic success without taking a moment to reflect.
It doesn’t help that self-expression is largely discouraged across Asia. The language of criticism and analysis is often frowned upon in a region where harmony is emphasized over individualism.
To do well in the sciences and to memorize the classics have been viewed as enough to make you a more-than-competent professional.
Think too hard about an issue, especially an ideological one, and who knows? You might turn into a nonconformist, even a radical, God forbid, a dissident and therefore a danger to the status quo.
Is this a uniquely Asian problem? Of course not. But America still values the maverick, the inventor, the loudmouth class clown, the individual with a vision. American kids grow up saying “I” — as in “I disagree” — without a second thought.
But even in America, it is not so easy for an Asian kid in a Confucian family household to say something like that. As a frequent judge of writing contests for high school students, I find it curious that many Asian American entrants, even those with a perfect command of English, don’t use the first-person narrative. The word “I” doesn’t appear on the page, leaving writers to struggle with the awkward “one,” even when addressing issues within their own families.
Personal experience
I remember dull afternoons in Saigon when I had to recite poetry classics in front of a wizened literature teacher. If I always cried at poetry recital, it was for good reason.
Each time I forgot a word, the teacher’s ruler would land with a “thwap” on my open palm. That class typified literature education in Vietnam, but I got my revenge: I became an American writer.
It is a generalization, but Asia is by and large a continent where the ego is suppressed.
When you take into account that two out of three Asians in America were born overseas, it’s no wonder that even the most diligent Asian students feel more comfortable in science classes than in English literature, where raising your hand to offer opinions is not only encouraged but counts toward the final grade.
No doubt Asia has become an economic powerhouse in the 21st century. But it takes a lot of thinking and imagining and re-inventing to create a new civilization with a sphere of influence beyond its borders.
Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and author of “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora.”
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