The Real Indian IQ

G.Subramaniam · (This post was last modified: 06-29-2008, 05:49 PM by G.Subramaniam.)

Husky wrote
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3. The main point I wanted to make:
The comment on Indian Girijan and Harijan population is not correct. They could easily learn, but the methods employed in western education do not always help all individuals learn. (That may account for the estimate of 5% you mentioned that do well in western-type school system, whereas the others may find the same system harder to work with.)
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The western type school system is the modern world
In this, I have not seen 2nd or even 3rd generation blacks, mexicans, indonesians, malays, thais, all middle eastern muslim states and SC/ST do well

I have on the other hand, seen rural artisan and peasant castes, vietnamese, chinese and koreans and japanese do well

I have always stood for honesty in understanding our strengths and weaknesses

Even 6th gen SC/ST , only 5% will be able to perform well vs maybe 35% for the
peasant castes

Look at the quota creamy layer SC/ST and how they perform in med and engineering

G.Subramaniam · 06-29-2008, 05:47 PM

swaminomics.org

Bharat Drowning or Bharat Rising?

By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar

India has a world-class elite sitting on top of hundreds of millions with low skills and literacy. This accounts for the title of a new study on India's educational tragedy â 'India Shining and Bharat Drowning' â by Jishnu Das of the World Bank and Tristan Zajonc of Harvard University.

What does this imply for India's future? Das and Zajonc say that if Indian firms adopt a Ford Model-T approach â where a few skilled managers use many unskilled workers â then India Shining (the upper crust) can act as a rising tide that lifts all boats. Bharat Drowning will become Bharat Rising. But, if Indian firms progressively become skill-intensive, India may end up with islands of privilege in an ocean of deprivation.

The researchers have not characterised our educational tragedy fully. The skilled upper-crust has been educated mainly in private schools, and the dregs in moribund government schools. The Indian Institutes of Technology and Management represent successes in public education, but the students who get in are mainly from private schools. So, a better title for the study might have been "Private Schools Shining and Government Schools Drowning".

Das and Zajonc use a new methodology to compare maths tests across countries. They compare maths test results of Grade 9 students in 2003 in two states, Orissa and Rajasthan, with students in 49 countries. These two states perform worse than 43 of these countries. Few readers will be surprised.

But while most students in Orissa and Rajasthan fare poorly, the upper crust fares very well. The top 5% of children scored 577 in Orissa and 544 in Rajasthan, well above the US average of 504. Assuming that these two states are representative of all India â an underestimate, surely â then for every 10 top performers in the US, India has 4. However, for every 10 low performers in the US, India has 200.

The top performance in 2003 came from Singapore (605 marks), with Korea second at 589 marks. The US ranked only 18th (504 marks). The performance of middle-income countries â including oil-rich ones â was surprisingly bad. Indeed, Orissa (404) and Rajasthan (382) fared quite well compared with much richer places like Egypt (406), Bahrain (401), Chile (387), Morocco (387), and the Philippines (378). Far below came Saudi Arabia (332) and South Africa (264), both of which have substantial per capita incomes.

India is the second poorest country on the list, and Orissa and Rajasthan are among the poorer Indian states. So, the data may give the impression that India is doing well for its income level. This is probably a mistaken impression. The study considers only kids at school. And in India only 53% of kids are enrolled in secondary school, against 90% in South Africa. If we consider all children rather than those at school, Orissa and Rajasthan may come even lower down in the list.

Let us return to the big issue Das and Zajonc pose. Will India follow the Model-T path of development that uses lots of low-skilled labour, and hence uplifts the poor? Or will it follow the high-tech path, based overwhelmingly on skills, leaving out the unskilled poor?

Pessimists have a case. Technological change means that fewer and fewer people are required for production. Tata Motors and Bajaj Auto have doubled their production while halving their workforces. Infotech companies export $40 billion but employ only two million people, a tiny fraction of India's workforce of 450 million. This accounts for fears of Bharat Drowning.

However, i am an optimist. Despite our educational catastrophe, we have averaged almost 9% growth for five years. Bad education is a constraint, but not a binding one. A slowdown is coming, yet India should average 7% over the next 25 years. With good education we would do better, but 7% is still miracle growth.

Because of its huge population, India's top 5% equals 55 million people, a large pool of skills. Despite this skill shortages have arisen, and so every part of the private sector is investing in training. This looks capable of improving most skills, sustaining rapid growth for two decades and giving time for education to catch up.

Consider the infotech industry. For every high-skilled software engineer or BPO worker, four other workers provide support services in transport, catering construction and maintenance. Most of these are decent jobs. So, a Model-T approach is not essential. An infotech workforce of 50 million can create ancillary jobs for 200 million.

Infotech is only a small part of the India Shining story. Our 9% growth has been driven much more by trade, transport, restaurants, construction, social services, finance and communications. High skills will help in these sectors, but the majority of jobs will need only modest skills.

Vested interests make government schools difficult to reform. But as incomes rise and people progressively send their kids to private schools, skills will improve. Four states have proposed school vouchers, and perhaps a new trend has begun. Governments may soon fund millions of poor people to send their children to better private schools. Possibly Das and Zajonc will one day write another paper titled "Government Schools Drowning and Bharat Rising".

G.Subramaniam · 06-30-2008, 12:45 AM

Some reality checks for second and third generation IQ

When the sikh and gujurati immigrants entered the UK, they initially tested as low iQ
But that was a temperory reduction due to socio-economic factors

In 2 generations these same groups have improved their lot to above the whites and their IQs are in the white range and academic performance above white

It is time to take a reality check and see how many of the creamy layer
of the OBC and Dalit castes have managed to raise themselves and does the creamy layer still need quota

If the creamy layer still needs quota, after 2-3 generations, it points to a genetic IQ deficit

The tamil nadu board exams are actually misleading
when they claim closing of the IQ gap
Here is why, the top 75% of the brahmins have left
and only the bottom 25% remain

next the tamil nadu board exam tests for memorisation rather than IQ , like the IIT exams
So the question then should be how do the non-brahmin castes in tamil nadu fare in the IIT entrance exams

And if they really believed that the IQ gap has closed, they would remove the quotas, but they dont

ramana · 06-30-2008, 10:38 PM

So GS to close the IQ gap among the SC/ST and the rest in India the teaching methods have to change? Is that a good takeaway?

