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Before I got into software development I worked for a South Korean company that helped high-level students get into American and Canadian universities. The sin
by beeftime 10y ago
Before I got into software development I worked for a South Korean company that helped high-level students get into American and Canadian universities.
The single biggest source of stress for myself and the other westerners working there is that the administration's (and the parents'!) only goal was to get these kids into a school, and absolutely no thought was given to acclimating them to a different culture or teaching them the skills they would need to thrive in a very different educational system and social climate.
We (the foreign teachers) would try to sneak cultural lessons in and hold extra classes about how to join campus organizations and social clubs, and we'd always get in trouble with the management because "it wasn't important".
There's a very real sense in East Asia that once you get into an American university that you'll become successful, but some of the brightest kids are coming back to their home countries with a 2.7GPA, a memory of crushing loneliness, and many tens of thousands of dollars wasted. It's a solvable problem that no one is really interested in even examining.
- mtw 10y agoI'd say many expat europeans or americans in Asia (Shangai, south korea) don't make any effort in making close native friends. Many of them prefer to hang out with people from their own country, or other western people. Only a few think about "acclimating to a different culture or learn new skills they would need to thrive in a very different educational system and social climate".
- beeftime 10y agoThat's very true, but you're talking about a totally different thing here. There's a big difference between an (ostensibly) self-reliant adult looking for work/adventure/cheap booze and a kid fresh out of high school tossed into a totally different world and expected to "become successful" with little to no guidance.
- hocuspocus 10y agoI lived 5 years in South Korea, and well: * It was incredibly easy to meet other foreigners, and not necessarily westerners, far from that actually. I now have genuine friends on every continent. * Since you're on the same boat, you can relate. Given how unique the work and life environment can be, it's nice to be able to talk with people who'll understand you. * Making native friends isn't easy, even when you're making real efforts. I don't have an unlimited amount of energy I can put into socializing, so after a short while I stopped trying too hard. Even the Korean friends I made before my move weren't too interested in hanging out once I lived there.
- senthil_rajasek 10y agoComparing East Asian cultures to U.S culture is not a proper comparison. Remember the U.S is a nation of immigrants.
- cushychicken 10y agoI think his comparison is perfectly valid. It's not one of East Asian vs US culture; it's one of coming from one culture to living in a very different one. He's discussing the same situation mentioned in the article, but in reverse.
- senthil_rajasek 10y agoThe reverse ( non East Asian moving to an East Asian country) is not the same. East Asian countries were never a nation of immigrants.
- slantyyz 10y agoAmerica is a nation of immigrants, but isn't the USA supposed to be a "melting pot"? Contrast that to Canada, where the term we used was "mosaic" (when I was growing up in the 70s & 80s).
- jonathankoren 10y ago"Salad bowl" was a trendy metaphor in the 90s for the United States, which is much more in line with "mosaic." Personally I find mosaic to be a more term. The problem with "melting pot" was that in melting everything becomes indistinct and bland, where as in a salad bowl, the pieces remain distinct but work together as a whole to make enhance the entire salad.
- slantyyz 10y agoBut is assimilation (i.e., the melting pot) as it relates language, culture and values still expected of immigrants in the US to the same degree as it used to be?
- hkmurakami 10y agoThe term expat is almost synonymous with "not integrating with native residents" to me. Otherwise imo they would be immigrants!
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoAs an American in Beijing, I didn't know many other Americans. True, I hanged out with foreigners (westerners, non-Chinese Asians, and Taiwanese who were basically considered foreigners), but I also hanged out with Chinese, heck, my whole team at work was Chinese with only me as the foreigner. When I was studying Chinese in PKU, it was similar. Part of the problem was that the university wasn't really setup to mix foreigners with Chinese students: we were studying at PKU, but using very different facilities. Of course, if you made an effort, you made friends, some of which I have today (incidentally, almost all of them went abroad to the USA as PKU undergrads tend to do).
- humannature 10y agoThat's cause most of them have an Asian fetish. They don't really care about the culture or language, just the women. Don't believe me? Go to any bar in Asia and tell me what you see.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Spooky23 10y agoIt's more than that -- parents explicitly don't want their children to absorb American culture.
- VLM 10y agoInterestingly as a parent I think that's fairly common, certainly more than majority, both foreign and domestic.
- jonathankoren 10y agoNot absorb American culture seems like a gross mischaracterization. It's not so much not absorbing (which is a losing battle unless you cloister yourself off), as much as not forgetting or not passing on parts of your own culture.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sumedh 10y ago> parents explicitly don't want their children to absorb American culture As my Indian parents say, these white people just drink alcohol and have sex all day.
- jeron 10y agothat's funny, my dad says the same thing and he went to an American university