Long meandering thoughts about culture, racism, classism, and parenting.

We took the kids to a math contest this morning and our location was in a facility that is very similar to after school clubs popular in Asian countries.

What is an "after school club" you ask? Very good question. As far as I can tell, it's more school. For around $500 ish (Cdn) a month, someone picks up your kid and brings them to this facility that has classrooms, teachers, and all sorts of materials where they do "enrichment" activities for your kid in subjects like math, English, French, and they even throw in art.

First of all, it did not escape me that we were one of two racial demographics present. Indians and Chinese. I counted the names on the doors (they assigned seats so every kid participating had their name on the door with a seat number). Basically 2/3 Indian names and 1/3 Chinese names. Zero European names and I saw nobody white at all.

So let's break this down a bit. We (Chinese) come from a culture that really emphasizes education. Math and literature are HUGE... but these days more so math, esp in diasporic communities. Why you may ask? Racism and poverty.

Education is a pathway out of poverty. Numbers are highly objective. There's no "I feel this essay more so it gets a higher mark". We feel this is the path for our kids out of economic poverty. Every Asian kid basically is pushed into math and science and we are told we have to be 4x better than the white guy if we want any chance of the same job for less pay. We will take it anyways because we are in a land that isn't dominated by us and taking the path of objectivity is less risky than trying to be a poet or artist while a minority.

Well, it worked at least for us. Thanks to our parents, we climbed our way out of "physical labour" working class and into "desk job" working class. Little step, but still a step. Our bodies aren't nearly as broken as our parents' were at this age.

Fast forward to my (second) generation of parents. We get to take a step back and ask ourselves is putting our kids in more school after school is really how I want my kids to spend their precious childhood years. I get to question the value of learning academic things faster and getting higher marks vs letting them do different things and having more fun as kids. I value time in the park over this kind of academic enrichment. This is my privilege as a child of immigrant parents who successfully pushed their kids out of the working class poverty that they were worried we would be trapped in.

I do not think it was a coincidence not a single white family was present today. There's a privilege of multi generational wealth and being the dominant ethnic group that allows these families to prioritize other things. The first time I heard a parent (I wasn't one yet) refer to their kid as well rounded so it's ok they only had B averages I was kind of shocked. I didn't understand what this meant. It took a while, but I eventually understood it to mean "They can spend their childhoods having fun and not earning high grades because they will have a quarter million dollar a year jobs lined up no matter what half assed school they graduate from and how low their grades are".

And fast forward. It's true. They do!

So all this to say, while there may be truth to the stereotype that Chinese and Indian kids are good at math, don't under estimate how much racism and classism has to do with them getting pushed into it. If their kids had a quarter mil a year jobs lined up for them after graduating from any half assed university, they wouldn't be doing this either.