G.Subramaniam · 07-01-2008, 05:53 AM

QUOTE(ramana @ Jun 30 2008, 10:38 PM)So GS to close the IQ gap among the SC/ST and the rest in India the teaching methods have to change? Is that a good takeaway?
[right][snapback]83584[/snapback][/right]


Let me put it in 2 different ways

Among the SC/STs, about 20% are able to take advantage of reservations and move
to the peasant level

example in Andhra we have the Mala SC who are relatively doing well

and in Rajasthan we have the Meena tribals doing very well

Among the peasants castes, about 20% are able to reach academically equal
to merchants. Examples being Nadar, Ezhava, etc

We have the rural punjabi jat sikh farm workers able to reach white middle class levels in UK

What I am saying is that since we have had about 60 years of Affirmative action
and those castes who were historically held back solely due to caste ranking
are able to move up rapidly, because of innate relatively higher IQ

The other remaining 80% SC/ST/Peasants show no signs of any movement and even if reservations
were continued for 100 years I would see minimal difference

For example in the USA, blacks earning $100k do at the level of whites earning $15k
These $100k blacks got their jobs solely due to Affirmative action and lack IQ

The remaining castes will not benefit much from Affirmative action
and if they can pass high school, or even primary school, thats all we can expect
It is cruel to put in someone 2 SD below the rest of the class

For helping these remaining castes, very drastic methods need to be undertaken
and it is unlikely that they will accept these methods of teaching
due to stigma etc

In 1970, there was a study of black kids using headstart
and various methods like montessori were tried and nothing worked except 2
behavior training methods

These behavior training methods are used in animal training
using rewards etc

one particular method is called ABA ( Applied Behavior Analysis )
and in 1989, there was a study by Dr.Lovaas in UCLA, where he cured 45% of
autistic kids
In his study the IQ went up by an average of 30IQ
In the real world, it is very common to raise IQ of Autistics by 15IQ fairly easily
using this

The other behavioral method is called Direct Instruction

ABA works slightly better for autistics and DI works better for normal
socio-economically backward kids

In the US, the black-white IQ gap is 15IQ
and using DI, the gap disappears in 3 years

However, DI is not very politically correct
It demands rote learning, It takes hard work
No fuzzy stuff
For the first 6 years, only language syntax, reading and math
and writing and spelling are taught
No other subjects until 6th grade when a very solid base is achieved

Normal kids can also use this method and shave off 2 - 3 years before 12th grade
Only a few serious people are aware of this

~~Pandyan~~ · 07-01-2008, 06:54 AM

QUOTE(ramana @ Jun 30 2008, 12:08 PM)So GS to close the IQ gap among the SC/ST and the rest in India the teaching methods have to change? Is that a good takeaway?
[right][snapback]83584[/snapback][/right]

As much as 80% of IQ is inherited. Can't "close" any gap through different teaching. At most, 5 points can be gained through training. Gaps are narrowed through better standard living which contributes to better diet etc.

G.Subramaniam · 07-01-2008, 07:11 AM

QUOTE(Pandyan @ Jul 1 2008, 06:54 AM)<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ramana @ Jun 30 2008, 12:08 PM)So GS to close the IQ gap among the SC/ST and the rest in India the teaching methods have to change? Is that a good takeaway?
[right][snapback]83584[/snapback][/right]

As much as 80% of IQ is inherited. Can't "close" any gap through different teaching. At most, 5 points can be gained through training. Gaps are narrowed through better standard living which contributes to better diet etc.
[right][snapback]83611[/snapback][/right]
</div>

The gap cannot be closed with normal teaching
but with special methods developed for autistics ( ABA ) and blacks (DI)
in the US, 15IQ point improvement is easily achieved

Still the first step is getting enough nutrition

G.Subramaniam · 07-01-2008, 07:14 AM

What the public needs to understand is , SC/ST etc have a right to make a decent living, but this living is not in brain surgery or nuclear missiles

They can get the ancillary jobs in high tech, but it is unrealistic to expect them to actually perform at the international level

G.Subramaniam · 07-02-2008, 07:25 AM

An interesting post by a Japanese American, on a white racist website
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I suppose these comments would prove the relatively low intelligence of people who browse this website. Iâve seen comments like âheâs actually good for a person from a low IQ placeâ.

Apparently these people havenât taken a look at the census and found that Indian Americans have the highest education and highest income out of all ethnic groups in America, alongside the Jews. Apparently they havenât taken a look at U.K. test results, where immigration is more relaxed than the U.K., yet still showing that Indians GSCE scores surpass whites and are second only to the Chinese.

Of course, there are a few reasons for this. The less intelligent probably cannot tell people of similar skin color apart, thus they think that the Chinese, who show high socioeconomic success abroad, are the same as the Vietnamese, who show low socioeconomic success abroad. Similarly, they would look at the darker Indians and say âHey, theyâre dark, they must be like black peopleâ despite the fact that Indians in the U.S. and U.K. are among the most successful brackets. And also despite the fact that while Africa has remained stagnant, India is growing rather well. Naturally, to those of lesser intelligence, the dark computer programmer in Silicon Valley does not seem different from the dark farmer boy in Africa or Australia.

Thereâs obviously the final reason, which is that whites in America may be willing to admit their inferiority in that country to the model minority - light skinned Asians like myself, but they have been nurtured on skin-colored based racism that they are unwilling to accept that the darker Indian immigrants in that country are so far ahead of them. Heck, a lot of them are also still hesitant to acknowledge the superior success of Jewish immigrants. Refusal to accept facts is a sign of lower intelligence.

-Takahata Joe

Husky · (This post was last modified: 07-02-2008, 06:30 PM by Husky.)

QUOTE(ramana @ Jun 30 2008, 10:38 PM)So GS to close the IQ gap among the SC/ST and the rest in India the teaching methods have to change? Is that a good takeaway?[right][snapback]83584[/snapback][/right]To set the record straight, #185 was not what I meant in the remotest.

With teaching methods I didn't mean the sort of high-handed western supplementary 'teaching' methods that try to devalue you even as they patronisingly claim they want to 'educate' you.

I was talking about something entirely different: Hindu teaching styles. For instance, the way entirely new concepts are explained (not just terms, but also the sort of concepts in, say, Samskritam that have no corresponding idea in other languages) using analogies that kids were familiar with from their own everyday life or surroundings. Even when the analogies were distant, it provides a point of origin to relate to the new idea and thus reduces cognitive overload. My dad when he tried to teach me things would employ some of my Grandfather's ways. I learnt better because of it. And if I can learn things, that means any Hindu/Dharmic can.
Even when you read Adi Shankaracharya's shlokas: the way he explains Hindu concepts about Moksha, he uses analogies. Much of Hindu literature explaining the soul and defining complex ideas are done in very novel ways that make people like me understand things better. Even the "not that/not limited to" negations for defining what the Gods are/what they are beyond, or the questioning "who was there before, what existed if anything" in the Vedas are all ways to explain ideas starting from the beginning where I am and allowing me to approach where their thoughts have reached.

