Why Asian Parents are obsessed with Academics?

I was having lunch over the weekend with some friends of mine who have children who are from 3 to 18 years old.

And one of them was discussing how worried she was about her daughter getting into a good secondary (high) school through a special 6 year programme that will lead her straight to Junior college. She was worried that her daughter might not have done enough through extra curriculum activities, or was not talented enough to enter those kinds of schools. She felt that she had brought up her daughter well, of good character and attitude but there was a nagging doubt in her mind that her daughter was just not good enough.

Then this morning, I woke up to notice a new video to a youtube channel I subscribe to. Here is the clip

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FityXzwPBSI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I sat in my office today and wondered... why are parents so obsessed about their children having to get into schools of 'Special' stature and why the pressure for them to conform to the World's view of intelligence or success?

Sure we could say that we want what is best for our children. Agreed. No parent should or would want the worst for their child. But I was reminded of this article that I saved a while back that was featured on Yahoo! News. I hope this will help all those teachers and parents out there understand, even if you are unaware, why we are so tough on our children. And maybe... just maybe we can learn to love them more by knowing our flaws.

The original article can be found here:

Originally posted at LeeAhLong.com