Christobritish education would explain concepts in their useless dry way (same employed even today!): term = definition. And that's supposedly teaching <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /> I'm surprised more people don't fail thoroughly.

Another trivial example is that unlike in Dickensian/christoterrorist 'education' where they knock your hand away when they see you counting, my Granddad never in the least discouraged this. My dad said it was because he knew that some children needed a way to visualise the numbers external to their mind, at least initially. (Certainly, not everyone sees numbers magically floating about in their heads.) Often he found them not really counting at all anymore but just holding up the fingers for support.
In christoterrorist schools in India they beat you up for that - the nuns beat you up for anything really. In NL, using one's hands to aid in arithmentic (I saw lots of kids doing that in primary school) was considered a sign of regression and to be curtailed, but the kids did gradually worse in maths when they were forcibly stopped.

ADDED:
On the topic of Autism. Even a US talk-show episode I caught - it was Oprah I think - they interviewed an Indian woman whose autistic son had become a success (he wrote poetry) only because the mother had developed a way to get him to do each small thing. She kept prodding him to do things: take the pen, take the pen, write, write. There are different levels of autism to be sure, but never underestimate Indian mums. Their kids are their lives. This mum was invited to talk on several conferences on autism because of the successful way she was able to communicate with her son and get him to communicate back. And she's not any grand researcher who developed some sterile clinical method for autistic kids. She's a mum who helped her child to become what they both knew he could be.

Hindu teachers are also like parents. They actually care. They don't think their students are a statistic and they don't give up on them because of a statistic.

About the following that I wrote in an earlier post:
QUOTEIt is why Hindu teachers like my Grandfather was able to make all his students succeed. The effort of the student is at least equally important, but all his students had the willingness, motivation and effort. Not everyone immediately scored the top marks when they went to college even though they all passed; but because christobritish bigotry destroyed a lot of Hindu schools, many of the students were at that stage 1st generation students again when it came to some subjects. Subsequent generations, having gained some background in these same topics, therefore did do better. And this trend can only continue to improve in the future.Many students across the board initially had trouble when they went to official school. School didn't really 'teach' them. It merely told them what it expected them to know/have learnt by the end of each time frame = christoBritish "education" that was prevalent in Dickensian times too. The Hindu students (along with my Grandfather teaching them) succeeded in spite of christowestern education, never because of it.

My uncle had to have special tutoring by my Grandfather in mathematics (along with several other children), since the teachers at 'school' couldn't get him to 'study' maths. But my dad and his other siblings have always said the same uncle is actually a mathematical genius: he eats sleeps and drinks maths. My dad said that even as a boy his brother was always quick solving the sort of equations the average person would take too long over to do by hand.
That same uncle has been a maths tutor in his free time since a young age, he still is. He has an incredible success rate teaching Hindu kids who find maths difficult to incomprehensible (and more especially, the way it is 'taught' in christowestern centres of 'education' in India). He works with village children, because he still lives in a village (though it has grown near town-size now).

Or an even more basic example: I refused to learn a word of English when I was put into LKG in India. It was a convent school. The nuns beat us all when we spoke in Tamizh (yeah, brave christoterrorists beat intimidating heathen kindergarten children speaking in Hindu Bharatiya language; they beat one kid senseless once - they panicked only after they had gone that far, and the panicking was only about their own skin).
They would only speak to us in the English language. I developed a great hatred for it because of them. My parents couldn't get me to learn anything to do with it. I wouldn't do any homework/practise writing or saying "ABC" and would throw a tantrum each day in order to avoid going to school. My mum got so sick of it that she would often let me just stay at home rather than go through my daily hysterics. She wondered why I was one way, while my sister (who had been able to get into an over-full Hindu school) was so diligent. (By that time, we were living a very long trainride away from my paternal Grandparents who could have fixed it all.)
Fortunately we moved. I got a totally new school, a new language medium. No Tamizh children to talk to though, forced to learn alien language just to make close friends. It was only after I started going to a normal school that I would learn the Roman alphabet without breaking the chalk or throwing the pencil. My parents never had it so good <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />
I did learn English eventually, but only much later. And none of it had anything whatsoever to do with the terrorist penguins of convent torture facility, I mean "school".

So I suspect that there may be a dormant/subconscious psychological factor why some African-American students may be more like me in this respect. I think internally they just hate the fraud, the way I did - it is unsympathetic, condescending, all while pretending to care. It likes to devise elaborate 'teaching methods' peppered with little traps just in order to catch heathen (even when converted) populations and then complain "look, they couldn't even do that right". The system is just waiting for the kids to fail. They have their "average IQ" pegged to a stereotype in the mass-conscious, their future paved out for them: angry rap star or Condoleeza Traitor Rice. The subject population is not even allowed to think outside the square they live in. This creates a mental barrier to learning in them which may hamper anyone.

When Einstein was a kid studying in Germany, his christoterrorist maths teacher said he would never do well in maths and was always putting him down. (Christonazi adult versus bright Jewish kid.) But Einstein came to excel in his field of maths: Physics. So it was merely lousy bigoted teacher and christo 'teaching' methods that wouldn't work with him. What can you expect from christo nazi schooling where addition and multiplication was in terms of the Japhetic/oryan christian Germans and subtraction was always taught using Jewish people: "2 christian germans x 2 christian japhetic germans is 4 germans, while 4 Jews take away 4 Jews leaves 0 Jews." <= Christian terrorist math. Very famous in history classes.

Do I believe all these number games cooked up by pro-eugenics Lynn and guesstimates based off of that? Or even what it's measuring (especially since the history of the invention of IQ bears out how it was created specifically to classify people in a racist hierarchical order).
Hmmm. Let's see, this question is just too much for my poor low darkie IQ. Put it another way:
- Christogermans were constantly trying to show Jewish people were not that intelligent. (Though the christos mystifyingly had to argue that the Jews were on the other hand intelligent enough to be blamed for being the cause of subversions like communism, cinema morals, and the rest.) Christonazi germany also tried to prove the Slavic people were incompetent and unintelligent. Really, the Russians/E Europeans not as clever as W Europe? Really?
- IQ in US is mainly about trying to show African Americans and other 'ethnic' minorities as being unintelligent. It's just a PC version of the lauded KKK movie "Birth of a Nation". The unspoken continuation of the typically christo/WASPy "1 drop rule"; just another way to attack them.
- As I see here, Indians are now another favourite target: "India has a low IQ" and lots of - again, demonstrably - cooked up figures to prove we're too incompetent to do anything, so that it can once again be said the "Japethic/oryan invisibles must have done it all".

Underestimation and devaluing of other people has gone all this time, except Indians only think the underestimation of their own kind is the "grand fraud" and are totally blind when the same fraud is/was perpetrated on others. I'm not saying everyone is equally capable of everything. What I'm saying is, they've been lying - often, and about different peoples - and they've been caught lying. And they have the motive too (racism) which is very transparent - from IQ test development to the Lynns of today conducting their tests and getting cited in books like the Bell Curve.

Is this really a game we have to play along with? And must we really believe the numbers about other people when we know those about ourselves don't even hold? Can anyone give me reasons why I must trust these biased people's numbers on other populations when we can see the bias they excercise in our own case? (When you know someone is lying about you to others, would you believe similar things they say about other people? I generally tend to assume that a liar is a liar.)
When they take small and unrepresentative samples of Dharmics of the subcontinent, and then include Turkish people's data amongst ours, and then change the figures for Indians when they do have data but it's not to their liking (all these examples on the racists' "statistical methods" were posted earlier in this thread), why must I believe a single thing they say. It's pseudo-stats. Pseudo-maths. Pseudo-science. And I never did like pseudo-science.

G.Subramaniam · 07-02-2008, 06:08 PM

Husky wrote
---
With teaching methods I didn't mean the sort of high-handed western supplementary 'teaching' methods that try to devalue you even as they patronisingly claim they want to 'educate' you.

I was talking about something entirely different: Hindu teaching styles.

---

If you ignore labels, the only scientically proven, repeatedly replicated
proven effective, especially for low IQ populations is behavior management methods such as Direct Instruction

This involves a lot of rote learning - back to basics - no fuzzy stuff

**acharya** · 07-02-2008, 10:41 PM

Is India Running Out Of Smart People?
Posted by John Carney, Oct 20, 2006, 4:24pm

Just in time for Hindu Christmas, The New York Times today runs an article on Indiaâs dearth of smart workers. That might strike a lot of finance people in New York as surprisingâWall Street seems pretty well-populated by folks from the subcontinent. But just because there are a lot of smart, skilled people in Indiaâpeople who want to work in finance, become engineers, programmers, etcâthat doesnât mean there is an endless supply.

Our Indian friends tell us that the problem is rooted in the countryâs wildly divergent population groups. Some groups just make better workers for the information ageâeither because they have better access to higher education, are more familiar with the culture of international capitalism, are less prone to disease and other afflictions that can retard intellectual progress or just have better native intelligence. Weâve never been to India and canât quite evaluate this kind of claim.

Steve Sailer says the mainstream media isnât helping because it is somewhat allergic to questions about intelligence, fearing that someone, somewhere might draw racist conclusions from the facts.

So we turn to DealBreaker readers. Whatâs up with India? Has India reached the bottom of its talented talent pool or is this just a temporary problem? (Bonus question if you can explain why the New York Times is running this as Diwali kicks off.)

Comments

Posted by blah, Oct 20, 2006 5:30PM

Just do a normal distribution on a population of 1.2 (give or take a few hundred million) billion people and yes you will have a lot of smart people.

Until recently, Indian economics was socialism (which as you might know doesn't provide a good infrastructure for most anything).

There are still many backwards places over there.

As for the NYTimes, ahm, maybe someone there thinks they have troops in Iraq? Or maybe they don't like capitalists?

Posted by Beach Bum, Oct 20, 2006 5:58PM

Maybe India is running out of so-called "smart workers" because they've all immigrated to the US!

"Smart worker" = "Smart-Ass worker"

I swear, the Indian guys working in IT and finance in the US (and UK) are some of the most fucking arrogant, cocky SOBs I've ever come across. Talk about "Cocky Fucks"!

And Indians are no more intelligent than Westerners--they're just more willing to accept lower wages. Still, they all act as if they're Brahmin. WTF?

In the Great China Vs. India debate, I'm on the side of China.

Sure, India may be a "democracy" (like who really gives a sh1t) and the Indian middle class may be on the rise (hurrah! more global waming!), but the country is wallowing in poverty, violence, arrogance, delusions, and multicultural-induced ethnic violence.

Posted by indian bum, Oct 20, 2006 7:54PM

why are you linking to the racist scum Steve Sailor. He uses the IQ Zoroastrian Parsees of Bombay as an example. For those who don't know Zoroastrian Parsees are driven out from Iran by the Islamists and have nothing in common with the rest of the Indians either culturally or genetically.

Posted by comments, Oct 20, 2006 10:34PM

Assume an IQ of 130 is required to work on Wall Street. How many workers does India have which match that?
CIA Factbook: India Population is 1,095,351,995. Assume India IQ is 81, then only 595990 Indians are smart enough to work on Wall Street.
China Population is 1,313,973,713. Assume China IQ at 100, then 29,893,075 Chinese are smart enough to work on Wall Street.
There are several advantages India has over China which also need to be considered. First, in terms of personality, Indians are much better than Chinese because they are extremely extroverted. Second, they tend to be better speaking English than the Chinese. Third, the population structure of India is younger than the population structure of China. Thus many of the smart Chinese are too old to want to emigrate.

John, it's nice that your boss is so down with the GNXP crowd and can handle biodiversity issues.

Posted by Does it Matter, Oct 21, 2006 1:25AM

Ok..I will bite. I'm a regular DealBreaker reader and this is my first comment.

I am an Indian, working in the financial industry in San Francisco. I came to this country five years back with $100 in my pocket. I'm now worth about half a million dollars. I'm a brahmin, the so-called priestly class in India. I studied in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), arguably the most difficult engineering institution to get admission to (tougher than getting into MIT).

ok. The reason I mention the above is because:

1) Talent or success is a function of individual initiative, hard work and availability of opportunity

2) At the age of 18, I worked in a coal mine and was destined to earn $10 a day mining coal. By sheer stint of hard work, I got admission to the IITs, which enabled me to learn. I touched my first computer at age 19. I'm now 28.

Stop categorising people on the basis of nationality, race, and ethnic background. When the economic conditions and policy is in the right direction, people will prosper. Individual entrepreneurship and initiative knows no boundaries.

Best.

Posted by rama, Oct 21, 2006 4:29PM

beach bum,
better you and hang yourself. I can simply guess that you are a moron on account of the lanuage you used. You like it or not Indians are the best brains , not the Chinese.
Indian should not care about such an idit like yu. Indian are really smart guys.

Posted by AR, Oct 22, 2006 3:26AM

The basic point of the article is that the demand for IT workers in India has outstripped the supply. If India has been turning out X # of workers annually, but the # of needed workers is growing significantly larger, then clearly a shortage will occur. Yes, pretty damn obvious.

Any high school econ student knows that in the short run supply is fixed. India definitely has problems as far as who is able to access its educational system, but with continued foreign investment in the country, those problems will hopefully be resolved, at least to the point where it will be able to catch up to the growing demand for IT workers.

Posted by blue shlu, Oct 23, 2006 1:23AM

India is among the fastest growing economies today...and to sustain the growth the manpower requirement is huge. Obviously, even for a country with a billion people its difficult to produce skilled people at that rate.

I am an indian, and working on wall street as a techie. I have worked in India and here...and am surprised by some of the comments here. Indians are the last person you expect to be arrogant snobs, they work hard though not necessarily at lower wages (another misconception), they have an IQ that is pretty high (dont want to use superlatives for matters of modesty).
On the other hand..i see the dumbest things done by non indians ( and non chinese. take a guess ! )

Some people would use any chance to come up with racist slurs which is unfortunate - the world is becoming smaller by the day and it is very much a global economy. If anybody wants to harbor ideas of their superiority well they are free to live in their ignorance, but dont have any doubts on who comes out as the loser.

I saw the issue of ethnic conflict also being raised. Might i add here that india is one country which is probably the most tolerant to diversity. So many religions and so many languages all living happily. If you want to see conflict try speaking english in japan, or being a hindu in pakistan, or a sunni in Iran.

Sure India has its problems - but is on the way to getting rid of them. For a democratic country that diverse, it takes time to change things.

Posted by VS, Oct 23, 2006 3:48AM

I can see that the guys at Dealbreaker know the truth but are afraid to speak it. They just hint at it and leave the dirty job for the posters to comment it.

Unfortunelly, none of you guys had the guts or knowledge to land a crushing blow to popular beliefs (which may I add, are synonimous with political corectness). Nor I will sacrifice myself here, as I am posting from the company's computer and we all know they trace and read everything you do on the net.

But all things aside, you know what I mean. I am from Romania, an emerging market that will soon catch up with the west, much, much sooner than India or China. And you know why? Of course some of you know, but most of you have no clue about it. Let's just say that we're not into the danger of running out of Brahmin, so our talent resources are only limited by our population number, which is as best as it can get.

So Dealbreaker guys, in the future I advise you to be more corageous and come forward with your beliefs.

Respect,

VS

Posted by Vic, Oct 23, 2006 9:58AM

VS

Please send me the recent report that Romania will catch up with the west soon. As for the fact that political correctness prevents people from saying what they want to say, how's this? Romania will remain a shithole for a very long time. You don't see the president or Goldman Sachs or American Enterprise Institute talking the vast potential of Romania whose biggest export seems to be underage girls for the streets of Paris and London.

India is running out becuase demand is far outstripping supply. The solution as the middle class emerges is to increase the number of world class institutions in India to produce more graduates. You seem to hint that somehow it has to with whites vs non-whites. Maybe from your Eastern European shithole, where black soccer players are routinely mocked, you can see things that way. In the real West, people are begining to transcend that and work with Indians, Chinese, and others to grow the global economy. We'll get to Romania, the paragon of capitalism, in about 200 years.

ramana · (This post was last modified: 07-03-2008, 12:49 AM by ramana.)

GS I hear you. So whats need is better education methods to bring up the IQ levels as there is a planned assault on outsourcing to India as the articles that you and Acharya have posted.

Husky, Please take it easy in labels. Its just distracting.
Thanks, ramana

Bharatvarsh · (This post was last modified: 07-03-2008, 01:44 AM by Bharatvarsh.)

Just a few points:

1) The point about IQ tests in US being created to show the "inferiority" of Blacks does not hold up for various reasons, the same tests also show Jews and North East Asians in US as scoring ahead of whites, now the last time I checked neither Jews nor Japanese/Chines/Koreans were acceped as either equals or superior by the KKK types.

2) To the claim that IQ is not a good measure of creativity, first you have to define what "creating" means, if it is about thinking outside the box then please note that is exactly what u need to come up with something like the theory of relativity that redefined Physics and started the era of Modern Physics as opposed to Classical (Newtonian) Physics. Modern Physics is largely built upon German+Jewish contributions, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Einstein, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Max Planck, David Bohm are a few names. Of these Physicists, 4 have partial to full Jewish ancestry, the Ashkenazi Jewish pop scores on avg between 107-115 on IQ tests and they seem to correlate well with Jewish "creativity". Oh and this achievement is not just confined to Physics but in almost every scientific or mathematical field u will find that Ashkenazis have made seminal contributions on which the modern world runs and from which u and I get our comforts.

3) If there was some other big conspiracy of Jewish "control" in all this then u still have loop holes in this conspiracy theory because both the high IQ and achievement are found only for Ashkenazis not among Sephardi (undoubtably white since they come from the Iberian peninsula) or other Jewish groups.

Its another matter if u want to debate about whether higher IQ is a cause or an effect of becoming developed but IQ tests are here to stay because unlike Phrenology they correlate rather well (0.40 I think) with things like school performance, income etc.

As for SC/ST and what their living is, I had always said that things need to be based on merit alone and once that happens it doesn't matter what group u come from, ur individual abilities decide what jobs u will get and thats the way it should be. At the most reservations are only needed for a limited amount of time for the most backward sections not for dominant groups like Yadavs, the current system is actually catering mainly to the dominant groups while the SC/STs r pushed out as these groups gobble it all up.

ramana · 07-03-2008, 01:46 AM

This is an example I was thinking of.
X-posted by GD in BRF

QUOTE("Singha")India Today....shades of Prahaar...

Task master
Amitabh Srivastava
June 26, 2008Â

SPIRIT OF INDIA â EDUCATION

With his sharply-creased police uniform, carefully-combed hair and flashy cell phone, he looks every bit an upwardly mobile IPS officer, and just as every bit out of place in a classroom full of clamouring children.

But there is no doubt that Abhyanand is perfectly at ease here, smiling while teaching Class V students the tenets of mental mathematics, which includes shortcuts to solve problems without the use of multiplication tables.

The Additional Director-General of Police, Bihar Military Police, pops a question and the children look momentarily flummoxed, but Abhyanand patiently nudges them into speaking up, simultaneously provoking them with multiple options.

The indulgent teacher finally smiles when a 10-year-old tells him the right answer and explains why it is so.

âTo me, a teacher is someone who never gives the right answer, but keeps asking the right questions. My job is to encourage my students to come up with the right answers,â says the IPS officer with deep conviction in his voice.

âAsking questions is important for a teacher because transferring concepts is not like copying files from one computer and pasting it on another,â says Abhyanand.

âWe need to activate the studentsâ brains and develop their lateral thinking abilities.â This is a doctrine that has seen his Super 30 programme click year after year.

The programmeâa free IIT entrance coaching course for 30 select youngsters from underprivileged families in rural Biharâsaw 18 out of 30 in the first batch make it to the premier technology institutions in 2003.

The success rate has been soaring with every passing year as 20 students qualified in 2004 and 22 got through the next year. In 2006, the number of students who cleared the entrance was 26, rising to 28 in 2007.

This year, the results for the programme were even better, as everyone from the Super 30 group made the grade in what is widely believed to be one of the toughest and most competitive entrance examinations in the world.

For Abhyanand, who tutors the IIT aspirants in physics, the tryst with teaching began rather by chance in 1989 when his son, Shwetank, then a Class I student, scored zero out of 10 in a class test on single-digit multiplication.

âMy wife held me responsible for this, and so I was forced to give teaching a try. I asked my son a question: what is the biggest number in the world? Shwetank was silent for a moment and then said, âThere canât be such a number, as I can always add one to it.â The boy had accidentally come across the concept of infinity, and I discovered the teacher within me,â he reminisces.


âSince then, I started investing time in their studies. Years later, when both my children qualified for the IITs and left for their respective institutes, I felt that I should never lose my âinner teacherââ someone who had grown as strong as the part of me that was a cop.â

The B.Sc physics topper from Patna Science College, however, needed to find an outlet. After a few meetings with mathematician and teacher Anand Kumar, who was familiar with the struggles of deprived students, the concept of âSuper 30â was born and the duo started the coaching programme in 2002.

The first batch of 30 deserving studentsâmany of whom were children of marginal farmers studying in panchayat schoolsâwas picked after extensively screening the shortlisted students.

They were brought to Patna and provided accommodation, food and gruelling coaching for seven monthsâall for free. Even today, the students of the programme donât have to pay for anything.

His friend Kumar takes care of the expenses. The success of the programme was evident with 18 of the 30 students clearing the entrance exam in 2003.

The Super 30 programme was an eye-opener for everyone who thought that only students who could afford expensive IIT coaching could clear the tough entrance examination.

According to Abhyanand, it is the difference in the method of teaching that is responsible for the Super 30âs success. Says Ritesh Ranjan, a student of the programme, âThe Super 30 teachers leave nothing to chance. They cover every topic and leave nothing untouched. They also help us develop confidence in our abilities.â

Last year, thanks to the schoolâs burgeoning reputation, around 10,000 students from all over the country turned up for the entrance test. :eek:

The coaching programme may have run out of a thatched hut with creaking benches under a hot tin roof, but a question from a teacher will often see all 30 hands shooting skywards.

The next batch of Super 30 classes is set to begin in September, but without Abhyanand. He has âmoved on and will now expand the concept of Super 30 and pick underprivileged Muslim students and train them for competitive examsâ.

The IPS officer has some time till then for the Class V studentsâand for the teacher in him to grow as well. And Abhyanand, once again turns to the young faces, transfixed in silence as he paces in front of a blackboard to explain how 10-digit multiplication problems can be solved without putting pen to paper.

Abhyanand and his students embody the age-old guru-shishya tradition, where the two are bound together by an unusual intellect and a common drive.

Helping dreams come true

With literacy rates lingering at 61 per cent, India still has a long way to go, but it is only when education is taken up as a cause by ordinary citizens, that the difference starts to show.

Like Abhyanand of Bihar, who is helping dreams come true for hundreds of underprivileged young students by coaching them for the prestigious IITs, or Pravin Mahajan, whose organisation is educating children of migrant workers across sugar factories in Maharashtra.

One passion binds them allâto spread education to Indiaâs farflung corners in the most basic way.

As Amartya Sen asserts, âWidening the coverage and effectiveness of basic education can have a powerfully preventive role in reducing human insecurity of nearly every kind.â

The government may build the most grandiose schemesâ whether it is the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, that was launched in 2001, or the National Literacy Mission, which began in 1988âbut until every literate Indian adopts one who is not, education will remain a luxury.

Can we find out more about these type of programs that help the latent creamy IQ to become known?

Bharatvarsh · 07-03-2008, 03:24 AM

Ramana I am not sure about such programs in India but here is one in Africa that may fit what u have in mind:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Insti...atical_Sciences

I don't know of any such programs in India.

IT is ok but to really identify the top performers in India u need to channel the qualified ones into research not a regular job, there are many people in MENSA but only a fraction will make any original contributions to Human knowledge.

I think for that to happen we need programs like the above where talented kids are identified and concentrate mainly on their area of expertise, then later go on into research. If we go by performance of Indians abroad in academics then I am certain that there are many kids who have talents that are going to waste solely because of lack of research facilities (such as MIT) and discouragement from family since it may not pay well.

When I say research, what I mean is things like this:
QUOTEWhen an arm or leg is amputated patients continue to vividly feel the presence of the missing limb a "phantom limb". In the early 1990âs Ramachandran began using this phenomenon as a probe for exploring neural plasticity in the adult human brain.

Ramachandran conjectured (and showed using MEG) that when the arm is amputated the vacated cortical territory corresponding to the missing arm is âinvadedâ by neurons which respond to stimulation of the face which normally would only go to the face region of the cortical homonculus. Signals from the face would then activate the original hand area of cortex and higher brain centers interpret this activation as arising from the phantom hand.[3] The results show that brain maps are highly malleable; not fixed at birth as was previously believed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran
Indians in US perform rather well in academics but u rarely see any original contributions because the parents tell them to either become a doctor or engineer.

ramana · (This post was last modified: 07-03-2008, 04:17 AM by ramana.)

In my home its lawyer!

Google links on Super 30

its run by Ramanujan Society of maths and run by two people.

G.Subramaniam · (This post was last modified: 07-03-2008, 06:33 AM by G.Subramaniam.)

Alright, let me put in my 2 cents
The traditional brahmin caste occupation was village school teacher, not priest
Even now, the schools that brahmins send their kids to are very academic focused, These schools are not famous like convents,
examples being DTEA in Delhi, where a lot of biharis, jats and punjabis who want a good education send their kids
The DAV school network all over India
The Vidya Mandir type schools in Chennai
The central school network is pretty good

The kids here get a 'brahmin type education' where they face a rigorous curriculum and motivated teachers, again mostly brahmins

Thanks to their focused teaching, they may be considered weak equivalents
of DI and ABA
Reading, writing, arithmetic and spelling are taught well
I would estimate that a SC/ST kid who goes to a brahmin type school will get a boost of at least 5IQ points, than going to a govt school

The RSS schools are very brahminical in the educational sense
( as a compliment )

What Abhayanand is doing is giving these kids an intense brahmin type school experience
But even then, keep in mind, out of the 1000 who apply , he only takes in 30, which is about 2 SD or 30IQ above the norm

Abhayanand takes in only TALENTED poor kids
and due to bell curve, the far right of the SC/ST population will have several

G.Subramaniam · 07-04-2008, 03:28 AM

This is about white flight from Cupertino to avoid Asian competition
I am sure there are plenty of equally academically talented Indians in cupertino but they dont get a mention

http://wsjclassroom.com/teen/teencenter/05...whiteflight.htm

The New White Flight

In Silicon Valley, two high schools with outstanding academic reputations are losing white students as Asian students move in. Why?

By SUEIN HWANG

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- By most measures, Monta Vista High here and Lynbrook High, in nearby San Jose, are among the nation's top public high schools. Both boast stellar test scores, an array of advanced-placement classes and a track record of sending graduates from the affluent suburbs of Silicon Valley to prestigious colleges.

But locally, they're also known for something else: white flight. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body. At Monta Vista, white students make up less than one-third of the population, down from 45% -- this in a town that's half white. Some white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether.

White students are far outnumbered by Asians at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, Calif.

Whites aren't quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they're leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.

The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.

Cathy Gatley, co-president of Monta Vista High School's parent-teacher association, recently dissuaded a family with a young child from moving to Cupertino because there are so few young white kids left in the public schools. "This may not sound good," she confides, "but their child may be the only Caucasian kid in the class." All of Ms. Gatley's four children have attended or are currently attending Monta Vista. One son, Andrew, 17 years old, took the high-school exit exam last summer and left the school to avoid the academic pressure. He is currently working in a pet-supply store. Ms. Gatley, who is white, says she probably wouldn't have moved to Cupertino if she had anticipated how much it would change.

In the 1960s, the term "white flight" emerged to describe the rapid exodus of whites from big cities into the suburbs, a process that often resulted in the economic degradation of the remaining community. Back then, the phenomenon was mostly believed to be sparked by the growth in the population of African-Americans, and to a lesser degree Hispanics, in some major cities.

But this modern incarnation is different. Across the country, Asian-Americans have by and large been successful and accepted into middle- and upper-class communities. Silicon Valley has kept Cupertino's economy stable, and the town is almost indistinguishable from many of the suburbs around it. The shrinking number of white students hasn't hurt the academic standards of Cupertino's schools -- in fact the opposite is true.

This time the effect is more subtle: Some Asians believe that the resulting lack of diversity creates an atmosphere that is too sheltering for their children, leaving then unprepared for life in a country that is only 4% Asian overall. Moreover, many Asians share some of their white counterpart's concerns. Both groups finger newer Asian immigrants for the schools' intense competitiveness.

Some whites fear that by avoiding schools with large Asian populations parents are short-changing their own children, giving them the idea that they can't compete with Asian kids. "My parents never let me think that because I'm Caucasian, I'm not going to succeed," says Jessie Hogin, a white Monta Vista graduate.

The white exodus clearly involves race-based presumptions, not all of which are positive. One example: Asian parents are too competitive. That sounds like racism to many of Cupertino's Asian residents, who resent the fact that their growing numbers and success are causing many white families to boycott the town altogether.

"It's a stereotype of Asian parents," says Pei-Pei Yow, a Hewlett-Packard Co. manager and Chinese-American community leader who sent two kids to Monta Vista. It's like other familiar biases, she says: "You can't say everybody from the South is a redneck."

Jane Doherty, a retirement-community administrator, chose to send her two boys elsewhere. When her family moved to Cupertino from Indiana over a decade ago, Ms. Doherty says her top priority was moving into a good public-school district. She paid no heed to a real-estate agent who told her of the town's burgeoning Asian population.

She says she began to reconsider after her elder son, Matthew, entered Kennedy, the middle school that feeds Monta Vista. As he played soccer, Ms. Doherty watched a line of cars across the street deposit Asian kids for after-school study. She also attended a Monta Vista parents' night and came away worrying about the school's focus on test scores and the big-name colleges its graduates attend.

"My sense is that at Monta Vista you're competing against the child beside you," she says. Ms. Doherty says she believes the issue stems more from recent immigrants than Asians as a whole. "Obviously, the concentration of Asian students is really high, and it does flavor the school," she says.

When Matthew, now a student at Notre Dame, finished middle school eight years ago, Ms. Doherty decided to send him to Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Jesuit school that she says has a culture that "values the whole child." It's also 55% white and 24% Asian. Her younger son, Kevin, followed suit.

Kevin Doherty, 17, says he's happy his mother made the switch. Many of his old friends at Kennedy aren't happy at Monta Vista, he says. "Kids at Bellarmine have a lot of pressure to do well, too, but they want to learn and do something they want to do."

While California has seen the most pronounced cases of suburban segregation, some of the developments in Cupertino are also starting to surface in other parts of the U.S. At Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., known flippantly to some locals as "Won Ton," roughly 35% of students are of Asian descent. People who don't know the school tend to make assumptions about its academics, says Principal Michael Doran. "Certain stereotypes come to mind -- 'those people are good at math,' " he says.

In Tenafly, N.J., a well-to-do bedroom community near New York, the local high school says it expects Asian students to make up about 36% of its total in the next five years, compared with 27% today. The district still attracts families of all backgrounds, but Asians are particularly intent that their kids work hard and excel, says Anat Eisenberg, a local Coldwell Banker real-estate agent. "Everybody is caught into this process of driving their kids." Lawrence Mayer, Tenafly High's vice principal, says he's never heard such concerns.

Perched on the western end of the Santa Clara valley, Cupertino was for many years a primarily rural area known for its many fruit orchards. The beginnings of the tech industry brought suburbanization, and Cupertino then became a very white, quintessentially middle-class town of mostly modest ranch homes, populated by engineers and their families. Apple Computer Inc. planted its headquarters there.

As the high-tech industry prospered, so did Cupertino. Today, the orchards are a memory, replaced by numerous shopping malls and subdivisions that are home to Silicon Valley's prosperous upper-middle class. While the architecture in Cupertino is largely the same as in neighboring communities, the town of about 50,000 people now boasts Indian restaurants, tutoring centers and Asian grocers. Parents say Cupertino's top schools have become more academically intense over the past 10 years.

Asian immigrants have surged into the town, granting it a reputation -- particularly among recent Chinese and South Asian immigrants -- as a Bay Area locale of choice. Cupertino is now 41% Asian, up from 24% in 1998.

Some students struggle in Cupertino's high schools who might not elsewhere. Monta Vista's Academic Performance Index, which compares the academic performance of California's schools, reached an all-time high of 924 out of 1,000 this year, making it one of the highest-scoring high schools in Northern California. Grades are so high that a 'B' average puts a student in the bottom third of a class.

"We have great students, which has a lot of upsides," says April Scott, Monta Vista's principal. "The downside is what the kids with a 3.0 GPA think of themselves."

Ms. Scott and her counterpart at Lynbrook know what's said about their schools being too competitive and dominated by Asians. "It's easy to buy into those kinds of comments because they're loaded and powerful," says Ms. Scott, who adds that they paint an inaccurate picture of Monta Vista. Ms. Scott says many athletic programs are thriving and points to the school's many extracurricular activities. She also points out that white students represented 20% of the school's 29 National Merit Semifinalists this year.

Judy Hogin, Jessie's mother and a Cupertino real-estate agent, believes the school was good for her daughter, who is now a freshman at the University of California at San Diego. "I know it's frustrating to some people who have moved away," says Ms. Hogin, who is white. Jessie, she says, "rose to the challenge."

On a recent autumn day at Lynbrook, crowds of students spilled out of classrooms for midmorning break. Against a sea of Asian faces, the few white students were easy to pick out. One boy sat on a wall, his lighter hair and skin making him stand out from dozens of others around him. In another corner, four white male students lounged at a picnic table.

At Cupertino's top schools, administrators, parents and students say white students end up in the stereotyped role often applied to other minority groups: the underachievers. In one 9th-grade algebra class, Lynbrook's lowest-level math class, the students are an eclectic mix of whites, Asians and other racial and ethnic groups.

"Take a good look," whispered Steve Rowley, superintendent of the Fremont Union High School District, which covers the city of Cupertino as well as portions of other neighboring cities. "This doesn't look like the other classes we're going to."

On the second floor, in advanced-placement chemistry, only a couple of the 32 students are white and the rest are Asian. Some white parents, and even some students, say they suspect teachers don't take white kids as seriously as Asians.

"Many of my Asian friends were convinced that if you were Asian, you had to confirm you were smart. If you were white, you had to prove it," says Arar Han, a Monta Vista graduate who recently co-edited "Asian American X," a book of coming-of-age essays by young Asian-Americans.

Ms. Gatley, the Monta Vista PTA president, is more blunt: "White kids are thought of as the dumb kids," she says.

Cupertino's administrators and faculty, the majority of whom are white, adamantly say there's no discrimination against whites. The administrators say students of all races get along well. In fact, there's little evidence of any overt racial tension between students or between their parents.

Mr. Rowley, the school superintendent, however, concedes that a perception exists that's sometimes called "the white-boy syndrome." He describes it as: "Kids who are white feel themselves a distinct minority against a majority culture."

Mr. Rowley, who is white, enrolled his only son, Eddie, at Lynbrook. When Eddie started freshman geometry, the boy was frustrated to learn that many of the Asian students in his class had already taken the course in summer school, Mr. Rowley recalls. That gave them a big leg up.

To many of Cupertino's Asians, some of the assumptions made by white parents -- that Asians are excessively competitive and single-minded -- play into stereotypes. Top schools in nearby, whiter Palo Alto, which also have very high test scores, also feature heavy course loads, long hours of homework and overly stressed students, says Denise Pope, director of Stressed Out Students, a Stanford University program that has worked with schools in both Palo Alto and Cupertino. But whites don't seem to be avoiding those institutions, or making the same negative generalizations, Asian families note, suggesting that it's not academic competition that makes white parents uncomfortable but academic competition with Asian-Americans.

Some of Cupertino's Asian residents say they don't blame white families for leaving. After all, many of the town's Asians are fretting about the same issues. While acknowledging that the term Asian embraces a wide diversity of countries, cultures and languages, they say there's some truth to the criticisms levied against new immigrant parents, particularly those from countries such as China and India, who often put a lot of academic pressure on their children.

Some parents and students say these various forces are creating an unhealthy cultural isolation in the schools. Monta Vista graduate Mark Seto says he wouldn't send his kids to his alma mater. "It was a sheltered little world that didn't bear a whole lot of resemblance to what the rest of the country is like," says Mr. Seto, a Chinese-American who recently graduated from Yale University. As a result, he says, "college wasn't an academic adjustment. It was a cultural adjustment."

Hung Wei, a Chinese-American living in Cupertino, has become an active campaigner in the community, encouraging Asian parents to be more aware of their children's emotional development. Ms. Wei, who is co-president of Monta Vista's PTA with Ms. Gatley, says her activism stems from the suicide of her daughter, Diana. Ms. Wei says life in Cupertino and at Monta Vista didn't prepare the young woman for life at New York University. Diana moved there in 2004 and jumped to her death from a Manhattan building two months later.

"We emphasize academics so much and protect our kids, I feel there's something lacking in our education," Ms. Wei says.

Cupertino schools are trying to address some of these issues. Monta Vista recently completed a series of seminars focused on such issues as helping parents communicate better with their kids, and Lynbrook last year revised its homework guidelines with the goal of eliminating excessive and unproductive assignments.

The moves haven't stemmed the flow of whites out of the schools. Four years ago, Lynn Rosener, a software consultant, transferred her elder son from Monta Vista to Homestead High, a Cupertino school with slightly lower test scores. At the new school, the white student body is declining at a slower rate than at Monta Vista and currently stands at 52% of the total. Friday-night football is a tradition, with big half-time shows and usually 1,000 people packing the stands. The school offers boys' volleyball, a sport at which Ms. Rosener's son was particularly talented. Monta Vista doesn't.

"It does help to have a lower Asian population," says Homestead PTA President Mary Anne Norling. "I don't think our parents are as uptight as if my kids went to Monta Vista."

Write to Suein Hwang at suein.hwang@wsj.com

Bharatvarsh · 07-04-2008, 06:20 AM

Last years Abel Prize winner Srinivasa Varadhan makes a similar point to what I have been saying regarding IT's and lack of original research:
QUOTE"Most of bright students are attracted towards IITs and technological institutions because that's the career path their parents want and that's the career path they think they want. And so a whole top level is lost already for pure math and basic sciences," he added.

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/sci-tech/03_20...rize-37047.html

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